Architects of Aztlan
From AdamWiki
Architects of Aztlan is a two-player tabletop role-playing game in which you tell the stories of a citizen of ancient Atlantis, a powerful civilization that has tragically brought cycles of cataclysm upon the world, and that has learned how to travel to the future by reincarnating into the lives of other people. In this way, they hope to prepare those civilizations for the unavoidable disaster that will come. Will they believe you? How can you save thousands of years of knowledge and civilization from certain destruction? If you fail, human kind will be lost…
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History
I wrote this game for Kevin Allen's Reversed Engineer game contest. In the contest, game designers were invited to create a character sheet for an RPG that doesn't exist yet and submit it. Then the sheets were randomly redistributed to the designers. Lucien Smith has assembled a collection of the sheets and their games, with thumbnails of the sheets. Awesomeness.
I got Mike Ramsey's character sheet, which provided much of the inspiration I needed for my game. We had two weeks to write a game and submit it. In the final stage, our game is assigned to two designers randomly for judging (1-10) based on three criteria:
- playability of the game
- integration of the character sheet into the game
- general cool factor
Nathan "Hamster Prophet" Paoletta (author of Timestream) posted his review of my game (and scores) on September 22. Christian "xenopulse" Griffen judged my game around October 2, 2006.
Officially, my game was announced as one of the top six. Kevin didn't post the places of those six and he seems to have ended the contest there instead of doing another round of voting on those six to pick a winner.
Nathan's Review
AoA is a two-player game with a rockin' premise - the player plays an immortal, time traveling spirit trying to save civilizations from utter destruction through the ages. Being an (ahem) time travel fan myself, I was happy to get this game to review.
Playability of the Game: 9 of 10
This game looks eminently playable. All of the parts, from backstory to character creation to situation creation to determining outcomes and consequences are there. The game is mechanically intensive enough to require some playtesting to see what ends up working and what needs to be polished - on two readthroughs, nothing jumped out at me as problematic or gamebreaking (though, seeing how the Dynamic Traits end up working would, I think, be a good focus for playtest). The only hesitation I have is about how contiguous or disjointed the game narrative should end up being. I understand that scenes can be very far apart in terms of time elapsed, but some examples or an extended example of play would be helpful in seeing how Adam sees this working out. But, at core, I don't see anything keeping me from taking the text as written and playing this game.
Usefulness Of The Character Sheet: 8 of 10
Other than Lifetimes Achieved, everything on the sheet is used in the game, and used well. I think the box for Gear/Essentials/Mementos is larger than it would need to be for the weight given those things in the game (while you can write as many as you want down, you only get 10 points to distribute among them, and there's 20 slots). The only other complaint I could have is that the sheet, were it reworked for the game, should be more decorated (to match the graphics in the text) and probably should have a spot to record which civilizations you've saved and which you've failed to save, as a record of play.
Wow, That's Cool Factor: 8 of 10
Two-player game? Time travel? Apocalyptic adventure? Intriguing premise and well-done execution? Nice layout and appropriate art? 19 freakin' pages? Nothing not to like, here. Being someone who's published a time travel game, I'm a sucker for this one. Also, the tracking of gameplay through the use of lifetimes echoes how I prefer to treat the passage of time's impact on character action in time travel games (i.e. via scenes or other mechanical bits than by passage of time in the game fiction). So that gets a big thumbs up. Sure, it needs some polishing and playtesting, but I think it's a fantastic achievement for a 2-week contest. I'd like to take this game for a spin some time.
Total: 25 of 30
Christian's Review
Disclaimer: I consider Adam a friend and have played with him on the Foundry. This review is as objective as I can make it; it just happens to be a very well-developed game.
Premise: In this two-player game, one player controls an Architect from Atlantis who travels through time to warn coming civilizations of their impending apocalypse.
Playability: 9
The 18-page ruleset clearly lays out all of the rules, including the division of authority, situation creation, resolution, and character development. There might be some kinks in there that will require playtesting, but at first and second glance, all of the rules are there and seem to work together well. Several rule ideas are really cool, such as the interplay between life-time (how much time the character has until the apocalypse hits) and insight (whether the character manages to stop the apocalypse), and how those bring up tactical decisions with the dice mechanic. The basic dice mechanic is also very cool, but explaining it would take too long at this point. It remains to be seen how it plays out. One of the concerns I have is that the characters are going to burn out permanently rather quickly.
Sheet Integration: 9
Adam used all of the parts of the sheet in several different ways in the game. The only one that seems to be missing is Life-Times Achieved (correct me if I’m wrong, Adam). Even small items such as Liege are given in-depth treatment.
Coolness Factor: 7
While the idea is great, it reminded me a bit of the Group Design Challenge premise at the Forge from a while back. Also, as Adam admits, there are obvious Dogs in the Vineyard influences here that helped Adam with the design, but make for a less-than-perfect fit. I’m just not sure that the way static traits are used gels well with the overall game—it feels like the way they are added up to get the four different arenas of conflict (among which you can escalate) are a leftover from the source of inspiration and feel somewhat forced (why use spirit+connection to kill someone when you use spirit+flesh to hurt them?). Still, overall the game looks great and I’d definitely play it. It has a lot of cool Color, too, such as the way in which Adam incorporated the Liege element from the sheet. The amount of effort and coolness that went into this game are overwhelming to someone like me who barely squeezed out three pages. Also, the layout is well done, art is included, and it overall looks highly polished already.
Total Score: 25
Paul Czege (author of one of my favorite games, My Life with Master), did some manually tallying of the reviews that were posted. My game, Architects of Aztlan, looks like it's in the finals (top six overall). In fact, it looks to be tied with Fred Hicks' game Chimaera (based on my sheet!) for 2nd place overall (25/30 points)! Aztlan also tied Something Is Rising, The City Will Fall for 1st place for Playability (9/10 points) and tied for 9th in the Wow Factor category (7.5/10 points).
Themes
Architects of Aztlan explores the value of humanity as a whole compared to the morals of an individual's worth. Literally, do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Is humanity worth saving if you have to act inhuman to do so?
In the game, the player takes the role of an Architect, a traveler from ancient Atlantis burdened with the responsibility to spread a message of doom. This character has the power to reincarnate into the life of a "host" in a faraway place some time in the future. The guide (GM) plays this host and all the other people the Architect will meet, and perhaps save. The fact that the host and Architect share a single physical body, and that one is the guide's and the other is the player's, creates tension and gives the guide a way to drive the player to make complex moral and ethical decisions.
Regrets
The contest entry as written has a couple flaws that I've already noticed.
- The Liege rules are purely "color" without the mechanical backing to make them sing.
- I should have created more structure for creating civilizations, a la creating towns in Dogs in the Vineyard.
- I wanted to include more background information on Atlantian science, including the fascinating ideas from the book, The Atlantis Blueprint [1], by Rand Flem-Ath. This book inspired me to write this game.
