Hello everyone, Lackster here. I plan on making regular posts showcasing Elusio, the project I’ve been working on the last 9 months, and get feedback from the community. This first post is about the setting and the general concept of the game. I hope you enjoy !

Imaginary communities weren't always hunted down. I even remember when they were free. They relied on stories, tales, fables, hearsay, legends, myths, folklore and poems. Each Family passed them down from generation to generation, on scraps of paper or sentences. Their only adversaries were the memories of those who preferred to forget, and I would never have imagined that these cherished stories were under threat.
Today, our communities are exhausted by a struggle to the death. They now hide from the new machines that examine, classify, process and crush: Science, the Economy, the Clergy, the State. Nobody dares tell me their story anymore, for fear of ending up burned by a priest, studied by a scientist or sold to a mining company.
Please, help me. Set off on an adventure, following in the footsteps of those people who still tell stories, tales, fables, hearsay, legends, myths, folklore and poems. And along the way, write your own. I'll always be there to read them.

Elusio is a role-playing game set in the early 17th century, in a world where the remnants of fantasy are pursued by various spheres of power: military, economic, administrative and scientific, as well as criminal, occult, artistic and religious. You embody a group of characters, each inhabited by the generational memories of different Families, who have their own relationship to the Real and the Imaginary. Entrusted by their community, this group protects what Imaginary still remains by eluding its presence, in order to hide it from the institutions that seek to harm it. You can also collaborate with some of these institutions, understanding their specific motivations, and try to negotiate a peaceful coexistence by building bonds of trust. Mahalia the writer is accused of witchcraft for her fantastic texts. Will you agree to entrust her to a wealthy patron who assures you she will be safe? The strongest man in the region, Gaston, wants to escape military conscription: will you hide him, even temporarily, with the local Occultist and his followers?

Making something invisible is difficult, especially when it's being hounded from all sides; but making it more visible by trying to have it accepted as such also makes it more vulnerable. It's this major dilemma that will guide your adventures.

A game of Elusio begins by creating the community your characters will be called upon to defend. In most classic role-playing games, you create your character, then are thrown straight into an adventure: an unknown to explore, solve and conquer. Here, it's the other way around. The game begins with a collaborative fresco (currently following a homebrew hack of independent ttrpg The Quiet Year), which anchors your characters in a community threatened by the various spheres of power, strange situations and internal conflicts, resolved or not. The history of this community will serve as a source of inspiration for the Director's subsequent adventures. Here is a photo of an early playtest. Can you guess the challenges faced by this community?

I’ll try to get the conversation going by asking y’all one design question I’ve been struggling with. This week’s question is: Why do they need to be a group of multiple people to act on behalf of the community? In generic heroic fantasy games, it’s simple: more PCs do more stuff, team=stronger. But here, the goal is to either build trust, or hide things. What’s your solution?

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You can find the original post and its discussion on r/RPGDesign here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RPGdesign/comments/190cwh5/looking_for_feedback_on_elus...