Secret Allegiances = Intrigue

intrigue (plural intrigues)

1. A complicated or clandestine plot intended to effect some purpose by conspiracy; stratagem.

Mountain Witch uses dark Fates. I'll be using loyalty cards. After each character is made, the GM will deal them an loyalty card. This will determine whether the character is working to complete the mission or disrupt it.

Loyalty cards will reveal one of two results:

Loyalist

Complete the mission. Protect the Null. Root out any Traitors.

Traitor

Sabotage the mission. Destroy the Null. Root out any Loyalists.

The bread and butter of The Company is espionage, be it political, corporate or something else entirely. Every player character has been assigned to carrier team as either the courier or its security entourage. Unfortunately, much of this 'security force' is secretly working against the mission objective. These traitors sabotage missions for their own idealism as often as they simply accepted an offer from a higher bidder.

Even the Null draws a loyalty card. Disloyal couriers may pass their 'secured' information to competitors, revolutionaries, or mundane information brokers. Until the time comes for their secret delivery, however, they are still forced to keep up appearances until they can root out the loyal members of the team.

Suspicion

Suspicion exists to encourage intrigue by rewarding a character's suspicious actions. Since Player vs. Player conflict can not happen until the climax (more on this later), players spend the early part of the game narrating suspicious behavior to cloud loyalties as much as possible. Ideally, there will be no way to predict a characters loyalty until the big finale.

Psychics It Is!

Had a really good talk with some gamer buddies today. They helped confirm some strange ideas and provided a few awesome ones of their own.

Seabirds = Psychics

The diet of seabirds leads to a concrete metaphor for telepaths. After the event, everyone developed the ability to read minds. The world has likewise changed in several big ways.

Skimmers - "Gulls"

Skimmers can 'listen in' on the surface thoughts (current intentions) of anyone in the vicinity. They can't dig too deep but they are usually the first to know what will happen next.

Pursuers - "Loons"

Pursuer work only begins at surface thoughts. A good pursuer can follow a large number of connected thoughts, learning a great amount of information, before losing the connection.

Divers - "Pelicans"

Divers get in and get out like a bolt of lightning. Not settling for the flotsam at the surface, they shoot for a specific thought before the subject can muster much resistance.

Scavengers - "Petrels"

Even the weakest mind provides too much resistance for a Scavenger. They are quite proficient at sifting through the thoughts of the dead, however, even the dead that still walk. No one's sure if scavengers really consume the dead brain tissue, or if they perpetuate the myth to add to their own legend.

Nulls - "Zombies"

Brain death used to be a one-way street, until Sombien hit hospitals. After full recovery from a vegetative state, the only side-effect of the drug is the total loss of any psychic ability and the total inability to be read by anyone but a scavenger.

In a world of mind readers, nulls become secure couriers. As long as they can avoid hostile scavengers, the information they carry is safe and secure. Of course, things are never that easy.

A Sea of Thoughts?

Jungian symbolism holds the ocean as a pretty classic symbol for the human mind. Perhaps our 'seabirds' are then psychics that spend their time digging through the minds of others. Some simply dip in for whatever thoughts float at the surface while others plunge quickly to catch slippery thoughts before they're hidden.

Would this be a game of psychic detectives? Telepathic criminals? Enforcers for the Man seeking to root out terrorists or revolutionaries desperately trying to hide their thoughts from the establishment?

These situations are certainly rife with Intrigue. Is there a dice mechanic that could actually feign mind-reading...?

Early Ideas

In the tradition of those that have already begun, I'll comment on the ingredients and medals of this year's contest.

Theme: INTRIGUE

The only thing this brings to mind right now is the Vampire rpg and LARPS. I dislike both of them so as much as I want to stay true to theme, this may be the first thing I toss out.

Ingredients: FLEUR-DE-LIS, DIVIDERS, SEABIRD, and STAR

Skimming the wiki page on fleur-de-lis brought nothing to mind, but it could possibly be the symbol for a faction within the game.

Dividers were used in cartography and navigation. My game could involve exploration as a theme or maybe there's an exploratory faction opposite the fleur-de-lis group.

The wiki on seabirds was fascinating with the description of diet and feeding especially catching my eye. Seems seabirds fall into 4 broad categories of feeding. Surface Feeders dip their heads to catch krill and other food at the ocean's surface. Pursuit Divers (like penguins) swim after food that's up to 70m down! Plunge Divers catch faster prey by dropping from up to 20m above the water's surface. Kleptoparasites are avian pirates, stealing the hard won food of other birds.

My first thought was sci-fi or steampunk style airships 'mining' the skies by diving to different depths. Then the Kleptoparasites immediately made me think pirates. Haven't we done the pirate thing to death already though?

The star ingredient didn't strike me near as hard as seabirds. Weird, right? The symbol for a 3rd faction maybe? Star's have a natural place with the navigation dividers from above. Why does it feel like I'm the only one getting a strong nautical vibe from these ingredients? I never considered making a sailing game, but maybe this is a sign.

Other Medals

There's a host of other medals I could qualify for, but only a few really stood out. Brevity means the rules will need to fit on 4 pages, Zombies means the protagonists would have to be zombies, Cerberus dictates the game must be for 3 players, etc. I'm definitely aiming for Brevity and that's the only one I'm shooting for at this point.

Maybe the seabirds are classes of ships where some are built for skimming, some for diving, etc. Maybe intrigue comes from plotting against the ship's captain. Maybe there aren't ships at all, but the diving is into a more symbolic or supernatural medium like the mind (Lacuna), hyperspace (Hellas), the underworld, or the like.