Last night Greg and I played unWritten in a setting that Greg is developing for a comic book he’s working on…
We started the game by talking about what we wanted to play. I said I wanted to play something inspired by Mouse Guard, a great graphic novel found here. Greg mentions his comic that was inspired by Mouse Guard, best described as, “The Secret of NIMH meets I Am Legend.” That sounded perfect. We decided on two pre-game rules: 1) There is nothing mystical, though forms of technology can be “interpreted” by the rats as being magic. 2) There is no rat to human translations. The time frame of the game is such that the rats are cognitively equal to humans, but, they haven’t yet develop literacy or any means of reading human text. So, this is the background we are started from…
Humans genetically modified rats to the point that the rats could have human-like cognitive capabilities. A “by-product” of this was their increased size to about 2½ or 3 feet tall, when standing on their hind legs, and an increased life-span, about 50 years. The humans have mysteriously disappeared, leaving the world, as we know it today, to the rats. Except, the rats don’t know who the humans were, or what happened to them. The main preoccupation of the rats is finding sustenance and resources and maintaining their shelters safe. The rats have not yet developed any form of agriculture or manufacturing at this time. They purely live by scavenging the remains of the humans. And, finally, our protagonists will be the second generation of these rats that have lived since the humans have died.
Here are the three opening cues we came up with from the previous conversation:
Intelligent Rats in a (ours) post-human world.
Tribes at war over sustenance & resources.
Did the gods gift this to us or abandon us?
These are the two protagonists we created:
Greg’s protagonist
Name: Wind
Role: Guardian of High Places
Physical Trait: Agile
Drive: Aspiration; Protect the Others
Drive: Inclination; Run After Mysteries
My protagonist
Name: Watcher
Role: Seeker of New Skies (scout)
Mental Trait: Custodian of Earth and Air (shaman skills)
Drive: Aspiration; To Find the Answers of our Past
Drive: Inclination; Being Abandoned, retreat to the depths
Before we actually began, we agreed that our tribes rats lived in a sky scraper in downtown Los Angeles. Their tribe is called the “Storm Seekers.” And, that we would be using the cinematic rules (once known as quickplay rules).
I’ll post the actual play next…