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Mission of Gravity Q8: Gaming
Ok, let's talk gaming on this one. Although a number of aspects of Mission of Gravity seemed rather mechanical as a reader, those same aspects fairly screamed traditional RPG gaming to me, where you've got a bunch of characters trying to solve physical problems using their skill sets and ideas. Here, the twist being that the characters are not humans, but space-centipedes. In many ways, this almost reads like a short campaign summary.
But what if you wanted to take a more story-game approach? Then presumably such problems would be fairly easily solved, so they wouldn't be the focus, but maybe interpersonal relations of the crew? Or maybe really interesting would be to have the players resolve various problems, but divide them between humans and Mesklinites and force them to work together to solve the problems, but make that interaction a problem itself, so there's a game-within-a-game in working out how to communicate with one another.
Any other gaming scenarios or themes that this book inspires?
Comments
Can you explain further?
Okay...the characters in Mouseguard are anthropomorphic mice, patrolling their territories, dealing with threats. They have some technology, but it's not advanced.
One place the game plays absolutely fair is in the environment being a genuine threat to the mouse characters due to their small size, and ample predatory animals. Facing a grass snake is as bad as facing a dragon in a typical fantasy game. There's use of seasons in travel and obstacles.
The scale, the anthopomorphisation, the use of a character's Nature as part of their concept (a mouse has their mousy nature...a Mesklinite has similar with such things as fear of heights, which can be overcome but are always there).
It's also towards the storygame end of the RPG spectrum with a formal structure to conflicts and obstacles, and GM and player turns.
Now I've typed all that I want to play Mesklinguard...but I suspect it might be quite a small pool of possible players.