Grimoire is steadily making some progress. As with all projects in the early stages of development, I have multiple directions that I could go in. In any case, it will be an authoring solo roleplaying games because I believe that will bolster the artefact created – the grimoire, bolstered by including journal entries from the wizard that created it. Currently, the game is set in a fairly standard fantasy city setting and its surrounding region. I am not sure if I will change this in future, though the inkling is there.
Currently the game works with two modes of play, both of which involve differing amounts of writing journal entries by the player. The reason they are different is simply to keep things feeling fresh and to ensure that spell generation is quick without needing to spend most of the time undertaking creative writing – that is not the sole point of the game. Spell creation is.
Modes of Play
My initial draft required many journal entries to be written, so much so that I spent two hours playing the game and I had only created 3 spells! Since then, I streamlined the journal prompt generation through the two modes of play: Research and Quest, and I made the game a touch more deadly. The game is much faster now and can be completed within 1-2 hours of play with more spells created and fewer journal entries.
Research is the first mode of play. It involves the player spending Coin to conduct their research in the safety of their office within the city. Currently, this mode works like the spell generation except at the end of it the cards that are used are shuffled and one is drawn to generate a journal prompt. After which, all cards are discarded to reflect the energy given by the wizard to interact with magic.
Quest is the second mode of play. It involves the player spending time away from their study or the city entirely in search of something – often Coin to conduct research with and sometimes other items like magical artefacts that allow cards from the discard pile to be returned to the deck. This is a far more deadly portion of the game as the journal prompts here tend towards the dangerous and instead of one journal prompt, a player will respond to a minimum of three to complete a quest. In this section, each entry for a card has three prompts much like Thousand Year Old Vampire portrays journal prompts. The reason I chose to implement this is to provide a more satisfying story arc across quests and because these cards are not discarded, therefore repeats may occur. It would be boring to have to respond to the same prompt time and time again.
So far, these two game structures work well, and it helps bring more flavour into the world while providing the player an opportunity to explore the wizard character. However, I am not entirely sold on this approach and I am considering changing it to focus even more on the creation of a spell and the drawing a glyph. Possibly extending the time of creating a spell by incorporating more of that into the Quest game structure. I am also undecided on whether or not to keep the original method for generating spells with cards or to adapt it more to Grimoire. It works fine as is, but I wonder if it could be better or, at least, different.
The Setting
I was not sure about a setting and I am still not sure of the setting that I have chosen for Grimoire just yet. The game is set in a fairly typical fantasy world that does not try to be too different so as to not have the wizards and grimoires created feel out of place when transferred to your worlds. It is centred around the City of Athanasia which is a pearlescent city of white created by a mysterious figure: The Great Wizard. None know them and none speak with them but from time to time, people do see them. Several journal prompts refer to The Great Wizard so as to provide a moment for the wizard to reflect on magic and their progress.
The surrounding land is again fairly standard, though quite humanised. Wizards will meet a variety of characters from wizard hunters to dream merchants to simple mercenaries. It is designed to flexible and easily ported to your own world. In saying this, a part of is considering removing the surrounding area and focusing solely on the city or maybe changing the city into a university or library of some kind where wizards conduct research. Another option is to include both. After all, the journal entry prompts for the city are the smallest because they only have 1 prompt each instead of the 3 that exists for Quests.
Overall, the game is developing nicely, and my head is swimming with ideas. Soon I want to start having others playtest it and maybe then I will begin to have some answers to my questions above.
For now, you too should listen to the humming of the ley lines to keep up with news about Grimoire by following this blog below. I would also appreciate hearing your thoughts, questions, or ideas over at twitter.
The Bardic Inquiry 