Well as long as it’s not absolute power …

… then maybe the corruption isn’t so bad!

Because there’s no other way to fight; in this game, Aslan isn’t coming, there’s no cool tattooed bunch of rebels to locate, there’s no haven to escape to. You have to join the evil. Rise in it. Grow powerful. And not give in.

Itโ€™s those Hijos del Rol causing trouble again! Why canโ€™t รngel Garcรญa Jimรฉnez and Edgar Sedeรฑo just have opinions about everyone elseโ€™s games, like normal people? Sure enough, they want to make one, and whoโ€™re they gonna call, anyway? But since they know what Iโ€™ve presented all these years, and have opinions about that too, that means I have to consult at the edge.

I hope you like it. Itโ€™s rough few-pages design at this point, my favorite time to look at it.

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8 responses to “Well as long as it’s not absolute power …”

  1. About Insurgence
    Hey guys! I’m Edgar, one of the authors of Insurgence.

    We recently found that this game could be designed in multiple ways.

    The first one, outside to inside, our group representing the classical hero’s journey. It’s frodo and Sam leaving the safety of their home to start the journey.

    The second one, down to up, the group representing people that has worked with the power but rebelled against it. This is the path of the anti-hero, using the power’s resources against itself.

    Now, this second option represents better the idea of the game, Insurgence. But we went more deeply. Insurgence is a game about people tired of tirany, corruption and being stuck here. There’s only one way out of it, now that we are insurgent: Face and destroy the Power. The alternative is to die or get corrupted by this System, this representing that the Power has leverage over you and eventually over the cause. Your chance of changing things are extinted. The Insurgence is over and the game ends.

    In that sense Ron helped us realizing this two ways to approach it, and the fiction created opened our eyes about the kind of game we wanted.

    Thanks! This is darker now and i fcking love it

    PD: We managed to make Ron like this use of fudge dice. I call that a victory!!!

    • Itโ€™s easy to forget that

      It’s easy to forget that Fudge dice, in the original system, are built to minimize deviation from the value on the character sheet. You’re basically playing a Karma system (in the vocabulary from Everway) with a little bit of wiggle.

      Clinton Dreisbach did some smart things with that for The Shadow of Yesterday. First, you roll three dice, not four, flattening the curve considerably, and second, you get bonus or penalty dice, which get rolled in (canceling 1:1 if you have both), and you always keep three. Since qualitative bonus dice are also involved, you get some serious skew going. So these effects turned it into a more Fortune-y, situational mechanic, while retaining all of its ease of use.

      But then people started using them for dice pools, and there, the even chances among +/0/- per die messed them up – more dice means a faster race to the middle, not a way to do better. That’s why all my little alarms went off, and why I was pleased to see what Insurgence does with it. (Patrons can see what I did with it in The People’s Hero, available past the $2 paywall).

  2. After watching the entire
    After watching the entire video, I’m eager to play this game. The question it poses really speaks to me. รngel, Edgar, if you guys ever find use for a playtester from Argentina, count me in.

  3. Also, I suggest that Simpsons
    Also, I suggest that Simpsons episode where Lisa needs braces as a very sobering, heartbreaking take on the subject matter.

    • Oh hell, that’s actually a

      Oh hell, that's actually a really good one. I probably have watched it at least a dozen times since they used to make reruns of The Simpsons all the time in Spain. But I would have never thought of it. Thanks!

    • Wait! I’ve just rewatched it

      Wait! I've just rewatched it and it turns out I had it confused with "Homer's Oddysey". At the end of that one, Homer betrays a popular cause under pressure/bribery from Burns. The one where Lisa needs braces ends much more optimistically.

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