Mountain Missive Nr. 4
The Attrition
The birth of a child is sacred. Time stops. Nothing else matters. The mother dies forever on a icy cabin floor. Deprived of structured care far from her community. Wooden splinters pushed deep into convulsing heels. Then a paraphonic cry and both go on together.
Back to beginnings. Mountain Resonance in recursive layers of a newsletter on game design.
Three time periods remain after a decimation of the setting, The Kingdom Of The East. The Dog Years tell of war times. Humans at their worst. Not loyal guardians, but crazed warriors and suffering, individually. The Last Summer is happiness for half of them and defeat for the other, suffering for most. One summer, in retrospect better than anything after for all of them, modulated in retrospect. The Long Winter tells of all affecting cold, everything stops ... almost, everything dies ... slowly. Long Winter is the darker chorus to Luka Rejec’s Longwinter. Larger than life. Thicker snow layers with low frequency oscillations.
Attrition is the great equaliser, the opportunity to become human. The stripping of layers, decimating, leaves flayed humans shivering until they stop. Attrition is the core concepts of Mountain Resonance. The added layers to the one true Panic Engine from Tuesday Knight Games are around attrition. Decimation to facilitate character growth. A story tool for a fist-full of sessions. Groups bound by fate and often hate, trapped in layers of colonist conflict.
Exhaustion Points, Heat Points, diseases, diseases, diseases.
Ablative warm clothing, ablative mountaineering equipment. Your offering might not be enough.
What will you give up last?
Gabriel Loppé - Crevasses et séracs sur le glacier du Géant, 1888
Get Mountain Resonance and its supplements for free on itch.io, and sign up for the upcoming print run on Kickstarter.