Walkabout Novella and Boxed Set

80 pages – Novella of a Journey

I’m envisioning this third part of the boxed set to be a travelling novella. The whole thing will be framed by the journey of a single person across the beautifully desolate landscape…it will be illustrated in colour (using a combination of techniques), and I’m thinking that it should weave the tale of a woman journeying in this exotically familiar world. I’m aiming toward something akin to a post-apocalyptic version of “The Canterbury Tales” or “1001 Nights”.

The Heroine will meet people on her journey, and these chance encounters will tell her their stories. The stories are designed to bring a personal perspective to the savagery and esoteric mystery, providing ideas for players and GMs to insert into their stories. Each of these stories would be about ten pages long (probably four or five of these), interspersed with the framing narrative of a character completing her journey along one side of the Australian coast.

The most dramatic journey for this type of narrative would be the voyage from Cairns (in the new alliance of city states known as Capricornia), along the former Queensland coast to the shanty towns outside the ruined Brisbane, into NSW and toward the savage nuclear wastelands of Sydney, onward along the coast to the Mornington Peninsula avoiding the similarly desolate nuclear wasteland of Melbourne (but probably hearing a survivor’s tale from that part of the world). A trip across Bass Straight, where the rusting hulks of oil rigs house independent colonies of isolationist survivors; then finally to the deceptively peaceful farmlands of the Thylacine Kingdom (where Tasmanian tigers and other cryptids are spoken about in hushed whispers).

Just a series of embryonic thoughts at this stage.

I know there are people who don't like the amateur ramblings of a game designer who think's that they are  novelist. That's why I'm keeping this short, and trying to make sure it gives as much opportunity for play ideas as possible. It will probably only be a bonus item available in the boxed set. 

The full boxed set is intended to carry the three books described so far (Rules, Almanac/Survival Guide, Novella), a series of dry erase play sheets, a pad of trait cards, five pouches and a 200 glass beads (40 each: White, Black, Red, Blue, Green). Besides a few pencils, pens and scrap paper or notebooks, that's everything you'd need for five people to play. I'm working out costings now.