Plot

At its heart, the tale of this race is a strange variation of discovery. All of their stories are woven together throughout generations and have an overarching progression as each new version of the same characters appear. Not simply vehicles to move the plot forward, the characters are central to the plot, with what they do and what they learn displaying the heart of the final culture who tell their tales.

What is the meaning of life? Who am I? Why are we here. Questions that millions of years have done nothing to clarify for the humans that find them, yet these people have come to a solid grasp of at least some sense of direction. Whatever other plots may be woven into the immediate story, the end result shows a race growing and changing as it seeks out it's place in the universe.

Three Movements

Because this is a tale of discovery, it has three movements or acts. The first of these is where we learn of where they have come from. To understand how they have changed, we have to know what they were. This is the shortest movement, but very important to establishing events. This is where you get to know the characters as individuals before they are thrust into the thick of things. You have to know where they started before you can discover where they have progressed to.

The second movement is where their world begins to change. Most of the time, there is a comfort in the familiar and the changes that come are a struggle. Sometimes those changes are for the better even if we can't see it until later. This is where the bulk of the game is played, slowly changing over time. The characters retain their identities, but must adapt to the frequent changes of society. Wild and uncontrolled events force shifts on them. With each new change, we learn more about who they are and what they are made of.

Through the dramatic struggle, they face the extremes of potential emotion. Death, love, rivalries, hatreds, fear, disgust and many more things must be dealt with on the path of discovery. Always the story centers around the characters as they relate to each other and their world. It is as they begin to grasp the fullness of these changes that they enter the third and final movement. As revelation dawns and the story comes to an end, there should be a sense of having found or learned something of value about the characters and their world.

To understand more of how this applies to game play, see the sections for Rules and Phases of Play.

Something to remember when preparing to play Generations:

"The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is, _different_, is evil, dangerous, or subversive." Henry Miller "With Edgar Varese in the Gobi Desert," The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)

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