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a game for up to 10 players Intro - Echo
Two branches of the English royal family – the Yorks and Lancasters – have been at war for the throne. But now grim-visag’d war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front, and the two Houses have united to become the Tudors. Everyone is supposed to be one big happy family, but while both Houses pretend to revel in this time of smooth’d-fac’d peace, the war continues just below the surface. Chef’s Commentary This version of The Grafted Rose: Dire Division in the Tudor Royal House was created during the 2007 Game Chef competion. Game designers participating in the competition were asked to select a list of words (“required ingredients”) and feature three of the four listed words prominently in a game that they designed over the course of two weeks. The list I chose to inspire this game included the following words: sacred, rose, thread, and inconsistency. My intent in designing The Grafted Rose is to create a short-form roleplaying game influenced by both independently published tabletop games and live action roleplaying (larp) techniques. I do not, however, come from a strong larp background, so this game is based largely on reading a few of White Wolf’s Mind’s Eye Theatre games and Rebecca Sean Borgstrom’s A Game of Powers (the live action version of Nobilis). I also recently played White Wolf’s boxed short-form larp, Long Live the King, whose influence should be readily apparent to those familiar with it. As for tabletop games, this game is strongly influenced by Ben Lehman’s Polaris, Tim Kleinart’s The Mountain Witch, Dev Purkayastha’s The Dance and the Dawn, Jessica Hammer’s Decade (all created in previous Game Chef contests), and Clinton R. Nixon’s The Shadow of Yesterday. Their Dire Division Two branches of the English royal family – the Yorks and Lancasters – have been at war for the throne. But now grim-visag’d war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front, and the two Houses have united to become the Tudors. Everyone is supposed to be one big happy family, but while both Houses pretend to revel in this time of smooth’d-fac’d peace, the war continues just below the surface.
Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction, That long have frown’d upon their emnity! What traitor hears me, and says not Amen? – Henry VII of Tudor You are that traitor. And you are not the only one. Whether you swear allegiance to the White Rose of York or the Red Rose of Lancaster, you are exceedingly unhappy with the current state of affairs. Henry Tudor, now King Henry VII, is a Lancastrian, and this boils the blood of any true man or woman of York. But he has married Elizabeth of York, abandoned his family name, and pursued a Yorkist agenda since coming to power. Clearly, this is enough to make any true son or daughter of Lancaster weep in anguish. It is 1490. The war is over. Most Yorkists and Lancastrians have embraced their new Tudor existence. Henious crimes committed in the war have been swept under the rug, forgiven by royal amnesty. But you remain. You remember.
Naming Characters & The Family Tree You are a member of the royal family, a member of the House of Tudor. Select a name for yourself and write yourself into the family tree pictured here on this Wikipedia page. It doesn't matter if Isabella of York and Henry Bouchier never had a daughter named Phillipa. They do now. All the family names listed above should be somewhere on the tree, but you might have to do a bit of searching to find where you fit. The entire group of players should have this tree printed out in front of them, with all the characters names written in, so you can get a sense of blood relations. Using the tree, you should be able to figure out how various characters are related to each other ("ah, so you're the nephew of my crazy uncle Edward"), as well as whether each character is more likely to have fought for the Yorkists or the Lancastrians during the war. Remember, of course, that family ties aren't everything. Even if your mother was Anne of York, you could have fought for House Lancaster. Oops. I suggest that players not worry overly much about the relative ages of their characters. Even if one character should be already dead or five times the age of another character, that doesn't particularly matter, they can still get married or have a romantic tryst over the course of the game. Maybe in future versions of the rules I'll address that, but not here. Threads of War
Second Murderer: Not to kill him, having a warrant for it; but to be damned for killing him, from which no warrant can defend us – Richard III, Act I.iv The War of the Roses was a low point in your family's history. The sons and daughters of noble House Plantagenet, split in twain, fighting under white and red banners, did some pretty horrible things over the course of a century of battle and subterfuge. Particularly during the reign of the last Yorkist king, Richard III, England was desparate. Times were harsh and people responded harshly to them. To say that there are some lingering regrets and hard feelings would be putting it lightly. At some point during the past 50-100 years, you have done more than a few very bad things. These crimes you committed, war crimes performed during a period of darkness, tie you to each other. The threads of the war trace their way through your family, leaving a scarlet wake. You are not the only one affected by your crimes. Crime breeds crime breeds crime. You are merely a link within several long chains of misbegotten deeds, entangling everyone in the giant web of the war. Each player has a sheet that looks like this, with blanks where the underlined parenthetical words are:
Then, in the middle of the table, there is a stack of cards that each have the following, again with blanks where the underlined parenthetical words are:
The process of creating the threads of the war goes like this: 1. Choose an even number of players to start threads. For playtesting, I would recommend having all the players except 1 or 2 each start a thread. Again, make sure you have an even number of threads: 2, 4, 6, etc. 2. Players starting threads each take a card from the center. They fill out the Giver part of the card and then hand it to another player, who fills out the Reciever part. The card is then handed back to the first player.
3. The initial reciever writes down the information on the card in the first part of Thread 1 on their sheet. The initial giver writes down the card information in the second part of Thread 1 on their sheet. 4. The initial reciever now becomes a giver. They take a card and fill in the crime they have just written down. Then they give the card to a new reciever, who fills in their portion of the card. And this pattern continues again and again, linking people together by their crimes. 5. Threads are "tied off" when a player who started a thread recieves a card and that player chooses to write their initial crime as a response. This means all threads eventually become loops, as they are tied off or connected to other threads (which, in turn, are eventually tied off).
Planning Your Crimes In general, crimes are things that you could concievable be executed for. Possible themes you might want to consider:
Threads don't necessarily escalate or de-escalate in any predictable pattern. You can go from things specific people want you dead for to things everybody agrees are crimes against God and nature. When choosing who to pass cards to, there are a few approaches worth considering: 1. Eye of the Needle: Most of your threads lead to one or two people, your confidantes or comrades. If they expose you, you're in deep trouble, but your close tie might prevent that from happening. 2. Shotgun: You have your fingers in lots of different pies. Some of your crimes are likely to come to light, but they're so spread out that you can probably keep many of them hidden. Probably. 3. Mixture: What most people will probably end up with. You're closer to a few other players/characters than others, but not totally dependent on anyone. Apologies So that's all I got around to writing. Character creation is really exciting, though, and my ideas for the rest are hot. I'm really looking forward to making this happen somewhere down the road. Thanks for reading it and I would appreciate any comments you might have. Please email me if you like: jaywalt at gmail.
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