My initial pitch, for your perusal, criticism, and kind comments.
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MEDICINE
You travel with Remi's Wonder Wagon Of Miracle Cures; Remi (the brains), Canelle (the looks) and you-the-player (the... silent protagonist) make a living of tricking unwary village hicks into buying your visionary cure-all. But, having grown tired of fleeing from parochial town to parochial town, Remi has decided that the Wonder Wagon is going to move its game to the big city -- Bonfaire. All your party has to do is cross the Alumeuse Badlands, making for Bonfaire on the other side. The only problem? The Alumeuse Badlands are well-nigh intractable, the endless desert broken only by the oasis town of Fantine. No worries, says Remi. You'll fleece the good people of Fantine, lighten your load of sacred snake oil, acquire new stores of food and water, emerge on the other side unscathed and laugh all the way to Bonfaire.
Fantine is eerily beautiful, with too many temples and too few bars. But before Remi's Wonder Wagon can leave for Bonfaire, your motley crew faces a serious problem. You've made a career of healing the well, but the people of Fantine really *are* sick. Furthermore, when Fantine's Council of Elders discovers that the snake oil you're peddling doesn't cure a thing, they're not keen to provide you with the food and water you need to cross the desert. Unable to leave in either direction, the Wonder Wagon stands by helplessly - until Canelle (whose beauty-in -residence is Remi's real meal ticket) falls ill. Suddenly, you and the Wonder Wagon are forced to dig for what's really going on in Fantine.
While utilizing the classic fantasy aesthetic of the Aurora Toolset, Medicine deals with modern issues such as social engineering, superbugs and over-sanitization - both medically, and metaphorically. Medicine is Wild-West desert crawl, a whodunit, and an absurdist drama about who's sick, who's well and who really needs healing.
Comments
17:37 Wed Jun 18th, 2008
This sounds really great, Rebecca. You summarized it quite well and it sounds like a lot of fun to play with some great themes to boot.
19:44 Wed Jun 18th, 2008
This sounds legitimately interesting. So it's pretty much going to an RPG, right? What kind of abilities are you going to have? Or is it more in the vein of a more point and click sort of game? This post is a little to stream of conscious for me...
12:48 Fri Jun 20th, 2008
So far, this sounds like you're going to grab your player by the heartstrings and not let go... Great! Since you don't seem to be resorting to magic, I'll be interested to see what era of medicine you choose. How advanced is germ theory? Does vaccination exist? Are you bringing in alternative practices such as aromatherapy? (Random trivia: During WWII, a French scientist discovered that soldiers who camped in pine forests got fewer respiratory infections than those who camped elsewhere.) Bonne chance!
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Professor WhizzyWig
16:39 Wed Jun 18th, 2008
That sounds pretty cool. Definitely a good match for the Aurora Toolset. I've always thought a non-magic story would be really cool. Good luck with it!