[Fifth World] Power 19

[jefgodesky]

I haven't finished even the general idea of the rules for The Fifth World, but answering the Power 19 still helps put a focus on what those rules need to accomplish.  So, a lot of these refer to ideas still in development, rather than anything fully worked out yet.

1. What is your game about?

The Fifth World centers on collaborative storytelling of local epics about humanity's feral, animistic future.  Local epics tell the story of a particular land, and the human and other-than-human relationships that define them.

2. What do the characters do?

The characters live as feral humans, living one b'ak'tun (approx. 400 years) after the collapse of civilization.  They pursue their own goals, nurture their relationships, and both defend and negotiate the human place in a more-than-human world.

3. What do the players do?

The players tell the stories of a particular place, and the relationships that define that place.

4. How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

The Fifth World gets its name from the southwestern mythology of emergence, which tells of many previous worlds, each successively destroyed by humanity forgetting its place as part of a living world.  According to the Hopi and the Maya, we live in the Fourth World, which the Maya calendar predicts to end in 2012, when the Fifth World begins.  So, the Fifth World still deals with many of the consequences left over from the last time humans ignored their place in the living world and their relationship with other-than-human persons and communities.  They survived only because they managed to figure it out along the way, out of necessity.

5. How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?

Characters go through a life path; essentially, players have to "grow" a character through the stages of his life, almost like growing a plant.  The things that define a character's model through this process do not refer to static qualities, but to changing relationships: to his community, to various groups or organizations, to family and friends, to spirits, to possessions, and so on.

6. What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?

The most vital source of power for a character comes from his or her relationships.  They can burn relationship points for extra power when they need it, to obtain blessings, to work magic, and so on.  But if they do not work to maintain that relationship, with offerings, favors, or otherwise honoring their relationship, they can destroy it.  To become powerful, a character must give back at least as much as they take, and preferably more.  So the game rewards players for enacting the "secret of sustainability," not to have zero impact on the land, but to have a positive impact, by actively giving back more than they take, and leaving the land richer than they found it.

7. How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?

Whenever and wherever possible, punishments and rewards come from emergent behaviors, rather than explicit rules.  Behavior that the game punishes don't suffer direct punishment from the rules; rather, the system of the rules makes the player start to punish himself by the act of pursuing that behavior.  With the relationship mechanic mentioned in the last question, a character who always takes without regard to giving back ends up punishing himself, as one by one he burns through his relationships, leaving him isolated, alone, and powerless.

8. How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

Most players have a limited number of characters, perhaps only one. The Genius loci plays all the land, which includes all other characters. That doesn't mean that it necessarily falls to the Genius loci to come up with the plot, though; the other players should drive the action by pursuing their goals, leaving the Genius loci simply with reacting, or perhaps pursuing his own characters' goals.  Characters put their goals, explicitly, right on their character sheets; those goals might nest inside of other goals, and they provide a story structure.  A one-shot might involve a number of players, each with just one goal on their character sheet.  Players recieve rewards for fulfilling those goals, attached to the goal and stated explicitly from the outset.

9. What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)

You should make the land where your story unfolds a land you live in, or a land you love.  The epics of that land should play with the same themes that have emerged in that land's past and present, with its same rhythms and priorities.

10. What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?

Your character has certain pools of stones or beads, representing different means of relating to the world.  A resolution check begins with you and your opponent both making a secret bid.  If you have a relevant trait or skill, then that will give you a certain number of "free" stones, stones you get back, but anything you bid beyond that, you will lose.  Some checks will end right there, like an arrow shot; others, players have the choice to escalate, like a debate, a hunt, tracking an animal, or a brawl.  Each player can throw in more stones, committing more effort to the contest, until one or the other backs down.

11. How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?

Playing The Fifth World should feel like a shamanic divination. Your character sheet takes the shape of a medicine wheel. Resolution comes from budgeting colored beads representing your different kinds of relationships and means of relating. You don't need to worry about the chance of a die roll; you need to worry about budgeting your strength across many different fields. You can consume everything you have for one climatic encounter, leaving yourself utterly vulnerable afterwards, but most of the time, you'll need to balance the needs of the moment against the need to conserve your power, and the unknowns of the future.  It also means that while you may find yourself desperate on your own power, with the help of others, or with many relationships to call on for aid, you can overcome most any challenge.

12. Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?

The primary means of advancement lies in building up stronger relationships. No clear-cut, quantifiable metric exists to compare who has advanced more than who, but all of a character's opportunities to grow stronger come out of his relationships.

13. How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

True advancement can only come through greater relationship.

14. What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?

The term "animist" has suffered much abuse since E.B. Taylor coined it in 1871.  Most of us hear the word and think more of our projections onto it, than any actual animist beliefs.  Animism simply means a recognition of other-than-human personhood, that if something acts like a person--if it communicates, if it exchanges gifts, if it teaches--then treat it as a person.  Works like Graham Harvey's Animism: Respecting the Living World, or David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, have helped me to have a brief glimpse of what the world looks like from that perspective.  I have found that in general, very few of us can truly recognize how deep our cultural constructions go.  My overriding goal with The Fifth World drives me to try to create an emergent experience for the player, if only for a brief moment, where they can share that glimpse of an animist world that has so inspired me.

15. What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?

Most of us have a preconceived notion of primitive cultures as lacking in cultural refinement, knowledge, medicine, technology, and so forth. Trying to play The Fifth World with this misconception will lead to disaster. The Fifth World derives a good deal of its content from real-world anthropology and ethnography, so it won't work with the Hobbesian misconceptions most of us harbor about primitive peoples.  So the "fluff" elements of the game spend a great deal of time trying to convey a feel of a feral, post-apocalyptic world that falls into neither the usual perception of post-apocalyptic as a grungy, desperate setting, nor the idea that uncivilized cultures must exist as short-lived, ignorant, diseased brutes or savages.

16. Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?

The "cool" factor. The jungle tribes of Texas that hunt giant beetles to turn their exoskeletons into armor or shields; the biker gangs that turn their hogs in for horses and hunt elephants across the fields of South Dakota; the tribes exploring the heart of the verdant evergreen forests nestled amidst the razor-sharp peaks of an ice-free Antarctica. That element fires the imagination. It banishes the idea of life beyond civilization as "solitary, nasty, brutish and short," and excites people with the adventure of creating a new, tribal future. In the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry used Star Trek to excite us about a glitzy future where technology fixed everything for us, but I don't believe that technology can do that.  I believe we can make a better future for ourselves by making societies that address our social needs, and put us back in touch with the rest of life on the planet.  I want The Fifth World to provide for people who feel as I do, everything that Star Trek provided to those who shared Roddenberry's vision.

17. Where does your game take the players that other games can't, don't, or won't?

Most of us, on some level, feel domesticated.  We have stories about the Golden Age, or Eden, or any number of others about how we lost paradise, and how we used to live so much more fully than we do today.  Much of the popularity of RPG's owes to that, and the desire to feel undomesticated; wild; to fantasize about the restoration of our humanity, and all that goes with it, e.g., the "teenage power fantasy."  The Fifth World takes that on directly, rather than indirectly, so it can talk about the roots of our domestication, the nature of feral existence, and the relationships that nurture and empower those "power fantasies."  Nearly all of us share very deep-rooted, cultural aversions to addressing these feelings directly, or often even acknowledging them; by facing that sense of isolation and powerlessness that follows from putting ourselves in an only-human world directly, The Fifth World goes somewhere no other game can.

18. What are your publishing goals for your game?

Rather than the traditional publishing model, I want to make The Fifth World fully open source, both rules and setting.  Your characters and stories can become part of the world's canonical back story.  We still plan on publishing books (an original core book and perhaps a d20 campaign setting to begin with), but these will primarily offer aides, not anything players will need to play.  Our money will come from the website.

19. Who is your target audience?

We'd like to pull over some gamers, but we'd rather pull in non-gamers and people who've never played RPG's before. People with an interest in anthropology or ecology would also enjoy this game.

[J Tolson]

The "Power 19" is meant to help you focus your intent into a manageable form. As such, if anything I say doesn't seem to contribute to that goal, please do ignore it.

That being said, you might want to actually readdress the various questions. This isn't to say that there is something inherently wrong with your answers, just that a few of them still seemed quite vague (and thus I am not sure if they are helping you focus). For example, #3: "The players tell the stories of a particular place, and the relationships that define that place."

Imagine now a group of people sitting down at a table to play your game. One of them asks "Right, so what are we supposed to do in this game?" His friend responds "you're supposed to tell the stories of a particular place and the relationships that define it." In the background a third friend asks where the cheetos are. The first friend sits with a blank look on his face, knowing that something had been said but being unsure of what that something was; "What, so... like telling the story of your backyard or something?" The other friend shrugs and responds "I guess. That is what the book says." He then addresses the third friend, informing him that the cheetos are right next to him.

Telling a story is a generalized action. A story can be told orally, it can be written down, it can take the form of a parable, an allegory, an anecdote, an epic poem, a parody, a satyr, etc. You know that players will be telling stories and that these stories will be about the relationships that define a place (Canada perhaps). That is good, but what do the players do in order to do what they are doing (or in other words, how do the players actually "tell the stories of a particular place and the relationships that define it")?

It isn't that your answers are wrong or anything like that; they just seem to be rather vague still and you might benefit, in terms of improved focus, from reworking your "answers."

Just a thought.

~Joel

[ChadDubya]

jefgodesky,

I don't have much constructive to say. I think the setting sounds sweet, and this is a game I'd play.

-Chad

[jefgodesky]

That being said, you might want to actually readdress the various questions. This isn't to say that there is something inherently wrong with your answers, just that a few of them still seemed quite vague (and thus I am not sure if they are helping you focus). For example, #3: "The players tell the stories of a particular place, and the relationships that define that place."

Ah, yes ... I can see where that would be rather vague to someone who isn't me.   It hit the main points of (1) collaborative storytelling, and (2) the "bioregional epic" character of the stories.  But I can certainly see the scenario you describe playing out--that phrase may mean a lot to me, but it means diddly squat to your average player.

Let's try again...

3. What do the players do?

Most players have one or more characters (possibly a family, clan, or other group), defined by their relationships, each with stated goals they hope to attain.  One player, the Genius loci, plays the character of the specific place where the story takes place (a specific bioregion, like a particular forest or watershed), which also has goals it hopes to attain.  The players then collaboratively tell a story about those characters and how they pursue and attain their goals, with an emphasis on the relationships they form in doing so.

Does that makes more sense?

[J Tolson]

Thanks for extrapolating on your answer, Jason. Just two things.

1) #3 was only one example of a vague answer. A lot of your other answers were rather vague as well (#3 was just a particularly vague example and I could fit in an obscure reference to the old D&D Parody by the Dead Ale Wives club).

2) I greatly appreciate you explaining your answer but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter if I understand what your answers mean, rather it is important that you understand what your answers mean and that these answers provide focus. Thus, if one of your answers is "rather vague to someone who isn't me," that is perfectly fine; please, don't feel the need to explain it (though, again, I greatly appreciate it that you went through the trouble). As long as your answers are providing focus for your design, that is accomplishing 75% of what the Power 19 was meant to do (in my opinion).

The other 25% of what I think the Power 19 was meant to do is provide a document that you can give to play testers and design-reviewers so they can evaluate if the game is doing what you think it is doing.

Me, I'm just looking at your game from some random guy's perspective (not designing it, not testing it, not reviewing it). I'm here to ask the stupid questions in the hopes of helping you catch those things that are so obvious that they've been overlooked.

Just a random thought.

[jefgodesky]

Well then, I think it's 75% accomplished.  The exercise did help me a good deal in narrowing in on just a few key concepts that the game needs to focus on.

That 25%, though, maybe not so much ... I can see I certainly did use a good deal of "shorthand" here that means a lot more to me than it would to your average reader, and that's going to be something I'll need to clarify for playtesters when it gets to that stage.