Prolegomena

Albion's Children is a role playing game set in the early Dark Ages after the Romans evacuated Britain. There is a lot in this post that I have shared with others already and I will be trying to get a lot of stuff in here quickly. If something doesn't make sense let me know and I will try to fill in the gaps.

I think the structure I am trying to emulate is television. I think that an evenings play will be a set number of scenes. I want the episodic feel and the short form of play. I also want characters to grow between sessions a little at a time.

I am trying to make two types of play accessible to the game. I want most of the game to be the standard old school role playing; in character, roll for what you do sort of play. If I use Tali, I would just add them up against a set difficulty and allowing re-rolls for complications. A couple of scenes on the other hand I want to play more like the scenes where the hero goes off and we see a lot of stuff getting done while thrilling music plays in the background. With Tali I would use a number of successes with special effects for Venus, Vultures and Dogs. These scenes would be to see how well the player did and set up the following scene.

What do you say to the game mechanics requiring the use of ancient Roman Tali?

http://www.freewebs.com/devilspicturebook/tali.htm/

MacGregor Historic Games makes resin reproductions modeled from real sheep knuckles:

http://www.historicgames.com/RPdice.html

I am trying to think about how to set scenes up so that they start on action. For example, In Firefly, Mal goes off to get something from someone; the scene then jumps to Mal getting the shit kicked out of him and plays from there.

I want the players to be in the game together most of the time. But I want a shifting focus like PTA. I think I am looking for something like a rotating GM rather than GMless. If PTA were what I was using the player with the lowest spotlight would be the GM.

For characters I want to be able to take some archetypes and bring them to life.

Some of the archetypes I was thinking about:

Druids and whatever their magic is
Celtic fighters men of prowess who fight naked to prove they are tougher than you
Bards who can destroy a kingdom with the right song
Roman Legioneers who can build a town in a day
Roman engineers who can move mountains and make straight lines run for miles

I think that religions will be foresquare as well

Followers of Christ Jesu the new God bringing power to the meek
Followers of Mithras schooled in the mysteries
Followers of the old roman gods with their augeries and their curses

One of the ideas for character creatiuon I have been thinking about is layered archetypes. Where you are from is the first layer, what you do is the second, what you worship third maybe there are others I havent thought about that yet. Giving up parts of your character to fit in with the team gains you some cool bonus but takes away certain memberships.

Still thinking more later.
Thor