The basic idea is that each player takes on the role of a game designer. You are cranky, opinionated, prejudiced and eccentric. You are also collaborating with a number of your peers -- the other players -- on the construction of an rule set describing some sort of RPG.

The game is played in 26 turns, one for each letter of the alphabet.

1. On the first turn, each player writes an entry for the letter 'A'. You come up with the name of the rule, and you write 100-200 words on the subject. At the end of the article, you sign your name, and make two citations to other rules in the encyclopedia. These citations will be phantoms -- their names exist, but their content will get filled in only on the appropriate turn. No letter can have more rules than the number of players, either, so all citations made on the first turn have to start with non-A letters.

Rules can be written several ways: "Alignment" (a subsystem for the game), "Acknowledgement of Differing Player Agendas" (philosophical discussion of a game or play issue), "Astral Psionics" (describing how a character skill or ability works), or "The Asteroids Rule" (descriptive title for a rule; this could represent something like "all basic situations, when resolved, offer up two new situations that are smaller in size, scope, or importance than the initial situation").

All rules will include at least one tag for what "chapter" of the rulebook they would appear in: Creating Characters, Player Advice, Combat, GM Advice, etc.

A player can (but need not) describe setting material in the context of their rule, but this sort of entry must also be tagged "Setting" in addition to other information .

2. On the second and subsequent turns, you continue to write rules for B, C, D and so on. However, you need to make three citations. One must be a reference to an already-written rule, and two must be to unwritten rules. (On the 25th and 26th turns, you only need to cite one and zero phantom rules, respectively, because there won't be enough phantom rules, otherwise.)

It's an design sin to cite yourself, you can never cite a rule you've written. (OOC, this forces the players to intertwingle their entries, so that everybody depends on everyone else's facts.) Incidentally, once you run out of empty slots, obviously you can only cite the phantom slots.

3. Despite the fact that your peers are self-important, narrow-minded dunderheads, they are honest designers. No matter how strained their interpretations are, their rules are as necessary as yours. So if you cite a rule, you have to treat it as a "locked" aspect of the ruleset! (Though you can argue vociferously with the interpretation and introduce new rules that shade the interpretation.)

4. This little game will probably play best on a wiki, and it should take a month or so to play to completion. At the end of it, you'll have a highly-hyperlinked document that details a nice little piece of collaborative system-building. (OOC, it'll probably be a mess. . . but maybe not.)

The owner of the wiki should set the general subject of the Lexicon. I suggest that he or she make use of the technique of "open reference" when describing the game's setting: "You are all game designers working on the first draft of a new BigCo Games RPG, based on the setting involving the Void Ghost Rebellion against the cyber-gnostic theocracy, in an attempt to establish the Third Republic." What a cyber-gnostic theocracy is or what happened to the first two republics -- they are named to specifically to evoke a mood and inspire the other players' creativity.

Tags: gaming, mad rpg theory
Current Mood: curious