| Website Design and Construction: Paul
Briscoe Geoza World Design: Paul Briscoe Geoza Game System Design: Paul Briscoe Additional World Design Material: JD Willis, Mike Goldsby Additional Game System Material: Mike Goldsby, Greg Johnson ARIA Design: Christian Scott Moore and Owen M. Seyler |
||
|
||
| The world of Geoza was originally envisioned in 1985 by Paul Briscoe. At the time, it had no name, no maps, and no game system. Geoza was only a mental concept, an idea of a world in which intrigue and politics played a much larger and more central role than in the typical "dungeon-crawling" fantasy worlds which were prevalent at the time. Paul also saw this new world as a place where magic fulfilled the same role that technology has played in politics and intrigue. He soon created several characters ("Personas") who inhabited this world, and the first outline of the Geoza "metaplot." Several years passed, and the world gained form and substance, but the world which would be Geoza still lacked a game system of its own. None of the then-current systems were appropriate, although several stood apart from the rest, and contributed key concepts. Harnmaster (Columbia Games), with its emphasis on skills and lack of "hit points," influenced later choices about the world. Likewise, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (Games Workshop) and 2300AD (Game Designers Workshop), both provided the concepts of career paths (or Vocations). No system then available, however, came close to providing the concepts of free-form and open-ended magic which were central to Paul's concept of the world. | ||
| So Paul created his own system. Since his
game world still lacked a name, his first players dubbed the system "P.O.G."
(Paul's Own Game). The world gained structure - it now had maps and an outline of history
- but still lacked a real name. POG went through several revisions in play
testing over the
next few years, but Paul remained unsatisfied with some of his rule structures.
He also felt that he needed to step back from the world for a time, and practice the craft of
storytelling. Paul returned to his world after a two-year hiatus, and began the process of revision and expansion by giving Geoza its name. His world now had a solid identity, and he began looking at the game system to decide how best to revise it. |
||
| Then, in 1994, Last Unicorn Games released ARIA Canticle of the Monomyth. J.D. Willis told Paul about the system, and the final development of Geoza began. The ARIA system closely paralleled Paul's own game system. He immediately began work on "converting" his world into ARIA terms, which mostly consisted of changing some system terms and defining the Geozan concepts of magic in the terms of an ARIA Reality. | ||
| Eventually Paul began to think about making his world available to others. The Internet seemed to be a natural setting for such a creation. He envisioned this web-site which would not only describe the world, but which would do so in a way unavailable to game settings that were restricted to paper and ink. Not only would the world of Geoza be available to others, but the maps and setting descriptions could be linked in such a way as to form an easily accessible whole. | ||
|
||
