[Shadows In The Fog] New Draft

[Piers]

A couple of quick questions:

Is this opening designed to foster some sort of 'party' cohesion or is it intended merely to bring together characters who will often be pursuing different plot-lines?  I had kind of imagined that the relation between characters would be somewhat looser from the text--some commentary there on this would be useful, or at least interesting.

It also strikes me as obvious that running a couple of Magic contests would be the perfect way to create more than this acquaintance level of background between characters.  Is this something you have thought of including in the character creation process?  Is it too much?  What sort of effects do think it might have?

[clehrich]

Is this opening designed to foster some sort of 'party' cohesion or is it intended merely to bring together characters who will often be pursuing different plot-lines?  I had kind of imagined that the relation between characters would be somewhat looser from the text--some commentary there on this would be useful, or at least interesting.

No, I figure that most of the game will run with independent plot-lines.  There will be some inter-character discussion, because that makes things as confusing and complicated as possible, so we need to establish contact.  That also gives good reasons for people to demand to enter each others' scenes.  But I figure a good way to start out is with a party-like structure and let it shatter into personal issues.  This seems to have worked pretty well for Jere in Age of Paranoia, and it fits with my own experience of the game.  You need people to be able to talk to each other IC, at least occasionally, so long as you make it very clear that they don't have to stay a "party" or anything of the kind.  This also puts people's conflicts and personalities front and center.

It also strikes me as obvious that running a couple of Magic contests would be the perfect way to create more than this acquaintance level of background between characters.  Is this something you have thought of including in the character creation process?  Is it too much?  What sort of effects do think it might have?

I'm assuming that it will happen, but I want it to be provoked by players.  GM-initiated magic is relatively boring, to be honest.  It's much cooler when people let loose and do magic by themselves, because they're much more invested in the outcome and everyone manipulates the situation to create interesting hooks and leads.  If it doesn't happen naturally, I'll just tweak things until someone decides to use magic as a solution to a problem, and madness ensues from there.

[Bailywolf]

I just found your game, and my head is spinning about it, and I ask this question without having yet fully read it...

But could you use the occult incident gameplay system in reverse to allow the players to investigate and explain an occult event they are looking into?  You start with the roundup (made by the Host), and then interpret it backards to 'explain' how it came about?  

-B

[Jere]

I just found your game, and my head is spinning about it, and I ask this question without having yet fully read it...

But could you use the occult incident gameplay system in reverse to allow the players to investigate and explain an occult event they are looking into?  You start with the roundup (made by the Host), and then interpret it backards to 'explain' how it came about?  

-B

We've done this several times to great success in Age of Paranoia.

[Lee Short]

I just found your game, and my head is spinning about it, and I ask this question without having yet fully read it...

But could you use the occult incident gameplay system in reverse to allow the players to investigate and explain an occult event they are looking into?  You start with the roundup (made by the Host), and then interpret it backards to 'explain' how it came about?  

-B

That fits in fabulously with an idea I've been tossing around in my head about this game -- using it as a history-building game rather than what we typically think of as an RPG.  I haven't had time to flesh out my ideas yet but the basic concept is this:  you are not exploring the actions of a few characters within the history of the world, you are exploring the events of the world as they would be seen in the headlines of the newspapers of the time.  A session works as follows: each player brings 2-3 headlines to the game.  During a player's turn, he presents one of these headlines.  This headline is unalterable: it is the headline in the newspapers (or the town criers, or . . .).  The players could then use the game's occult resolution mechanism to determine the real events behind the headline.

[clehrich]

I just found your game, and my head is spinning about it, and I ask this question without having yet fully read it...

But could you use the occult incident gameplay system in reverse to allow the players to investigate and explain an occult event they are looking into?  You start with the roundup (made by the Host), and then interpret it backards to 'explain' how it came about?

That fits in fabulously with an idea I've been tossing around in my head about this game -- using it as a history-building game rather than what we typically think of as an RPG.  I haven't had time to flesh out my ideas yet but the basic concept is this:  you are not exploring the actions of a few characters within the history of the world, you are exploring the events of the world as they would be seen in the headlines of the newspapers of the time.  A session works as follows: each player brings 2-3 headlines to the game.  During a player's turn, he presents one of these headlines.  This headline is unalterable: it is the headline in the newspapers (or the town criers, or . . .).  The players could then use the game's occult resolution mechanism to determine the real events behind the headline.

As you may know from a thread over in Publishing, I am in the process of setting up an enormous wiki for Shadows in the Fog, and the rules are part of that.  One of several things I have altered hits on precisely this point, based on the experiences to which Jere refers in his Age of Paranoia game.  I hadn't thought of the headline thing; I'll definitely want to incorporate that.

The only problem with the headline thing is that those old newspapers are not as easy to get one's hands on as all that.  The Times is easy enough if you have access to a large research library, because it's completely filmed on microfilm reels, but the Times is also about the most boring newspaper ever constructed.  They don't really have headlines; they tend most of the time to have things on about page 8 that say, "Whitechapel Murder."  Booooring.  What was very successful was the Pall Mall Gazette, the Illustrated London News, the Illustrated Police News, and so on, which have lurid headlines and wonderful pictures... but which are VERY hard to get one's hands on if one does not live in London.  Maybe eventually the wiki will get big enough that people will start contributing actual headlines as they find them, and that will be a resource for this sort of thing, but for the nonce it's kind of a pain.

As far as the rules are concerned, basically what happens is that there is a setting-up of "teams": there's an opposition and an initiator, and then everyone else contributes to what happens.  The opposition defaults to being the GM [called the Host], but someone can bid to take that role over.  The final narration that winds up what has occurred goes to the winner of the hand.

When the GM initiates magic, as for example when something has happened and we need a nifty explanation for it to confuse and intertwine matters, everyone can win; when magic happens normally, only the initiator and the opposition can win.  That way when the GM starts the thing, everyone is out for himself to make the whole story interesting and complicated and fun -- and to get the final narration that puts it all together and gets the ball rolling.

I have considered, and I wonder what you people think, suggesting this as an opening gambit for sessions where there isn't an obvious starting point.  Basically the GM starts with some event -- possibly from a newspaper, for example -- and initiates a round.  Everyone rolls with it, and then the final narration gives a kind of suggestive shape for the session.

The wiki rules and some pieces are up and available, but I haven't put some things up that I want to be there, so I'm going to hold off passing on the address.  Expect it soon -- and then you can zip around and find what you want more easily.  The PDF is just getting out of hand in terms of size.

Note that the current PDF rules are now a bit outdated as well, because of the issue you guys are bringing up, and a bunch of things about motivation, how the game tends to run, and so on.

I hope you'll all check out the wiki when it's ready -- and contribute!

[Lee Short]

Actually, I wasn't intending to use real newspaper headlines -- players were going to be expected to simply make them up (though nothing would stop them from using real ones if they wanted).  

Also, I think I've got about 6 ideas for different takeoffs of this game.  It's given me so many ideas about things that might be cool.  I'm sure some of the ideas won't pan out, and I have no idea when I will have time to flesh them out.  

About the wiki, I hope you set it up so that we can create our own "setting modules".  The setting I'm most psyched about applying this game to is 1550's underground pagan Knights Templar.

[clehrich]

Actually, I wasn't intending to use real newspaper headlines -- players were going to be expected to simply make them up (though nothing would stop them from using real ones if they wanted).

Oh.  Yes, that would work.  I generally try to invent as little as possible at a meta-level like this, as there's quite enough madness happening at the play level, but this could certainly work.

About the wiki, I hope you set it up so that we can create our own "setting modules".  The setting I'm most psyched about applying this game to is 1550's underground pagan Knights Templar.

Yes, there's a section for Campaigns, in which you add whatever you want.  If you're setting something somewhere other than Victorian London, you might want not to use all the cross-references to the dictionary, directory, and so on, though.

One piece of advice.  You need some piece of serious nastiness, from history if at all possible, to tie things together.  Shadows in the Fog tends to have a kind of centripetal force driving everything outwards.  One of the balancing factors in the regular setting is that it's really very difficult to get away from Jack the Ripper.  This is also one of the things that keeps gameplay on that fine line between just plain ugliness and pulp.  The tendency of the players is likely to be toward pulp, because in a broad sense at least that's our natural tendency in gaming -- we gravitate toward strong genre norms.  The problem is that if you go right into pulp, the game collapses.  I find that occasionally throwing a raw document, like a coroner's report on some of the butchery performed on the Ripper's victims, keeps this slide in check.  In essence, just knowing that this is not fiction, that this stuff really happened to real women and that it's horrible almost beyond belief, keeps a very dark edge in the game -- and it's that edge that makes Shadows in the Fog work.  So at any rate, I suggest that if you're going to do 16th century Templars, you find something like this; god knows there's enough nastiness in the 16th century to go around.