Category: Powered by the Apocalypse: ApWorld Settings

It’s really satisfying to look back on a weekend and find yourself with three strong additions to a project, two section rewrites, and having also started merging an old flavor text dog in with the larger whole.

Pangs and Curator moves are there, though the Curator needs explanations so shit like make a Rule of Thirds move comes across as having any sense to it at all. The basic moves have been given circumstances to proc, but not 6/7/9/10 results yet. I may post up a preview of the Remnant doc before those are in. I know feedback or any kind will be hampered by their lack, but I’m reaching a point where I’ll need some outside eyes to ask some hard questions about how this jalopy is going to fly.

I hit major stride this weekend and figured out Remnant’s Stats, part of what drives the player’s actions, and part of the game’s core concept: The pangs you obsess over drive you, the passion inside ignites you, the light you radiate enshrines you, and the stain in your heart devours you.

The range of emotion the player can express, and how capable they are at chasing their obsessions, reaching out to others, and staying afloat in the sea of their depressions are linked. If you need the passion to succeed you can stoke the fire inside to increase the odds in your favor, but that fire isn’t going out on its own. You have to talk yourself down, have someone reach out to you, or let the color that empowers you go and watch your dreams drift further out of reach.

I’ve got further to go on this, but the direction feels thematically appropriate.

Once again I’m fiddling with Remnant, my setting hack. For a long time I’ve had an inkling of what I want it to express, the ecstasy and agony of my creative process, but I’ve not been able to think through an implementation that doesn’t feel like a set of obvious ‘game benefit’ levers. The rough loop goes like this:

Players need a scarce liquid resource called ‘Color’ to survive.

1) Drink the Color – This makes the player flush, luminous, the world around them feels better, npcs enjoy their presence because they feel more alive around them.

While flush the player is able to make things out of ash and memories. These things can be public or private, durable or impermanent. This includes objects, places and even people.

Players get bonuses to their rolls when they use their flush state to pursue personal goals.

2) Burn – Color was never supposed to be imbibed straight, but the world went to shit so now you do. Color burns off your pangs, which are like… Think of the strings from monster hearts but tethered to your personal goals, things you want, things you want to make, etc. whenever you make a successful step toward achieving one of your pangs the burn grows. The stronger your burn, the greater the bonus to your rolls.

Depending on how you got the color you’ll have a varying amount of Tint. This substance builds up over time and can kill you eventually, but the first thing that burns in a body is tint, followed by your harm. If you don’t spit the color out the burn will consume you.

3) Hollowed – Once empty of color a body is empty and dull., You don’t shine, and you give off no warmth. The tint that you hold works against you wreaking havoc on anything you try and do. The things that you made while flush will now begin to display their flaws, breaking down, or turning on you. This is when the Downside begins to rear it’s head.

This cycle of superb artistic freedom, marred by an encouragement toward self destructive behavior, culminating in a depressive and impotent state is what I’m trying to paint here.

I just can’t figure out how to do it elegantly.