Sirocco

I figured that Play it Cool needed an original fantasy setting, you know, to show how the system could work with fantasy conventions. But there were two problems with that.

For better or for worse, fantasy role playing games are defined by wargames and MMORPGs. So the standard mode of play is:

1. Meet monster or villain
2. Pick ability to use on monster or villain
3. Roll to see how well that worked
4. Go back to step 2 unless monster or villain is dead
5. Presuming monster or villain is dead, loot them and meet a new monster or villain

I know it's not quite that boring, but honestly, every other aspect of a standard fantasy RPG is fluff. You don't need to pay attention to it for your character to live, succeed and thrive.

The second problem is that I had made a commitment to fit any supplements or setting documents into 3 pages.

But in Play it Cool, the narrative quality of one's actions have a huge impact on their success and on the degree of success. And success in a stunt allows a player to narrate facts into the plot and setting that the GM then has to live with. So I have to write a setting that goes against common styles of fantasy RPG game play, and one that fits into 3 page.

So I resurrected Sirocco, the world of Ard, a fantasy setting that I'd been toying with for years that was built specifically for this gaming group that I've sometimes gamed with. The players and GM share narrative responsibility a great deal, and they often drink (and other things) during the game, a lot, making it impossible to maintain continuity, and forcing a lot of improvisation.

It has excuses written into the setting, specifically to accommodate huge continuity slips. And the number of details you need to keep in your head are actually rather slim. If you can just remember 10 things about the world of Ard, then you can make up any adventure you like without breaking the setting.

The reason Sirocco works so well with Play it Cool is that Ard allows for very dramatic, cinematic play. You might feel weird describing a knight doing all sorts of acrobatic fighting moves, but we've been conditioned by games like Prince of Persia or God of War to accept or even expect fantasy characters in Mediterranean settings to perform amazing fighting moves and tremendous feats of magic. And Sirocco is a setting that nominally takes place in a fantastic southern Mediterranean land.

When it was done, it all just barely fit on 3 pages. I thought about removing the Author's note in the beginning, to give myself more slack, but I didn't need it.

So here it is.