Wield and ‘I need an Elric TV show!’

I just finished Wield, a game by John Wick, and I really don’t know what to think about it. 

In the game, you play an artifact of great power, an intelligent magical item that has its own will and goals. Stormbringer from the Elric books (and the real hero, according to some of my fiends, I mean friends) was a major influence.

Which is cool and more than enough to interest me.

However, one of the things that throws me is that you have a second character, a ‘hero’ who is carrying the artifact _someone else_ is playing. More than that, each hero has their own destiny which is gong to be contrary to the artifact’s goals.

And that’s where it gets funny in my head. Playing an artifact or multiple characters doesn’t bother me but having conflicting goals... That doesn’t bother me. I just don’t know how it would go. I’ve played a lot of different RPGs so not having a good idea of what Wield would play like is kind of weird for me.

There’s also a mechanic I find strange. Artifacts have control over their ‘heroes’ and they can give them great power. However, the more power they give, the less control they have. Which makes absolute sense with the idea that the artifact is the real character and the heroes are disposable hit points. But it is weird from a traditional, thematic point of view. I get more of Stormbringer’s sweet soul-drinking power AND I get more autonomy? Woo hoo!

I think what I need to really wrap my mind around is that Wield isn’t about the ‘hero’. You might go through a bunch of them. It is the story and the legacy of a scary magical item.

Which reminds me. Where is my Elric TV show? Seriously. You’d really think that would be a property that would get snatched up in today’s market. I have to assume that the rights must be in some kind of legal limbo but I want my albino emo-teen cursed-sword guy TV show.

The Zombie Clock is ticking... yea!

The word that came to my mind after reading John Wick’s The Shotgun Diaries was desperation.

I’m not a big zombie fan. It feels like, too often, the default theme is humans are the real monsters overlapping with who we really are without society’s rules. Powerful themes but it gets repetitive. And too often, the zombie genre can become some kind of escapist fantasy, that a zombie apocalypse beats the nine-to-five job.

The Shotgun Diaries doesn’t come up with a new theme for zombies. Instead, it strips the zombie genre down to almost the most basic level. You play almost helpless survivors struggling to stay alive with minimal, dwindling resources. 

Seriously, characters are basically one-hit-point wonders who each have one meaningful skill. If that skill doesn’t apply to a situation, you are helpless. You do have access to a group pool of dice but that is hard to replenish and using it increases the overall danger level.

But the hook, the something special that makes The Shotgun Diaries something worth playing, is the Zombie Clock.

Every ten minutes _real_ time, the Zombie Clock goes forward one tick (indicated by adding some sort of token in front of the GM, glass stones or plastic zombies or mouse skulls or whatever) When that happens, a day goes by, the player’s dice pool loses a die and things get more dangerous.

The GM can trade one of the tokens in to do bad stuff. And if the Zombie Clock gets too far, the characters’ shelter get overrun and really bad things happen. 

The Zombie Clock is great because it creates a real time mechanic for ratcheting up tension and danger. I remember when I first played Dread (the one that used a Jenga glee) how having a physical structure that was inevitably going to collapse and cause catastrophic failure added a visceral level of fear and tension. In that first game, we the players started hugging the wall to keep away from the Jenga tower.

The Zombie Clock isn’t quite that extreme but it makes the game more real. You can’t sit back and make detailed plans while the game world is on hold. No, you are literally on the clock.

As I’ve said, I’m not big on zombie games. And there are other zombie games I’d played before The Shotgun Diaries (Like All Flesh Must Be Eaten or Zombie Cinema) However, the potential of the Zombie Clock does make me want to try The Shotgun Diaries.