The Last Word.pdf

The Last Word

A storytelling parlor game for 4 players

You need: A deck of 52 playing cards, printouts of the Role Cards, a way to keep track of

points for Coyote and The Lantern, and something for The Lantern to write Concepts on.

The Pitch: You are a member on a small successful writing team, working on your

next big thing. One of you is getting story ideas that are actually a prophecy of the

end of the world, but she doesn’t realize it yet. This dark future could be stopped if the

events in the prophecy were changed. Another one of you is actually an immortal trick-

ster spirit in disguise, here to mislead the others and make sure the end of the world

takes place. Can a collaborative effort bring out the best in an artist’s original vision?

Or will it be twisted into something so unrecognizable that it no longer contains its

original meaning?

The Team

The Lantern: A prophet who has apocalyptic visions of the future. Her visions, if

heeded as a proper warning, could save the world from ultimate disaster. However, The

Lantern is not aware of the truth of her visions. She is a popular writer of iction, and

unknown to everyone (Well, almost everyone) her next work happens to be timely and true.

It’s about the end of the world. She has two often conlicting motivations, to create a

work of uncompromised personal vision, and to make a proit. Nevertheless she maintains

a close writing team who she collabor tes with for their invaluable feedback and input,

who consist of the following.

The Doctor: The doctor is an editor who cuts out bad ideas and replaces them with

good ones. She is the un-acknowledged secret to the success of many works of literature.

Through the Doctor’s thoughtful advice and careful editing she has helped transform The

Lantern’s writing from something med iocre into the popular and successful worldwide

sensation it is now. The Doctor’s need to help and ix things also makes her the one per-

son who will do whatever she can to try to stop the end of the world (if she realizes the

visions are true), however she might inadvertently subvert this in her attempts to help

make the best story possible.

The Mimic: The Mimic is the least creative member of the team. Instead he has a vast

knowledge of what has worked before and what doesn’t. Though he often copies from past

successes and utilizes cliche ideas, he does it well. His knowledge is both practical and

accurate. He also represents the voice of the public, running test groups to gauge their

reaction to the work in progress and reporting the results of their feedback to the team.

He is mostly concerned with meeting the bottom line and making sure the inished work

will be a inancial success, therefore he panders to mass appeal and tries to offend the

least amount of people.

Coyote: An immortal trickster spirit who can take on any form. He seeks to confuse

and alter the Lantern’s vision as much as possible to ensure that her apocalyptic vi-

sions will not be recognized as truth, so that the end of the world (as we know it) cannot

be stopped. He is not evil, but he is inhuman and driven by playful mischief and the be-

lief that then end of the world is the punch-line to a cosmic joke. He manifests as a close

friend to The Lantern and an important voice of input on her writing team, so that he can

more easily trick her. Coyote is valued as a member of the team for his amazing creativ-

ity, though his ideas are often outlandish and subversive.

How to play

Setup: Separate the deck of cards into the four suits with jokers removed, and give

one suit to each pla yer of the four main roles. Have each player shufle their single

suit deck. Shufle the Role cards and deal them out randomly, or have each player pick

the one they like. Have a quick brainstorming session and throw out some ideas for the

kind of story you’d like to tell (this takes a little pressure off The Lantern so she

doesn’t have to come up with something from scratch on her irst turn, though she’s free

to ignore this if she has her own ideas.). Last, each player crosses off one of the items on

their Role card and writes a new one in it’s place.

Play: Each chapter of the game is played in 3 acts. It’s up to you how many chap-

ters you want to play, you can pick a set amount now or decide at the end of each chapter

whether to wrap up the story or keep going. At the beginning of the irst round each play-

er draws 4 cards from their deck. Each card corresponds to a prompt on their Role Card. If

you want to you can play with Jokers as a “make up your own” wild card. The lantern goes

irst and picks one of her four cards and sets it aside face down. This is The Prophecy.

She then writes down a brief, single sentence description of her story idea based on the

card she chose, The Concept.

Setting aside The Concept and keeping it hidden, she begins pitching her story idea

based on it. At any point during her story any of the other players can interject by play-

ing one of the cards from their hand. They then describe what they think should happen

next in the story or changes they want to make to a previously told part, and the new

elements put into the story have to correspond to the card they picked. The loor is then

handed back to The Lantern who continues her story with the new addition included as

described by whoever added it. If any player feels the Lantern isn’t following their in-

structions well enough, they can interject and correct her.

After each player has played a card, The Lantern has 1 minute to briely wrap up

her story. After a minute passes she must stop, and reveal her concept and the card she

chose. The players then decide as a group whether she was able to keep close enough to

The Concept and The Prophecy. If so, give The Lantern one point. If not, Coyote gets a point.

After all three acts, the chapter ends. The players can now d ecide whether to play

additional chapters or to end the game, unless you already agreed on a set amount. Be-

tween chapters, if everyone likes they can change the Roles around. If you do, everyone

keeps their roles from the inal chapter for the epilogue. After the last Chapter add up

all the points from all the chapters, and whoever has the most points wins. At this point

The Roles become characters in the conclusion of their own story

Epilogue:

If Coyote wins: Coyote gets to direct the other players in a scene where the world

ends, while the other characters are doomed and powerless, forced to follow the prophecy.

(The fun part is usually watching them act out their own deaths!) Coyote describes a setup

then whatches them improv. When he narrates character actions the players must act them

out as he describes it. When he narrates action in the environment they react as if watch-

ing it happen. If he narrates their dialogue they must lip synch over it. They are his

puppets. However he can always shut his mouth and leave them to improvise where he left

off.

If Lantern wins: She’s the director, while Doctor and Mimic help her save the world.

However, she becomes a character in the scene as well. When she gives direction she acts

as if she is reading from the prophecy she has written (which she and the others have

discovered to be truth), the rest of the time she acts in character as The Lantern. Also,

this time Doctor and Mimic are given full control over what their characters do in the

scene, free to follow The Lantern’s direction or diverge from it in their self awareness.

Coyote become’s Lantern’s puppet, and plays any villanous character’s she narrates into

the scene. If there is a Gallery she can also call upon them to act out other characters.

Other stuff

-There are three acts in each chapter for good reason. If it helps you tell your story,

follow the three act structure: The introduction and inciting incident, the rising action

and turning point, and the climax and resolution! If that’s not your thing, feel free to

play with 5 acts per chapter and follow a 5 act structure.

-You can never negate another Player’s addition to the story with your own, or otherwise

minimise it’s importance. Any addition must be as integral as it’s creator instended. Remem-

ber, creating the best story together given the constraints is the point of the game, not

winning or losing. Treat each other’s additions as if they were your own.

-The genders of the characters in the rules aren’t set in stone, play the characters as

whatever gender you like.

- Try to stay in charac ter as much as possible the whole game, though feel free to take

some breaks here and there. Just follow the description of your role, and feel free to add

your own spin on it.

-If you are stuck for ideas, just use the irst thing that comes to mind, even if it seems

completely boring. Just because it seems boring to you doesn’t mean someone else won’t

think it’s brilliant!

-If you like the game and want to create a new setting to play it in, you can do

this simply and effectively by writing new prompt lists for the cards and new de-

scriptions for the roles!

-The Gallery: An optional role for extra Players. The Gallery functions as an in-

teractive audience

Any additional players become members of the gallery. They are the biggest

fans of The Lantern’s work and her most inluential critics. When they write a

blog, thousands of people listen. Each member of the gallery has their own spe-

ciic interpretation of The Team’s work and where the story needs to go, characters

who are their favorite and characters they hate. They are also likely to have a

favorite member of the Team. Though they are not physically present at The Lan-

tern’s creative meetings, their opinions are often loudly interjected and their

presence is heard and felt by ev eryone in the meeting. Through their connections

and leaks they seem to somehow maintain perfectly up to the minute knowledge of

The Work’s progress.

At any time a member of the gallery can interrupt the game by shouting out

comments, criticisms, rants, and opinions of the writer’s work and the direction

the story is going. Each member of the gallery should attempt to create a speciic

character over the course of play, devloped through their outbursts and interjec-

tions, either a fan or critic of The Team’s work. The team should respond as though

they are remembering a piece of feedback they have read, being very sensitive to

their public perception. So sensitive that they might even bring feedback from the

Gallery into their discussion and let it affect their writing decisions.

The gallery should not try to overshadow the writing team, and therefore

limit themselves to no more than 1 or 2 major interruptions per chapter. However

it can be itting at times for the voice of the Gallery to become an overwhelming

presence, when the pressure of success on the writing team is high. The gallery

can also provide helpful inspiration at times.

Lantern

Ace: The Self

2: Love

3: Society

4: The Machine

5: War

6: Forces of Nature

7: The 7 deadly sins

8: The Vanishing

9: Destiny

10: Death

J: Betrayal

Q: Justice

K: Plague

Doctor

Ace: Introduce a new character

Resolve a conlict

Shift focus to another character

The story becomes an allegory

Develop a character’s personality

Reveal a character’s motivation

Fix a plot hole

Reveal something through a

lashback

Use a Flash Forward

10:

Remove a character

Introduce a new conlict

Escalate the stakes

Foreshadow danger

Mimic

Ace: Reinvent a classic.

Coyote

Ace: Epic Melodrama

Add a sex scene

Romance

Remove something offensive to the

Parody

target market

Hard Sci-i

Add something to appeal to the

Dark Comedy

High Fantasy

target market

Supernatural

Add a ight scene

Add explosions

Surrealism

Use a cliche

Conspiracy Theory

Add something you loved from

10:

Just plain Silly

a recent movie, book, or game

Art House.

Add something you hated from

Fairy Tales.

a recent movie, book, or game

More meta then meta

10:

Jump the shark

Simplify it for the masses

Add comic relief

Give the fans what they want

he Last Word

Written for Gamechef 2012 (heme: Last Chance)

Used Ingredients: Coyote, Lantern, Doctor, Mimic

Unused ingredients: [Seven Systems Legacy] new(?) idea for damage modeling :

http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=11756.0

Polaris: Trait Bidding : http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=10894.0

podcasting? : http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=27673.0

Koh-i-Noor: Scii with Uniqueness : http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=5001.0

Layout and Design by Orion Canning

Orion.Canning@gmail.com

Advice and thoughtful feedback:

Jackson Tegu

Robert Bruce

Morgan Stinson

Sp4m

Inspired by:

My Daughter Queen of France by Daniel Wood

he Quiet Year by Joe Mcdaldno

Bridge, Hearts, and other parlor card games

he Future of Storytelling Has Arrived by IrrevocableFate

http://techgnotic.deviantart.com/art/he-Future-of-Storytelling-Has-Arrived-293860261

Extra thanks:

Jonathan Walton

Joe Mcdaldno

and everyone else who makes Game Chef happen

Fonts:

Traveling Typewriter by Carl Krull

http://www.carlkrull.dk/

Minion Pro by Robert Slimbach for Adobe

Images:

Spiral bound notepad with lines by net_efekt

http://www.lickr.com/photos/wheatields/1803278949/

Old Wrinkled Paper Texture by Playingwithbrushes’

http://www.lickr.com/photos/playingwithpsp/2583644089/

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: