[Nine Games about Tyrants]: design notes & game summarie

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Nine Games About Tyrants

Design Notes:

 I'm writing a game about tyrants. I wanted to explore the psychology and pathology of despots, the corruption inherent in absolute power, and the dangerous absurdity of life inside a dictatorship.
 When the idea occurred to me, I assumed it would be a single game. But when I started brainstorming a framework/mechanism for addressing Tyrants/Tyranny, I immediately thought of four possibilities. Later more sprung to mind. Rather than trying to identify or focus on the single strongest concept, I decided the game would become nine multiple frameworks under one overarching theme. I provide a paragraph summary of each of the nine games after these design notes.
 Players can play one of the nine games without ever looking at the other eight. Or they can play 2 or more in sequence to create multiple perspectives on the same Tyrant. I suggest a few "packages" or "threads" of games after the summary paragraphs.
 Most of the games are intended to have a single, fairly simple approach. Players should be able to learn the rules and play a complete game session in a few hours.
 A majority of the games lean towards a 'collaborative storytelling' approach (is there a better name for this sort of game?). 3 or 4 of them will look more like standard rpgs with minimally-statted characters and action resolution rules.
 The game was partly inspired by such Latin American 'Dictator' novels as Garcia Marquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch, Miguel Angel Asturias' El senor Presidente, Roa Basto's I the Supreme, Carpentier's Reasons of State, Tomas Eloy Martinez's The Peron Novel, and Mario Vargas Liosa's The Feast of the Goat.
 These novels tend to employ a complex, Faulknerian style. The authors use flashbacks, mix fact and fictions, throw in stream of consciousness. Their Dictators are often fictionalized versions of a historical tyrant or an aggregate of several real life Caudillos. These larger than life figure function as narrative magnets. Their lives and stories attract a wide-ranging whorl of personal memories and social, historical, and political commentary. I didn't set out to write a game that would "emulate" the structure or tone of the books I listed. Most of the games offer a single, fairly simple approach to the Dictator as a subject. But there is a hope that multiple games, each offering a different perspective on the same topic, could add up to a sum that's greater than its parts.
 Rather than devising a single dystopian setting (or even a sample setting), the game stresses the idea of 'The Tyrant' as a theme. An entrance point that would allow players to explore a range of concepts and situations, from the egomania and foibles of a puffed-up Absolute Leader to the pitiless machinery of repression that sustained real world dictatorial states. The games are like "build you own dictator" kits. Players can create a farcical Leader in the vein of the Three Stooges' anti-fascist spoofs, or take a somber approach like they were compiling a dossier for Amnesty International. They can model a late 20th century dictator or a Roman Emperor. Hell, players can even sympathize with their Tyrant as they explore his rise and fall.
 One design goal was to keep the supernatural to a minimum. I might include a mechanism for occasional magic realism-style synchronicity and weirdness in one of the games. For the most part my approach is that truth is stranger than fiction, and fictionalized truth can be intriguing enough that you don't need magic.
 I have finished drafts of the rules of the first three games described below (just the rules, no color and almost no examples of play). After I post this message, I'll either post the rules in 1 or 3 new threads, or work them up into crude pdfs and post a location where you can grab them.
 I have a few questions that I'll list at the end of this post. They're questions on the overall game concept, not on specific games.

Summaries of the Nine Games

Crimes Against Humanity. The Tyrant has fallen, and at last faces justice.  The international community has charged the Leader and his main subordinates with war crimes and human right abuses. Players take the roles of prosecutors and judges, defendants and witnesses in a trail that is part political theatre, part excavation of the dark secrets of a crumbled regime.

The Palace Gates. The dictator, so ancient he seemed deathless, has finally succumbed to the ravages of age. At first stunned, then curious, then elated with the news, the people break into the Dictator's palace, revealing his lavish quarters, sordid dungeons, and heaped collections. This game plays like a surreal episode of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" or "Cribs." Room by room the artifacts of the tyrant's long reign are brought to light. Players sift through this detritus of a lifetime of power to create stories of the Leader's rise, routines, and eccentricities.

New Edition. The Leader is dead... long live the Leader! With reformist winds blowing, the Party needs to distance itself from some of the abuses of the past, but cannot afford to entirely discredit its founder. The players are a committee of intellectuals and editors charged with producing a revised edition of the deceased Leader's distorted, propaganda-laden biography. Revising this book will be a tough balancing act, especially because each player/character has different ideological and personal goal in terms of what to change, emphasize, add, or delete.

Sic Temper Tyrannous. Players are part of a conspiracy to assassinate the Despot. They have to work together to devise and carry out a plan (or plans) to kill a target who is highly paranoid, heavily guarded, and blessed with the devil's luck. Adding to the difficulty, not all the characters know who each other are, and communication lines inside the secretive conspiracy are erratic.

As I lay Dying. All the trappings of absolute power – the unquestioned right of command, the vast wealth, the state portraits posed like Napolean or Alexander and reproduced in innumerable posters and billboards, the network of informers, the armored divisions – they all shred like tissue before one dark spot of death. The Leader is dying. In his last hours, he summons his heirs, lackeys, and even long-time adversaries to his side; slips in and out of dreams; and is overwhelmed by a rush of memories. Players in this game narrate and role-play brief scenes from the Tyrant's past. These fragments, (which can be played in or out of chronological order), add up to a kind of judgement of the Leader's rule, and his life.

Coup d'Etat. Players are members of a clique of Colonels poised to overthrow the current Leader. The plotters, all alumni of the nation's elite Officer's Academy, know each other's strengths and ambitions well...too well. So while they collaborate to stage a coup, players will simultaneously be watching their backs and scheming how to claw their way to the top of the heap in the new regime.

The Disappeared. The Dictator is a distant, brooding presence; this game focuses on the machinery of repression that keeps him in power. Players try to discover the fate of a missing person (a friend, family member, colleague, lover, etc.) whose disappearance was no less sinister for being so routine. Forced at gunpoint into an unmarked sedan, and then... no word, no news, nothing. Players walk a tightrope between wanting the truth – however grim – and knowing that those who pry too hard could end up sharing the same fate.

Rest & Relaxation. Hope springs eternal. They could pass off a few weeks as vacation, maybe a few months as a medical convalescence. But now, as the years roll by, the tragedy and humiliation of their banishment are unmistakable. Still, once a week, like clockwork, all the exiled Despots in this pleasant resort town meet at a seaside café. They wait impatiently for the arrival of the freighter bearing mail and newspapers from their homelands. In this game, players gripe about the infamous treachery that forced them into exile; and seize upon rumors to spin unlikely scenarios about how they will return to power.

Notes from Underground. To a dictatorship, a book can be as dangerous as an armed uprising. Dissident writers and artists are censored, spied on, imprisoned, murdered. Facing this scrutiny, some authors fall silent. Others conform to officially sanctioned styles and ideology. Still others write allegories in hopes of sneaking ideas past the censors; or pour out their true thoughts into clandestine texts – samizdat – that are circulated like contraband, mimeographed, smuggled out of the country. Players in this game work on two levels. They portray characters in a book a dissident author is writing, a book that touches on the extremely touchy subject of the Tyrant. Players also guide the writer as he or she navigates through censorship, the secret police, and other trials and tribulations of daily life and creativity in a dictatorial state.


Packages of Games.

Here are a few combinations of games that seem to fit together into natural sequences:

Post Mortem:
 As I lay dying
 The Palace Gates
 New Edition

Resistance is Futile
 Notes from Underground
 The Disappeared

Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword
 Coup D'Etat
 Sic Temper Tyrannous


Some overarching questions

1. Any suggestions on an overall title (or improved individual game titles?)  Of all the individual titles, Sic Temper Tyrannous seems most deserving of a promotion. But I'd like to avoid a non English title.
2. Part of the idea is that if you play multiple games as different windows on the same Tyrant, facts and stories established in one game carry over to the next. For example, if the Dictator is convicted and executed in Crimes Against Humanity, that's a pretty central fact to consider when you're re-writing his biography in New Edition. So the question is, do I need some sort of mechanism or tracking system to establish which facts carry over? Or is it ok to go with an assumption that anything established in one game applies to the next unless players agree to exclude some information when they are starting the second game?

[hanschristianandersen]

An anthology RPG... very interesting.  I don't think I've seen anything quite like that before.

1.  Regarding an overall title, how about just "Nine Short Games About Tyrants"?  It's accurate, concise, and different from anything else on the proverbial gaming shelf.  Heck, it worked for the movie Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.

2.  Regarding continuity, I would take a look at My Life With Master's rules for Master creation.  What if the group collectively creates the tyrants' Aspect and Type at the very start of play, and then those broad decisions are used as inputs into each of the nine games?

Beyond that, do you really need to enforce continuity across each of the nine games?  If you're really interested in the body of myth that builds up around a tyrant, wouldn't it be more compelling to not have any sort of objective continuity, beyond simply the tyrant's initial characterization?  This permits "Caesar the reluctant hero of the people" and "Caesar the power-hungry destroyer of the Republic" to coexist in glorious ambiguity.  The degree of carryover is then left solely to the vagaries of actual play.

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1.  Regarding an overall title, how about just "Nine Short Games About Tyrants"?  It's accurate, concise, and different from anything else on the proverbial gaming shelf.  Heck, it worked for the movie Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.

That's a fine suggestion. I've already adopted it as a new improved working title.

2.  Regarding continuity, I would take a look at My Life With Master's rules for Master creation.  What if the group collectively creates the tyrants' Aspect and Type at the very start of play, and then those broad decisions are used as inputs into each of the nine games?

Beyond that, do you really need to enforce continuity across each of the nine games?  If you're really interested in the body of myth that builds up around a tyrant, wouldn't it be more compelling to not have any sort of objective continuity, beyond simply the tyrant's initial characterization?  This permits "Caesar the reluctant hero of the people" and "Caesar the power-hungry destroyer of the Republic" to coexist in glorious ambiguity.  The degree of carryover is then left solely to the vagaries of actual play.

again, makes a lot of sense. In fact you explained it so well I'll borrow heavily from your Caesar example. (and will give credit)

thanks

mark

ps- and I just posted my first three games to give an idea of how they look individually

[ethan_greer]

I agree with Hans on all points:

This is a very cool idea.

Nine Games About Tyrants is a good title for the product.

My Life With Master would be a good game to look at for inspiration.

And the continuity thing - yeah. Good stuff.

[Sydney Freedberg]

This is... interesting. So far all much more "collaborative storytelling" than "roleplaying" in the traditional sense, as you said; so your model may be less "My Life With Master" and more "Universalis" (I just bought & read both of these myself). But both those games have a much more -- for lack of a better word -- game-like structure than yours so far, with rules and resources to spend and mechanisms for formal struggle for control over the storyline. Your rules are more like guidelines for a collaborative writing project -- actually the closest analogy I've seen, come to think of it, is Lexicon (another recent read, but this one available online: http://www.20by20room.com/2003/11/lexicon_an_rpg.html).

Returning to your concept: The greatest power would, I think, come from playing all 9 games about the same Tyrant, presumably over one session apiece, and rewarding (perhaps with some formal mechanism) building on each past session in the subsequent ones. That could create a tremendously rich "shared imaginative space."

Personal taste note: Of the specific games you've posted so far, I find the trial the least difficult to get into, and the exploration of the dictator's palace the most. What does that say? Dunno.

[JamesSterrett]

Out of curiosity:  for "Sic Temper Tyrannous", do you actually mean "Sic Semper Tyrannis" ("ever thus to tyrants")?

Or do you have some clever Latin pun I'm missing?

[redivider]

Out of curiosity:  for "Sic Temper Tyrannous", do you actually mean "Sic Semper Tyrannis" ("ever thus to tyrants")?

Or do you have some clever Latin pun I'm missing?

No, just some clever mispelling! And to think I grew up in the commonwealth of virginia where it's festooned on the state seal or flag....

thanks for pointing out the error

[redivider]

This is... interesting. So far all much more "collaborative storytelling" than "roleplaying" in the traditional sense, as you said; so your model may be less "My Life With Master" and more "Universalis" (I just bought & read both of these myself). But both those games have a much more -- for lack of a better word -- game-like structure than yours so far, with rules and resources to spend and mechanisms for formal struggle for control over the storyline. Your rules are more like guidelines for a collaborative writing project -- actually the closest analogy I've seen, come to think of it, is Lexicon (another recent read, but this one available online: http://www.20by20room.com/2003/11/lexicon_an_rpg.html).

The games w/ some more typical role playing content are the ones on assassination, dissident writers, and coup d'etats. I hope to finish a draft of one or more of these 3 by the next time I post a clutch of games.

A gaming group I'm in has just started a round of Lexicon. It was one of the inspirations for the editing game I posted, although what I wrote is more constrained/focused less elegant/open ended. (For all the ways I think editing is a hard gaming sell, I have to admit that game concept is one of my favorite of the nine).

Personal taste note: Of the specific games you've posted so far, I find the trial the least difficult to get into, and the exploration of the dictator's palace the most. What does that say? Dunno.

Thanks for your impressions. I'd expect others would share your rankings. Relating anecdotes about some dictator based on junk you find while tip-toeing through his abandoned palace is probably less intuitive than taking part in a mock trial. I should find some clear, even over the top real world examples from the fall of the Marcos, Hussein, Ceausescu etc. regimes and all the weird stuff found in their pads. An in game example or two wouldn't hurt either. As for the grids, I really like the novel Life a User's manual, so when I found I could dubplicate the way it was written, I just had to go for it. Someday I'm going to design an old school dungeon using this oulipo method, no matter how cosmically wrong that is.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Personal taste note: Of the specific games you've posted so far, I find the trial the least difficult to get into, and the exploration of the dictator's palace the most. What does that say? Dunno.

WHOOPS.

Sorry -- too late to edit that orignal post now, but I meant the exact opposite of what I wrote. In other words:

I found the trial format the LEAST engaging -- maybe because I'm not a legal drama fan, maybe because the judging / prosecuting mechanics feel a little awkward -- and the tour through the dictator's home the MOST engaging -- probably because it's a cool way of stimulating freeform.

Interestingl, therefore, the thing I liked least was the most game-like in formal structure, the thing I liked most was least game-like and most collaborative story-telling -- indeed, it feels like an alternative approach to the same target that "Lexicon" aims at.

Apologies for my confusion....

[contracycle]

This is an excellent concept.  R&R reminds me of:

"Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own.
The Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable
Tyrants and Kings."
- Pink Floyd, The Fletcher Memorial Home

Anyway, I'd be very keen to see a developed and structured version of this idea.  Such a purposeful, thematically focussed game or games may well I think open up some new bounadaries of what RPG can do and what sort of topics it can meaningfully address.  I have a little difficulty at the moment visuaklising how you see the actual play panning out and whether or niot there is any motivatiob in operation other than the Sim desire to explore this topic.

[Mike Holmes]

Wow, quite unique. I'm fascinated by the idea, and that's despite the vagueness that the idea still has a ton of.

How do you see the games proceeding from a timeline POV? This is an important question as it pertains to the question about how facts carry over. That is, it would be intriguing to have the games occur overy the same period of time. Each time you start a new one, you go back in time and approach the same events from a different angle. Or possibly with only some overlap. In any case, the problems are obvious - you may need to record a lot about what happened in order to keep it straight.

So, was this your intent at all, or are the games meant to follow each other sequentially in time? You mention flashbacks, but what I'm asking is if you want to go full out Sound and Fury.

Mike

[redivider]

I have a little difficulty at the moment visuaklising how you see the actual play panning out and whether or niot there is any motivatiob in operation other than the Sim desire to explore this topic.

Good questions. As I've been developing the individual games I've had some idea of how each of them might play individually. I'm less clear about how they might come together as pieces.

I'm not sure whether playing more than one of the games, each as a different perspective on the same topic, would change the play experience for each individual game. Would the warcrimes trial game play differently as the 5th game in a series of games about the same dictator than it would play as a stand alone game? Or would the previous game perspectives just be like any other shared backstory?

On motivations, I'm not clear about the all the permutations of the creativer agendas discussed at the forge to answer that well. Part of the point, clearly, is to explore certain facets of tyrants/tyranny, and to create parts of the life-story of a dictator. Seems like if you played more than one of the games, the 'dream' part of sim would diminish since you're switching ways of looking at things while keeping ideas from the other perspectives in mind. Does 'one version of the story ... for now' count as narrativist? When does a topic become dynamic enough to be a premise?


ps- thanks for the pink floyd quote

[Paul Czege]

Hey Mark,

I should find some clear, even over the top real world examples from the fall of the Marcos, Hussein, Ceausescu etc. regimes and all the weird stuff found in their pads.

You have to read this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/05/bowden.htm

Paul

[redivider]

How do you see the games proceeding from a timeline POV? This is an important question as it pertains to the question about how facts carry over. That is, it would be intriguing to have the games occur overy the same period of time. Each time you start a new one, you go back in time and approach the same events from a different angle. Or possibly with only some overlap. In any case, the problems are obvious - you may need to record a lot about what happened in order to keep it straight.

So, was this your intent at all, or are the games meant to follow each other sequentially in time? You mention flashbacks, but what I'm asking is if you want to go full out Sound and Fury.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Measured as a timeline of the Tyrant's career:
1. Coup comes first during his rise to power.
2. Disappeared, Noted from Underground, and Sic Semper Tyrannis all fit into an amorphous period anytime while the Dictator has a firm grip on power.
3. Crimes against Humanity and R&R both happen after the Tyrant's fall from power.
4. As I lay dying is self explanatory
5. And New Edition is after his death.
(Palace gates can fit it either in stage 3 or right after his death between 4 and 5.)

But that doesn't really answer your question, because it just shows what stage the tyrant is in when the game starts.

In terms of what events the games can portray, some of them (as I lay dying, new edition, palace gates, and notes from underground) could easily cover almost any time or event because they either focus on the past/ or fictional versions of the Tyrant.

Crimes and R&R are also backwards looking and so can cover everything, but would they would tend to have a more limited focus.

Coup, the disappeared, and sic semper are played more in the here and now and have the most defined scope.

So I think you could go into Rashomon or sound & fury mode with up 6 of the games, but not all 9.

I didn't intend the games to examine all the same events, but I assumed there would be overlap.




[/list]

[redivider]

Hey Mark,

I should find some clear, even over the top real world examples from the fall of the Marcos, Hussein, Ceausescu etc. regimes and all the weird stuff found in their pads.

You have to read this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/05/bowden.htm

Paul

Hey, thanks. I will.

m