Welcome to Crawling Out of the Abyss

Welcome to the first devlog for Crawling Out of the Abyss! My hope is to post a bit about the game, mechanics, and the development in general every one or two weeks.

To start off the devlogs, lets dive a little deeper into what the game is all about.

What's the Story?
 Crawling out of the Abyss is about characters (Forgotten) that have lost their memories and have been cast down into a dungeon-like place known as The Abyss. 'Memory loss? That's been done a million different ways already!' 

I know! What sets this story apart from many others is that the mechanics behind the game focus purely on not only the characters regaining their memories but also deciding through their thoughts and actions if they still want to be the person they once were or embrace something new. Every step of their journey will either involve recalling something of who they once were to overcome an obstacle or embracing this blank slate version of themselves and growing into a completely new person.

A Single Journaling Experience or a Story-Telling Device for a Group with or without a GM?

Both! The main mechanics of Crawling Out of the Abyss involve drawing from a Tarot Deck three times (no previous knowledge of Tarot Decks required!) and following the prompts in the rules to create situations for the characters to face and overcome. This means that a single person could run through the entire game by themselves, creating their own experiences from the different prompts. Or a group could run it together, taking turns at drawing the cards and deciding what each of them mean and what they face. OR a group could give all of the control to one person, essentially a Game Master, who can do all of the interpretations and create the world for the others to experience.

So is this a sandbox game or one on tracks?

Both! Neither! It is adjustable to make it whatever you want it to be. The idea behind Crawling Out of the Abyss is that it is suppose to be your character's story. That means we want you to make adjustments so that the game makes sense for the story that you want to tell about your character and their journey.

As your character makes their way out of the Abyss, their are a number of milestones we call Story Beats that delve a little deeper into the lore of the Abyss. These Story Beats provide unique interactions, unlock and explain new mechanics to use, and eventually lead to your character(s) escaping from the Abyss. If you wanted a straight-forward story, following the Story Beats and their triggers would be the best way to play.

But what if your character doesn't fit into the Story Beats provided? Then change them, I promise I won't be offended! Unlock parts of the story when you feel like it is the right time. Expand on the interactions with some of the denizens of the Abyss to make them more interesting experiences that fit with your character's story. Ignore everything and completely rewrite the story itself! Our hope is to provide a fun and interesting game that you can modify as you see fit to make it as interesting as possible for the type of game you want to play.

What if I want to skip the game entirely and just use the system to create a backstory for a character for a different game?

Good! There will be a page with suggestions that focus specifically on how you can run through the game in 30 to 60 minutes (guesstimate) with the sole purpose of using the prompts to create a deep backstory for a character that you could transpose into any system. It shouldn't be too difficult to use what is provided in the game to create anything from a hero for your fantasy world, to a troubled investigator in the present or an alternative reality, to even your charismatic but damaged space cowboy. The system will give you the building blocks to create the foundation of a character you can look forward to playing in any setting.

Closing

All of the above is just a bare-bones explanation of what we are hoping to create with Crawling Out of the Abyss. In future logs we will dive deeper into the actual mechanics and story to help you determine if it is the type of game you would be interested in playing. And if it is, we will certainly be looking for people to try it out once we move into the Beta Testing of the game. Keep your eyes out here for when we move from Alpha to Beta!

Until next time!

-Vern of the Mystically Valiant Knaves