CTGttW Question 11: Gaming

NeilNjae

How could you use this book for gaming? Would you concentrate on the relationshps among the people in the train? The effects of the Wastelands on the train, or on the world?

Apocryphal

Yes, sure - probably all of these. Since the train is metaphorical it would easily be swapped out for any enclosed environment which is keeping out an outside environment. A sailing ship or a space ship would do. Putting it in that light, think of the parallels to Alien, Voyage of the Space Beagle, or Solaris.

Flip the script to humans invading a foreign realm and you have Roadside Picnic or Heart of Darkness (or Silverberg’s Downward to the Earth to give an SF equivalent).

Having interesting characters to interact with and a mystery to solve are must-haves in RPing, so yes - have those too.

BarnerCobblewood

Good question. I guess I see the relationships among the PCs and NPCs as being the responsibility of the whole table, so for that I only need to do my part by making the N/PCs I play functional within their roles. I think my ideas about the Wastelands (monstrosity) as incomprehensible might be of use, but the Wastelands as they were revealed through the book aren't of much use for the kind of game I would like to play. I'm not interested in playing at saving the world / girl, nor in finding the MacGuffin. So I would make it a lot more dangerous.

clash_bowley

I couldn't see how I would use the train. I'm not an 'on the rails' sort of GM. The descriptions of parts of the wasteland were evocative enough to help describe parts of some Fae or other wild magic land. I liked the name Weiwei. After that? I got nothin'.

kcaryths

I don't have the RPG experience you all have (I have only played a number of play-by-post GURPS games over the years and some D&D with my son in more recent years) but this would make a pretty decent cooperative board game. A train that moves along with several generic characters that all have different skills, a nefarious force that us trying to stop you. Basically Pandemic but on a train.

clash_bowley

@kcaryths said:
Basically Pandemic but on a train.

Brilliant! I would design that board game with a permanently changeable board, and you inherit the changes each voyage. The train would take damage along the way, and the engineer would attempt patch repairs en route. The surveyor could 'find alternate rail routes' around real nasty places, and a fixed amount of damage can be repaired at each depot (Moscow and Beijing). So as the game progresses, each voyage the terrain changes more and more and the train is possibly subject to more and more damage. If you get to the year 1900 with the train still viable, Civilization as we know it wins. Otherwise the wild magic can't be contained.

kcaryths

Exactly that! Would be pretty fun.

clash_bowley

@kcaryths said:
Exactly that! Would be pretty fun.

Yeah, it would, wouldn't it?

RichardAbbott

What a cool idea!

NeilNjae

@kcaryths said:
I don't have the RPG experience you all have (I have only played a number of play-by-post GURPS games over the years and some D&D with my son in more recent years) but this would make a pretty decent cooperative board game. A train that moves along with several generic characters that all have different skills, a nefarious force that us trying to stop you. Basically Pandemic but on a train.

Sounds a bit like the Battlestar Galactica game. That one has the twist that some of the characters are randomly assigned to be enemy agents. Some are assigned part-way through the game!

kcaryths

Sounds great. I love those kind of dynamics in games.