The Weekly Squid
Inspired by Apocalypse World‘s love letters & not yet having time to put together a proper AP, I came up with some meta fun for my game in the rough form of a one-page “newspaper.”
I hope to make improvements and continue with it in between each session. I started to write it like a proper Victorian newspaper & realized I’d be significantly less likely to continue the project if I had to worry about stylistic choices & historical research.
The intent is to document for the players some of the fallout from their actions each session, throw a bit of fictional meat on the bones of some of the clocks they’re aware of, and hint at other clocks they might investigate – provide some starting places for gather information next time out.
A more ambitious project might be to create generic “authentic” Doskvol newspapers or leaflets as a format for generating scores on an ongoing basis. Something like the newspapers for the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Game, but instead of combing its pages for clues to a mystery, your rogues would look through it for score opportunities and pick up setting information along the way.
The presence of the Ink Rakes and the setting of Doskvol generally feels like ripe territory to employ newspapers to provide score opportunities, rumors, information and laud (be fans of) the hardscrabble scoundrels of “The Dusk.”
If you do something similar for your game, I’d love to hear about it.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B156JfVtecqDY0lLSDhDNjJWYnM
Notes: My current Doskvol begins less than two years after the Unity War: The second month of 847.
The crew successfully stole the Red Sashes’ war treasury last session.
Phan didn’t leave the ring for his locksmith friend Frake (played by Michael Caine). It’s a warning. The Wraiths know Frake is Phan’s friend and are revealing to Phan they can get to him at any time. This will be news to the player. >:D
That looks lovely, what font is that, I will try to find a way to format something clean and easy to read but also stylized.
Thank you. Casablanca Antique. I’m sure there’re superior options but it was an easily available choice in OpenOffice, so…
This is great.
My crew of Hawkers are busy establishing their tabloid (printed with addictive ink) in Charterhall and Nightmarket, so I love seeing things like this as inspiration and competition.
This is really cool. Not sure I’ll end up doing something similar (maybe next the next game I run of Blades), although I have started creating heat clocks and the like with catchy newspaper headlines as descriptors, and I will often tell my players about off-screen happenings by having them see certain things in the broadsheets. They’ve also started using the broadsheets and tabloids to find information, though they’re aware of how unreliable the Ink Rakes’ information likely is. Playing up how news and gossip travels in the city has been really fun (we had a memorable scene recently where our vampire grilled a newsy for gossip at a news stand).