Empire of Satanis

[Paul Czege]

Hey Darrick,

I think definitely you've been successful at evoking Lovecraft and Ligotti with your setting. The Vahs-vra are fantastic. The Akturian Heads. The Vihm. The Aquatic Glyphs of the Blood-slicked Sea. The Diabolic fungus armor. Very cool. I envy your raw creativity.

And yeah, we're going to playtest. Chargen was Monday night. We have a Zibza, a Vihm, a Blazht, and a Tsahag. First session in two weeks.

I have a number of small questions and comments:
[list=1][*]Are the Zibza rooted to the ground? Tom came up with a cool notion that we're going to use for the playtest. The Zibza is rooted to the ground during scenes, but can change location between scenes. So maybe in one scene it's in the town courtyard, and then in the next scene it's at the entrance to a rocky grotto. But we never actually see it move from place to place.
[*]Are we correct that, for starting characters, everything magical fades at the end of a scene? Puppets created by Puppet Magic? Plants created with Plant Magic? The text in the section on Experience suggests that Magical Permanency isn't available until Monarch rank, which implies that magic fades for characters of lesser rank. Some clarification somewhere is probably in order.
[*]Satanis is sometimes "The Black God" and sometimes "The Crimson God." An attempt to induce madness via inconsistent usage? You fiend ;)
[*]I very much like that the player characters are monsters. Yeah, other games do this. But it's out of the box for a Lovecraft inspired game.
[*]The reference to "bastard swords" in the Twilight of Paradise scenario should be purged, as it just screams D&D.
[*]How do you determine a player character's starting estate? The text says a Guoa-asht starts in the second estate, and with 500 zirkas in starting equipment and slaves. And in the "stuff to buy" section you state that all other player characters "begin in poverty," which suggests they might all be fifth estate. But if a player creates a very sorcery-focused character, maybe they should also be second estate? Maybe a Zeph n' glarl should be fourth estate?
[*]It's Cool that a character can have a zero Attribute.
[*]I love how you've compressed the combat and initiative mechanics down to a single die roll.
[*]It could probably be more clearly implied that Practical Knowledge is the "perception" attribute.
[*]Can any character take the Flying skill? Or just the Yidathroth? I'm suspicious the Vahs-Vra, and the other non-Yidathroth races don't have the wings for it.
[*]Can any character take the Priest of Satanis skill, or just the Yidathroth? And it only works to heal the nine (seven) Yidathroth races?
[*]For the Knowledge skill, are we correct that the player must specify the subcategory of knowledge?
[*]Does Priest of the Dark Current also double the character's Spells Per Day?
[*]More generally, can a player attempt any of the skills they didn't actually purchase with character points? They'd just roll their attribute. Ride & Drive maybe? Search? If so, which ones? Not all of them?
[*]Can Seduction be used to woo creatures of the same sex?
[*]Is Sphere of Color-Borrowing automatic? Or you have to roll to successfully borrow the color?
[*]Skill costs described in the Experience Points section are a multiple of the character's "current score" in the Skill. What is the cost for adding an entirely new Skill?
[*]I really like the "Color of the Magical Spheres of Influence" mechanics.[/list:o]And one big question:

What do you want the Empire of Satanis play experience to be like?

You write that the game can be taken in many different directions, from "hack and slash to investigative storytelling." You have lots of color text about Void Saber duels, which suggests you're partial to the hack and slash. And your tightly refined combat and initiative mechanics reinforce that; my gut tells me they're going to work well for quick and tense Void Saber duels, and that they're the most playtested mechanics in the game. But then you have example Attribute + Skill combinations in the "Examples of Dice Pools" section for stuff like "slapping some paint on a canvas and passing it off as genius," and available skills like Cooking, and Music, which alternately suggests that you're partial to a character exploration style of play. And you write that players are "encouraged to make well-balanced characters." And I guess by that point I don't know what you mean. Balanced in terms of combat effectiveness? Balanced in terms of power and influence within the game setting? Balanced in terms of significance in the story produced by play? I think you need to take a stand, and design a system to support it.

I work for a reference publishing company. A couple of years ago the product development area asked the editorial area to create several "reference guides for small libraries," consisting of important subsets of content from some of our more expensive titles (ones that small libraries typically can't afford). The editorial work was done. But when it got to the graphic design and marketing stage, the question was asked of the marketing folks, "Who's the target audience?" And the response was, "Small libraries...well, small and medium-sized libraries...well, really, any libraries that want to buy them." The marketing folks didn't want to miss out on possible sales by focusing the design and marketing too narrowly. And you know what? Sales were far under expectations. The lack of focus made it impossible for the target audience to self-identify. The libraries didn't know that the books were designed for them. There was nothing clearly telling them so. And so they didn't buy them.

I think you're in that same zone with Empire of Satanis. Hack and Slash, and character exploration, and dramatic story creation are not complementary target audiences. If you want the game to reach up from the page and demand to be played, you need mechanics and supporting text with a stronger focus than what you have.

Let me tell you what I think you want. You write that "ambitious fiends who are consumed by the will to power may advance in the ranks and shape the conquered worlds to their black heart's desire." In the "Possible Scenarios" you have this one: "Some weird, new power is discovered in the swamp. Demonic tribes have begun to worship this hitherto undiscovered field of magical energy." In one of your intro scenarios you have an NPC who has a plan to overthrow Satanis. In your other scenario you have a magical item that sure seems to represent power over Satanis. I think you want a game that's about willful player character pursuit of evil power. Am I correct?

(You realize you don't have that, right? You have text that encourages the players to have characters with traits like "oppression, cruelty, domination, blasphemy, ambition, lust for knowledge and expansion, aggression, courage, a passion for degradation and aesthetics." But I think you pretty much know that the encouragement isn't going to deliver. You have the one "Possible Scenario" scenario idea about the demonic tribes in the swamp that hints at a power opportunity, but the rest are all about forcing the player characters to do a task, or hiring them for a mission. Blue Planet is like that as well. Cool setting, but what do the player characters do? They run a charter boat service and take clients. They hire themselves out on jobs. Blah. Almost all of your possible scenarios suggest a design awareness that if you don't force the characters to do tasks, or offer them missions, that the players don't know what to do with their characters, that they'll mill around or something. My suggestion is that you can absolutely build a reward system which eliminates that problem. You write that the purpose of following the dark path is to "become a God by way of breaking out of the prisons: reality and self." You need to mechanize this! Your character Attributes are Will, Magical Aptitude, Theoretical Knowledge, Practical Knowledge, Cunning, Attraction, Brute Force, Agility, Endurance, Vitality. And yeah, they're functional. Even elegant. But they're pretty sterile if what you want is passion from your players. You know what I want? I want attributes like Blasphemy. You've got all this Lovecraft-inspired terminology in the game, but not for the actual mechanics. Have you seen Zak Arntson's Chthonian?)

Paul

[darrick]

wow, that was great.  it felt like i was just refreshingly pummeled by a sentient crashing wave of wisdom...

i think you are very correct in your criticism regarding Empire of Satanis, not really harsh at all.  and you are absolutely correct that i'd like games to be about characters taking power for themselves.  Not so much over Satanis or the other evil Gods, but over the universe around them and the realm of humans.  

i want play experience to focus on the things i like in a game.  some combat, but not a ton, storytelling, self-motivated characters and stories, scenarios where the players/characters see a chance at doing something unexpected and grand, almost beyond the scope of what the adventure called for.  those are the gaming sessions that always stick out in my mind.  

as for the gameplay questions i will address a few quickly as our office manager is having a baby as i type (probably a Malahko) and i've got work to do.  ;(

zibza aren't rooted to the ground.  i should specifiy wings and stuff, i actually forgot all about wings before creating the additional races.   magic lasts "awhile" an easy difficulty result would last till the end of the scene, a complex one would last for about an hour.  anyone can be a Priest of Satanis, the Dark Current would effectively double a person's spells for that day.  Sphere of Color Borrowing skill is automatic.

but the biggest hurdle is mechanizing the kind of gameplay that i want.  i will get working on that.  thanks, i appreciate the time and effort that went into your assf**king, i mean rant, no i mean criticism.  haha.  thanks, D

until it's up on my website:  www.CultofCthulhu.net

people can find the game in the form of a pdf and a word doc here:  http://www.grumblingdwarf.com/forum/files.asp

[Thor]

I don't know if we are discussing the game, but, in the rules, the example of the cascading dice you have the first roll of 2,6,6 the two 6's re-roll for 4,6 and the last roll is a 2. You then show the rolls adding up to 14 (6+6+2) which is the same as the first roll. Shouldn't the total be 2+6+6+4+6+6= 30?

That aside there are several things that I like about the game and if I can get it figured out I will let you know how it ran.

Thanks in advance
Thor

[darrick]

oops. i think we have a misunderstanding.  you don't add all the numbers together.  instead, you are looking for the single highest result.  let's say you have to roll three dice because you have a 1 in the Cunning attribute and a 2 in the Stealth skill.  you roll a 3, 5, and 4.  your final result is a 5.  if you had rolled a 1, 2, and 6, then re-roll a die - you roll a 5, ( 6 + 5 = 11 ).  if you roll a 6, 6, and 6, then you can re-roll 3 dice, let's say you get a 1, 1, and a 6.  re-roll that guy again.  finally, you rolled a 3.  ( 6 + 6 + 3 = 15)  your result is a 15.  Match that to the difficulty chart right on the character sheet and see how awesomely you crept past that human guard!

in the latest edition if your action/spell matches your character's Color Sphere of Influence and you used some detailed description in describing your action/spell before you started rolling, you'd get a + 2 to that result.

thanks, Darrick

[hardcoremoose]

Hey Darrick,

As part of Paul's group – I'm the Zibza – I'm looking forward to playtesting this game.  But already I have a lot to say about, and I've been chomping at the bit.  You see, I think there's a tremendous amount of imagination on display in EoS, but it doesn't all jive for me the way I wish it would.  So I'm going to talk about those parts that don't quite work for me, but you should know that I love parts of this game, and like quite a bit of the rest.

I notice that you haven't been at The Forge long, so I'm going to assume you have read much of anything else on the site.  That could be a bad assumption, but just in case it's not, I'm going to recommend the following three articles to you:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/">Fantasy Heartbreakers
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/10/">More Fantasy Heartbreakers
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html">System Does Matter

The first two are good because they get at why people design games the way they do, and although they're largely limited to D&D style knockoffs, I think they have some relevance to EoS.  The third, although it's old and has been somewhat replaced by newer, longer articles, provides a heartfelt explanation of why system is just as important as setting in a game.  They're fun, quick reads, and I'd love to hear your thoughts after you've read them.  Maybe they're useless to you, but even that would be interesting to hear about.

Also, I'm curious about the sort of games you've played in the past.  What's the breadth of your experience?  And if you don't own it already, I suggest buying Paul's My Life with Master immediately; it's a short, swift kick in the balls if you've never seen anything like it, and nicely representative of how far roleplaying games are stretching themselves these days.   And it's a horror game.

Okay, now for the criticisms.

System-wise, there are a lot of things you can do with this, but right now you're barely scratching the surface.  You state in your text that mechanics and system are your lowest priority when designing a game.  I can appreciate your goal of keeping the game rules-lite, but there's a difference between rules-heavy games and rules-intensive games.  My Life with Master would probably be considered rules-lite by most people's standards, but its mechanics accomplish a lot.

For starters, mechanics aren't just for resolving actions.  That's a formidable barrier for most game designers to cross, but take a game like My Life with Master (and if you don't have it yet, you'll have to take my word for it): It has a lot of rules, but there's no real mechanic that allows players to resolve just any old action their characters might want to attempt.  It boils down the types of actions that are important to that specific game – villainy, violence, developing relationships with NPCs – and it has rules for those (and not the same rules, I might add).

Now I'm not saying My Life with Master is the be all and end all of rpgs, just that there's a lot to be learned from it.  Figure out the types of things you want to the characters to be doing and provide rules for those.  For instance, you have a skill called Cooking.  Is cooking a meal really important to your game?  On the flip side, there are not enough skills for political intrigue (Seduction and Innuendo come to mind), even though the text emphasizes that as a major point of play.  And if that is a major point of play, it should have mechanics at least as deep and involved as combat.

Because here's the thing:  People will look at your text and see what you invested the most time in and will assume that's what your game is about.  If you have five pages of combat rules, and just one to cover all the rest of the things a character can do, can you blame them for thinking it's a hack & slash game.  Is it any wonder that most players choose to play a Zirakean?  

Once you know what you want your players to do in the game, you need to know how to get them to do it.  One way is to simply limit the types of actions that you have resolution mechanics for; sure, they can still cook a meal – tell them how they did and then move on to the important stuff.  The second way, and this is crucial in all game design, is the reward mechanic you put in place.  I can name two reward mechanics in your game, and both could use some examination.

Your main reward mechanic is a basic experience point type thing.  You earn it simply by playing.  You spend it on various advances between games, in a very White Wolf-ish sort of way.  This whole thing seems lazy and half-hearted.  Your players and their characters need to be rewarded for specific behaviors, and the reward should be something worthwhile.  And who's to say they can't earn these rewards and make good on them during play.  Now obviously, EoS is at least in part about the struggle for power, so you definitely need a reward mechanic that allows characters to increase their stats and social standing.  Your mechanic does that, but I think you could approach it in a way that is both more creative and encourages your players to actually play these fiends like fiends.

The second reward mechanic, which gets short-shrift in your text, is the bonus a player gets for adding cool description to his action.  Other games do this, but if you've never seen it anywhere else before, it's an outstanding development.  It gives players an immediate reward that is of use to them, while at the same time allowing them a spotlight moment and an opportunity to insert their voice into the game itself.  This could be refined such that it gives a bonus for certain kinds of descriptions (for instance, the more evil and heinous the description, the larger the bonus).  I was (maybe still am) designing a game that gave players bonuses for freaking each other out (and a really huge bonus if you could cause someone to pass out or have to leave the room in disgust.  You can see why EoS is right up my alley, right?).

That said, I think you need specific rules for an even greater escalation of power.  You suggest that characters will eventually be able to become gods, conquer worlds, and reshape them to their liking.  I don't see that happening.  I haven't figured out how you would do it, but it's a bold design goal.

I think you need to re-examine magic as well.  Your schools of magic are cool, and the way Colors work is very fun; together they provide a nice set of strictures on what you can and can't do.  But I think it could benefit from some more fleshing out, and the "Spells per Day" rule is pretty uninspired.  You could come up with something more creative, I'm sure.  I mean, you created the Zibza, right?

Also, why are the humans magic resistant?  I know how you explained it in the text, but what lead you to make that decision in the first place?  Was it so they could stand up to the player characters better?

And here's my final game mechanic thought of the night:  You have a fumble mechanic reminiscent of White Wolf's.  In White Wolf, fumbles are treated as a bad thing.  Personally, I always found fumbles to be the best part of certain game systems – they created a twist in the story that both the players and the GM were forced to deal with, and the extra adversity always felt dramatically appropriate to me (except for those times, of course, when a GM used a fumble result to arbitrarily kill off a character, which is both lame and wrong).  I guess what I'm asking is how do you see fumbles?  In playtesting, how often do they occur?  And why can't you fumble and succeed on a given roll (ever hear of a pyrrhic victory?  Your basic resolution mechanic would easily allow for it)?

Some other thoughts:

You need an editor.  Anyone with a separate pair of eyes and a decent command of the English language will do.  There are people here who might be willing to help.  Heck, I'd be willing to help, although I'm by far not the best candidate for that sort of thing.

Here are a few specific editorial comments though:

I'd reign in the adjectives, especially in your opening text.  You use seven adjectives to describe a single entity at one point, and my thought was that you must have just opened up to the back of Call of Cthulhu 3rd edition, to the two page spread where hey list all of the Lovecraftian descriptors, and just started  writing down anything that sounded decent.  It seems unwieldy to me.  Later on, when describing the various Ages and the Abyss of Making, your writing is slightly more restrained, and more evocative for it.  At least for me.

Your opening might need to be revised.  I'd like to hear other people's opinions on this actually, but it seemed to me you were repeating the same ideas a lot.  Like you were writing and you'd hit a block, so you'd just rewrite what you had already said, and that you did it two or three times.

When describing the worm things in the creatures section you misuse the word "cyclopean", using it to describe the smaller of the worms rather than the larger.  This seems like an honest mistake, since you use cyclopean earlier to describe the city of Frier, and it makes perfect sense there.  Unless, of course, you intended the big worms to be so big that they dwarf the "cyclopean" ones, but that's just confusing.

You say you want to publish this soon?  Could you talk about that more?  How close do you think you are, and how close do you think this text is to where it should be?  

A few personal preferences, disregard at your leisure:

You're obviously a fan of Star Wars.  Hey, I am too (the original three films, in their original forms anyway).  The voidsabers are so obviously lightsabers that they undermine my appreciation of the setting (I should point out that none of the other players had the same aversion to them that I did).  I know you love the voidsabers, but I'd call them something else and find some way to distinguish them from lightsabers.  Tom – our group's eternal wellspring of good ideas – suggested that the blades might be composed of invisible energy, only becoming visible when they come into contact with something.  You could attack someone before they knew they were being attacked, and by the time it became obvious they'd be trying to hold their guts in!  Oh, and if you're going to have voidsabers, I think they should be more powerful – a +2 to attack/defense doesn't seem enough considering how important they are to your setting (of course, I haven't playtested this yet, so right now I'm just talking out my ass).

I'm not a fan of Candyland magic either.  Again, the other players disagreed with me, but it just doesn't connect for me.  You've got this world full of alien strangeness, and then there's this whole school of magic rooted in a deeply familiar, very earthly thing.  Now, if Candyland were a place...a strange pocket dimension, or one of the planes of Hell, ruled over by some depraved childlike-god or something, that would be different.  Then I could buy into the magic, maybe.  As it is, it feels out of place.

I suggest striking any references to actual Lovecraftian creatures from your text.  As far as I can tell it's not illegal for you to have them there, but I think it does your setting a disservice.  

And finally:

What are your thoughts on evil and players playing evil?  How has it worked out in your playtests?  Do the characters come across as evil, or just depraved (I can come up with a lot of sick shit easily, but is that really "evil"?).  If the characters are largely in conflicts with bigger, more evil creatures, do they come off as evil, or more like anti-heroes?  

A while back we had this discussion on "evil", which might give us some talking points:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=317">Elfword = "Evil"


Best,
Scott

[darrick]

wow, can you see into my brain or something?  seriously, do i have a transparent head?  your hunch that i used the 3rd edition of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook for my cool sounding adjectives is precisely correct.  i've rarely found such a useful "throw away" page in a RPG book as that.  i use it quite a bit, probably more than i should...

thanks for directing my attention to those essays.  yeah, i too wrote a hearbreaker fantasy once upon a time.  luckily the idea died a quick death.  and finally i came upon an idea that led to Empire of Satanis!

this is what i've learned.  yeah, EoS tries to be all three G, N, and S.  although i prefer the Narrativist type and if i had to pick one, it would be that.  i really like games like Vampire, Call of Cthulhu, and the few games of Toon and Amber that i've played.  I also like all three Fortune, Karma, and Drama.  Karma and Drama being a little more satisfying to me than Fortune.  

My Life With Master sounds good, i'll order it tomorrow if not sooner.  Until Paul mentioned it a couple days ago, i'd never heard of it.  

the things you talk about definitely have my attention.  how would i reward such things besides something lame like instant 'action points'?  i've always liked HackMaster's Honor game mechanic, maybe i could have a one to ten often fluctuating scale of social standing?  i would need to think more on how that would affect game play... you wouldn't suggest scrapping the experience point thing altogether would you?  not that i find that unthinkable, only what would replace it? ...although if characters started a bit more ass-whooping, then the need to advance and get better might not be necessary.  players and characters could focus more on the story, role-playing, and development of their evil/reality altering.  do Amber characters advance with XP?  i can't remember.

yeah, i'd like the idea that the characters can become gods and stuff too, i'll have to work on how.  do you think that magic should be unlimited?  when i playtested it the first time (which was great cause i had 6 people willing to try it out ) characters were literally using magic every other minute to try and one-up each other and play practicle jokes on NPC's.  after that i was like, 'Woah, i need to limit that magic stuff so people can keep there mind on the game instead of just never ending magic-ing each other'.  maybe i was wrong?  by the way, since that first playtest the most i've been able to muster is 3 players, most of the time only 2.  hard to playtest thoroughly with only two frickin guys - Satanis love 'em.

yeah, i thought humans being magic resistant fit the story better since the Fiends were exiled from the universe millennia ago.  now Fiends are back, occasionally, and they find that magic has severe limits in the universe of man.  maybe i should go the other way and have magic uber-potent, allowing Fiends to really re-shape the universe like gods in the making.  a bit like Amber, i suppose.  let me know if anything i say sounds cool.  i have very few sounding boards...

i've never heard of the pyrrhic victory, although i'm guessing it's a victory with drawbacks?  please elaborate.

Other Stuff:  i'm not sure if it's in the version you have but towards the end i off-handedly nicknamed the voidsabers - annihilation blades.  i like the invisible blade until it makes contact.  i think you'll find a +2 to attack and defense is pretty bad-ass, although other people should judge this and let me know.  wow, the depraved childlike god thing is really great.  i'll definitely use that if you don't mind!  i go back and forth between Fiends being the epitome of evil and suggesting they are "beyond good and evil" as Nietzsche or Alestair Crowley might put it.  i'd be happy to take suggestions.  i'm really not sure where to go.  i'd rather the game play not totally degenerate into trying to gross each other out and just disembowel everthing in sight.  although, i love horror, gore, and sick stuff too, so if people really want it, i say let them have gore.

yeah, i should get an editor.  weeks ago, all i wanted was to get the game into "decent shape", put it up at a print on demand place, and then be able to sell it on my website (two more weeks).  you guys have taken more interest in EoS than i ever thought possible - which i'm very appreciative for.  i guess i never thought it would really be something.  EoS might have some kind of destiny after all???  i did have a guy in the game publishing industry think it was great and was willing to advise me on how to spend $50,000 of my money so i could make it really big, splashy, and put it in stores.  realistically, i could see myself investing $5,000.  although if i can print it free at Lulu.com, maybe that is my best bet.  this is all very new to me.  i'd just like to have people see it, play it, and hopefully like it.  the more the better.  and to not loose an ass-load of money in the process.

if you guys want to help out, that would be extra-sweet.  i've been working on this bastard for awhile now, all by my lonesome.  i could really use a fresh pair of eyes and creative juices... i'm running on just mountain dew and demonic alien blood these days.  you guys certainly have more to offer than i have considered in the game play / rules mechanics arena.  if you, Paul and Scott, want to collaborate/edit/help me publish it/whatever i'm extremely open.

thanks, Darrick
email:  darrick3909@yahoo.com
p.s.  can't wait to hear how your game turns out!!!  or anyone else's.

[daMoose_Neo]

Just a note of interest on Magic and Man: In "Flight of Dragons" the main character is summoned from circa 1980's to a medival-fantasy version of our past to "save magic" and embarks upon an 'epic' D&D style quest...only to finally defeat the vile sorcerer Obadon by denouncing magic in all its forms.

There you have a reletively reasonable tie in to a reality that gods still exist- their strength, their magic, is predicated upon the strength of the belief in that magic. A fiend then couldn't easily influance Joe-schmoe athiest/scientist who disbelieves EVERYTHING, but with proper manipulation and the help of someone who does believe can start to make the subject question, bringing them closer to believing and closer to more power.
Like the line from Daredevil- "How do you kill a man without fear?" "By putting the fear in 'im!" (and "And I want a costume!")

[darrick]

wow, you must be able to see right through me too!  yes, i included just such an explanation in the game.  sort of a holographic universe / belief structures reality / chaos magic paradigm...

and i also love that movie.  it's been a long time since i've seen it.  maybe it's out on dvd?  thanks, D

[hardcoremoose]

Darrick,

I don't want to overwhelm you with stuff, so I'll try to limit myself to responding to your queries, and hopefully give you a few words of caution (and encouragement...gotta' have the encouragement).

You say you prefer Narrativist style roleplaying, but from the games you list, I don't think you've ever played a game that was well-designed for that purpose.  Even Amber doesn't really qualify (although that point was argued back and forth for months around here a few years back).  We could talk forever about this, but the crux of narrativism is that the game asks an emotionally-loaded question and the players (not the GM) answer it.  That's where all the games you listed fail - they might ask interesting questions, but the rules don't empower the players to answer them and give the GM all the power in directing how events unfold.  The easiest example of narrativism for me is Sorcerer; the game asks "How far would you go to get what you want?", and then gives you mechanics focused on answering that.  I can't see where EoS has that, and maybe that's not really what you want.  If it is, well that's a whole conversation of its own.

Keep in ind that I'm not talking about taking away all power from the GM - that is not an essential feature of functional narrativism.  Sorcerer, for instance, requires a lot of preparation from the GM, but it creates room for the players to swing their weight around (and yes, sometimes the GM has to react to that in exactly the same way the players react to the stuff he throws at them).  That's one of the harder parts of narrativist design - figuring out how to create space for the players' voices.

Again, the reward mechanic thing could be a huge discussion all its own, and probably depends a little on where you land on the GNS tree.  At its core, you should first think about what kind of behaviors you would like your players to exhibit at the table, and then figure out what carrot you're going to dangle in front of them to get that from them.  It's kind of Pavovlian.  One thing you might try, which we recommend all the time around here, is to write a word-for-word account of what your ideal game session would be like, then start working out what mechanics you need to get to that point.

I wouldn't necessarily scrap the experience point system right now, but the fact you're not that attached to it is pretty telling.  I don't know how Hackmaster's Honor system works, but your thinking on social standing is interesting, if only because you talk about it a lot in your game text, but don't really do anything with it mechanically.  I don't recall how Amber does its character advancement, but I think it's with experience points.

Your playtesting experience seems kind of woeful to me.  Is the goofy behavior you describe typical of the people you play with?  It might just be that you guys are on different pages when it comes to games, and no rules are going to fix that.  On the other hand, a good reward system might convey the information they need to get them playing right, assuming your group is normally functional.  And I don't see a problem playing with just three players; we play with four, and find the intimacy better for certain types of games.

You've got high hopes for EoS, in terms of both design and publication.  The bad news is that it's not really ready for publication.  The good news is that you're in the right place.  Many Forge stalwarts have self-published, both in print and PDF, and sell their games from all sorts of venues, including GenCon for the past several years.  There's lots of good advice about publishing floating around here (we have an entire forum for it!) and the people here will help you.  But first you need to nail down the game and the text.

Final thoughts:

Yes, pyrrhic victory means exactly what you think it does.

If the player characters can become gods, I think their rise to divinity should have horrible consequences for the others around them.  For instance, maybe the other members of your race are driven to extinction so that you can claim your particular uniqueness, or maybe they become your slaves, like the Star-Spawn are Cthulhu's minions.  That's just me though.

I like "Annihilation Blades" way better than "Voidsabers", but even so, it doesn't seem as clever as some of the other names you came up with throughout the text.  While I'm at it, I don't really care for the naming of the living transports either.  Not nearly as cool as the Akturian Heads, for example.  Oh, and I immediately picked up that the Dimensional Spawn and the Formless Shamblers were just two Cthulhu servitor races with the descriptors shaved off and switched with their respective nouns.  And the Soggothians are obviously Shoggoths.  You can do better than that (the Sairmenow...now there's a cool sounding name, and a cool race to boot).

You can use any ideas I throw out there - that's why we're here - but please, don't let my enthusiasm overwhelm you.  It's your game.  You won't make everyone happy, but one of the fundamental rules at The Forge is that you should come at game design with a personal vision, and your audience will follow.  If you think something's cool, other's will too.  As for helping you out, that's what we're doing now.  ;)

As far as magic resistance and humans go...I wouldn't necessarily change anything yet, it's just something I was thinking about.  Although I'm not generally a fan of the "bendable reality" explanation for magic (the idea that "belief" shapes reality), I do like Nate's suggestion that characters would have to work around a human's innate denial of the supernatural to affect him.  Also, is it possible for human sorcerers to somehow summon a player character into the mortal world?  Mortals summon weird monsters all the time in CoC, and I think it would be a fun little spin on that idea if it were the player characters who were getting summoned rather doing the summoning, since they're the weird monsters in this game.

Oh, and here's something Paul reminded me of: Forget the "well-balanced" character thing.  Encourage players to make specialty or "niche" characters.  My Zibza, for instance, has four scores at 0, and I think that's a brilliant option (In fact, I think it should be mandatory that each character start with at least one zero in an Attribute).  There are things my character just can't do, so he has to depend on others to do them for him.  Imagine what happens if I piss off the character that I depend upon for physical defense and he refuses to fight my enemies for me!  Imagine if the game had mechanics that forced that situation into being!

Okay, so that's a whole lot of rambling.  Basically, Paul's question still stands as the most important, and I guess I tried to reiterate it: What do you want a play experience to be like?

Best,
Scott

[darrick]

Dear Satanis, the changes...

i've taken a lot of good advice to heart.  things i've added:  new colors, a new skill called Dreadful Exaltation which i'm very proud of - pretty much worshiping a false idol and then that idol "wakes up" and does evil things for you.  the biggest things are the game mechanics for encouraging and motivating certain concepts of the game, which Paul suggested.  the first is what i can envision being a step in the Narrative direction:  giving the players a chance to alter the direction of the game.  This is simply called Story Alteration, and a player says his idea and then rolls a die, if he succeeds, then the story is altered slightly.  at first ideas like that make me think that up is down and left is right, i thought chaos is reigning and good suddenly became evil and vice versa... that's just what i want!  we'll see how it plays.  i'm sure you guys have played games like that alot, but i don't think i ever have.

i also came up with two qualities that characters have, scored from 1 to 10.  the first is based on general evil and destruction, it is called Social Standing.  the second is more esoteric, it is based on the Dark Way - the predominant religion in Fiend society.  simply, the more weirdness, horror, and creative bizarre grotesquerie a character achieves, he gets a higher score in Hideous Paradise.  As Scott suggested, the first can be used to enslave other Fiends and the second can also be used to change things in the game, but in a different way than Story Alteration.

every 10 minutes i've got a new game.  haha.  but it's very cool and i enjoy writing and revising it.  hopefully i'll get to play it again next week and see where i went right or wrong.  anytime someone wants the very latest update, email me at:  darrick3909@yahoo.com

thanks, D

[darrick]

Last night's playtest with the new rules went well.  The reward/motivation system is one of the best ideas that came out of my being at the forge.  I was running an npc and would occasionally have my character do something spontaneous to show the other players/characters what is possible in EoS.  

Carnage and Sinister Weirdness (the two faces of evil, matter of fact and atmospheric... or physical and spiritual) were used to good effect and things escalated nicely.  after the game, players wondered if they were getting too powerful... i told them that that was the beauty of EoS.  Characters are naturally over-powered super beings.  And that they are striving to become Gods!

One new player went off on a plot-tangent of how he wanted to create a genetic "defect" in some humans that would lead to future generations being more like himself (using magic - not the old fashioned way, although there was some of that too).  The player seemed genuinely surprised that he was not only allowed, but encouraged, to continue his plans throughout the scenario.

When an old hand (at EoS) player finally arrived at the table, I told him a little about the changes to EoS and about the Story Alteration mechanic.  He used that right away to enter the story and give his character a purpose for being there.  Instead of just popping up, he determined that his character was sent to earth's past to check up on the other characters for Satanis.  He increased his chances, made his roll, got it, and now the story was altered.  And it all happened "believably and within the game's context" because I build that mechanic right into the game.  :)

I was very pleased with how things turned out.  I'm looking forward to Paul and Scott's evaluation and then it's off to Lulu!

By the way, there was a thread a while ago about why we game... That, I believe, is a valid question for anyone creating their own RPG.  My answer is probably different than most.  Briefly, I game because I want to escape into a world where I feel fulfilled/happy/stimulated/excited.  If you've ever felt like an outsider and then finally found your niche and said, "Wow, cool.  Now I feel like I belong, this is right up my alley".  Then you know what I'm talking about.  The fact that I feel happy and at home around monsters, evil, and horror is... unsettling, but oh well.

D

[darrick]

well, i've heard good things from Scott, and a few other playtesters...

phase one complete, i guess.  the Empire of Satanis game in all it's loathsome glory is available here as a download or in book from:  http://www.lulu.com/content/113758

all feedback will go towards:  A.  a possible 2nd edition down the road.   B.   EoS content on my website.  C.  any future rpg i design.

so long and thanks for all the fish (in the Blood-slicked Sea)
Darrick
www.CultofCthulhu.net