[Hearth] Opening remarks

[Eric Bennett]

Hello there, y'all.

I've been lurking on this forum for a fair bit, having followed a link from (I think) 24 hour RPGs. I've had the idea for this game slowly forming while I've been playing and running other games, but now I'm going to extricate its elements from the games I play and give them a nice, accessible system of their own. Something that won't be riding along with another theme, but rather be something of its own.

Grabbing an outline from the Structured Game Designs sticky, I'll sketch out my thoughts along this framework.

Influences
Chill
Buddhism
H.P. Lovecraft
Shadow Hearts CRPG series
Shin Megami Tensei
Chrono Trigger
Convergence http://bobbincranbud.com/bobbincranbudpresents/convergence/convergence2.htm
Various anime and manga, primarly broad strokes and emotions with big debts to Chrno Crusade and Hayao Miyazaki.

Premise
This is a game where characters are individuals who, for whatever reasons by whatever means, have come to understand something more of the Big Picture of things than their fellows. This Big Picture has some rather awful things in it, things which are destructive to the mass of humanity for several reasons, depending on their particular source. The purpose of play is to both explore the character of those people who stand against the darkness, as well explore the consequences of this conflict. Stories will concern both down to earth, human issues as well as issues of "saving the world." Long-running games will likely (and should be reinforced to?) proceed from the simple human level outward. This is a reflection of the aesthetics of both Lovecraft and CRPGs, where the characters start with a very narrow, limited grasp of their world and its problems. This grasp gradually widens until their actions have global-scale consequences.

Setting
The universe can be summarized into three divisions, the Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable. (The first two are inspired by Chill, the last is my own creation.)

The Known
This is the mundane world. What you see when you look out your window every day. Most of humanity exists with awareness only of this level of reality. No monsters here, nor magic. Physical law holds sway, and the world is, aside from human evil, safe. (I think I need to put a bit more into this division, but I am not sure what. This will probably be fleshed out more as I work on ways for Fallout to work.)

The Unknown
This is the middle level of reality, between the Known and the Unknowable, where most of the action of Hearth stories is likely to take place. This is level on which most human myths and legends have their truth, be it faeries or vampires or werewolves or nature spirits, or angels or demons. Magic is drawn from the Unknown, as it is this place where the formless chaos of the Unknowable is interepreted by the mind of conscious life. Human bodies exist in the Known world, while the mind is a thing of the Unknown. Which came first, body or brain? Who knows? In the Unknown, physical and natural law can be suspened, bent, broken, erased or changed, sometimes permanently. The Unknown world coexists with the Known, though most do not realize it because the dominance of the two levels in different in different places.

The Unknowable
The Unknowable is the grand sweep of Lovecraft's cosmic vision, Nirvana, the abode of God,  the Void. It is the same as all other levels of reality, only lacking in any assigned qualities. Swirling clouds of atoms are the Unknowable, but the human mind in the Unknown calls it a couch, which to the Known world it is. This is the highest level of reality, and one which cannot directly touch the Known world.

The levels can only interact with those directly adjacent to them, so the Known can only directly interact with the Unknown, as can the Unknowable. The Unknown is the middle grand where the levels mix and broil. A human who limits their understanding to the Known world alone will never be threatened by the Unknowable, but in turn can never touch the beauties and marvels of the Unknown. This is the reward for the risk of the Unknowable.

Character Creation
The section I need to work on the most, the questions of what elements of the characters to quantify and put into the rules is something I'm still scribbling at. Its probably going to resemble Teenagers From Outer Space, in that there are

• Stats: Measures that all characters have in the setting, probably between 3-5 in number and measured in low numbers, like Unisystem, Tri-Stat, and TFOS
• Traits: Anything that sets the character apart,. i.e. skills, commando training, a life of religious study, an excessive fondness for cats or books or cars, or a summer job working at Taco Hell. Probably also including descriptors like "athletic" or "bookworm." This also includes things that might come up as disadvantages, but everything here is measured in positive numbers, because in any given situation it might be a benefit or a hinderance. This half-formed idea is inspired/ripped from the first edition of Cthonian.
• Problems: Everybody has them. You owe a lot of money, or murdred your wife, or are dying of some degenerative disease. This has overlaps with some of the more negative Traits, which I need to work on. I can't remember where I saw what inspired this entry.

The mechanism of generation should be semi-random, probably with rolled stats and some sort of bonus to the tally given for low stats ala TSR's Gangbusters.

Character Improvement
Ultimately, the specifics depend on how things fall out in terms of what is measured on the character sheets, but for the most part improvement should be based on increased understanding of the world, and is likely to have a large non-quantified component, in terms of having more contacts and bits of information and people to be called friends.

In terms of individual character growth, increased understanding of the truth strengthens the person on a physical, intellectual and spiritual level. I want to use something like Key Skills for this, in that the character has a particular aspect of themselves or their souls that they use as their means of coming to understand the universe. This idea, which is fairly important to the setting, I need to work on quite a bit in terms of clarity and how to reinforce it.

Resolution System
Should be unobtrusive, intuitive and use a d6. Probably going to be d6+stat+/- relevant personal and situational Traits matched against a difficulty for simple rolls, or matched against another such roll for contested rolls.

Well, that is about what I have as of now in terms of something that I can relate easily. Next time, addressing the kinds of stories to be told. Feedback is tremendously appreciated. :) I look forward to becoming active here.

Later,
Eric

[Jasper]

Hi, Eric and welcome.

I like your cosmology, and the general game premise. I'm a little hazy on a few things points though, so maybe you could clear those up. First, I'm sure you're familiar with the perennial question around here, "What do the characters do? What do the players do?" My guess is that the PCs are going on a CRPG-style journey, with battles and puzzles, gradually ramping up to epic-level conflict, often physical? Are there other elements in there as well? The second half of the quesiton deserves special attention too, possibly in terms of real-world diolog and decision-making.

I'm also curious about the mechanical connection between the different realms (known, unknown, unknowable) and the characters, or other rules of the game. Do characters gradually gain more understanding of the unknown, and move towards the unknowable in some way? Or is the game just based around the very fact that "the PCs are people who don't just dwell in the known world"?

As far as character advancement goes, it seems like scale is going to be a big factor here. And while saying "the characters gets stronger and stronger and stronger" is one way to ramp up scale--to the point where a PC will take world-affecting action--there may be less direct ways. Specifically, it seems to me that the "unknown" is a perfect tie-in. Gaining power, and even developing potential, could have less to do with literally gaining muscle mass and much more to do with understanding the "unknown" aspect of "strength," as a concept. And that insight gives you the power to use your strength in a much broader, and much larger way. Rather than punching a guy out with your own fist, you tap into the "strenth" of the world, and move mountains. This gives your cosmology more immediate weight too.

[Eric Bennett]

Hello Jasper,

P.S: This turned out more stream of consciousness than I anticipated. Ah well.

I'm glad you like the cosmology, and in answering your questions I should be finishing out the rest of the first batch of information I wanted to post. The Known/Unknown/Unknowable is my answer to "What if?" And now we arrive at the question of "So what?"

What do the characters do?

The characters begin as average folks in the Known world, which, when fully expounded upon will likely also include tweaks if players want to play in alternate worlds ala the Final Fantasies or Chrono Trigger. I'm trying to stay focused at this point. The big idea at this point is that everyone has something they want to protect, be it an ideal, a goal, a place, a person, whatever. This is the characters Hearth, the warm place in their souls that gives them motivation. I've got another part of the cosmology in an early form here

(http://www.livejournal.com/users/edwardbenedict/4579.html#cutid1

Sorry for the incoherence, I wrote it at 2 AM. Be kind. ;) In any event, the part where the inner darkness of the character (rewarding the self) becomes their light (rewarding others) is their Hearth. The mental image that inspire that term is one of those winter evenings around a roaring fire from some Gothic novel or the other, with the narrator nestled into a big ol'  comfy chair, spinning tales of his exotic adventures to wife, children, or friends. The cycle of play would go something like this...

1. One of the character's Hearths is threatened.
2. Characters investigate the threat, getting a feel for what the problem is. The players will have a good say in this, and this phase will also involve the group working out just -what- they want the threat to be.
3. Characters confront the threat. Either physically (as is reasonably likely) or spiritually (something I want to find a way to emphasize and reward. The phrase "You can't save them if you can't even save yourself" sticks in my head at this point.)
4. Characters resolve the fallout that the confrontation has on their Hearths.

Let me give a more concrete (and rather unenlightened) example here...

1. Joe Diamond (Hearth: His old neighborhood) has had some adventures into the Unknown before, and the fallout from those events has gradually led to something strange moving in on the neighborhood. Children are reporting nightmares and adults are losing lots of sleep.
2. Joe asks around, and relies on some of his resources from the Unknown to find out that an entity of the Unknown that makes itself a body from dreams has moved into the area.
3. Joe confronts the dream-bodied creature, with the intent to prevent it from taking away the neighborhood's dreams. He has several choices he could go with. He can drive off the being through violence, or he could talk it into altering its feeding habits so that no one is as drained as they presently are, etc.
4. Say Joe goes with letting the dream-body stay, but now has it feeding on many more people than before in smaller amounts. The fallout of this is that the neighborhood experiences disconcerting and sometimes troubles drain, but with the upshot that now it has a supernatural protector, in that the dream-body wants to protect its food source.

The above was pulled out of the air by me in about 2 minutes, so it isn't the grandest plot of all time or anything, but I think it gets the general idea across. The characters should have a variety of viable solutions available to them when it comes to dealing with a threat, and the manner in which they do so changes how the resolution affects what was threatened in the first place.

This is only a rough draft of the basic unit of play. The steps should not always be so clearly separated or simple, but the example character has a fairly small scope in the example, which is one of the scales on which characters advance.

Think of the usual CRPG. The initial challenges are relatively mundane, close to home, and direct to solve. As the solved problems mount up, eventually they come across something that threatens not only their homes or themselves, but a larger group as well. When they address that problem, they have moved out of the lower end of the scale towards the higher levels. Their understanding of their world has increased, and with it their awareness of the problems that exist. By being aware of these problems, they are able to act upon them. This process tends to repeat until the scale of problems that characters are aware of is one a global and historical scale, usually ending in a climactic conflict whose fallout affects the entire world and future thereof.

For Hearth (I should probably differentiate the name of the game and the term like this, or get a different name or somesuch), this parallels the stages of the character's development of scope. The character starts out without any knowledge of the Unknown, and therefore they cannot see the problems that arise from or are connected to it. Then something happens, and they have a little bit of understanding, and a slightly broader view of the world. This gives them the ability to identify and act on small-scale problems stemming from the Unknown. These small-scale problems provide links to larger scale problems, which in turn offer links up to a higher scale problem, etc.

Well, that was bit long for "clearing something up". Sorry if I veered off topic or left something unclear. If so, just say so and I'll not have a fit of exposition at the question next time. Hehehe...

What do the players do?

I assume from this question you mean "Why are the players playing?" If not, then I apologize. My forum search-fu is rather weak. If so, let me lay my ideas out for you.

The purpose of play is to explore the characters and the setting. In this case, the aspects of the characters most important to the game is their Hearths (what they are protecting or helping along) and their understanding (in Hearth terms, their Gnosis, or knowledge gained by insight). The players define their Hearths, stating what their characters feel to be important, and their Gnosis comes to be defined by their experiences. I think I want one of the goals of play to also involve the characters reaction to envisioning a world where their Hearths and their Gnosis coexist. I'll work on a good example for this point, but I hope my general idea comes across properly.

The theme behind the game, spelled out broad and clear is that everyone has something they want to protect. One of the big reasons I cite CRPGs in my inspirations is that they have been responsible for a lot of the "gray" style villains to hit our shores. By this I mean villains who are not evil for evil's sake, but merely whose goals and ideals (their Hearths) come into conflict with dominant portion of the rest of the worlds. This may be due to their acting to protect Hearths of a higher scale than the heroes are aware, for example acting to protect a planetary scale Hearth as opposed to merely a continental scale Hearth, but that examination doesn't quite belong in this particular place.

Everyone wants to protect something, but to protect something you have to have the power to do so. And to get the power to do so, you must understand your world. In this cosmology, very much so, knowledge is power. You can't duck a fist you don't see, you can't atone for a sin you didn't know you comitted, you can't learn something you didn't even know you were ignorant of. All beings are capable of acting with the same power, the only limiting factor in reality is their understanding. Which leads us (hopefully) to..

The connections between worlds

I am still hashing this out clearly, but the general idea is that the Known and Unknowable realms are separated by the Unknown. The Known is ordered,material, simple, and explainable. The Unknowable is total, incomprehensible, humanity-erasing chaos. The Unknown is chaotic, mutable, semi-etheral, but by the same token understandable and controllable. The limitations on the worlds are fairly simple. The Known cannot directly affect or be affected by the Unknowable, because the former doesn't know of the latter's existence, and the latter isn't aware of the former as a separate, discrete entity. The Unknown comes in as the gray area between them. Neither totally chaotic nor bound by completely by the laws of space and time as we know them, and because of this it can act upon and be acted upon by both the Known and the Unknowable.

That was a little convoluted, but what it boils down to is that those who dwell totally in terms of the Known world can never be affected by the Unknowable. In turn, they can never affect it. They are less than bystanders to that scale, but there is nothing inherently wrong with that. What I am trying to get at is that in this context you aren't threatened by something that you are totally unable to be aware off.

As for how this relates to the characters, the thrust of it is rather like what you suggest, Jasper, and I am glad that you brought it up, if only because it says to me that I am talking talking utter nonsense. The Known world has fixed laws of space and time. You need X working energy to Y task. By being aware of the Unknown, the characters have some grasp that this law is rather entirely arbitrary. There is no fundamental reason that it has to be the case, and they can use this knowledge to perform Y task without needing X working energy. For this physical example, their knowledge would inform them that the strength they can command is not limited to their own, individual body. Their knowledge acts (kind of) like a form of leverage, enabling them to draw on strength beyond their own for the task.

For a mental example, things are a little easier to illustrate. Someone trying to solve a problem of, say...engineering, needn't rely purely upon their own, individual intelligence. Their knowledge of the Unknow makes them aware that they do not exist entirely separate from the rest of the cosmos. Their own intelligence can be expanded through something akin to the idea of the collective unconscious...or in a more down to earth example, imagine you had an entire forum of folks in your head that you could communicate with at the speed of thought. How would that affect the way you tried to solve problems? Every individual has their own mental strengths, and as knowledge of the Unknown dissolves the physical laws and arbitrary distinctions those strengths can combine, and ameliorate weaknesses.

This still sorta leaves questions about the actual Unknown world...but that is, again, something I am working on. The Unknown is just the buffer zone, however, between the Known and Unknowable. Mind the construction as I work things out, please, and head on over to

Character Advancement

This is last point I think I shall be able to address before I sink into incoherence for the night.

Characters advance in two primary ways, by their Hearths and their Gnosis.

Hearths
Expanding a characters Hearths means that the character either strengthens their attachment to a particular Hearth, or gains a new Hearth of a higher scale. I'm not sure at this point how I would represent strengthening a characters attachment to a Hearth, but it probably will relate to the significance with which the characters actions can affect that Hearth. Perhaps the lower-scale Hearths are automatically strengthened by gaining a higher-scale Hearth? Not sure, but however it is represented, the strength of the connection will affect both the degree of positive and negative fallout that the characters resolutions can cause. So for, example, a character to really and truly save the entire world, they would need to strengthen their connection to it, which I would draw as a parallel to many of the sidequests players get sent on in CRPGs right before the endgame, with special double underline highleted reference to Chrono Trigger, which states this pretty much explicitly, and Earthbound, where connecting the main character's strength to the world is the point of the journey.

Gnosis
Hearths are the advancement of the characters ability to affect their outer world, while Gnosis is their ability to affect their inner world. As Gnosis increases, the interconnections of reality become clearer to the character, enabling to tackle problems more easily, as well as more blatant affects upon the physical world and themselves. To borrow from Jasper's example, a character whose Gnosis is expanding becomes aware that their physical strength is only relevant on a purely material level, and that there are higher sorts of strength available, in quantities that boggle the mind, if one only knows that they exist, and that they can be manipulated.

Well...I think that just about does me in for the evening. The advancement ideas need work, I need a better explanation of what the players do (for which I will probably borrow the technique advanced in the structured game design thread) as well as more explication on the Unknown realm. As is, Hearth is a pretty heady, mystical idea that needs brought down to earth a bit, to make the stories more relevant, or at least apparently so. Hehe...this thing is growing on its own, and its time to trim the hedges a bit, next time.

Hope you all enjoy, and sorry for the length,
Eric

[Graham W]

Eric,

It's a lovely setting. And I like the idea of protecting the Hearth.

I'm a little unclear about the story structure you give. Does every game start with something threatening one of the characters' Hearths? What do the other characters do when the first character's Hearth is threatened - do they help that character or do they have Hearths of their own to deal with? What incentive do they have to help each other, if they're only worried about their own Hearths?

Can a game session start, not with one of the Hearths being threatened, but with one of the characters deciding to explore the Unknown? What reward does the character get for exploring the Unknown?

The three questions I've seen posted before (by Troy_Costisick) are: What is your game about?. What do the characters do? What do the players do?

I think I understand what the game is about. I'm still not quite clear what the characters and the players do.

[Jasper]

Awesome, Eric. You answered most of my questions there -- and no apologies for length necessary. I'm really loving the whole concept. It's a sophisticated reading of the CRPG's hero's journey. Really, you must make this game. I want to play it.

The Hearth definition is excellent and seems like a great version of the "kicker" (see the glossary if necessary). And Gnosis too, though obviously that needs mechanical clarification. And I'm glad to see you had already anticipated my strength example.

As for the question of "what do the players do?" it's trying to get at more than "so what?" (though that's a good one too): it's asking what the players will be doing and thinking about, as people, while sitting around and playing this game. Because all role-playing is not the same, we need to know what this game's particular version of role-playing will be (or wants to be). Your 4-step breakdown of play hints at some of this: frex, when you say that players will discuss and decide on what the threat really consists of. That says what players are doing: they're talking about the game. Of course they have to be doing other things to. An example would be "they're wading through lists of tactical options and carefully planning their moves, often discussing them." That's just an example and doesn't seem quite right for Hearth, but something like that. Assembling an imagined dialog of play will go a long way to answer the question too.

At the end of your post, you talk about the transmogification of the character's Hearth: either a reinforcement or an upping of scale, with a new subject to protect. It seems to me that you should just combine those two: the character, in coming to  greater understanding of his world, also learns how his initial, small-scale Hearth is actually part of something much larger, and for it to remain the character's Hearth, he actually has to expand it. Thus, while he begins by saying, "I need to protect my village from bandits," he's later forced to say, "To do that, I have to depose the evil king, who supports the bandits." And later still, "To depose the king, I have to infiltrate the world-wide conspiracy and destroy it from within." Thus, your final Hearth (I'm presuming there's a final win-confition here) will have a direct line to the initial Hearth. And when all is said and done, the character goes back to that little village he started in, because now he's saved it -- by saving the whole world.

[Eric Bennett]

Alright. I'm glad this is getting a positive response. It looks like right now the next step I should take is an imagined dialog of play? I can certainly do that.

I need to address

• How the different character's Hearth's interact.
• Just what I mean by the players determining what the threat is.
• An example of upping a Hearth to a level of scale, which I can put at the end of the dialog.
• A secondary dialog describing another way that the scenarios could go, as player-initiated exploration of the Unknown.

I think that should answer most of the standing questions. I'll get on that.

Also, I'm definitely adding vgmix.com to my list of inspirations. The music there is helping a lot in terms of energy for this project.

Later,
Eric