Milestone One
“What he gets are peripheral glimpses of data, like the reflection of a computer screen in the dead-air static of the television. He doesn’t read the information in this reflection because he can’t — it goes by too fast. But he gleans it. He recalls an image, an address, a name. He becomes aware that there are others like him in the building.”
—from Tomorrow War alpha document v0.2
The first playtest document—alpha version 0.2—is now in the hands of playtesters. My first reaction is excitement; it’s always thrilling when your work first goes out in front of people. It feels more real. (This is why I enjoy getting your comments on the blog, too.) My second reaction is a kind of faint shame that the playtest document is as sketchy and unpolished as it is. It’s not a game yet, and this is a real make-or-break time for the work I’ve been doing.
Also, there’s this: I made some design breakthroughs following an at-home playtest this weekend, and those are not included in the v0.2 document that just went out. So already I may have something better to show, but it’s not being shown yet. Patience, they tell me, is virtuous. But time keeps on slipping away.
These new breakthroughs? They have to do with the Identity trait and how that will impact characters’ Skills in the long run of play. It’s becoming quite likely that Tomorrow War won’t have the kind of regular character advancement you might expect from an RPG, in which a character gets better and better over time. Characters in this game are likely to change a great deal, but with some steps backward and a lot of sideways movement. One mission your character might be a great driver, but in the next that might not be true. We’ll see.
What I really want to do this week, though, is cover two things I said I’d cover in previous entries: a bit about the game’s “metaplot” and a little bit about what I mean when I say that Tomorrow War is an “indie” RPG.
CAMPAIGN-ORIENTED PLAY & METAPLOT
As written, Tomorrow War is an intensely focused game. It is not meant to model sci-fi action or modern firefights in general. It is meant to facilitate this campaign about these characters and these circumstances. (As an example, improvised weapons are somewhat overpowered right now in the game, and I expect them to stay that way, because it’s right for the theme and attitude I’m going for.) This isn’t a game about time travel, it’s a game about very specific time travelers and the choices they face, both strategically and morally.
The campaign is broken down into three major phases, describing the arc the characters (roughly) take during the chronicle. Whether or not they choose to truly adhere to this arc is up to the players, of course, but the tenor of the story changes over time (because change is an essential part of a good narrative) and the players must respond to those changes by making new decisions for their characters. This three-part arc might take just three play sessions, or it could take ten or thirty or whatever you want, but the notion of the looming end-game is out there. Echoing the sense of an impending future.
Paired with that, we get a history of the future, describing some of the major historical events between the modern day and the undisclosed future year of Tomorrow. The player characters are locked into this history. Or so they may be told. The truth is that the future is mutable, it can be changed, and since this future history is essentially the metaplot, the metaplot is mutable, too. Characters behind the scenes are changing the rules of the game, but the characters can make similar impacts on the timeline—on the metaplot.
As you might guess, this focused play experience is inspired in part by trends in other short-form RPGs, like White Wolf’s Orpheus and indie RPGs like My Life With Master and Agon. The core idea for Tomorrow War as a game has been around since 1995 (!), but the idea that it’s okay for a published RPG to have a definitive ending has taken some time to get settled in my head, so embracing that in this game took awhile.
It’s here now, though, and the game’s stronger for it.
AN INDIE RPG
Insofar as I am designing Tomorrow War myself, and insofar as it is a self-contained experimental idea for an RPG, I suppose the game is an “indie” title. But if we choose to define the indie label as meaning “creator owned,” then the game may not properly be an indie game by the time it reaches you. Things get complicated there, and I don’t want to say too much until such time as I have deals etched in stone.
When the game finally comes out (fingers crossed), we can argue on RPGnet about what indie means. Until then, I’m continuing to consider this an independently produced game.
Questions? Comments? Always eager to hear them.
Music: Nine Inch Nails, The Slip