Torchbearer: Boxes within Boxes

[Shreyas Sampat]

There is a legendary sanctum at Veamaandhi's Basilica of Red Cliff.  It can hardly be called a chamber; at best it's a pavilion.  It sits atop the Great Hall, open on all sides to overlook the Sea of Years to the east and the coastal farmlands to the west, until they end at the tip of the mountains of the Jaw.  The window facing the sea is always hung with a red cloth, to symbolize the Goddess's presence.

The room's floor is circular and made of tightly stretched skin.  When you walk across it, it beats like a huge heart - softly, muffled, but undeniable.  The ceiling is the same; when the floor moves, the ceiling sounds in response.  The effect is like being inside a drum.

The sanctum is blessed by Veamaandhi, and it has strange powers - it Sounds the Truth of Spoken Word.  The truth, spoken here, is echoed by the booming of the drum-floor; lies inevitably fall flat.

Everything in Torchbearer can have Traits.  The World, a village, a little girl's doll.  What's this mean?  Any of these Traits, if nearby, can be invoked to resolve a conflict.  Traits of less Myth than the conflictors are trivial, but there are things like Veamaandhi's Floor - which has a Legendary power to detect the truth.  This is why no one lies to the priests of the Scarlet Goddess.

This makes it possible to do very interesting tricks with environmental Traits.  Want to run a monster-movie episode?  Set the Story's Myth higher than the Characters', and give it a Trait that permits stupefyingly foolish actions to be performed with impunity.  Want to play a game about good and evil?  Give the World a Vision that reinforces that; characters are rewarded for acting in accord with it.  

Or something.  Can I really do that?  Define reward frameworks dynamically, by setting Traits of situations?  Give characters the ability to grab onto hooks of the situation in such a tangible, crunchy way?

[Andrew Martin]

Or something.  Can I really do that?  Define reward frameworks dynamically, by setting Traits of situations?  Give characters the ability to grab onto hooks of the situation in such a tangible, crunchy way?

Why not? I can't see a problem with that at all. I don't know that it needs to be "crunchy"; just describe it with lots of colour and players could interpolate that there's a trait or three hanging around for their characters to use.

[GreatWolf]

That's something similar to an idea that has been tucked in the back of my head about Alyria.  I haven't stated this explicitly in the rules yet, but part of my concept has always been including groups/institutions as a potential part of a storymap and using exactly the same process of chargen to create these nonperson story elements.

For instance, we ran one game set on a mistship.  The crew (as a unit) was given Attributes and Traits.  It works quite well and, incidentally, also provides a stat template for an "average" member of that group.

Your idea is a bit broader than mine, but I see no reason why it couldn't work.  Is Veamaandhi's Floor going to be part of the story?  Then give it Traits, Duty, Vision, etc.  (Doesn't that make it a Pyre?)  I think that this will have precisely the effect that you want.  In addition, it also allows for minor Traits to be given out to random locations.  For instance, two characters are dueling with phoenixes while climbing the White Cliffs of Serenity.  The GM might say that this location, while nothing special (i.e. not a Pyre), has the Trait "A beautiful view/and a nasty fall".  Now the battle just became a tad more interesting.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[Emily Care]

Your idea is a bit broader than mine, but I see no reason why it couldn't work.  Is Veamaandhi's Floor going to be part of the story?  Then give it Traits, Duty, Vision, etc.  (Doesn't that make it a Pyre?)  I think that this will have precisely the effect that you want.  In addition, it also allows for minor Traits to be given out to random locations.  For instance, two characters are dueling with phoenixes while climbing the White Cliffs of Serenity.  The GM might say that this location, while nothing special (i.e. not a Pyre), has the Trait "A beautiful view/and a nasty fall".  Now the battle just became a tad more interesting.

Let me see if I'm understanding four willow's idea:

minor traits (like the "nasty fall") would be simple, non-magical descriptors of objects/places etc. that can affect conflicts some how (ie somebody can suddenly get thrown off the cliff)

more significant traits (like Veamaandhi's floor's truth telling ability) can be supernatural traits,  or natural traits that are uncommon and powerful, and also can be used to affect story and characters.

Are you saying that these traits can be added in the course of play as well as at the start or whenever setting is established?  So that traits can be introduced about objects or places that have already appeared in play?  And who may introduce them? If any participant can, then that is a handy way to lend players narrative power.  I'm in favor of that.  I'm reminded of Donjon by it, except that instead of narrating events etc. after the conflict resolution, players are being encouraged to create modifiers by making up salient aspects of the world before the conflict resolution.

Am I getting your drift?

--Emily Care

[GreatWolf]

Emily,

I think that we're communicating.  I actually probably wasn't as clear as I should have been, though.  :-)

I see two positive effects of Willow's idea.  The first effect is the ability to define significant places as "characters" in their own right.  The second is a mechanical method to reflect minor environmental traits (like "nasty fall").  Whoever has Directorial power could invoke these, I think.

But, as I reread the original post, I realize that I missed the actual point.  Silly me.  The actual question didn't relate to places or objects.  It related to the larger "metagame".  Willow wants to know if there should be a story object called "The World" with its own Duty, Vision, Traits, etc. that can be called upon by any character and which functions as a framework for play.

I can see strengths and weaknesses in this approach.  Strengths include the ability to define mechanical rewards up front, so that everyone knows what expectations are and can modify character behavior appropriately.  It also allows for a firmly defined way for characters to change the world by allowing them to induce Crises in the World's Duty, etc.  Early drafts of Alyria employed a similar concept (and as I mentioned, it still floats in the back of the design), and I think that this could provide excellent focus to a long-term campaign game.

A weakness that I see, though, is that such a framework could prove to be too constricting at the beginning of play.  Many times there are themes, ideas, or moods that are discovered only through play.  Trying to define too many at the beginning to prove to be destructive to this in-play generation.  So, this framework could not be all-inclusive or too limiting in order for it to work.

So, I'd say that it is an idea worth exploring, so long as it is kept as a broad framework and not slide into becoming the script for the campaign.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[Mike Holmes]

This is exactly the design goal behind my Synthesis system.

Mike

[Jonathan Walton]

My own thoughts...

Emily: As far as I can tell, there really isn't a strong distiction between "magical" and "non-magical" properties in Torchbearer.  It really tries to make everything have the power of myth, so there's magic in everything, even in the beautiful view of the White Cliffs and the deadliness of the fall.

Seth: I don't think Shreyas means to make World a permanent story object, but simply allow the players to attach modifying traits onto any story objects they wish, be it a scene, a location, a character, a mood, a series of interactions, the world, or a moment.  These could be as lasting or as ephemeral as the players like, I imagine.

I also agree with Andrew that it doesn't need to be that crunchy.  All the crunch in Torchbearer comes from the core mechanic that 1 Trait = 1 Die under normal circumstances, so using various Traits in interactions is easy.  Bringing in various environmental factors would allow characters to take advantage (or disadvantage) of their surroundings.

I also like it because it, effectively, makes everything alive in a very animistic sense.  You're giving Traits to the terrain and the story the same way you give Traits to characters.  In fact, that could explain phenomenae like the Hollow & Wheat Gods.  They're simply parts of the environment that have gained enough Traits to be considered seperate entities entirely.

Finally, it would let the players work out conflicts between different parts of the environment/setting!  Say, for example, the Eternal God-Storm is destroying everything in it's path, heading directly for the Monastery of the Essential Silence.  You could actually roll for the conflict between the Monastery and the God-Storm to see whose myth was stronger!

Later.
Jonathan

EDIT: One more point... making the setting alive goes a long way towards making it easier for Torchbearer to support GM-less/collaborative playing styles.  If I can take the "role" of the God-Storm and someone else can "play" the Monastery, you now have a scene that can be enacted without any "characters," at least in a traditional sense.

PLAYER 1 (Storm):  "Surrender and open your gates to me, for, though I respect the deep stillness that pours from within your four walls, nothing may stand in my path.  I am the subduer of nations and dieties, and you are a lesser thing."

PLAYER 2 (Monastery):  "Blow elsewhere, foul wind, for, in the 200 years that I have sat in meditation on this rocky soil, nothing has broken the quiet purity of my thought.  I think you will not be the first."

PLAYER 1 (Storm):  "We shall see."  Okay, I burn 3 drops of Fuel to raise the Storm's myth quantity, plus 1 more drop to change 'Knows Not Gentleness' from a Smoke to a Flame.

PLAYER 2 (Monastery):  I'm using the Monastery's 'Font of Tranquility' Ember to create the Coal 'Eye of the Storm'/'Karma is Inevitable'.

etc.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I observe that when I ask a question in its infancy, before it has formed completely even in my mind, I get much more varied and interesting responses, like these.

Crunchiness I don't really feel justified in calling Torchbearer crunchy, to tell you the truth.  It's crunchy like bakalava - it has a veneer of flaky layers over a core of buttery honey-almond goodness.  Okay, maybe not like that...

Boxes A box is my colloquial shorthand for any entity - World, Story, whatever, that has Traits that can be used to advantage by the Characters inside, as if through a concerted action.  Boxes can be of two types: with defined Myth and without.  Each has its strength and weakness:
Defining Myth has a profound effect on conflicts, effectively giving a cutoff point for where the box's effects can be made negligible; below that point they are either significant or dominating.
Undefined Myth has the effect that the box's Traits are significant at any level of Myth.  This is pretty weird, but interesting.

Less Significant Entities, Incomplete Characterizations This is an idea I came up with while reading this thread over.  Much of the Character terminology - notably locutions like Pyre and Lantern - are shorthand for "things like Characters, but aren't people".  Suppose that no Characterized entity is required to have every property - Myth, Vision, Duty, Traits.  Even player-Characters can be "poorly-defined" at the start of play and acquire definition through Crisis.
Then we can do things that were in my original conception of Torchbearer, like setting a baseline of Myth for everything by making that the Myth of the World, as well as things like setting Visions for large boxes, rewarding players for acting in Colour, and Duties for larger boxes, rewarding for acting towards an end.

Restriction I think that the idea of incomplete characterization and dynamic modification solves this; at Setup the people with D-power only arrange the elements that they definitely want, and leave the rest up to play.  Crisis is powerful (though I realize now that I've failed to provide a discussion, in the document, on Crises that create qualities rather than change them; I suppose the next draft will see those.)  I'm really glad you brought this up - the idea of dynamically creating Characters, though it seems to be increasingly popular, was something I never considered for Torchbearer, but was definitely getting under my skin, especially when I turned my attention to Ron's observation about the effects of simultaneous detailed Characters and Setting in Nar-focused games.

Directorial Power This is something I've been wrestling with in TB; who has it?  I've explicitly used Ron's suggestion that the winner of a conflict gets narration power over it, but is free to choose whichever outcome was proposed; is this Directorial?