Character Creation: Unwritten

Got a little time before my players get here to play Chill, chili's in the crock pot, why not?

The Game: Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of MYST and Beyond
The Publisher: Inkworks Productions
Degree of Familiarity: Some. I've run it once, and it uses Fate, which I'm pretty familiar with.
Books Required: Just the one.

 

I played MYST once years ago, but there's a whole expanded universe that I'm now, like, slightly more familiar with. I just wrote a review of the game for RPG.net, and it'll be up in a couple of days, but it's pretty favorable - I like this game a lot.

Now, if we were actually playing a game of Unwritten, I would be creating a whole framework with my other players. Since it's just me, however, I'll just assume the same framework that we used when we played the game recently (though not necessarily the stuff specific to what we did). In order to make a character, I start, as usual, with a concept.

Well, if I were playing this game, I'd want to spend my time going through different Ages and chronicling things. Rather than playing a naturalist, though, I think I want to play someone who's obsessed with Yeesha (one of the important figures of the setting; she could do things with Writing that no one else could). My character is writing The Chronicle of Yeesha, and is convinced that by following her journey through a particular set of Ages, he can unlock her messianic message for the world. He's also superstitious about learning any Writing - he's happy to use Linking Books, but he doesn't believe he's worthy to go making Descriptive Books himself (that, I think, would be a fun character arc).

So my High Concept is Chronicler of Yeesha. His name is Leslie Ruck.

Now I do my Journey. This would involve picking two prompts from a "steps along your path" list (formative experiences) and two from a "crossing paths" list (dealing with other PCs), but given that I have no PCs, I'll just have to make up other characters, I s'pose. And then there's an Aspect attached to each one.

Well, for the my steps bits, the obvious one is that he believes, above all else, that Yeesha can save the world. He believes that Yeesha's journey throughout the Ages was a pilgrimage, but he also believes that figuring out where she ended up won't help - the journey is just as important. I think this all came about the first time he went adventuring in an Age. He Linked into an Age called Hystek; it was dark and underground and at first he thought he was still in D'ni somewhere. And then he found it - a huge mural, carved (and signed!) by Yeesha. He copied it into his book, and that's what he references whenever he gets stuck. I think that book makes for a decent Aspect, so I'll take My Magnum Opus, the Chronicle as my first Journey Aspect.

Since I want Leslie to be experienced and enthused about jumping from Age to Age, I'll describe another Age he visited and what happened there. He visited an Age called Plateau, which, when he got there, was just a featureless expanse - no puzzles, no life, no nothing. And then he kept walking, for days and days, and reached the edge. The bit that he Linked to was the dead center of an immense plateau (hence the name), and over the edge was a pulley and lift that lowered him down into a lush jungle with amazing, vibrant plant life and plentiful food. This taught Leslie that if someone went to the trouble of making a Linking Book, there's something there to see. The Aspect is Every Age Has Wonders.

Now I need a couple more Aspects. I could make up other characters to have Leslie have crossed paths with, but eh. I have a pretty good sense of his personality.

Well, he's definitely fit and clever, because he goes traipsing off into Ages alone. And he was willing to walk for days rather than Linking home, so he's dedicated as heck. I'll take Just A Little Further to represent his stamina and perseverance. Finally, I picture Leslie as being rootless. He owns very little, seldom stays in one place for long, and though he returns to D'ni often, it's mostly just to plot his next move. I'll make that Aspect You Own Nothing You Can't Carry.

Now, Skills! I get one at Great, two at Good, three at Fair, and four at Adequate. Well, Surveying is unquestionably my Great Skill. My Goods are Athletics and...hmm. My gut says Survival. That's probably wise.

My Fairs are Research (gotta learn about those Ages first!), Rapport (he's personable) and Craft. His Adequates are Empathy, Engineering, Will, and Notice.

Now, stunts. I get three, unless I want to lower my Refresh, which I don't.

Well, I know I want a stunt to boost my Research with regards to Yeesha's journey. So I'll call it Endless Search: I get +2 to Research using a Discovery action about an Age that shows up in the Chronicle.

I'll make one up called Trust the Journey: If I spend a Fate point to declare a Yeesha-related detail about a scene, I get a +1 to Create an Advantage based on it.

And finally, I am Extremely Dedicated: I get a +2 to oppose with Will if someone is trying to talk me out of going to an Age or something else related to my quest.

And I think that's it, actually.

Unwritten, now written

Last night we played Unwritten. I think it went pretty well, and since I'm too restless and bored to do the work I should be doing, I'm-a do the write-up.

The characters start out doing their usual things: Principessa is skipping stones in the upside-down water in the unexplored area. Nick is taking readings on his equipment near the border, while Terra is sneaking around in places she oughtn't be. Eleni is following a mafia tough, while Saron is delivering a book (not a Book) to a patron.

And then a huge, powerful wind kicks up out of the unexplored version. Everyone manages to take cover except Saron; the wind blows the book right out of her hands. Principessa, thinking quickly, grabs a cable and flies up like a kite, catching the book. She returns it, and Saron gives her a pair of gloves in thanks. She also notices that the wind kicked up some residue that isn't native to the cavern - in fact, it looks like the dirt from Vilette, an Age marked by high winds and a cyclical 400-year destruction of civilization. She brings this to Nick, who analyzes the dirt and concurs. Nick, of course, is fascinated - weather systems from other Ages don't just pop up. He moves to cordon off the area and go exploring, but then Walleye, Principessa's mafia handler, warns him that he should just stay away.

Nick, however, is too experienced and dedicated an explorer to be dissuaded, so he decides he'll just go in anyway. Principessa tags along, concerned for his safety, and Saron goes, too, to take notes.

Meanwhile, Terra and Eleni, in the unexplored area from the other direction, meet up. The two groups eventually meet up with a tunnel opening up in a deep pit between them. Terra, after a quick compel to Leap Before You Look, tries to jump the pit, and fails...but she inverts and "falls" up, landing on the ceiling.

A little experimentation later, the characters realize that gravity inverts itself in the pit. Nick sinks pitons and starts climbing "up" into the pit (down?), and Terra uses her grapple gun and just zooms by him. At the bottom, the characters realize a couple of things. First, there are five tunnels, roughly equidistant from each other, leading back into the wall. Second, dozens of Linking Books are set into the floor, Linking Pages up.

With some trials and tribulations, the other characters make it to the bottom (top?) of the pit. Nick climbs down a tunnel and finds a lever, which he pulls. Half the books disappear. Eleni climbs into another tunnel, finds another lever, and gets a similar result (but with the other books). Saron notes that the books seem roughly divided into Ages with running water and ages with deserts or otherwise high heat. The other tunnels contain levers, but when flipped individually they cause hideous grinding sounds, as though immense gears were about to strip.

When those three levers are flipped together, though, the gravity rights itself (OOF). Now able to walk on the bottom of the pit, the characters check out the books. Saron recognizes some of the Ages depicted - Vilette, the Pearlescent Aeon, and others that the players came up with originally (and some that they didn't, of course).

At this point we used the deduction system to figure out the answer to the big question: "What is the purpose of this mechanism?" After a few rounds of deduction, they realized that this place was a D'ni cleansing apparatus; it could activate water and heat. As a side effect, many of the places the books link to were good for dumping bodies, which might be why the mafia was so interested...

At this point, Nick started trying to chisel out a Book. Saron objected, strenuously - the Archivists needed to document this and make sure that they weren't destroying some expensive bit of history. Nick agreed, but Terra didn't, and popped one out with a crowbar. She touched the screen, and pop, she disappeared. She was in Vilette.

Nick, concerned for her safety, Linked after her. The others looked at each other, shrugged, and followed. If nothing else, they were pretty sure Nick had a Linking Book to get back.

Game Prep: Unwritten

I'm running Unwritten tonight. This was something I was running to review (I run games written/produced other other IGDN members and then review them), and normally that's just a one-shot, but we kinda ran out of time after chargen and I didn't want to rush. So!

If you're playing tonight, of course, don't read this.

Sunday Post #1: Unwritten

So, last night we did character creation for Unwritten, and we were going to play it, but time got away from us and we decided we'd rather have a second date to play it rather than either play until 2AM or rush through a scene or two.

Unwritten, if you don't know, is an RPG based on the old Myst video games (you can get the PDF here, pay what you want). Now, I played the first one waaaaaay back in the day, liked it, and never really got into the others, but there's like a whole huge fandom around the games and the novels and the MMO. I really like Unwritten (I'm gonna be writing a review for RPG.net, I just haven't decided if I'm going to write it before or after we play the session).

Anyway, we used one of the preexisting frameworks, but then went on to do much of the rest of the game creation-work. Everyone created an Age, which might or might not get visited when we play. Folks all added a detail about the setting, which wound up focusing on the underground city of D'ni.

Specifically, there's an unexplored section of the city where the weather is backwards. Rain pools on the ground and then falls up, and occasionally it gets cold enough to snow (also in reverse). Electrical devices don't work there, either. Also, D'ni has an organized crime ring, and they're very interested in the unexplored section...

Characters, then:

• Sarah plays Eleni, daughter of a minor magistrate in the Guild of Maintainers. The mafia has him under their thumb, and she'd like to get him out. She's curious and has a knack for finding Books in weird places. 
• Mike plays Nick Boydelatour, a veteran explorer. He was going to be an astronaut, but a minor heart murmur kept him out. He found his way to D'ni, and he's been exploring new worlds ever since. 
• John plays Terra, who Linked into D'ni as a child, carrying a grapple gun, and having no idea what kind of Age she's from. She's been searching for her home Age ever since. She was adopted by the head of the local "mafia," which puts her at odds with her friend, Eleni; Terra refuses to believe what Eleni tells her about her dad.
• Travis plays Principessa, a young orphan who acts as a gopher for the mafia. She's overconfident, daring, and skilled at reading art and making judgements about the people who made it.
• Michelle plays Saron, a junior member of the Guild of Archivists. She's heavily book-smart, but has very little real-world experience. She's also the secret daughter of the mafia head (Terra's adopted father); she's been told her father died in an accident. 

So, next time, we'll actually get into this. Unwritten doesn't really do much with combat (there are, in fact, no combat skills), so all of this mafia stuff is going to be more an omnipresent threat/family issue than a source of physical conflict. I'm looking forward to it.