I went on a walk with my wife and our two dogs last night. We walked through the town’s cemetery, which I always enjoy. While we were walking, my wife asked me if I thought that many people who had been buried next to each other actually had liked each other in life.
My answer is unimportant.
What is important is the game idea that came from it.
The idea I got is for a true shared story, kind of like Fiasco. In fact, I thought about it being a different type of Fiasco playset, but the “things go wrong” side of things isn’t something that I feel is necessary here.
Maybe I should actually pitch the idea, huh?
You’re dead. So is the person next to you. And the person next to them. You’re all dead. Being dead gives you time to think. Time for your story to breathe. Who were you? Who was the person next to you? And the person next to them?
Now is the time to find out.
The idea is that everyone plays a corpse in a graveyard. You begin play by drawing out the plot where everyone is buried, and you’re all buried near each other. You begin making connections between yourselves. Maybe you were family. Maybe two families buried next to each other.
The game is about your shared history. Through procedural flashbacks (here’s where the Fiasco influence comes in), you delve into the shared story of those around you. If you all played family members, the connections would be obvious and deep; family, after all. If you play strangers, say, soldiers killed in battle, the connections would be more tenuous and more subtle.
Whatever the connections are, they’re there, and that’s what the game, the story, is about.
This is more rough than most of my new ideas. Other than the procedural scenes, I have no idea how I’d set things up, what the procedural scenes would look like, or how to tie the story/game up into a satisfactory ending.
Oh, there’s no GM. I do know that.
So I throw this one open to you: help me design this one. Let’s see where it can go.