Mountain Missive Nr. 11

The System-Setting-Symbiosis

Bashutu touches the body of their unlikely colonist friend. They speak the sacred words you can only say once, “Blood runs out, blood runs in. A heart stops and then begins. A last breath becomes just another one. The sacrifice is paid by another one. A life carried through snow. This lifeline ends, so you don’t go.”

How a setting lives and dies on a blog on game design.

Rules make a system, setting makes a story. Time stop. Tape stop. Rewind. In retrospect players remember stories. Fast forward. All needs to be recognisable enough to buy, but different. All new, but easy to grasp. Delayed again, degraded by time. Balanced on a blade’s edge. Dance of success. Mountain Resonance and The Kingdom Of The East. The Knife is essential to a Mountaineer. The knife is essential to a mountaineer. Delayed degradation, high-end roll off, tape delay. Cut your enemy, cut your firewood, cut your food. Cut your friends off their rope. In Mountain Resonance system and setting are intertwined, but separate-able. Truth for many. Crystalline. Mountain crystals. Cut it yourself. Take a blade. Is it a Knife or a knife after you are done cutting? Your choice. Many truths. Pick your repeat.

Skip back. Hard sync. Different truths tell of Incan Gold and firemen. Climb a temple. Climb a ladder. Repetitive play dissociates from settings. Delayed degradation, high-end roll off, tape delay. New beats, not a rule, a suggestion: A campaign of Mountain Resonance lasts 4-8 sessions. Attrition tuned to it. Hard sync timbers of pain and storytelling.

What is the undegradable core of your game?

Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada, California, 1868

Get Mountain Resonance and its supplements for free on itch.io or RPG-Trader and sign up for the upcoming print run on Kickstarter.