...because it's pretty cool.
It's still a little early to talk about
Geist proper — I mean, the thing's at the printers and all, so all our mistakes will be set in stone, which is to say, cold and enduring paper from now on. But I'd rather let the game speak mostly for itself.
Except that this isn't much of a reward for tuning in to this blog, now, is it? So heck with it, let's discuss a little developmental intent. So not exactly details — of a sort. Rather, this is the stance that I had when we started the brainstorming, and it's the guidelines I felt were important, at least for me, from the beginning.
A New Property: Okay, let's get this out up front: there's a reason the new game's title doesn't start with W. I loved
Wraith. I wrote for
Wraith. Rich Dansky and I would have little fights over email where we talked about how Ember and Slander would beat each other up. But I didn't want to propose another
Wraith. Note, now, that this is not a mandate "Thou shalt not do a new
Wraith" — rather, I felt it was time for me to try my hand at something new, much as Bill et al. did with
Promethean. This intent also applied as "not
Mummy" and "not
Demon" and "not
Orpheus," but
Wraith was the one everyone was talking about most. Basically, it was time to try our hands at something new. I apologize to everyone who really wanted a new
Wraith or
Orpheus, but so far we had five remakes and one new property. It was time for another new toy. Speaking of which...
New Toys: One of the big learning points for
Changeling was that it's really okay to try cool new things with mechanics. Players not only embraced the kith system, the pledge mechanics, and the weirdness of the Hedge — they ran with it. I wanted
Geist to have a new core mechanic that went into interesting places. I also, though this is more tangential, wanted it to be something that could go interesting places if you reskinned the core mechanics and did something very new setting-wise. If you've ever seen people talk about how to use
Changeling to handle more traditional fantasy or even a low-level "superheroic mutants" game, you know what I mean.
Something I Find Important: I do my best work on game lines that somehow speak to what I believe.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse absolutely spoke to me with its environmental themes, and
Werewolf: the Forsaken
was about believing that what you do right here right now is important,
even if you aren't shaping the fates of nations. Both also represented
the spirit to fight and die for what needs doing that I deeply admire.
So in a way, both are games I loved because they paired what I think is
cool with what I think is right. When I got to work on
Changeling,
one part of that was about my lifelong love affair with the fantasy
genre (I blame my mother, who started me on Tolkien and Lewis and
Alexander and Carroll at a very formative age), and the other part was
about my very real love for my family and home and my fears of what it
would be like to lose them.
Geist also works at the same dual core of things that are important to me. One
the one hand, it's about death — and death is cool, with its skull
motifs and necromancy and all that. I've wanted to do a game of my own
with those motifs for a while. Yet the other side of that is the
attitude about it. I don't want to spoil too much (and maybe it's
already spoiled), but the Sin-Eaters' culture is something I think is
intellectually interesting and emotionally satisfying.
Exciting!: There's a pretty simple barometer for this, actually. Do people talk excitedly about the pitch? Do the brainstorming sessions get everyone lit up and ready to go? Do the writers love what they're given? You will have a
much better game if this is true. I am pleased to report that we achieved this. Everyone loved working on
Geist. That's always what makes the job worth it.
Those were the big important things to me about
Geist. Whatever the final judgment may be — and I'm sure the community will judge this game — we hit those four design conceits. I'm happy that we did that. I hope you're excited to see what's coming up with it.
And perhaps once the game is out (or very close to it), I can be enticed to divulge the story about the "split pitch," and
Geist's neo-sibling that almost won the contest... but we'll see.
(Oh hey, have a
link to the cover!)
Posted
25 Jun 2009 10:52 AM
by
EthanSkemp