Raptus Regaliter

Earlier, I talked a little about the interview with Luke Crane on Canon Puncture. What I failed to mention was Mr. Crane talking about his joint project with Jared Sorenson, Project Donut.

Information on this particular title has been sketchy at best, but there are some really interesting things about it that Luke revealed during the interview. We know, from the website, that this is a sci-fi game, but beyond that, it’s proven to be quite the mystery. Some of the new info sounds incredibly promising, though.

The setting and the rules are supposedly more than tightly integrated. They are, in fact, the same thing. This makes things interesting because it means that there is no such thing as metagaming in the Project Donut system. I find this to be a fascinating concept, especially after having run Burning Wheel, where gaming the system is somewhat expected (see Practice in BWR). I’m used to hearing things like “i need 100 more XP to make it to the next level,” but the idea that you can talk about the game mechanics at the table and still remain 100% in the game is, well, amazing to me.

Perhaps the most fascinating idea is that the game setting is one where there is a disctinct lack of both scarcity and death. This, of course, means that there’s no money, and no life-or-death struggles. The economy of the game is based on the idea of your social currency - how many friends, fans, and followers you have - and how much you can give away. At least, that’s how I understand it.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am and is filed under Gaming, RPG Design, Role-Playing Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.