we're on a one-way elevator to hell

[reverancepavane]

The problem with collecting interesting role-playing games is that there are some that you really really want to play, but you know in your heart of hearts that there is no one else within a thousand kilometers or so that owns the game, let alone is willing to run it for you. [Save vs Despair or +1D2 Despair] The source of the problem in this case is Abandon All Hope, a game set on a massive (ala Escape From New York) computer controlled (ala Paranoia) prison (ala The Shawshank Redemption) vessel (ala Leviathan) on the way to deliver convicts (ala Fortress 2) to found a new colony (ala Pandorum), that has accidentally fallen into a rift between the universes into one inhabited by demons (ala Event Horizon), which are attracted to the rich bounty of potential convict happy meals inside the ship (ala Alien and Alien 3). So you get to combine your standard horror and prison movie themes in one setting [including the possibility of those types of horror prison movies (ala Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS and Werewolf in a Women's Prison) if you so desire]. Plus some SF tropes, and your typical FPS game (ala Doom, Quake, System Shock, Half-Life, and Portal*) as well, of course. I really want to play a dissident nuclear weapons engineer who was sentenced to transportation because his knowledge was considered dangerous (and immoral) to the New World Order. [Although the game does seem to be lacking "fissionable (1)" components in the scrounging table, so I suppose I'd better limit my abilities to be really good at jury-rigging (can we give up and simply call it McGyvering from now on) stuff.] [* Mainly due to the presence of the happy fun Warden computer (ala Paranoia) that isn't at all reacting to the massive damage the ship has taken, the prisoners being outside their cells, and all those demons/aliens running around the ship. But whose to say anyway that the entry into the rift was an accident. Perhaps this is an experiment by the New Order, investigating the rift by using disposable people, with the computer monitoring the results (and planning to send a message buoy back). That would certainly account for taking all the expense for shipping the convicts off into space, rather than just using a bullet and a backhoe...]

Comments

[maelorin]

thank the gods there are no elves, of this would be the one-true-rpg!!11!

sadly, i am currently trapped in a maze of little words, scattered across (virtual) pages ...

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

My one objection to the design of the ship is that it is a very 2D dungeon style of maze, which doesn't really make sense for a manufactured ship. Of course, if it were a converted asteroid, you'd probably want to leave substantial amounts of core material intact to maintain structural integrity. My first impulse was to redraw most of the maps for the initial adventure to try and get something which felt more like a spaceship to me than a typical fantasy dungeon.

[maelorin]

that seems like a pretty basic error - but not entirely surprising at the same time.

it's easy to get trapped in 2d thinking when you're drawing on a flat surface. easier still when you're used to seeing maps drawn that way. especially old(er) rpg dungeons.

the first time i saw a set of maps drawn in isometric projection, it took a few moments to see the 3d layout being represented. (it was the ruins of an 'ancient temple' of an 'ancient civilisation' on an 'alien world')

[haloumi.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I want to play it but it does sound fun to write about.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

I suspect that is quite true for myself as well. In that the ideas embodied by the game are quite interesting. Especially as a graphics novel. The problem is that it is entirely derivative (but from a reasonably large number of sources). On the other hand the rules are quite simple, but sufficiently adaptable to support play intelligently, and are mechanically well suited to the milieu. They spark story ideas quite well, in and of themselves. The adventures (and to some degree the rules) do tend more to a combat orientation though. On the gripping hand, I'd rather do something with the larger metastory than the individual adventures of the players/characters, which is partly a manifestation of my love of world-building, and partly because I think that it's interesting working out justifications for why this approach was taken, and working back to determine the Society that created (at least, in greater detail than they proposed. It could just be that the official storyline is true (the prisoners are enforced colonists to start a new colony), but they so vastly outnumber any potential other colonists they would be more disruptive than is their worth, especially with their being other alternatives. On the other hand, dropping a ship full of convicts into this strange Rift that the authorities had discovered might just work (especially with the reports of any survivors from the original survey mission).