The Setting

Hey Drovers,

The setting of Autostede is something that I've had a lot of trouble with and lately, as I've had an ongoing campaign running, both the reasons that I've struggled and the ways that the game doesn't feel right have coalesced in a way that I have finally managed to piece everything together. 

So today I want to walk about what I want the setting to be.

I really want to lean in to the wild west post apocalyptic genre, featuring that while people use Autostedes every day in a variety of ways, nobody really knows where they come from or how they work. Physically they are largely mechanical and so metal workers and engineers are largely capable of fixing and altering them, but nobody has been able to take a pile of Autostede parts and turn it into a functional Autostede. 

I do want to take the game into a slightly more zoids / horizon zero dawn direction, away from Pokemon, by introducing one central fact that everyone in the setting knows, which I hope will flavour the play experience in a particular way; wild Autostedes are compelled to find the most powerful Autostede in range and fight it.

This means two things:

One, when travelling through the wilderness you will be attacked. By a lot of Autostedes. And you won't be able to stop them from attacking you. Maybe if you win the fight in the right way they'll run away.

Two, if you head into town, everyone knows that the fact that you're there puts their life in danger. They can't stop you from coming in, nobody can compete with the power that you control by being a Drover and having a powerful Autostede, but having that Autostede in a civilized place will draw all of the dangerous Autostedes in the area into town, where they will destroy everything to find and fight you.

My intention in developing this is to foster a narrative of being a competent, capable person in a position of never fitting in, because the only way to be a part of society is to say goodbye to the machine that has always been there for you, is your most trusted friend and greatest ally. 

Maybe you'll make that choice, and play out the story of coming to terms with that as you sunset the Drover, but being a Drover is not possible if you want to live a simple life. 

I feel like this paints the PCs in a very particular light, because they may want to help. They may see the plight of the local populace and want to find a way to solve all their problems, but they will always leave, and hope that they left soon enough.

Similarly the townsfolk will see the arrival of a Drover as a blessing or a curse, because here is someone who can do things that nobody else can, but whose presence is a portent of bad things happening here, and soon. They will help you in any way that they can, hoping that with their help you will be able to leave soon. 

On the other hand, I'm really enjoying the Autostede creation game that I developed and want to dive further in to the idea of collaborative creation as an integral part of exploration. I'm going to fold in some of the mechanics that I have used previously in various campaigns to center a hexcrawl and try to find a way to have the generation of the world be something that happens piecemeal at the table amongst everyone in a way that creates a sense of wonder and excitement as the players explore the world. 

On the other hand I want these tools to be robust enough for a GM to use them by themselves to prepare a world for the players to explore, if that is the way that those players prefer their game to run. 

Similarly I want to clarify the mechanics behind the modules, so that a GM who wants to go deeper than the Autostede creation game can hand craft new modules and therefore new and interesting Autostedes for their players to fight, and maybe tame.

A lot of this is still a swirl of ideas and possibilities at this point, but I'm excited to bring them to the table, polish off the pointy edges, and get them out to everyone who wants to play this game at home.