Mix-O-Tronic Result:
"Willy Wonka/trade/victorian"
BANDERSNATCH'S BOTTOMLESS BOWL OF BAUBLES
Strategy Board Game/RPG
Imagine if you will, a game based on the idea of Willy Wonka, taken
back to the Belle Epoch. In a grim and dirty England, awash with coal
smoke, stand the greatest monuments to confectionery ever made -
Wonka's, Slugworts', Haberdash's and Bandersnatch's. These fun
factories turn out packet after packet of pure joy for children all
over the world. Bandersnatch himself is a prince among children, his
name breathed in the same hushed tones as Father Christmas.
In an attempt to solidify the hearts and minds of the world's
children, these princes of praline, these titans of taffy work day and
night trying to outdo each other, or send each other to the scrapheap
of history. Along with the brightly packaged chocolate bars,
Bandersnatch and the others employ the grandest of schemes: espionage,
bribery and other, nastier plots.
In Bandersnatch's, you compete with the other candiers to capture
territories by getting the children in that territory to prefer your
sweets above all others. To do that, you'll have to create
new novelties for the kiddies, open candy stores, hire traveling
salesmen, kidnap chocolatiers, brainwash the masses and occasionally
break into a factory or two.
The catch is that while these sorts of low-handed tricks are
necessary, because the world of sugary fun can hardly run itself,
exposure is lethal. Once the precious little monsters know that
you're a backstabbing liar (and who isn't, really?), then sales will
definitely feel a dip. The trick is to do everything that your
competitor is doing, and make sure that he's the one who gets caught
with his pants down.
Mix-O-Tronic Result:
"gadgets/mythology/Alice in Wonderland"
CLOCKWORK GODS
RPG
The Clockwork Gods have come to Summerland. (Work with me, here.) In
an infinite land of eternal summer, an agrarian society has lived for
eons. Now, with the coming of the Clockwork Gods, technology, and all
of it's blessings and ills, has started to spread across the
land. Seige engines, windmills, canals. With this change comes the end
of the old ways, of the Worldly Spirits.
Not that the Worldly Spirits are taking all of this lying down. Since
the appearance of the Clockwork Gods, storms have increased their
power, damaging windmills. Floods have become more common, drowning
canal locks. The Clockwork Gods' greatest feats, the clockwork mecha,
are susceptible to lightning; their pilots are falling prey to wolves
and other beasts of the forest.
Caught in the middle are the people of Summerland. While the coming
of the Clockwork Gods means less toil for them, their connection with
the land is too valuable for them to lose. In the war of ideas, there
are no more casualties than in the ranks of those just trying to
strike a balance between clockwork and nature.
Clockwork Gods players can choose to play a clockwork god, a worldly
spirit, a proxy or paladin of either, or one of the temporal leaders
of Summerland who are caught in the middle of this epic conflict.
One of the key elements of the game is the balance the players must
make between Clockwork and Spirit. The more adept one becomes, the
less they can use the other. At the extreme ends, a person with high
Spirit can use a staff but not a sword (too close to clockwork) and at
the other, the character can run a clockwork mecha but become lost in
a forest in a second flat.
©2001, 2002, Kuma Pageworks & Brian Hollenbeck
Next time: stealing from the movies, and a pet Kuma project!
