The Mushroom Press Design Blog

Now, about Parliament of Crocodiles...

The Inspiration

This game came out of a weird mental alchemy. I had the great pleasure of picking up a horror movie I’d never heard about before: a little flick called Let the Right One in. It’s about a little girl vampire and the little boy who gradually becomes her thrall. It’s an extremely visceral and character-centric movie. Let’s say it had an effect on me.

A little bit later (like within the same few weeks) two other events added their weirdness to the soup of this movie in my brain. I got the chance to finally watch American Psycho (and I now understand why people love this movie) and I went to the zoo with my kids.

The zoo thing I think may have been the reactant. I was pushing the stroller with my youngest in it, checking out the crocodile pond, with both of these movies buzzing around in my head. This was one off those croc tanks where it’s on two levels: you can see it from above (like a victim would see it), where all the crocs just look like floating logs. But if you go down to under water level you see the crocs from below (as another crocodile would) and they’re perfectly visible animals, arranged like they’re sitting in parliament.

So there it all was: the metaphor, the name, and the central conceit of the game. You were a hunter living invisibly to your prey, but instantly known to your fellow monsters. You were in the Parliament of Crocodiles.

…..

In addition to the above films, I’ve always been a fan of two films my super negligent family let me watch at way too early an age. Those being Interview with a Vampire and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Those two, most notably the powers of Dracula and Louie’s torments, had a strong influence on the game.

Books that have influence the game have come to include the masterful treatises on realpolitik (both penned long before the term came into existence) the Prince by Machiavelli and Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Also, in general, the works of Ayn Rand with her peculiar, sociopathic protagonists greatly influenced the tone of the game.

Other influences include Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Frankenstein the modern Prometheus, the films of David Cronenberg, and various bits of myths, legends, fairy tales and folklore.

…..

Vampire: where it succeeded and failed for me

I was a big fan of Vampire; the requiem’s later books. Damned cities and the Danse Macabre in particular. The reason I liked them was because they gave mechanics to…. Well, things that had needed mechanics since the core book. Namely territory and social rules. Both products also had a lot of meat and style which made them a joy to read.

I especially was a fan of Damned cities, with its descriptions of forgotten sewer catacombs and abandoned subways buried far from the light of day and the memory of man. I’m with Zack S. when it comes to dungeons, so this stuff really set my imagination on fire.

There was a lot that I couldn’t game in Vampire though.

For instance, there were too damn many vampires. It seemed like there was supposed to be a thriving community of dozens or even hundreds of vampires in a city (fucking… What?!). The factions, which never made sense to me, made no sense without at least this many vampires in a city. The Disciplines oscillated between useless and merely disappointing. The Mekhet never lived up to their own (humble) hype (and were a piss poor replacement for the awesome Malkavians of yore). There was no unifying antagonist, nor compelling reasons for protagonists to really…. Do anything.

Say what you will of old vampire, the punk added a needed kick in the ass to the gothic. It was a furious and directionless youth culture energy that propelled you to rise up and best your elders, or at the very least flip them off and pull the trigger on your shotgun. The name of the game is literally meant to evoke the ennui of eternity… Not really compelling stuff to play.

Also, the factions? Some of them had no representation in their own game. The Carthians, which I thought were awesome, didn’t have a clear goal that actually made any actual changes to anything. They were sort of vampire communists (but not really) as opposed to the vampire feudalists (which were led by capitalists? Kind of?). And their big thing was supposed to be that they wanted to coexist with humans, but actually that was a terrible idea if you paused to think about it. So, their main thing, if attempted, would kill a chronicle. If it was attempted in a big way (even just one city!) it would kill the setting. Not well designed.

So there was a ton of Vampire: TR that I couldn’t use. I loved it enough to run it anyway, and with some duct tape and some pruning shears, and liberally aided by Damned Cities and the Danse Macabre, I did run a few decent chronicles. Each one was plagued with problem from the setting, the rules, the pacing, the XP system… Yeah I could go on for a while but no. I’m not here to rant about Vampire and how it failed me. I’m here to talk about why my game is good.

…

Let me be clear, because it might seem like I don’t like V:TR. The contrary is actually true: I fucking love V:TR. What’s good in it is so good you guys, seriously. But as a game and as a product it was overall a failure for me, which has led me to having a very particular kind of blue balls for running something with just the good parts of the game.

So, the genesis of POC was this gaming frustration, plus all of the above mental alchemy from the inspiration sources. It is truly a strange game I have conceived.

What I was trying to do (whether I am succeeding is debatable)

…..

So the game. All of the above films portray either vampires or murderers who are…. Strangely driven in their urge to kill. So the characters you’ll play are similar creatures. They look human (or if not, have a suitably horrible way to pass for human). Much like the monsters in the films, they are a significant cut above the mortal herd in terms of power and genius. Each one of them is driven by an insatiable urge to slay human beings.

Like Louie, you can choose to struggle against this urge, or like Patrick Bateman, you can revel in it. But like them both, it has a powerful effect on you.

The other players in the game are not assumed to be your pals. Or, even necessarily know about your existence. They’re cast in the role of rival predators (which, they are). I had to create pacing mechanics where players get structured turns for this to work, but in playtest they run together pretty smoothly. Also, this helped to create all the natural consequences of competing powers: there are rivalries, and blood-feuds, and alliances of convenience, and whole rainbow of horrifying options for competition and cooperation.

Okay so I wanted to make a system that had all of the following:

·       You can make your own monster character with a lot of customization. You could be a vampire, werewolf, Frankenstein-thing, wriggling mass of lovecraftian tentacles, wendigo, ghost, selkie, sentient virus, demon, warlock, immortal alchemist, etc.

·       The scenes present in the above movies where the protagonist is clearly struggling with their overwhelming urge to kill happen naturally as a consequence of the mechanics of the game.

·       Actually, generally all of the major beats from those inspirations (as well as more specific ones depending on the monster built and the type of horror it evokes) happen as a consequence of game mechanics. I hate it when designers just say “Do Genre Trope please!” instead of actually designing rules that make it happen.

·       Characters would be powerful and dangerous to NPC mortals

·       Characters could compete against each other within the framework of the game, without ruining the campaign

·       Characters could die and revive with consequences. Or new characters could be built quickly and easily enough that players weren’t excluded from a game because their guy died. BUT, to make certain that loss had enough teeth that you’d fight to stay alive anyway.

·       A sophisticated resource and territory system that allowed for conquest and fruits of the conquest while remaining true to the horror roots of the enterprise (yeah this part has proven to be a fucking nightmare by the way. But it’s taking shape so…. Yeah, worth it)

·       A system with mechanical balance (or, more accurately, sophisticated imbalance leading to distinct strategies while retaining an initially level playing field and allowing for mid and late game surprises) AND satisfying genre fulfilment AND AND a sense of real-world verisimilitude.

·       Finally, it absolutely HAD TO HAVE a system which was simple, accessible, and robust. Like Chess, or Risk, so as a commercial product it could appeal to the juicy, juicy casual market. OPEN YOUR WALLET GRANDMA.

·       It had to escalate all the way from dirty murderers in the street to the end of the goddamn world.

As I have been designing it, it has sort of become an Objectivist Hero game, with a healthy smattering of murder and sociopathy. Characters are driven by their desires first and foremost, without any pretense of nobility or classic heroism. It’s sort of an id-release game where being horrible and selfish nets you huge in-game gains.

Also, it can be a competitive roleplaying game like Paranoia. As a matter of fact, the underlying threat of competition between players drives the resource-acquisition of conquering and enthralling the human populace, which in turn escalates the powers and reach of the characters in this awesome feedback loop of the world slowly getting eaten by monsters.

I'm sure I'll dump more about all this later. I just haven't talked about it much and this is like, the next game that is getting finished.