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Author Topic: The Wandering Village - an idea worth stealing!  (Read 1236 times)

Spinachcat

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The Wandering Village - an idea worth stealing!
« on: October 17, 2020, 10:02:57 PM »
Here's the origin of the idea
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strayfawnstudio/the-wandering-village?

The Wandering Village is a city building simulation game. In a world where mysterious plants are spreading all over the earth, emitting toxic spores as they grow, a group of people seeks shelter on the back of a giant, wandering creature they call ‘Onbu’.

Become their leader, build their settlement and form a symbiotic relationship with the creature to survive together in this hostile, yet beautiful post-apocalyptic world that now surrounds you.
Key Features

    Build a village on the back of a giant creature
    Farm various crops
    Send out foraging missions to gather rare resources
    Survive a variety of different biomes and events
    Build a relationship with a giant and influence its actions
    Ecology/Biology inspired gameplay
    Unique blend of 3D and hand-drawn, hand-animated 2D graphics


At its core, The Wandering Village is a city building and resource management game with rogue-like and survival elements. Farm various crops to keep your villagers fed, send out foraging missions to gather rare resources and scout the environment while constantly expanding the settlement. Of course, living on the back of a living, breathing beast comes with its own challenges, such as helping to maintain the creature’s health and building trust. This might even lead to the beast paying attention to your requests as it wanders through a variety of different biomes, each with its own perks and challenges, always trying to outrun the threat of the toxic spores.

In-game Screenshot

The ultimate goal, for both the humans and the creature, is to find a place where they can settle down and live in peace again. And if they don’t find this place, maybe they can figure out a way to fight back the plants and create it themselves.

Core Mechanics

Survival - Escape from the toxic spores and keep your villagers and the creature alive against ever-changing threats.

Symbiosis - Live both from and in harmony with the giant creature and form a relationship with it as you trek together through the post-apocalyptic world.

Building - Build an infrastructure where your people can live together, work together and survive together.

Farming - Plant, cultivate and harvest various crops to keep your villagers and the creature fed and healthy, or grow new kinds of resources.

Foraging - Send scouting parties to explore the different biomes surrounding you, discover rare resources and bring them back to your village, opening up new possibilities.


There's a lot more info on the KS page and it's ripe for grabbing for a RPG campaign. It's got great campaign potential and I could see running Gamma World / Mutant Future / SWN / using the concepts.

Love the concept of a "safe healthy world" on the Onbu's back, but a toxic, dangerous world all around them. Of course, there's the question about predators who could bring down an Onbu and what about competing Onbu's wandering the world with villages of their own.

It leans itself to some Battlestar Galactica action as well if there were a dozen or more Onbu's marching together as a fleet that needed protecting from predators.

There's so much interesting stuff to explore with ANY concept involving a moving city (kinda like Space 1999) and how you gotta keep dealing with new environs and keep moving and what that means for those living atop.

Also, so much cool stuff to imagine involving the mood, aging and health of the mega-creature itself...and how does it breed?

Bren

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Re: The Wandering Village - an idea worth stealing!
« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2020, 11:57:20 PM »
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Greentongue

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Re: The Wandering Village - an idea worth stealing!
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2020, 01:30:49 PM »
A great concept. Not sure how many existing rule systems would support this as a play style and be actually FUN.

Spinachcat

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Re: The Wandering Village - an idea worth stealing!
« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2020, 04:16:28 AM »
As for rule systems, its a question of what each GM feels they need versus what they are comfortable hand waiving.

AKA, how do you handle the mass collection of resources and construction? Or do you leave it as background to PC action/adventure?  Where do the PCs begin in the hierarchy of the community? Do you do it Zero to Hero or are the PC's all Large and In Charge?

There's a lot of possibilities here and I don't see one ruleset that would be "perfect", nor would most choices be "bad" either. I could easily see Savage Worlds working quite well.

jeff37923

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Re: The Wandering Village - an idea worth stealing!
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2020, 12:24:37 PM »
Since 3.x D&D, there have been some thin rules for villages centered around a tarrasque. This just seems like an expansion of that.
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KingCheops

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Re: The Wandering Village - an idea worth stealing!
« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2020, 12:35:56 PM »
Sounds like it'd fit in Age of Sigmar if you turned up the heavy metal elements by about 10.

DocJones

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Re: The Wandering Village - an idea worth stealing!
« Reply #6 on: November 04, 2020, 05:56:23 PM »
I think I read of something similar in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive books.
People were living on an island that was a living creature.

bat

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Re: The Wandering Village - an idea worth stealing!
« Reply #7 on: November 06, 2020, 08:29:40 PM »
This is a great setting idea that I would run using Carrion Lands by Gallant Knight Games. It is based off of Barbarians of Lemuria with a resource management system that includes fortifications,  which could be applied to the giant. The setting is a bleak version of the Conan: Exiles video game with the serial numbers filed off. The setting can be easily altered; I have used it for a twisted Oldhammer game, substituting the Carrion Lords for greater daemons of Chaos. It is all fun and games until the mutations start appearing.
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