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New write-fag quest? Madness Quest JTH 2011/07/10(Sun)20:02 No. 39614 ID: 223884

'Sup /tg/, I've been mulling a bunch of ideas in my head for a while and I think I might start a quest. To be honest I'm absolutely abysmal at drawing, and thus have decided upon a quest comprised mainly of prose.

The quest's core is based upon a tabletop RPG I discovered a little while ago called "Don't Rest Your Head" and, as the title subtley suggests, is woven around messed up stuff.

Here's the intro from the book:

Introduction
You can’t sleep. It started like that for all of us, back when we were garden variety insomniacs.
Maybe you had nightmares – gods know we all do now – or maybe you just had problems that wouldn’t let you get a good night’s rest. Hell – maybe you were just over-caffeinated. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it was, eventually you got to a point where sleep became a choice, rather than a mandate … and then it just dropped off the list.
And then, and only then, something clicked.
That’s when you started noticing the extras. An extra door here or there. An extra window looking out onto a city packed with surplus buildings, hodgepodge towers standing shoulder to shoulder, roofs angling into one another. Clocks chiming the thirteenth hour and unfamiliar stars twinkling in the too-clear sky. Streets and alleys that weren’t there before, leading to late-night markets that sold things like laughter and indecision.
When you took a long walk down the streets of the Mad City, you stopped being a Sleeper and started being Awake.
But that click you heard wasn’t from the secret world snapping into place. It was the sound of the Nightmares flicking off the safety and pointing a gun at your head. When you crossed over you became a target. They can smell you now, if they get close enough. The Paper Boys are closing in, and you’d better pray you don’t become a headline.
You’re chum in the water, my friend, and it’s time you got ready for it – before the clock chimes thirteen again. You’re going to get tired, more tired than you ever have before, but mark my words: sleep isn’t just off the list now, it’s an outright enemy that’ll strip away your vitality and leave you vulnerable. There’s no going back, and from here on out, there’s just one simple rule that must dominate your life.
Stay Awake.
Don’t rest your head.

So the game focuses around the protagonist's insomnia and builds off of it as a game mechanic. Exhaustion is a product of overexersion and can bring you closer to crashing and becoming food for hungry Nightmares. More importantly, your insomnia directly results in you discovering the Mad City: A hidden city filled with Wonderland-esque creatures and hideous underbellies. When the world "clicks" and you cross over into the state in which you can pass over, you become Awake. As such, your status gives you extraordinary abilities, one being an [Exhaustion Talent].

An [Exhaustion Talent] is an ability which is very much grounded in reality, but for you it is pushed to the extraordinary. An Awake athlete might have an Exhaustion Talen for running very fast or jumping really high. It is something possible, but unlikely and pushed beyond its normal limits.

The other extraordinary ability you are granted from your sleepless lifestyle is called your [Madness Talent]. A Madness Talent is a supernatural ability, one that is often tied to your life or the events therein. A Madness Talent can take hold as a reflection of your outer self: A conman can have the ability to make people believe him or be compelled to give him money. Others can be tied to what's inside and can provide insights into yourself, what you really are. A meek child can become a Giant. A brute can speak words that calm. They don't always have to be completely concrete either. Some venture into near-stupid levels of game-breaking wonder. In an example given from the book, you can have the ability to cut people very well. However, people aren't the only thing you can cut. Try hard enough and skillfully sever ties between people. Make lovers suddenly have no reason to see each other. Break apart a child's tie to his abusive father. That kind of stuff. Basically, come up with an idea and inflate it into whatever you can think of.

Much of the game is comrpised of roleplay and elaboration of what you're doing. Saying "I attack that guy with my ray gun thingy" is different from "I fire at the guy's legs with my Subatomic Supercompartmentalizor, hoping to at least slow him down so I can make a getaway." Intentions are key. Rolling of die are almost exclusively for when conflicts arise. Rolls made to pick a lock are useless if there isn't anything on the other side waiting for you.

The whole idea of it and the fact that I generally consider my writing to be my strong point has led me to believe that I could make a quest that would be entertaining and, if possible, draw the questers into the experience. I've had some practise running quests in real life as a DM, but haven't done so on the internet, but I've been lurking TG for nearly a year and I think I understand the gist of everything.

The game mechanics will be explained at-length during the quest itself when they arise (look for spoilers, that's probably where I'll put them by default).

I look forward to questing with you, tg.