Strange Horticulture as an RPG?

[rowyn]

After watching Vicorva stream Strange Horticulture, I bought the game and then finished it in a weekend (it’s not a long game).

It’s fun: I liked the little puzzles that were often pretty easy, and that the game had a “hint” option so if I didn’t find the puzzle easy I could just keep asking for hints until it gave me the answer. XD

I still wanted to play after I got an ending, so I played some more to identify all the plants. And then started a new game. But I remember all the answers so it’s not as much fun as the first time.

So now I’m thinking about running it as a play-by-post RPG.

One reason I like the concept of Strange Horticulture as an RPG is that the mechanics (identifying plants and solving puzzles) are nonviolent.

I don't usually like puzzles as a game mechanic because I get frustrated easily. But Strange Horticulture's "hints" option solved that, which is why I want to incorporate that explicitly into the RPG.

The video game has some off-camera violence. I'll let the players decide if they want violence in the RPG or strictly non-violent.

Game premise:

All the PCs play people who have recently started to run a shop of mysterious and mystical plants. None of the plants are properly labeled. You have a book about plants but it’s bad at describing them. (You get to decide how you got the shop/plants/book).

Game play:

• General roleplay: interacting with customers and deciding how you want to handle them
• Identifying plants: I’ll provide a bunch of plant pictures and some poor descriptions of them and you get to try to figure out what goes with what.
• Solving small puzzles/riddles: you’ll get clues and solving them will give you more things. Sometimes the clues will be Extremely Obvious. I do not promise challenging puzzles.

Each PC has a talking animal companion that can give them hints, but There’s a Cost. (Maybe parts of your soul! Or your memories! Or kitty treats! I will let the players as a whole decide this one.)

Likewise, I’ll let the players decide how serious they want the game to be -- do you want Lives To Depend on your correct identification of plants/solving puzzles, or more like “the most dire consequence is that some customer is angry at you because the wrong plant attracted ants and ruined their picnic”?

There will be an overall plot of some kind, but also small stories about helping customers (or failing to help customers by providing the wrong plant, whether on purpose or not) and how they react.

I’m thinking 3-4 players, and players get many of the same puzzles to solve and can collaborate to solve them in various ways. And one of the mysteries is “why did we all start running our shops at the same time in different places?”

In the event of players who join the game but later have to leave for whatever reason: I'd like to have their PC retire and/or mysteriously depart and hand over their shops to a new player or NPC, so that their departure needn't impact the other PCs. n_n

I will not use any of the plot points or specific puzzles from the video game, so there'll be no spoilers for the video game and no advantage to having played it or not.

Would anyone be interested in playing?

Possible players so far:

• Ciel
• Alex
• Anke

Comments

[anke]

Would that be online or actually snailmail? In the latter case I might be too far away and hold things up...

[rowyn]

Online! On a forum or using Google Docs or something, I figured I'd discuss the technical bits with players once I had some. :)

[anke]

Put me on the list, then!

[rowyn]

Yay!

hrm

[(Anonymous)]

This sounds interesting but I am hesitant to commit in case of lack of time. This probably depends also on the players, but as GM how frequent are you thinking sessions (interactions?) will be?

Re: hrm

[rowyn]

I started the group & character generation a week ago, and so far have only had one player respond. So it's kinda looking like "not at all" at this point. <_< I usually aim for one post per person per day.

Re: hrm

[(Anonymous)]

Ah. Once a day is a bit more frequent than I can do right now, and regardless I need to get past this weekend first.

I've done freeform forum roleplaying, but am not familiar with online asynchronous rpg with an actual system; would want at least a few hours to do character gen, I'm curious how that process might affect irl puzzles as roleplay elements.

[alltoseek]

Did you ever do this? I have to say, plants and puzzles are totally my bag and luring me in, even though I know nothing at all about RPGing :-)

[rowyn]

I did actually start this! My players all stopped posting after a few entries, alas. I still have all the prep work for it already, though, so I could run it for you if you wanted. :D

Or you could buy the Steam game, which is pretty great, I gotta say.