Thinking Genre emulation N' next week's one page game.

I’m already kicking around next week’s one page game. The game is going to be called “Down on Mill Road” and will take its influence from classic kid and teen adventure / danger movies like  (from lightest to darkest) “The Goonies”, “Stand by me”, “The lost boys”, “Silver bullet”, etc.

The game will take place in one setting with up to 4 players a crossed one “night” of game time.

Why say this solid few days before the game gets done and put on the blog? I think because I like the idea, the genre is ripe for the picking, and I have a few good ideas to make a quick game pop a bit. In short I’m a bit excited about it.

My biggest sticking point right now is not how to handle success in a game of this type, but how to handle failure?

You see in the movie the goonies there was never a total party kill, as great as that would have been. A movie like the lost boys there was some serious danger in the film; vampires got killed, in silver bullet a main character dies. However I don’t ever remember thinking “they are all going to die!” at any point in those films.

So I am thinking that failed roles are setbacks (which need to be described) and each member of your team can only take so many setbacks before they “have to give up for the night, or are put out of the action” with the option of very sudden Death (its’ how those movies worked any way), if the group wants to play that way.

Is it perfect genre emulation? No probably not. But can genre emulation in this case yield a suspenseful gaming experience? If there is no real risk of character death can I bring tension to the game? I think so.. I guess it all remains to be seen.

Oh and I gotta fit it on one typed page .. almost forgot about that part.