The Blue Room
Two summers ago I ran a successful but weird PBEM called "No Other Blue". This game has nothing to do with it, but I've decided to keep the Blue theme
A room blue tiled and blue lit. Around the walls are seven doors. A cart-wheel hangs from the ceiling, and a crowd gathers.
Character List
The State of the Blue Room
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The Premise
The Blue Room is a PBEM that I'm going to be running over the summer, and maybe beyond. The setup is this:
- You are playing a character living somewhere in England
- The year is 2003, 1996, 1982, 1961, 1933, 1898 or 1856
- Your character comes to the Blue Room in their dreams
- That's about all you know
Character Generation
Character generation is absurdly simple. It has three steps, and one of those is the obvious "come up with a concept" step. Once you've come up with a concept, you're going to need to pick a starting year, and then spend seven points on quirks. Then you're done.
Concepts
This is the "World very much like our own" so favoured by modern occult games. PCs should be resident in England, in one of the seven years listed. They should (for preferance) be the sorts of people who, when they start having weird dreams about a blue room, show an interest and start trying to find out about or otherwise interact with it. Apart from that pretty much anything goes.
Years
Just to reiterate, PCs can be based in the years 2003, 1996, 1982, 1961, 1933, 1898 and 1856.
Quirks
You know the drill, or you should at least. You get seven points, to go on the following. Note that thare are no flaws. This isn't because I morally object to them, it's because with only 7 points per character they couldn't be properly balenced. Such is the problem with rules light games.
Longevity (1 to 7) You are alive in later years. If your character is based in 1856 and you spend 3 points on Longevity, you can be pretty sure of being alive in 1961.
Fragment (2) You know a secret.
Day Job (2) You've got a day job, with the skills, income and general ties to the world that this entails
Magician (5) You can do magic. How cool is that. See me for how magic works in this setting
A Pig in a Poke (3) You pays your points, you takes your chances
Temporal Power (4) You have temporal influence, at least in your year
Independant Wealth (4) You've got money, and it's self sustaining. This is useful if you suddenly have to go AWOL to investigate weirdshit
Wild Talent (3) You've got some kind of Power. It'll be some sort of vaguely psychic thingy, and its precise nature is up to me. You can make suggestions if you like.
Ally (1) You're an annoying lawyer who doesn't feel complete without a man in her life... or alternatively you have some sort of ally
Real Friends (2) Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies
Destiny (3) Something to your benefit is going to wind up happening to you before you die. This will involve power, it may not be anything your character would have chosen for themselves
Talent (2) You're pretty darned good at something
Exceptional Talent (3) You're really darned good at something
Unique Resource (2) You've got access to something really handy. Perhaps it's a library of tomes of wisdom, perhaps it's a ConEx season ticket.
Genre Notes
First and most importantly Ixnay on the Imetraveltay. This game does take place across multiple timezones and PCs may or may not be able to move between them (you'll have to see now won't you) but this game will not focus on changing history, time police, and killing your own grandfathers.
On a similar note, please accept that you are all doomed. Once your paied-for longevity runs out, you're probably dead. This is unlikely to take you out of the game, of course, but please accept that if you're playing a character living in 1856 then odds are you will find out that something nasty has happened to you by 1898. This is all part of the game.
Still in that similar vein. Whether or not you can fight destiny is to be left very much up in the air, however I will say this. Anything a player gets told by me is canon and cannot be changed, because that way madness lies. That being said please note that there is an important distinction between "what a player is told by me" and "what a PC reads in a newspaper". If you want to avoid your own death at the hands of the Order of the Emerald Glass in 1945 your best bet is to try to do it in such a way as to leave the world thinking you died at the hands of the Order of the Emerald Glass in 1945.
Them of y'all as knows me and knows the way I run this sort of thing will know what to expect. It'll be odd, it'll be fairly hands off (although less so than No Other Blue was) but I will expect the players to carry a lot of the game themselves, this means I'll be looking for character concepts who will go out and do stuff, get involved in plans and intrigues. You know the drill.
Turnsheeting
I'm going to be all postmodern and experimental here and say that there's no official limit on Turnsheet actions, but the game runs roughly real time, one week OOC to one week IC, and any attempts to take the piss will be crushed beneath my iron fist. What you can do will be limited by your quirks, common sense and other cool effects that I am not going to tell you about, so there.
There will be no IC news per se beyond individual turnsheet feedback, but events may lead to a change in the nature, shape or form of the Blue Room, and these changes will be noted on the site.
The List
The Blue Room yahoogroup ([email protected])is going to be the main forum for the game and unless you go out of your way to make things otherwise it is the only forum for IC communication between PCs. Should two PCs wish to communicate offlist, you need to take one of the following options
- If you are based in the same year as another PC, you can meet and communicate privately, but you need to turnsheet finding each other, or give out your contact details through the Blue Room
- If you live in a different year to another PC, and I haven't told you of a way to communicate across time outside of the Blue Room, then chances are you can't. Of course you could always look into it...