Casting Shadows

My proposed Icons Campaign, Waters of Casablanca, (otherwise known as ‘I was misinformed’) has gotten the short shrift these past few weeks as planning moves into high gear for the Mechwarrior Campaign, and as my deep interest in the Ubiquity system in general, and All for One: Regime Diabolique grows into a dangerous obsession.

We don’t need no stinkin’ planning!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, further planning for Waters of Casablanca must really wait for characters to be conceived and constructed before worthwhile interaction can be seeded into the vast sandbox of the modern-day Seoul in which I live. Unlike Hair of the Dog, which not only requires a massive refresher course in setting material and mechanics, but the creation and dissemination of campaign material to the players, the Icons proposal has no need for anything but an awareness of who the characters are, how they interact with others, what ‘abilities’ they will have, and how they might use those abilities.

Sample Setting Development

Seoul is a truly massive city where one can get embroiled in all sorts of nonsense and there will be a lot of interpersonal situations to develop into stories, but as an example of the sort of planning I might be able to do, we can use the pending G20 Summit. Lots of biased and overwrought ‘reporting’ is in place already and can serve as a very good prop for an exaggerated Icons + Heroes setting, and can set the stage for how people, powered or not, deal with protests, disruptions, vandals, and the potential of terrorism.

Another voice unheard

As the summit will be held in just over two weeks from the time of writing, the full arc of events and consequences will be complete before the game ever gets its first clatter of dice, so I will have a solid and realistic framework of events to present to players for modification through their characters actions and reactions – should they choose to get involved. Even if they do not choose to get mixed up in the events, they will still serve as an interesting backdrop to whatever drama they do spark. I am often pleased at the result of mixing real-world events with in-game events, and seeing how the facts presented in the news can be twisted to mesh with character actions to give that ‘*If* you knew what really happened~’ effect.

Regular features of life in Seoul can also be given a cursory developmental pass to isolate elements which the characters, once created, might influence or be motivated by. The on again/off again relationship with North Korea, ongoing labor issues, the byzantine and bizarre entertainment industry, the national obsession with overcoming past scandals in genetic research, and the cut-throat world of the high-tech industry, are just the tip of the iceberg.