Quixote & Coyote: A Game Concept

[Jeremy Cole]

I love this is idea.

Any thought that the fantasy world represents the growth and development of the characters?  The conflicts in the two worlds would mirror each other in a lot of ways.  If the players, as children, are being terrorised by local bullies, they might move into a fantasy world with villains who must be overcome, and they eventually do this with bravery.  Then, returning to 'reality', they can defeat the bullies with a lot of 'bravery' stat boosts.  Almost every 'reality with fantasy elements' film uses this technique to some extent.

If both stories were plotted out, very loosely, with matchng scenes, then I don't think the problem of switching between worlds would be a problem.  A scene's conclusion would be obvious, and the GM would jump in and describe the sudden appearance elsewhere.

Any thoughts?

Jeremy

[Jonathan Walton]

Ah.  Another day, another slew of great advice.  I love the Forge.

The one thing that came to my mind in reading the premise was the MTV cartoon of the Maxx.

Hells yeah!  The cartoon was good, but the original comics were amazing.  Great parallel too.  I may have to go find some "Maxx" graphic novels to see if they can inspire some cool ideas out of me.  Your "Calvin and Hobbes" connection is nice too.  There's a textbook example of what individual fantasies would be like, especially the adventures of Spaceman Spiff.

I like the idea that certain rolls (bad ones or just randomly) cause reality to set in. You would need some way to allow characters to 'get back' into the fantasy. And decide what, if anything had changed.

I guess I was thinking that (without other people in a collective fantasy to haul them back in), you'd just have to build your fantasy from scratch, either recreating what was lost or starting a completely new one.  If the characters did take the elevator to the top of the building, they could imagine that they'd reached the summit if they like, but they could also imagine they were stepping out onto the surface of an alien planet.  It would really be completely up to them.

I am thinking of having the possibility for "trademark" fantasies, reoccuring delusions that have special meaning for a character and are easier to manifest.  For instance, they could have a trademark identity (Spaceman Spiff) or imaginary companion (Hobbes), or trademark enemies, or trademark powers ("I'm Spider-Man!"), or a trademark environment (mars, London Below, etc.), or whatever else.  Since the group are building a collective fantasy, it's most likely that the trademarks would be along the same lines, but that's not necessarily the case.  It's just less consistant if they mix genres like knights and superheroes.

what if you were to make the real world "realistic" and keep the fantasy world "rules-light"?

Whoa, cool idea alert!  But I'll go you one better...

What if, within their own fantasy, the characters can determine what rules they want to follow?  If we're already passing Author Stance around, there's no reason we also couldn't pass "Game Designer Stance" with it.

So say, in the real world, we've come up with a simple-but-uninteresting game mechanic: for every action, you roll 1dF (a Fudge die).  On a minus, you fail horribly.  On a blank, something boringly "normal" happens.  Only on a plus do you actually have any success.  However, after a plus you roll another die.  A negative cancels out the success, a blank makes your success only mediocre (and still somewhat depressing), and a plus continues the chain (and you get to roll another die).  This is used for every action, so you'll be rolling dice all the time in the real world.

So, almost 90% of the time, you're going to end up with depressing results.  Even if your first die succeeds, you second die will probably fail.

However, you'd build fantasies by building strings of pluses.  Maybe, to escape the basic drudgery of the real world, you'd need 3-4 successes in a row.  Perhaps initially, you'd need 5, but as you got better at this fantasy stuff, the number would go down.  So you'd be constaly rolling on little tiny things, hoping to eck out enough success in the real world to escape it's boundaries.

However, once in the fantasy, things are different.  You could decide what you wanted to roll for.  You'd probably only need rolls to dramatically increase the level of fantasy or to change existing components.  If you wanted to move from London Below (slightly fantastic) to Camelot (very fantastic, at least, when you're coming from the modern world), you'd need to roll.  If you character, who knows nothing about martial arts, wanted to suddenly break out some kung fu, that would take a roll.  However, once the bar had been raised, you could do anything you wanted within those limits.

Also, once in the fantasy, blanks become slightly-positive outcomes and only minuses would damage the fantasy (and you'd have to roll a bunch of them, over a period of time, to destroy the fantasy completely).  You could also decide how many dice you wanted to roll.  Lots of Fudge dice tend to cancel each other out (forming a bell curve), so you'd have a much stronger chance of gaining success.

How's that for a basic system?  I just came up with it, so it's definitely open to tweaking and completely different suggestions.

I worry that this idea would lead to a painfully complex design, but in concept - the Real World provides us with complications for which Fantasy cares not - is excellent.

Right now it doesn't look that complex, but I guess I wasn't really aiming for a "realistic" depiction of the real world.  If we want to emphasize the point that the real world sucks, I think we can do that with a pretty simple mechanic and just repeat it all the time (to imitate the drugery and petty failure that reality excells at).

Maybe instead of a layered mechanic, one could represent the difficulty of Reality in another way - maybe every conflict in Reality has some base level of difficulty, while the Story has a sliding scale of 'resistance' to the characters based on the stability of the shared fantasy. As the Story falls apart, it starts becoming more and more antagonistic to the characters, and finally it shatters, as maintaining the Fantasy in the face of this unsatisfying, maybe even painful, Story becomes too difficult.

I like the idea, but I have a hard time imagining exactly what you're describing.  Let me take a shot at it, though:

We're rolling D10s.  Reality has a basic difficulty of 7 (hello, Storyteller!).  The shared fantasy serves as a modifier to this difficulty, subtracting difficulty points depending on various things (the number fo people in the fantasy, the level of "unrealness," the length of the fantasy's existence, the general level of belief in the fantasy, etc.)  Your typical roll in reality serves to arbitrate a single event.  However, rolls in the fantasy world, which are much easier, arbitrate entire scenes.

Is that more like what you were getting at?

If the players, as children, are being terrorised by local bullies, they might move into a fantasy world with villains who must be overcome, and they eventually do this with bravery.  Then, returning to 'reality', they can defeat the bullies with a lot of 'bravery' stat boosts.

Hmm.  I do like the concept that your fantasies empower you, but I don't know how much I want to emphasize the characters' ability to do things in the real world.  If they simply use their fantasies as a way to strengthen what they can actually do, the fantasy becomes a means to an end.  I think I'd rather have the fantasy be the end in itself.  The characters are losing connection with the real world because their lives suck.  They don't particularly want to go back and "make things right" there.  They just want to stay in the fantasy world as long as they can.

Still, perhaps there's a way to integrate these concepts together, one that I'm just not seeing at the moment.


Thanks so much for all your help.  Keep this stuff coming!  Rip into the two dice mechanics and see what you can do...

Later.
Jonathan

[Blake Hutchins]

Sounds sorta Fisher King.  Cool.

Best,

Blake

[talysman]

what if you were to make the real world "realistic" and keep the fantasy world "rules-light"?

Whoa, cool idea alert!  But I'll go you one better...

What if, within their own fantasy, the characters can determine what rules they want to follow?  If we're already passing Author Stance around, there's no reason we also couldn't pass "Game Designer Stance" with it.

So say, in the real world, we've come up with a simple-but-uninteresting game mechanic: for every action, you roll 1dF (a Fudge die).  On a minus, you fail horribly.  On a blank, something boringly "normal" happens.  Only on a plus do you actually have any success.  However, after a plus you roll another die.  A negative cancels out the success, a blank makes your success only mediocre (and still somewhat depressing), and a plus continues the chain (and you get to roll another die).  This is used for every action, so you'll be rolling dice all the time in the real world.

So, almost 90% of the time, you're going to end up with depressing results.  Even if your first die succeeds, you second die will probably fail.

However, you'd build fantasies by building strings of pluses.  Maybe, to escape the basic drudgery of the real world, you'd need 3-4 successes in a row.  Perhaps initially, you'd need 5, but as you got better at this fantasy stuff, the number would go down.  So you'd be constaly rolling on little tiny things, hoping to eck out enough success in the real world to escape it's boundaries.

However, once in the fantasy, things are different.  You could decide what you wanted to roll for.  You'd probably only need rolls to dramatically increase the level of fantasy or to change existing components.  If you wanted to move from London Below (slightly fantastic) to Camelot (very fantastic, at least, when you're coming from the modern world), you'd need to roll.  If you character, who knows nothing about martial arts, wanted to suddenly break out some kung fu, that would take a roll.  However, once the bar had been raised, you could do anything you wanted within those limits.

Also, once in the fantasy, blanks become slightly-positive outcomes and only minuses would damage the fantasy (and you'd have to roll a bunch of them, over a period of time, to destroy the fantasy completely).  You could also decide how many dice you wanted to roll.  Lots of Fudge dice tend to cancel each other out (forming a bell curve), so you'd have a much stronger chance of gaining success.

How's that for a basic system?  I just came up with it, so it's definitely open to tweaking and completely different suggestions.

I worry that this idea would lead to a painfully complex design, but in concept - the Real World provides us with complications for which Fantasy cares not - is excellent.

Right now it doesn't look that complex, but I guess I wasn't really aiming for a "realistic" depiction of the real world.  If we want to emphasize the point that the real world sucks, I think we can do that with a pretty simple mechanic and just repeat it all the time (to imitate the drugery and petty failure that reality excells at).

that's sort of what I was thinking about, too, when I made my earlier suggestion. no complexity in the die rolls, but the Real World requires task-based resolution and is measured in 3.14 second rounds or something. and maybe all rolls should be opposed in the Real World, versus unopposed rolls in the fantasy. in fact, maybe the first opposed roll after dropping out of fantasy gets extra opposing dice based on how long the fantasy lasted?

[Jonathan Walton]

in fact, maybe the first opposed roll after dropping out of fantasy gets extra opposing dice based on how long the fantasy lasted?

Oooooh, there's a stealable mechanic.  Check this out:

You know how I said (in the first system attempt) how you'd need a string of "+" to build a fantasy?  Well, how many "+" you need could be based on your current situation.

-- If you're sitting behind your desk in the office, daydreaming of being somewhere else, you're going to need at least a "+++++" to get the hell out of Dodge.

-- If you've just watched a really great, fantastical movie that makes you feel empowered, you might just need "++++" to get out.

-- If you've just come from playing a LARP, where you and your friends imagined that you were doing all sorts of crazy things, you might just need "+++".

-- If you've already got a bunch of friends in a collective fantasy, ready to pull you in, you only need "++".

-- If you're still somewhat caught-up in the collective fantasy, but something is trying to cut you out of it or crush your dreams, you only need a single "+" to maintain tenative contact with the fantasy.

-- If you've just been cut out of a fantasy or were part of a fantasy that crashed & burned, reality hates you and wants to get even.  No matter what tricks you try to pull, you're going to need an additional "+++" to free yourself, even if a bunch of friends start building a fantasy around you.  This is in addition to whatever the current conditions are (office boy would now need "++++++++").  This penalty wears off if the character engages in "socialization," showing up for work on time, picking up the kids from school, going to high school reunions, whatever.  Reality will start trusting them again.

I still need to do some more thinking (and I like Taly's idea of opposed rolls against reality and unopposed against the fantasy), but that's at last a model of where this could be going.

Later.
Jonathan

[Torrent]

Maybe I just don't get the rationale behind it, but it seems like requiring good rolls to get into fantasy and bending reality against good rolls goes against the theme of the game.  I would think that the downtrodden and unhappy ones would be more likely to go into fantasy than those that are happy in reality.  

I guess this comes from my interpretation that it is more of the Quixote and Maxx like thing, where although the fantasy is 'real' it is based upon the mind of those in it.  Where Reality could really care less whether you live there or not.  Maybe that even gets into a theme or premise for the whole game, somehow give the players a reason to want to remain in reality, but bias the system toward having them in fantasy and making things easier there.  That gets back to the Changleing link, where fantasy is great and banality is bad, but too much fantasy leads to bedlam.  So the players have to balance between reality and fanasy.

Example: Calvin pops into fantasy usually when he is doing somethign he hates, homework, school, dinner... whatever.  And only gets slammed back usually when he hits a really hopeless situation in the fantasy.  So that, atleast in my mind, would say that a string of failures on either side would cause you to jump.  Just that the system in reality is more 'realistic' and prone to failures.

I still really like this concept.

Andy

[talysman]

Maybe I just don't get the rationale behind it, but it seems like requiring good rolls to get into fantasy and bending reality against good rolls goes against the theme of the game.  I would think that the downtrodden and unhappy ones would be more likely to go into fantasy than those that are happy in reality.  

more likely to want to go into fantasy, but maybe not more able. and although Reality could care less whether someone is living in a fantasy world or not, the conflict is really between the characters' fantasy and the characters' disgust with their real lives; thus, it's not really Reality that punishes the characters, but the characters themselves.

I could be wrong, but I think Jonathan is aiming for a game where the fantasy is the goal rather than success in the real world. the real world is the obstacle, it keeps dragging the characters back... character improvement in the game would allow the characters to stay longer and longer in the fantasy.

does that sound right, Jonathan?

[Jonathan Walton]

I would think that the downtrodden and unhappy ones would be more likely to go into fantasy than those that are happy in reality.

more likely to want to go into fantasy, but maybe not more able.

I think you're both right, in this case, and not really noticing it.  There's a couple points that might clarify this:

-- Rolling "+" on little everyday tasks doesn't necessarily mean a person is succeeding in life.  A homeless person living on the street could have a dream of his youth and then try really hard to recall memories of those days.  If he rolls some "+" and gets scraps of memory back, it could be enough to send him into a fantasy.

-- The "+" could be rolls for just about anything.  We're not talking significant tasks here.  Finding edible things in a can of garbage could count.  Just something interesting enough to pull the person out of the banality of the world and make them believe greater things are possible.  If constant failure drove people to fantasy, then reality would have a hard time being menacing, because if it did its job too well, its enemies would still escape.

-- The fact is, people who spent LARGE PORTIONS OF THEIR LIFE living in a fantasy world are going to have a hard time keeping a normal job, unless they're careful to make their escapades Narnian (i.e. however much time you spend in the dreamworld is like 5 minutes in reality).  Children could probably get away with it, but might not get the best grades in school.

-- Think of the ways there are to lessen the difficulty of entering a fantasy.  The easiest way is if you are on some serious drugs OR are certifiably insane OR are an artist.  The liklihood of any of these methods making you extremely wealthy are pretty slim.

-- Those who have less material and emotional attachment to reality should probably get bonuses to breaking away from it, because they have less to lose.  Reality, for the most part, is already ignoring them.  As in "Fight Club," a quick way to support your fantasy life would be to blow up your apartment.

Does that make sense?

the conflict is really between the characters' fantasy and the characters' disgust with their real lives; thus, it's not really Reality that punishes the characters, but the characters themselves.

Taly's right that this is more the tone I was going for.  The character's lives suck (though not as much as the characters in "kill puppies for satan").  If their lives were more interesting, they wouldn't feel the need to escape to a fantasy world.  They could just enjoy being alive.  Reality doesn't work for them, though it obviously works pretty well for some people (corperate execs, celebrities).  Instead of making their lives better (or because that would be close to impossible), they indulge in a little empowered escapism.

the real world is the obstacle, it keeps dragging the characters back... character improvement in the game would allow the characters to stay longer and longer in the fantasy.

Actually, no matter how powerful the characters are, I think I always want Reality to be a threat with teeth.  They'll never be able to escape it completely or even mostly.  After all, it's that tension that drives the game.  Eventually, they should be able to seriously extend their fantasy time, but not so much that they can just ignore everything else.

Advancement wouldn't just increase their DURATION of remaining in fantasy, but the SPEED at which they could build and rebuild fantasies.  They could gain new "trademark" components that could be popped in at will, they could go from Reality to Camelot or Space Opera or Looney Toons that much quicker, without all the intermediate steps of "that's not a road, it's a mag-lift."

At least, that's what I imagine at this point.

Later.
Jonathan

[Jonathan Walton]

In talking some with Willows and helping tweak the Torchbearer System, I think I've come to realize that those rules (with some slight modification) would lay a truly interesting foundation for what I'm trying to do with Q&C.  It sorta makes sense too, since Torchbearer was one of my original inspirations.

I'm going to start a new thread and see if I can sketch out how that might work.

Check it out here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=38895#38895

Hope to see you on the new thread.

Later.
Jonathan