The Dream Merchant<br/><br/>A mostly free form modern day RPG based mostly on the Deliria RPG from Laughing Pan Productions.<br/>http://www.laughingpan.com.  Their newest source book "Everyday Heroes" is a brilliant piece of<br/>work for anyone looking to run a modern day "neomythic" type of game.<br/><br/>The 'also-inspired-by' list looks like this :  A wonderful LARP I played in at Dexcon 9,  PrimeTime<br/>Adventures in any of its forms (but especially for the "Hound and Hare" game played at Dreamation<br/>2005).  Delerium - the stunning visual creation of Cirque du Soleil.  Delerium the band and their<br/>album Chimera.  Novels by Charles DeLint, Christopher Moore, and Terry Pratchett.  The magic<br/>that is all around us.<br/><br/>Setting :<br/>Each player's story will start with a visit to Malick's Second Hand Shoppe, a seemingly<br/>normal store set in a modern larger city of the player's choosing.  All the stores are both<br/>the same and different all at once, and are linked through the Mysterium.<br/><br/>Malick's Second Hand Shoppe is a place easily passed over by busy people, not seen but<br/>still taking up space there between other stores.  It's usually down a back alley or off a small<br/>courtyard.  People don't see it unless they are meant to, and what calls them to see it for the<br/>first time is different for each.  Maybe it was a newspaper advertisement that no one else remembers<br/>seeing.  Perhaps a missed step and a stumble on the curb brought you up short staring at the<br/>name on the door for the first time in hundreds of trips down that particular street.  Or maybe<br/>it's just a happy find on a day exploring for bargains.<br/><br/>Whatever the cause, Malick's is mostly your average second hand store.  Packed floor to<br/>ceiling with now discarded pieces of people's lives, unwanted clothing, things that have outlived<br/>their usefulness, or never found their niche.  It has all the nooks and turns of the best used<br/>book stores, and a comfortable but cramped atmosphere.  There is no Starbucks here, although you<br/>can occasionally find an overstuffed chair to take your weight, especially when you want to try on<br/>those used hiking boots.<br/><br/>While each store in each city looks different, and has different stock, each has a few<br/>constant things.  There is always a huge oak counter in the back where purchases are made.  No<br/>cash register is ever around.  The proprietor always makes change from a strongbox, although the<br/>prices charged are rarely something you can easily make change for.  And there is a small back room<br/>with several doors for customers to exit out of should they not want to use the main store entrance.<br/><br/>The proprietor is named Jack, or perhaps Jaqi, Jacqueline, or just J if the owner is female.<br/>Either is possible, and they may be brother, sister, cousin, father, daughter, or anything in between.<br/>He may be an older silver gray man with a tweed coat, or young many-pierced goth girl reading a copy<br/>of Nietzsche and sighing.  Who is there depends on what the payer is looking for and ultimately<br/>who they think should be running the store in their city.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>Character Creation :<br/><br/>Character creation in Deliria always starts with "Tell me a story...", so for this game, I'd like<br/>to start with "Tell me a story of how you came to find this shop..."<br/><br/>But I'd also like to get:<br/><br/>A name<br/>Three things your character is good at<br/>Three things that are important to your character<br/>Three things that get in your character's way<br/>Three things your character doesn't want anyone to know<br/>The one thing your character wants more than anything else to find/possess<br/>Does your character believe in magic, the fae, or anything beyond the normal?<br/><br/>These can be one liners or woven into a story.  The one thing they want more than anything else<br/>is one of the ultimate game driving pieces, so please be as specific as you can.  It can be something<br/>metaphysical, or a normal possession lost in the past, or anything in between.  But I'm not going to<br/>be able to do much with "to bring about world peace" or "to know the essence of nothingness".  It's a<br/>modern fairy tale, and as such should be more personal than epic.<br/><br/>I'd like an idea of how much or what kind of sex, violence, and magic you'd prefer in the story.  And<br/>the more specific the better.  Combat is not tradionally a big part of modern day fantasy, but if you want<br/>to turn the story more toward a vigilante/justice tale, then I need to know that beforehand.  The main magic level<br/>here is that of mostly faery magic.  Its infrequently noticed by the normal world, but it does exist.<br/><br/>This is not a typical high magic adventure, but if you want a coming into her powers story I can probably<br/>make that happen.  I'd also like to know ahead if there are any particular sexual acts or situations that<br/>your character would like to explore.<br/><br/>Each character will have their own thread and really their own story.  Usually they won't intermix, unless<br/>both parties involved request and agree to it.<br/><br/>Basically, I want ideas of what you, the player, wants out of the story.  Not a script for what you want to happen,<br/>but an idea of the things that drive this character, and make roleplaying them interesting.