Wake up!

[hardcoremoose]

Matt,

Here's what I think would be cool.

As I remember from our old Target Audience discussions (and correct me if I'm wrong, I obviously don't have access to that information any longer), player characters are normal people jerked from the real world and plopped into the Dreamspire as part of this cosmic game*.  Your website even hints that there might be a way to escape it.

I think some kind of mechanic that characterizes their connection to the real world, to their former lives, would be cool.  The Whispering Vault has its Keys of Humanity, Le Mon Mouri has Memories, and Wraith has Fetters.  I think Dreamspire is a spiritual cousin to some of these games, and while treading the same old ground is lame, the idea is still sound.  This would give the characters (and the players) something to care about other than what is going on immediately in the setting.

Now, if the Dreamspire itself has an agenda, it's probably to draw the PCs into its game, to use them to replace its missing pieces.  It wants to sever the characters' links to the "real world", and it does this by offering up Pawns.  Basically, if the players decide to "play the game" and use Pawns, they'll be jeopardizing these other things, their real-world selves.

For this to work, the links to the real world have to mean something mechanically.  Maybe they could replace attributes or traits, and as players use Pawns they risk reducing their own effectiveness, thus increasing their dependence on Pawns.  Or maybe the links work as self-defined Madness Meters, or Sanity, or Humanity, and if they're all eliminated, your character becomes an unplayable NPC - rendered a pawn in the Dreamspire's perpetual chess match.

If this were the case, I'd do two things with the metagame mechanics for Pawns.  First, I'd give the players access to an unlimited amount of them, since they're only hurting themselves.  Secondly, I wouldn't have them go over to the GM, since they're already a major problem for the PCs' livelihood, and he doesn't really need them anyway.

Okay, so the above is really derivative, I know.  Maybe there's a kernel of something in there though.

Take care,
Scott

* This is a bit of tangent, but if players are normal people jerked from the real world, what time and place do they come from?  Maybe we discussed this in the past, but I don't recall (just like I didn't remember about the Quests - sorry).  I'd say they come from any time and place...but that's just me.

[Matt Snyder]

Scott, your memory is better than you give yourself credit for. The denizens of Dreamspire are indeed inhabitants of the "real world" snatched away from reality and trapped in a shared nightmare. As I've focused on certain elements recently, I've managed to neglect others like this "trapped from reality."

But, good thing you brought it up . . . because I was about to after a private message from Blake Hutchins. While musing on what the Premise might be, he suggested this: "What will you do to escape being a Pawn?"

Bingo. Sick when folks do a better job of saying what you're thinking. Thanks, Blake.

Now, if that's the case, then I need to do a couple things. First, I have to make people care about their former, real-world self. When I first created Dreamspire, it didn't really matter what, when or where you came from, just that you'd committed some transgression and were trapped in one freaky Purgatory as a result. This made people really get into the cool setting, "advance" characters, and let me not worry about the real world as I designed.

However, obviously it matters a great deal where, when and what characters came from. That's because they have to care about getting back there. So, I need to tie Quest to that ambition. That is, Quest should have everything to do with building some kind of synchonicity between Dreamspire and the real world; it should be some kind of goal which might earn the right to escape the terrible realm once and for all. This also would go a long way toward gelling that crucial conflict that Ron stressed above.

Second, and very much related to that, I need to constuct a mechanic that lets players and GMs manage that synchronistic link between the two world, as you've suggested.

See, I knew this discussion would go something like this. Matt posts. Matt gets overwhelmed by how much of a fool he's been. Matt thinks "Eureka!" Matt goes back to the drawing board. Rinse. Repeat.

So it goes. I guess my only consolations are that I knew this would happen and that the game will be much better as a result.

[Lance D. Allen]

Okay, wow. I've been following this thread, and despite my determination that the really neat looking website would not draw me in, I've been subtly salivating.. And now, this last hook that Moose brings up has got me, and you've just reeled me in.

If I've not made myself clear, allow me to be bold: I want to play this game.

Ahem. Sorry, I said that wrong..

I want to play this game. NOW.

I'm getting this weird-freaky cinematic sequence going through my head, characters dressed in stylized outfits symbolically reminiscent of chess pieces in this dark chamber, which doesn't seem fully real, engaged in some conflict which is somehow as much social and moral as it is physical. They've been together a long time, and they've grown to love each other the way a family would (and perhaps more, in certain instances). But something is standing in the way of final redemption... And the knight sacrifices himself, crying out "Go, now! While you still can!"
And then you switch to another scene, some time later... The rest of the party is gone, free... But the knight is now some high, dark lord, having lost his soul to Dreamspire... and become powerful, scheming, vicious... And somehow resentful. Someday he wants them back, and somehow, he will get them back, and make them pay for letting him make the sacrifice, and stay here alone.

::shudders::

I want to play this game NOW.








::whimpers:: please?

[Mike Holmes]

Sorry I'm late, can't figure out how I missed this.

First thing I have to say, Matt is, Neat, try this. No, wait.

I agree with Ron. You have to decide what you want, and make the decision for the right reason. If you go Sim becuause you are retreating from Narrativism, well, this just givea my old narrativist nemesis Paul grist for he mill, and I'll not have that. If you decide you want a Sim system, then it should be because you want to produce the sort of stuff of which such a system is capable.

That said, I say go Sim with it.

I like Lance's imagery, but I got stuck on a similar one of my own as soon as I read this. There is an episode of "The Prisoner" in which the people of the village are dressed up like chess pieces, and being made to play a game of chess. Innocuous, on the surface (they don't fight or anything, peices taken are just pulled off he board), but given the context of the village itself, it's sinister. At one point a player refuses to move appropriately, and he's removed forcibly and taken to the hospital for reprogramming.

The point of the episode is an interesting one. In chess you know who your oponents are because they are marked. In RL, this is not true, but you can figure out who the black pieces are by watching their behavior. It's classic game theory, really.

Anyhow, I can totally see where you are coming from. While episodes of "The Prisoner" did have plots, what always got me going about it was that it was always a "series of interesting events" going ever on (well, for several episodes). Highly existentialist, and highly condusive to the Sim mentality, IMO. I've even designed a game that works on the isolation like you find in "The Prisoner" (If you haven't seen the show, you must).

Anyhow, youhave these same elements. People brought in from outside where they can't escape. Factions inside. And the urge to produce a "series of interesting events" (as opposed to the Nar story). Neat.

OK, on to specifics. First, you are emulating some sort of dreamworld, are you not? Hence the name? And surrealist immagery? So, why would you bother with simulating RW physics. While I like realism in realistic games, such would be odd here, IMO. You can kill two birds by eliminating much of the physical stuff and focusing on the Pawn stuff, namely that it'll be simpler, and more focused. Sim != realism.

Not to say that you can't have pseudo-physical battles. Certainly you can. But I'd make the outcome of these based on determination, or correlation to your quest, or somehting like that. That makes the character's quest central as well, instead of being just another tacked on background mechanic. Relationship mechanics would be appropriate in such a dream state, as well, I'd imagine. In fact to keep the player's engaged with the character's "RW" existence (that outside of the isolation tank), you must do as Scott suggested.

But what's really missing is faction emrboilment. I was just looking at Max's (AKA Balbinus) new game about politicks, and thinking about how the mechnics work from a Sim angle. They are designed for Gamism, but they at least engage the player on the surface in the subject matter. This could be dome in a more Sim fashion for your game.

First thing that comes to mind is the relationship stuff again. What are factions if not people relating due to some common goal? So there should be some of that. But it could go deeper. Much deeper. You used one of my favorite words, byzantine.

I would suggest reflexive and recursive mechanics of some sort that caused the creation of plots and counter-plots, etc, etc, ad infinitum. There is no bottom to the conspiracy well in this dreamland. It's like Al Amarja, but even worse, it's veneer of reality stripped off and laid bare. Elements portrayed as chess pieces so that everyone knows it's a game, but the oly game in town.

Yes, real potential. I can see some really avant guard mechanics empowering the participants to create the ever more complex machinations in an almost... viral... manner. As Frank Herbert's characters were won't to ponder, Wheels within wheels. That's the way to go. Players will never have time for physical stats, they'll be way too busy trying to figure out what's going on, and how they can capitalize.

That last part's important. They must be able to succeed, no matter how complicated things get, or nobody will want to play. There has to be a point to things in this weird place.

Lastly, endgame. Just for the name, and just for the way it fits the setting, you have to have a way for people to escape. Is it their Quest, do they get out when the quest is achieved? Do they ultimately find the true nature of the game, that it has no end? Do they die from the sorrow caused by the seeming insanity of it all? Can they rise to the top of the conspiracies, to dominate the game? Can they create checkmate? Or are they the king that gets irrevocably trapped? How many pawns and other pieces must be sacrificed to get where they need to go? Will it be a dream or a nightmare in the end, a living hell of a stalemate?

How can they get back to their "Real World"? And how does the experience leae them once they have?

Mike