Trust me, I'm telling you stories.

Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

Tempest follows a group of people stranded on a remote Hebridean island during a storm that isn’t showing any sign of abating. They must find the tools to survive while exploring the remains of previous human habitation and piecing together the fragments of stories that have shaped the landscape. It is intended to be fairly serious in tone, with an emphasis on emotion, and with personal rather than global stakes. It is expected to be somewhat bleak, with a background level of acute melancholy. It will probably go to dark places, but we won't be pushing it into Lord of the Flies territory.

If you enjoy the performative aspects of roleplay, you may enjoy Tempest. If you enjoy creating interesting stories and character arcs, you may enjoy Tempest. If you enjoy feeling powerful and aspire to shoot fireballs from every orifice, you may have less fun here. This is not the kind of game in which characters end up with a shot at ruling the world; your characters are ordinary people living in a slightly altered version of the 1930s whose main differences to our own history concern human rights and equality. There are no dragons here, as far as we know.

I long
To hear the story of your life, which must
Take the ear strangely.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

On one level, Tempest is a game about survival, the trials of a group of people stranded on a deserted island. But this is no Robinson Crusoe, no paean to the indomitable human spirit. We're unlikely to punish you for calm, resourceful play - it's just not our major concern here. Indeed, while resource management is built into the system, such pressures are intended to drive a particular type of drama.

Tempest is about the ways in which we change under stress and in unfamiliar situations. It's about who we become when forced to take on new roles. It's about sea-change. But it's also about the things that remain of us, the qualities that sit at the core of our personalities and define us as individuals. It's about self-discovery.

A major part of that comes from the interactions between characters. The tension between cooperation and competition, the breaking of social conventions under changed circumstances, the tales we tell each other. You may want to think about the sorts of stories that might be important to your character - stories of their life. Their friends and family. Their dreams and fantasies….

Some of our major influences include:

• The Tempest (William Shakespeare)
• Lighthousekeeping (Jeanette Winterson)
• The Owl Service (Alan Garner)
• The Waves (Virginia Woolf)
• The Robber Bride (Margaret Atwood)
• The Magus (John Fowles)
• Dear Esther (The Chinese Room)
• Various scraps of mythology, folktales and fairy tales
• Critical analysis of folk- and fairy tales by Angela Carter, Jack Zipes, Marina Warner and others