Psychic slaves or no psychic slaves? [my honor-based RPG]

[Abkajud]

It's been almost a year and a half since I've posted about my honor-based RPG idea. At the time, in this thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=24671.0, I discussed the basic idea: certain individuals in society possess unearthly amounts of skill and luck, all because they adhere to the Emperor's standard of proper ethical conduct.
I'm thinking of changing the name of the game from Dishonor! to The Mask of the Emperor, on the basis that I've fleshed out a good deal more of how play relates to the Emperor, and masks kinda sorta feature in there, too.
Anyway, the Honor mechanic grants dice to Honorable characters based on how much Imperial favor they wield. Good, patriotic deeds in play put characters up for an Honor Vote at the end of each session, wherein all players vote on each PC and decide if the Emperor was suitably impressed to grant them a little bit more power.
The flip side of the Honor Vote is the Dishonor Challenge, in which word has gotten back to the Emperor that a PC or a significant NPC has done something scandalous, dishonorable, or otherwise not-so-patriotic. The accuser and the accused roll a social contest of attrition, converting dice pool successes into chances to reduce their opponent's relevant stats being used in the contest. The first person to reach zero loses, and will lose an Honor point in so doing. Haven't worked out all the gritty details for that mechanic yet, but that's the basic idea.

Anyway! Point is this: it occurred to me that the issue of time and distance and PCs actually reaching the Emperor's Court (where Dishonor Challenges occur, as the Emperor is the one whom you need to convince of someone's guilt) might be served by giving each Noble House, and the Emperor Himself, the use of psychic slaves known as Heralds. Heralds, to a more or less overt extent, know their master's mind, and as such a) are peerless advocates in the Court for their charges and b) replace their own mental/social stats with those of the character they're defending. There's this whole idea I have about the armed aristocracy being forbidden to enter the Emperor's receiving room, but may only watch the proceedings from theatre-house seating. It reinforces the distant, godlike nature of the Emperor if you can't even approach him in your own physical body, and I figured it'd be kind of cool to tweak the feudalism idea of "power flows downward", since nobles get Honor dice from the Emperor through a mystic process, and can in turn exert a sort of mystic influence over certain conditioned individuals.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: I want to have players' honor and virtuous actions be as relevant as possible, so long as someone who cares is actually watching. As long as this is the case, Dishonor Challenges work as normal. But when you're down in the sewers, or in a bandit's camp in the forest, or far into the Imperial frontier, I figure nobody around might actually have a Herald that they can wield/report to on your scandalous or laudable doings, and thus you're insulated from smears on your reputation.

I think the idea of shaven-headed slaves, mystically conditioned to serve as go-betweens for Man and Emperor-God, is pretty sweet. I also think it provides a bit of punch to move outside the initial, explicitly Asian-esque trappings of the rough setting, and goes into a territory that's more of my own design.

Thoughts? My goal is to have this game ask the question, "Power flows from the favor of the Godlike Emperor. To reject His favor is to reject society. How do you feel about/relate to this?" If that's what I'm going for, then maybe the "logistical" issue that precludes Heralds is unnecessary or excessively literal-minded; on one hand, Dishonor Challenges could happen at the end of each session (provided there's some acceptable down-time we can squeeze in and things don't end on a cliffhanger for the Challenge participants), but on the other hand, doing that could rob the sense of urgency of one's actions. Does this crowd players too much, making them -too- accountable, or would waiting til the end of the session be better?

I could always do both, I suppose: wait til the end of the session (when Honor Votes are already happening) and still use Heralds as the thematic medium through which the Challenge occurs.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Wow, you answer your own point perfectly. At first I blanched at the heavy-handed setting-based justification for something that could be just as easily worked in by just playing with the fictional time-scale of events. Then I noticed that you actually have aesthetic reasons for having these heralds: I agree, they sound like a cool fantasy touch for this sort of thing. Then in the end you decide that you don't actually need the heralds just to justify how the emperor gets to know about misdeeds, but that they're cool enough to retain even so. I agree.

Also, I imagine that the whole issue of needing to have bonded retainers in the imperial court to keep the nobility around you honest would be fun to play with. A character might fake such a bond to cause uncertainty, for instance.

[Abkajud]

Well, I feel like a light went on in my head as far as Story Now is concerned: I began seeing design of mechanics in terms of interesting choices players could make to affect the storyline, and it's all been falling into place from there.

For example: Heralds are, being slaves, completely forbidden to ever engage in physical violence. But then again, the PCs get control of House Heralds during a Dishonor Challenge. If he wanted to, a PC could say "My Herald gets so mad he smacks the shit out of Lord Asshole's Herald over there." You could go right ahead and roll, and see if he does, in fact, smack some shit out of someone, but then the follow-up would probably be the Imperial Heralds calling for the guards to put the Herald to death immediately.

Needless to say, this would cause the PC to lose the Dishonor Challenge immediately, and promptly lose an Honor point. But this isn't a "failure" so much as it is a pretty powerful statement about being frustrated with the whole Herald system, with bowing and scraping and observing protocol all the time. There's actually a character class called Outcast, which is "a member of a fallen House or a fallen member of a House". I'm trying to design things to give players as many different "takes" on the concept of arbitrary, mystically potent reputation-stuff. With that being said, I've been imagining PCs trying to use their Heralds as spies or even assassins; certainly the Emperor does just that. It'd be a major breach of protocol to get caught doing such a thing, and I think a PC with zero Honor might even be incapable of creating the mystic bond between Herald and master.

It occurs to me I could even make Heralds a sort of "bottom rung" choice for character class, seeing as they are so far removed from actually wielding any "real power" that any steps they take to pursuing their own ends would, at the very least, have the element of surprise.

By the way, classes in Mask of the Emperor are only somewhat mechanically-limiting choices; yes, your class can only use certain skills in public without dishonoring himself (courtiers can't Duel, for instance), but that doesn't mean a PC is limited in some absolute way from taking these forbidden skills altogether. In fact, because certain Audiences (those bystanders observing a conflict resolution) might actually not care at all about Honor (bandits, evil sorcerers, Hairy Barbarians), and thus you can't use your Honor dice in that situation, it can definitely pay off not to rely too heavily on the Emperor's favor for everything you do. There are limits to even His power, ya know

That idea, of still having rigid class distinctions but the only rigidity coming from in-play social consequences, rather than from explicit rules-based limitation of choices, comes from an article at Places to Go, People to Be: http://ptgptb.org/0019/classconflictD20.html
When I read this article, it seemed so full of possibilities for taking the D&D setting and adapting it to more engaged, more connected play. At the very least, it's flipping a Gamist mechanic ("balance" between classes) and turning it into something that either cleaves to The Dream or could exist as part of a design for making a Premise that addresses these limitations.
Initially, I was going to limit MotE classes ("roles" as I called them at one point, and may again), but I think it's better just to make that whole vaguely Mage: the Ascension trope of "Yeah, but who saw you do it?" work towards my ends more effectively.

Since I mentioned Mage, I should put out a disclaimer of sorts about MotE: the power your character possesses is not inherent, unless you're a Sorcerer (a class who don't have Honor anyway, but Sorcery). All Honor comes from the Emperor; and your Audience doesn't so much limit what you can do as simultaneously enable and constrain it, like how plugging in your computer enables it to do things that can be done with electricity but, presumably, keeps it from doing something that some sort of other power source might make possible. Fuzzy metaphor, yeah, but I think you get the picture.

[Vulpinoid]

I don't know if this idea will help you, but I thought of it as I was reading through the posts.

I'm working on a game which plays into the current global phenomenon of "Reality TV".

Characters know that they are being occasionally watched by a mass audience, but they don't know how often or when.

Basically, at the start of every scene, a d6 is rolled (the result of this die is kept hidden from everyone). The die is only revealed at the end of a scene, and if the die has shown a result of 4 or higher, then everyone has seen the truth on national television. There is always a chance that the actions of the players will be watched, and if a character does something dramatic in the scene (a critical failure or a dramatic success), the die result increases by a point. Players may also try to exert background influence to reduce the die roll by a point.

Characters earn prestige in the eyes of the audience if they do well in a scene that was watched, and they lose favour in the eyes of the audience if they're caught doing something nasty on camera.

This could be applied to the game described in this thread by having a secretive order of spies under the control of the heralds or even the emperor himself.  No one knows who they are, or when they are watching, they just know that there is always a chance their actions will be spotted.

In a secluded area, the actions might be observed on a roll of 6.
In a quiet street, the actions might be observed on a roll of 5.
In a typical area, it might be 4.
A busy market might be 3.
Heavily observed parts of the palace, 2.

On a 1, the action has always occurred with no-one noticing.

Given that you have magic inherent in your system, you could even have these spies as arcane seers sitting at crystal balls, or meditating in front of feng shui mirrors, observing the world around them. Such observers immediately inform their superiors of any honour breaches in the empire and these are immediately sent to imperial arbiters for their judgements (which are in turn announced by the heralds).

If the heralds were psychic, they could interrogate the wrong-doers to ensure the judgement is fitting (at least in their eyes).

In this way, characters could be called up to a tribunal, to explain the activities that have been observed. Making this a critical point of storylines, or simply a way to keep disruptive characters in check by forcing them to have a conscience.

Just an idea.

V

[Abkajud]

A terrifying thought, is what it is, V! Sheesh!
The Panopticon can't hold a candle to you, man. Wow.
While it's very, very compelling, I think that's actually pushing it too far in one direction; it's not a police state so much as it is a mystic relationship with one's audience and one's Emperor.
I was actually thinking that Heralds are all very obvious for what they are; shaved heads, House sigil-tattoos, that sort of thing. Players shouldn't be paranoid; they can and will get stage fright, of a sort, but they don't have to worry about magic slaves listening to their conversations.
Good to take it that far, though, so I can plumb the depth of what I wanna do.

[LandonSuffered]

Abkajud wrote:

I guess what I'm getting at is this: I want to have players' honor and virtuous actions be as relevant as possible, so long as someone who cares is actually watching. As long as this is the case, Dishonor Challenges work as normal. But when you're down in the sewers, or in a bandit's camp in the forest, or far into the Imperial frontier, I figure nobody around might actually have a Herald that they can wield/report to on your scandalous or laudable doings, and thus you're insulated from smears on your reputation.

If you want the player characters' actions to be as relevant as possible, why does it have to be observed by anyone? Why not simply make consequences to any and all PC actions?  It is a psychic/metaphysical link to the Emperor, after all...even if no one is around to observe the mis-deed, the character will know he or she has failed to act virtuously.  Perhaps PCs would face stiffer penalties for being observed than when acting alone (conversely, they may also get better rewards for performing honorably in front of an audience than in secret)!

That being said, I too like the idea of shaven-head psychic slave Heralds of the Emperor.  They can simply wander around the galaxy as a constant reminder of the moral and ethic code the Empire wishes upheld.  They make great Color for the game, and they can serve as plot devices for scenarios. I'd definitely include them if you feel they're appropriate!

[Amadeo]

I really like this idea of Heralds, it fits your setting and helps to reinforce this grand emperor-god. I wouldn't however make them playable, I think it would be much more interesting as a background element that reveals the extent of the emperor's power. He is so great, so powerful in his existence that he can do away with an individual's free will. At least, that's the vibe I'm feeling here.

[Abkajud]

Thanks for the replies, Landon and Amadeo!

Well, see, the characters in Mask can be as disingenuous as they like. I wasn't really going for some kind of follow-your-morals-to-power exercise; I was trying to craft a situation in which you know very well that your smarmy, slick opponent is really a bastard, but until you catch him in the act, and make it stick, you're out of luck.
Or you could just kill him; forcing a situation in which he besmirches your honor (or your sister's, your father's, etc.) could result in a duel, and then you gut the jerk. Of course, he's got friends, who'll try to do the same to you.
Landon, I read your post and immediately thought, "Whoa, where can I have a little room to be bad?" Rather than making anything automatically happen just because I know I did something (kind of like WoD's "Humanity" mechanic), I wanted to rig it so that you can be as depraved and terrible as you like, provided nobody actually sees you do it.
But if no one can see you do it, and live to tell the tale, what does that leave you - killing everyone in the room, as one of my players suggested? Or, perhaps, slaying people in their beds? That sort of outright monstrousness will get you followed and killed, eventually.
As long as you are contributing in some public way to society, you can build a reputation that will protect you from jealous rivals and smear-tactics.

In Unknown Armies, the taboos for Adepts and Avatars are enforced by the character himself - stepping off the path in front of him is bad news. This makes more sense, as these characters gain power from obsessing over a particular idea and applying it through mysticism. In Mask, the power comes directly from the goodwill of the Emperor, and involves all of society. It's not personal morality at all, really - it's collective, group-oriented stuff, through and through.

And hey, when it comes to public figures in real life, isn't that all that matters? ^_^

Fun twist: one of my players is actually going to play a Herald, but one who was swapped into another noble family's nursery as a baby, so that he could be raised by someone else and still cultivated by his birth family to be a spy. And, well, an assassin. My player, Victor, who wants to try and kill the Empress, thus pushing a kind of Shogunate period in the setting, said he wanted to be an open book for his birth father to train and manipulate, but still have the appearance and social license of a bushi. I'm excited about where this is going to go!