Looking for a system to suit a horror adventure

[Elkin]

I don't know whether or not does this thread belong to this specific board.
I've got an adventure idea in mind, and I'm planning to run it on a con in August.

I'm currently doing some final research, to anchor my game in historical events (namely, I'm looking for a 1850s-1860s Prussian war that took place during the winter, or at least the fall, but that's besides the point).

My problem is finding the right system for this scenario. As it stands right now, I'm using The Window, but it's a bit too grainy, and doesn't provide solutions for certain problematic situations that might arise during gameplay. So I'm looking for either a new system, or a way to implement some of my requirements into The Window.
I'm completely clueless when it comes to game design, so I'm asking for your help. These are my requirements:

Simplicity: Definitely the most important requirement. It's a con game, and the majority of the players are likely to be freeformers. I don't want to scare and confuse them with tons of rules, stats and attributes, nor do I wish to waste valuable time on explaining what each of the stats does. That's why I originally chose The Window instead of CoC, which might've also been suitable.

The Illusion of Realism - I want my horror game to be, well, horrifying. One of the major causes of fear in this game should come from the players' inability to grasp the subjective reality as they are lost inside the PC's false perception of reality. To this end, the game, while almost strictly narrativist, should have some simulationist elements that will make the players believe, at least until somewhere after the middle of the game, that they are masters of the PCs' faith, and that everything in the world is behaving exactly as it's ought to be. These belifes should be carefully cultivated by the system while the plot slowly pushes the PCs to believe they're facing mortal, flesh-and-blood enemies.
The illusion of realism is the main reason I don't use freeform. The Window provides a decent amount of semi-realism, I suppose.

Antihero PCs - A more minor cause of fear will be the PCs' incompetnece. The PCs are a bunch of anti-heroes, and the system should portray it. This is where The Window is flawed. It contains more in-game terms to show competence than incompetence. I also want a system that allows the PCs to die. I don't want to make the players feel invincible and protected by the GM's fiat, but I also don't want to look like an arbitary executioneer.

Perception and Un-reality - The climax of the adventure begins as the PCs realize that what they see isn't what there actually is. The unholy artifact that lies in the center of the adventure is messing with their minds - but also with reality, to a certain extent.  The main example of this distortion is the NPC which serves as a plot hook and guides the PCs through several parts of the adventure. What he is, basically, is a manifestation of the PCs' secret desire to find the artifact, and the artifact's desire to be found. He is more than an illusion, but less than a tangible being. The PCs perceive him as an ordinary human, and he can be seen, but not remembered, by NPCs. With players being unexpected as they are, I will need some sort of way to represent this being in terms of gameplay.

Magic - Rules-wise, this is not a vital part of the game. I can, if I try hard enough, do this part as freeform, but I'd rather have something more solid to work with. By magic, I mean a general way of distorting reality rather than spell casting and wand waving. Aside for being an important quality of the main villain, I also want to make magic (though at a much weaker and costly form) available to one of the PCs, who'll have to keep it a secret from the others.


That's about it, I think, though I might remember some other requirements later.
What? Do you still think it's too easy to come up with this stuff? Then what about this extra catch - I can't playtest anything. My gaming group has dissolved, which is why I'm going to run a con game in the first place. So everything you suggest should be something you've successfuly used once.

I know it's not easy. I've cracked a wall by repeatedly banging my head against it. I'd really appreciate your help.

[montag]

Hi Elkin
... and welcome to the Forge.

For your immediate purpose I'd recommend a look at Unknown Armies (which IMO is basically a mixture of CoC, "Over the Edge", and Ron Edwards' "Socerer") though it sounds like basically any kind of rules-lite game might do. In that case you might perhaps want to have a look at FATE (derived from Fudge).

Now for the "usual Forge stuff" part ;)
What you are going for would be called "illusionism" around here and is decidedly not narrativist because players have merely illusionary control over the story. Your planing to do the equivalent of a stage magican's trick. When done well it can be great fun, but when done in at way that breaks the social contract for any player it's rightly called railroading.
If you want more feedback on your scenario, just say so.

[Eero Tuovinen]

This is actually a quite common wish with finnish GMs, to find a system that supports their illusionist wishes. I'm just posting to note that somebody really should create the ultimate illusionist game. Actually, I'd do it now if I wasn't swamped with work.

For the current problem I suggest any game the players won't be familiar with. If that's not good enough, go with what I outline below:

Give them character sheets, of which a majority is taken by a skill list. Give the skills percentage values to make it easy to read. Tell the players that the system is opposed rolls, and let them roll to try anything. Roll yourself behind an obfuscatory object of some kind (aka screen). Practice beforehand looking like you care about the rolls, until it becomes reflexive. Make yourself any decisions about outcomes. If ever in doubt or you don't just care, give a good result with a high player roll and a bad one with a low one (to generate an illusion that the rolls matter). If a player ever doubts your application of the rules (say, they roll a very high result with high skill and still fail) have many dice behind the screen so you can lift it and show him the dice you "just rolled" (with a very high number).

Have a couple of subsystems to disguise your intentions. At appropriate times in the plot and when the players look bothered jump them with a new subsystem that requires them to do something that looks meaningful. For example, make ten "maneuver cards" for combat and make the players make a choice between them a couple of times for each combat. You yourself of course roll from your "readymade opponent maneuver table". Describe battles using some element from the maneuver chosen, to give a strong impression of actually taking in player input.

Plan the adventure to the t. As you won't have any real system to support in making improvised decisions, you have to know exactly what is going to happen. Also use the dice in a comfortable way to generate detail when stumped. A good rule could be using different coloured dice to decide on the intensity and type of you random content (the black rolls high? seems that they manage in summoning a greater demon or something). The important thing is that you're comfortable with your oracle, so when the stump comes, you can fluently continue decisionmaking.

Make magic, which you mention, a nifty subsystem as described above. Give the player a roll of monopoly money and tell him to write a word onto each piece whenever he wishes outside combat. Whenever the player wants to do magic, ask him to give you any of the notes he desires. Implicate that both the values and the words affect the outcome. Actually, tell him that most words do nothing and he has to deduce the right words from the general mood and content of the game. When the player gives you any money, reward or not, as appropriate. You can even use the money to inspire your decision if you don't care about the exact result.

Think like a stage magician. Your job is to give the illusion of a roleplaying game adventure, and you use the classical tools of tradition, misdirection, social force and wits to generate an illusion of actual play.

I assume that I won't have to give advice on general railroading? You probably know what to do if a player wants to go somewhere completely different, for example.

[montag]

*blink* Eero?
Where did that come from? I realize that illusionism actually might be well served by the ideas you outlined since the best the rule system can manage under these circumstances is to get out of the way of the GM's story.
Still,  the sarcasm (I'm reading into your words) especially in the latter part of your post seems entirely uncalled for, so ... I don't really know what to say.

[Eero Tuovinen]

*blink* Eero?
Where did that come from?

Oh, I can see how that could be read as sarcastic if you haven't got absolute faith for illusionism as play practice. I'm however quite serious. Might be that the ideas are bad, but then again, they're basicly brainstorming from the basic idea of illusion (I haven't played illusionistic for about ten years). If there is a bad turn of phrase, I blame the late hour. Could it be that you didn't expect straight-up advice on illusionism, and therefore see sarcastic meanings that aren't there? I confess that people here usually have so many doubts of the form that designing for illusionism feels like trolling. "Make sure the players are too busy to do anything important" and that kind of thing, really makes you feel sleazy.

Do you have better ideas? I'd think that the key to creating an illusionist play experience is to provide the things a roleplaying game usually provides, but doing it the hard way, without relying on other players to take a part of the load and proofing the game against their interference. That's what I tried to do above there.

To continue in the same vein, I suggest directing the other players to participate in "safe" (those generally considered meaningless by story-oriented GMs) ways in creating the general atmosphere of the game. If I have time to do a full-blown illusionistic game some time, it'll be based on directing play efforts of all but one player towards color and mood, instead of the things that have to be controlled by the illusionist (those'd be the elements with actual meaning, generally). How about, instead of the above percent die system (which has the benefit of transmitting information about character strengths), you'd use a system based on player performance? Put a big pile of coloured stones on the table and tell the players that they can only give them to each other as rewards for in-character action. Tell that red stones are for expressing strong feelings, blue stones are for good strategic thinking, yellow stones are for storyhooks (or "making story-furthering decisions" as it'd be expressed) and so on. Give them character sheets with stone meanings printed on them. Then forget the stones, let the players take care of distribution. If someone complains of cheating, put things straight, but otherwise let the players take care of how stones move. Later on, when the characters try anything, trade the stones for dice of different sizes and colors (which suggest a system, but you only tell the players to "roll them and let me worry about calculations") and let them roll. Apply the rest like in the above suggestion. This way has constant stimulation and keeps the players busy doing description, so they don't derail the plot. When all the stones are gone tell them that there are no more stones until the next sunrise/when police arrives/when god says so, and voila! The players have more things to worry about, and by choosing the right refresh point you can give them something to work for in an obvious way ("Oh, we get more die stones by defeating the baddies? Guess I'll get going then!").

(Actually, I'm feeling a game coming on... I'll have to think on this...)

[Elkin]

Wow. Before posting this, I was a bit skeptic about what you're doing in here. I stand entirely corrected.

As a veteran Paranoia GM, I'm no stranger to making bogus dice rolls and pretending they're incredibly important, but it didn't occur to me to use such a mechanism in this specific game, even though the idea of the meaningless colored stones sounds like something I've got to try sometime.

The problem is, that due to the shipping prices, the lack of gaming stores and the lousy translations, the local roleplayers aren't accostumed to learning new systems. The great majority of the local players who grow out of D&D move on to freeform, and are ambivalent at best towards systems.
Whenever I GMed an online Paranoia game, the British and American newbies kept asking about the rules, and why did I make this decision and not the other. When I played with Israeli players, they only seemed vaguely interested in the bogus calculations I was doing behind my omnious screen of death. They just assumed I know what I'm doing, and weren't too interested in learning how to do it themselves. So the meaningless stones idea, fun as it might be, will probably be wasted on them.

For example, make ten "maneuver cards" for combat and make the players make a choice between them a couple of times for each combat.

The maneuver cards aren't likely to be used, as non of the PCs is really combat-worthy enough to do anything beside running away from combat.

The magic subsystem, though... that could work. I'll need to flesh out the magic-user a bit more before deciding on the specifics of this nifty monopoly-money system.

Plan the adventure to the t. As you won't have any real system to support in making improvised decisions, you have to know exactly what is going to happen.

That's my problem. I'm a very insecure GM, and I always want something more solid for me to work with in case the players do something completely unexpected.

I assume that I won't have to give advice on general railroading? You probably know what to do if a player wants to go somewhere completely different, for example.

As I was saying, I'm a veteran Paranoia GM. I know all there is to know about brutal railroading, all while allowing the players to retain the illusion of control.


I might've given the impression that the entire adventure is an illusion. It isn't. It takes place in both the real world and a higher, metaphysical plane. I would translate what I've done so far to get some input, but I don't really have the time right now. I'll probably do it next week or so.

[smokewolf]

If it wasn't for the Con atmoshpere I would recommend The Swing. Since Ron brought up Unknown Armies, The Swing has been called a Realistic Alternative to them, as well as Mage, Call of Cthulu and others.

I made The Swing to be as realistic as possible, being so it takes about 3 game sessions to become comfortable with the rules, but after that they actually become easier than the D20 system. Odd though. The Swing is also able to be dropped into any time, any genre and work without having to rewrite any section of the rules.

Whenever you get time check it out.

[Paul Czege]

Hi Elkin,

The PCs are a bunch of anti-heroes, and the system should portray it. This is where The Window is flawed. It contains more in-game terms to show competence than incompetence.

Have you seen Vin Diakuw's http://members.shaw.ca/vdiakuw/reverseRPG.htm">Reverse RPG?

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya folks,

As the last two posts have thankfully demonstrated, the goal for this thread is to help Elkin, not to dive into semi-accusatory or semi-defensive discussions of illusionist techniques.

Best,
Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

As the last two posts have thankfully demonstrated, the goal for this thread is to help Elkin, not to dive into semi-accusatory or semi-defensive discussions of illusionist techniques.

Clear as crystal.

I've given the matter some thought, and have come to the conclusion that it is likely best to use a non-system like I described above. The rules systems that have been mentioned are all good options, but they have the problem of being rules, which is an unnecessary impediment at this stage. You risk ending up disregarding your chosen rules system if you pick one, so it's actually better to only use the bits you need. In this case those bits would be the user interface the players interact with. All other parts are strictly considering unnecessary, although possibly helpful. It should however be noted that people have since the dawn of rpg history played games that have rules support only for combat and character achievement, so if those parts are unnecessary for you, you really should expect to be able to get along fine without any rules system at all. It's a thin line between freeform and illusionism, but a peculiar one: for the GM there is no difference (except for keeping up pretenses) while for the other players the difference is as great as it could possibly be.

Whenever I GMed an online Paranoia game, the British and American newbies kept asking about the rules, and why did I make this decision and not the other. When I played with Israeli players, they only seemed vaguely interested in the bogus calculations I was doing behind my omnious screen of death. They just assumed I know what I'm doing, and weren't too interested in learning how to do it themselves. So the meaningless stones idea, fun as it might be, will probably be wasted on them.

In this way your prospective players sound exactly like a certain strain of Finnish roleplayer. If a con GM hereabouts declares that the rules are his pregorative and the players should only worry about playing their role, most players will accept the ultimatum and the rest really cannot make a convincing case against it either. Obviously many GMs tend to play their own systems.

Anyway, considering this, you have an easy job ahead of yourself. If the players are not oriented towards the rules, why worry about them yourself? Either make all decisions yourself or put it up to an oracle of some kind if you want to have outside input. If the players take your word for there being a system, you'll only need to roll the lone die now and then to keep up the pretense. Audience not interested in the act is the easiest to fool, after all.

The maneuver cards aren't likely to be used, as non of the PCs is really combat-worthy enough to do anything beside running away from combat.

I suggest making a short list of the kinds of things you expect the characters to be doing in the game. Ideally there's some stuff in there; a good illusionist game has above all a good GM plot, and that means putting the characters in the middle of things. There's no need to provide meaningful choices, but the characters have to be in the middle.

That being said, make the list and post it here. Then we can fiddle out a subsystem for each occurrence, tooled to give the impression of portentous decisions but not hooked to anything at the other end. Ideally such subsystems will give the players decisions that produce color and play detail, even when not affecting anything. Like the above maneuver suggestion: the description of battle is more interesting when you've chosen between charging, banter and parley, even if the outcome itself is predecided. Even more interesting it is if different characters have different cards. Free color, that's what it is.

The magic subsystem, though... that could work. I'll need to flesh out the magic-user a bit more before deciding on the specifics of this nifty monopoly-money system.

Yeah, that's one of the better ideas I had yesterday. If the player "gets" the idea of divining magical phrases from the plot, it gets a suitably mystical quality for him, nicely immersing him into a magical phantasm. "Seagulls? Why did the GM mention seagulls again, the second time in the game? It must be a recurring theme, an universal symbol, and certainly a magic word! It must be mine! But do I write it on one or two bills? 'Sea''gull' or "Seagull"? And what denominations do I choose? Maybe I can get a flying spell with this!"

That's my problem. I'm a very insecure GM, and I always want something more solid for me to work with in case the players do something completely unexpected.

That's largely a matter of planning and railroading. First, reduce your planned plot to it's minimal components. Then, take apart those components. Figure out the order the components have to have in order to make sense. Write it down. When playing, whenever the players want to do something or other unexpected in the original plot, just swap in the next element in your plan. So if, to take a classical example, you have planned for the characters to meet a madman who gives them advice when they first come to town, you have to take the information apart from the madman and give it regardless of what the characters do. So if the players decide to not go to the town at all they might meet the madman somewhere else. If they disregard the madman, they meet a reporter investigating the same occurrence. If they don't listen to him either, they stumble on a dead priest with a diary containing the same information. Continue ad infinitum, and in the end they will get the information you want to give.

The above principle holds true for other things than information as well: if the characters have to end up somewhere (say, the hideout of Dracula), you can just degree that wherever they go it's the place they had to go. If you plan your plot as a series of conceptual events that do not depend on character action you have much less chance of ending up in insoluble situations.

However, the above is not the end-all of railroading. The key to making play satisfactory is to cooperate with the players in taking the plot to the correct direction. Use semimechanics (I'm calling them that to differentiate from mechanics that actually affect content dynamically) that keep the players from making decisions that derail your plot and encourage them to follow it: it's common knowledge that a great majority of players, when presented with a plot-heavy game, will either
a) go along without a fuss,
b) make decisions based on character motivations,
c) fixate on a winning condition,
d) go mad from being bored or
e) sabotage the game because they're jerks.
Categories a) and d) are a problem of writing an interesting plot and providing enough color, not of railroading. Similarly e) is a matter of social control, that is, you and the other players can kick out the obvious jerks. Categories b) and c) are thus the problem, and if you can provide obvious (I'm talking something your mother would pick up) framework for both kinds, they will do what you want. This is achieved by framing the story (call it "Raiders of the Lost Golden Ruby", and by gosh, do they go after the ruby when it presents itself!) and preplanning the characters. As long as you are obvious enough (your grandmother should be able to pick the character motivations and winning conditions up in her first game) in your directions everyone will be happy. You never hear of players who are dissatisfied because they knew exactly how to depict their characters/win.

I might've given the impression that the entire adventure is an illusion. It isn't. It takes place in both the real world and a higher, metaphysical plane. I would translate what I've done so far to get some input, but I don't really have the time right now. I'll probably do it next week or so.

Hey, do not concern yourself overmuch with the difference there. When going illusionist, you can well use the same rules with both, just taking care to stay within bounds of probability in the real world parts.

[Alf_the_Often_Incorrect]

Eh, I'll just post my RPG and its credentials here, and you tell me if it works.

My RPG uses a skill, trait and stat-based system with 1d6-1d6+attribute+skill+situational modifiers. The players and GM make up the skills, the GM makes up the stats (clarification: stats are like str, dex, etc. in D+D). Traits encompass pretty much everything that isn't a skill or stat. These are made-up too. Logarithms keep the numbers small (don't ask), thus contributing to simplicity.

Simplicity: check.

Realism: check. At least in the sense that a shot to the head will kill you, and stuff like that. No little anti-realism wrinkles.

Incompetence: check.

Dying: much easier than most RPGs ^.^

Perception and Un-reality: I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, but it's a flexible system.

Magic: check. Even rules for time travel, if you need them.


Try it if you want.


P.S.- this sounds like it's going to be a kickass campaign.

[Elkin]

Thank you all for all of your help and great suggestions.
Eventually, however, I was convinced to join a large multi-table event, where horror, let alone illusionism, just won't do, so I'll leave my scenario half-baked, for now.
However, I do intend to run it sometime in the future, and when I do, I will revive this thread.
In the meanwhile, if someone comes up with The Ultimate Illusionist System (tm), let me know.

[Sonja]

Feel free to use the system I created here:

http://www.kisa.ca/123.html