I’m continuing the design of Two-Peaks Island. Writing stuff on paper helped me to see that I started with two much ideas. I’ve got lots of tropes, scenes, situations in mind, but I needed to reframe my plans, even with a C.A.T.S. already written as a roadmap.
The C.A.T.S. will soon get a revision, in fact, following some changes and thoughts I got. Nothing really significative, but still things.
In this post, this « Island Diary » that will serve as a title for those design posts, I want to show two elements I’ve spent time some time on those last few days.
First, while reviewing all my notes, I found out that I was going too far. I was planning too much stuff, and that was not the thing to do in a « Brindlewood Bay »-style campaign format, as I imagine it to be in structure and length. So I worked on that : the campaing, its levels. How to structure it, what to put in it, how to rise the tension, how to follow the progress in the campaign.
I chose to use Memories as timer markers for the progress within the campaign. Those Memories are from other people who came to the island. They will trigger through some Moves. It will put the focus away from the Lost Ones (the Players Characters), by showing the fate of other.
Regarding the campaign, I first got other ideas. But I decided to tighten the proposition, the story and to go on another idea. Because I don’t want the campaign to be complex to run, I don’t want to micro-manage several factions in a complex system. Also, I don’t want the campaign to run on a too long format, so I tried to stay in the framework of already published games with 5 levels :
- The existence of the Witches
- The past existence of lost communities
- The conflict between the Witches, the Wandering Memories
- A storm that will impact the status quo
- Escaping the Island
All this is described a little bit more in the previous link. Feel free to read, comment, question it!
My second task at this point was to work on the Player Characters. That I named (for now) The Lost Ones.
I want the PC creation phase to be dynamique, like a movie montage, made of Vignettes. We need to discover the Lost Ones in the heat of the action, as if we press fast-forward on the pilot to jump to the second pilot, where the mystery start.
As in many Carved from Brindlewood games, the past of the characters will not be talked about. It will be vague, mysterious, hidden. Flashbacks will be there, during play, to bring us players more informations. And that is … like in the TV-Show Lost !
The document linked before also talk about the Masks (Crowns in Brindlewood Bay) that are set for the characters. Masks of the Past, in order to learn about their life before the crash, through Flashbacks. Masks of the Island, in order to see them dive into the Island mystery and maybe lost them here.
Those mechanics could be strange for you, as they are yet unexplained in the document, but they’re linked to the Carved from Brindlewood framework. They work like Destiny Points, that save you one time against a fictional effect.
I hope you’ll like those first previews, and that you’ll be inclined for more, be intrigued by it.
Feel free to contact me here, or on the social media where I wander. Be it for explaining some choices, some ideas, to ask for more and so on.
See you soon on the Two-Peaks Island.
Note: the two links open up a Google shared document. Those are living draft documents that can evolve. Feel free to add comment. They could become stall in a few months or even disappear (I’ll try to add a warning here) while I organize my notes.
Also, being french, my english could sometimes include some strange wording. Sorry for that.