New Thoughts of Cataclysmal

As mentioned previously, I was having issues getting my game "Cataclysmal" to work as I'd hoped. I loved the concept that I'd created for the game - the "Saviors". People who had done extraordinary things to save others, but who had perished in the fight. We tell stories of those heroic acts as a way of remembering them. 

I was convoluted in building the rules of engagement for the players around the table, and that led to some confusion about how to best collaborate with the others and made our timeline of events muddy at best. I recently had new ideas about ways that I could fix these issues (though I wish I'd written them down better at the time). This will really just be me rambling to nobody, but might one day be nice to look back at my progress when considering new games. 

My most barebones version trims the game down considerably by making it a short game with only one Savior and three rounds only of storytelling. Players would work together to create a cataclysm event plaguing mankind. Then each player tells one story about *the* Savior - a daring exploit or perhaps a tender moment during the chaos - before then working together again to come up with a heroic way that the Savior died. I feel like this breakdown would require more inspiration or guidance, but boils down to the same message in a less confusing way. 

An additional variation would simply be to increase the number of Saviors, thus increasing the number of rounds of telling stories. By making the final round a collaborative one, however, there is not the same pressure on individual players to tell separate stories of the Saviors' deaths, but the group can collaborate to develop a scenario where they all stood up again the forces of evil and lead mankind to safety. 

This version of the game also makes it easier to use these rules as a Solo Writing game. Solo Players could be creative and create a living testament to their Savior, compiling stories from different survivors into a tome of some sort. They could adapt it to a internet boards, perhaps someone is seeking lost stories of the Saviors online and they could recruit random players to write their own stories. 

The ultimate goal is to make sure that we can tell simple and compelling stories about ordinary people who rise to extraordinary duties.