Once More

So, after a week of sponsor meetings, proposal writings, and travel, I’m able to think about the game again. And to put things simply, I decided to combine the two ideas I presented earlier. And fortunately just before things went busy for me, I was able to put those ideas together. Here’s a short summary.

I’ve taken the map idea into a fixed map of 31 boan – which if you recall are essentially worlds in which you become reincarnated. The map is set up with four directions, centering on the humanboan: North = Truly Called, South = Fully Aware, East = Pleasure Boan / Heaven, West = Suffering Boan / Hell. The first two destinations are not in fact boan, but actually states within or outside of the cycle.

The players take on shades, which are somewhat more nebulous than the idea of a soul. These take on different lives each related to each other. The shades carry attachments, calling and awareness, with 20 points moving among them. When the shades incarnate in aboan, the players turn to the page listed for that boan and assign center (the arbiter for that boan), lives (some shades may have more than one life at a time) and then list out details for the age in which they encounter that boan.

Once these are done, the lives act out certain stages, essentially pre-built conflicts, where each shade can influence a conflict by raising (up to 6) an attachment with calling or awareness, or reducing (down to 0) an attachment adding to calling or awareness . These are added as a die of value equal to the higher value of the attachment to determine the outcome for that stage, and also are added to the appropriate side of the map (increasing attachment of joy adds to heaven, of pain adds to hell, releasing to calling adds to Truly Called, releasing to awareness adds to fully aware.) The player then describes how one of their lives has devoted or given up something appropriate to the exchange. This can happen up to one time, per stage, to a single attachment, and not shade can have more than six attachments.

The outcome of the stage is described based on the winning shade’s goals, and if specific listed outcomes occur (as written on theboan page), additional dice may be added to the map, or changes may occur to attachments, calling, or awareness. It is even possible for a life to end, if this is the last life a shade has, then it rolls a die and places it on the map in one of its dominant directions (as determined by totals of pain/joy attachments, calling and awareness, respectively). Every shade whose life remains to the last stage will do this at that point as well. Then the shades move in the dominant direction indicated by totalling the dice on each side of the map. If there is a tie for dominance, they instead move to the humanboan, rolling for which variant they enter (there are six, in addition to the initial one).

Play continues in this way until the shades exit through one of the sides, playing a final stage as they deal with the consequences of that ending.

I’m going for a strong contrast of structure and freedom, and from another direction that of coming to terms with the people you travel with.

– Mendel