Reminders

So, most of this week has been hammering away at the Primeval Bastionland Playtest and today I sit down to write the editorial but... the writing part of my brain is crumbling.

There's a lot I want to talk about in relation to Primeval. I rambled quite a bit about it over here but small things have already changed since then! 

I'm holding back on making significant gameplay changes, but I wanted to tweak the way Omens are rolled, and fine tune a few of the specific Knights and Myths, so I've snuck in a few alterations. 

This post was originally going to be a plea for mercy. "Hey, I released that free pdf this week, so do you mind if I'm too tired to write an editorial too?"

But here we are. I'm writing it. And I'm afraid it's not going to be pretty.

I thought I'd share the current mantras of my notes document for Primeval. These are things that I hold to be so important that I shove them at the top of the doc in big bold caps.

In Electric Bastionland they were:

ALL GAME NO HISTORY NO FLUFF NO LORE
MAKE THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING
IS THIS BETTER THAN WHAT A GM WOULD MAKE UP AT THE TABLE?
STOP ADDING SHIT

Well I think those are still relatively solid, but Primeval is its own beast. I want it to be a game that still fits my values, but has an identity beyond just being ITO or EB again. 

So here's what I have currently yelling at me each time I open my notes:

MYTH NOT HISTORY

For a while this was subtitled with NO ROMANS NO ROADS. A reminder that just because I'm drawing on some elements of Arthuriana and Early-Medieval Britain doesn't mean that I should be grounded in reality. This is a world based on the idea of those sources. The myth, not the history. The feel, not the specifics. 

You know how it's weird when you see a picture of Lancelot wearing shining plate armour that's probably more 16th Century than 6th? That's what I want to embrace. A world where that's real, because it's the myth. 

THE GAME IS THE WORLD

This is similar to the ALL GAME note I had for Electric Bastionland. Since ITO I've embraced the challenge to see how much of a world I can present without having any pages of raw exposition. 

Pedants will note that I have one or two pages just explaining setting elements in both of my previous books (and indeed this one), but y'know, shoot for the stars, aim for the moon or whatever. I'm talking about getting as much setting into the actual game tools as possible. 

In Electric Bastionland I boasted that the Failed Careers were the world, and I stand by that, but I think I can go further. In their current state the Knight/Myth spreads already do a better job of giving you what you need at the table. The plan is for any given spread to give you a knight, a steed, a seer, a building, a person, a beast, a landscape, an object, a wonder, some encounters, and a couple of mini spark tables. Maybe I'll add more too. As close as I can get to a one-stop shop without just cramming each spread full of 8pt text. 

MAKE IT ALL STICKY

Horrible words to live by, but named after this blogpost. Omens are basically encounters, but I've given myself a little more freedom to make them broader little packages of stuff. 

In spite of that, I want them all to stick to the players. I can't stop them just walking past certain Omens, but I want most of them to make a lasting impression. Maybe it's something they'll want to come back to later, maybe it's something that needs dealing with right now, or maybe it's just something that lingers in their head. 

See, I had an editorial in me after all!

And I'll end with a note that these are giant reminders because I need reminding and haven't fully internalised these yet, so don't be surprised when the current version isn't quite there yet.

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