[ERA d6] Mutaiji - Dark Neolithic Demon Hunting (Long Post)

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Okay, I've truncated the name of my system, which I've been calling AVERA, to just "ERA d6."  I say d6 because I've been working on other mechanics, and a second edition may use custom dice.  Someone can reply here if that's been taken.  Anyhow, I've been working on my demon-hunters-ish (think Claymore or Inu Yasha) game, Mutaiji, for some time now.  Instead of giving it a Japanese name, I may just call it "ERAdicators" in light of the new name of the system.

The world of Mutaiji has strong apocalyptic and neolithic themes, but it's not literally apocalyptic.  The world is harsh, and people must band together to survive.  Small civilizations are just starting to bud, and have not the time, resources, or proximity to war with each other.  Instead, they must war with the Mu.

The Mu is/are a set of primal ideas, with no true physical form.  Conceptually and thematically, you can say that they're much like psychoses and neuroses, including things from a simple phobia to schizophrenia.  They manifest themselves by controlling reality, from within the mind and without.  Some command living creatures into battle.  Others can turn entire forests or beaches into a hellish nightmare.  Many are a nuisance or simply benign.  They share in common ways alien to our mode of existence. 

Those being controlled by the Mu are called "sleepwalkers."  The reality that mankind must struggle with is that each one of them has either been a sleepwalker themselves at one point, or is a descendant from them.  All evidence points to the fact that humanity was once completely a part of this horror, and evolved from beasts at the whim of the Mu.

The heroes, or Taijiya, come in many forms.  But all must have something that allows them to combat the Mu.  Some come from tribes of evolved homonids, with physical and sense capabilities far above those of homo sapiens.  Others have harnessed the power of the Mu, taking some of its taint upon themselves in order to control it, and thus have some influence over reality as Mediums.  Still others are able to develop technology such as living biosuits as weapons and armor versus the Mu.  Of course, a character may have some aspects of all three.

Exorcism is a complicated business.  Ostensibly, the ultimate goal is to eradicate the Mu completely, but not a single person is sure this is possible.  To exorcise a Mu can sometimes mean physical combat, but it's rarely that simple.  More often, clues to the nature of the Mu will be given, and only a process of investigation can lead to the exorcism.  Since only the more powerful Mu can take physical form themselves, it can sometimes be paradoxically harder to beat Mu of much lower power level, since they are so much more enigmatic and detached.  To boot, most humans are sleepwalkers, but most sleepwalkers are not human, and so civilization is outnumbered.  There will be plenty of beasts, both prehistoric (with a preference for the odd) and fantasy.  Sometimes it's not so easy to tell if a creature is a sleepwalker, and this is especially true for natural predators.  Some other beasts defy logic in their existance.  They depend upon the Mu and cannot exist without the power over reality sleepwalking gives them.  If they awaken, they die.  There even happens to be a homonid species like this.  Perhaps even more dangerous, however, are Taijiya that have somehow turned sleepwalker; a fate worse than death, and a formidable opponent.

Eradicators will also have a philosophy they run by.  Some believe that sleepwalkers are humans just like us.  After all, though it is rare, sleepwalkers can awaken.  Aside from any mutilations that may be on their body, awakened sleepwalkers are for all intents and purposes human.  The psychoses that they often suffer from are no different from those experienced by others in this harsh world.  Taijiya of this philosophy look hardest for a more reliable way of awakening sleepwalkers, and avoid the loss of life at all costs.  Others believe instead that the Mu is simply an expression of the universe, and that some concession to the Mu must be made.  Still others believe in the utter annihilation of the.  And though all evidence is to the contrary, some few others believe that the existence of the Mu really is proof of an apocalypse; a scourge that exists because of the sins of living beings.  They believe that the true defeat of the Mu can only come about by solving a greater philosophical puzzle of existence, likely related to atoning for past wrongs.  They refuse to exorcise Mu from the unworthy.  Parties of Taijiya are often made up of a mix of these philosophies; and sometimes even contain more original outlooks.  Bands and villages, however, tend to each be more uniform in beliefs; and even form cults/religions around such ideals.

Story-arcs for most Taiji can range from 1 to 3 sessions, but Campaigns may have Mu which survive from Story-arc to story arc, to only be exorcised in a final battle.  Other side stories can occur, but the focus will be on Taiji.

Questions:
1. What do you think about the name, either Mutaiji or ERAdicators?  I haven't done a lot of searching to see if either is taken, and I'm pretty flexible on this.

2. I've obviously taken a page from Mushishi and Ghost Hunt (manga/anime), in conceptual Mu exorcism.  The puzzles will be primarily association games with structured rules.  Every puzzle should have at least a few correct answers, and players should be encouraged to be creative about it, but they shouldn't be able to draw undue associations, lest it become too easy.  I'm not sure where to start with this.

3. Playable races are all members of the genus Homo.  I imagine most players will want to play Homo sapiens or some specially adapted fantasy race.  Neanderthals may have their own slight physical advantages, too.  I lean on the side of highly intelligent homonids, but I imagine species like Erectus or Habilis may end up being villages of extras.  Due to setting, Language is a non-issue, so you'll get no caveman speak.  Sure, humankind doesn't have access to metallurgy or quality textiles.  I see the design for the game as tight, black-leather, and sleek thin crystalline-grown exotic weapons.  I suppose you might categorize it as Post-neolithic Punk?  This is a game about getting back to our roots as humans, in a beautifully dark world.  Anyhow, do you think it's possible to break away from the "caveman" stereotype with this design idea?

-Jason T.

[Justin Nichol - BFG]

I think getting away from caveman speak is fine. I mean, caveman speak is kind of a silly concept, our species has never really spoken like that. Original languages would not have been especially sophisticated but they would be able to communicate with the intelligence of a human being albeit one who has not been educated especially well or experienced much outside of a particular lifestyle. When I first read it, it almost felt like a post-apocalyptic thing. It might sound cheesy, but there may be ways, after the collapse of a genetically engineering human civilization to have strange creatures, Chimera if you will roaming the land alongside revived dinosaurs, and have what's left of Homo Sapiens be the specter of what was once this civilization. This is especially true if you have biosuits and the like. Maybe this was already what you were planning. If it is. I see no reason why there would be any question as to Caveman speak. Although Neanderthals did have vocal chords which were far less developed than our own, despite their in some ways, superior intellect.

As for the rest, the Eradicators seem to me a lot like Yamabushi, which I personally like. I say this because of their propensity for exorcism both through spiritual/mental and also through physical conflict.

As for the name, I think it's good, but when you're writing it in the actual book, as a graphic designer I personally dislike when one part of a word is big and the other parts are small because it throws off the balance of the word. Consider if you do make an ashcan or PDF of this, have Era be one color and dicators another, just so the balance is maintained while still differentiating the words.

I really like the primal feel of the game and the Mu, it reads to me like a very moody, spooky Anime. If possible, could you have the Mu take some form even if it is just something horrifying from the persons own subconscious. Maybe it's just me, but I think lots of people have a psychological need to see the villains true form at some point, to look terror in the face.

[Vulpinoid]

This sounds like a really good idea for a game.

Depending on the specific timeframe for the game there could be quite a few ways to take this.

Going back far enough into prehistory, there are current scientific thoughts that various strains of homonid walked the earth at the same time; some died out, while others interbred to form the current range of humans.

Going forward into the future, you could play with the post-apocalyptic genetic deviations described by Justin.

Either gives scope for a dynamic range of races that are different from what we see in typical fantasy fare.

From a scientific perspective, the Mu of the past could be remnants of a bygone era, percieved as spirits or voodoo loa, or kami and oni, etc. Future based mu could be remnants of a nanotechnology that infuses it's host and drives them insane.

There are a lot of really great directions that this could take.

Good luck with the exploration of concepts.

V

[J. Scott Timmerman]

You know, if other GMs want to use this setting, and throw in a twist of post-apocalyptic, that's fine by me.  I, however, don't want to do the whole "Planet of the Apes" thing.  As you've said, Justin, it's cheesy. 

With the various adapted fantasy humanoids I was going to create, the basic premise is that they have been bred that way by the Mu.  All of human intelligence is the result of harsh "weeding out the weak" tactics employed by the Mu.  Humans are only one result of this, however.  Like I said, there are many other fantasy beasts that exist only to serve the whims of the Mu.

I go out on a bit of a limb in creating the "adapted" traits that some species have.  At their most extreme levels, for instance, eyes might be able to see like microscopes down to the cellular level, or like binoculars, recognizing individuals several miles away from a mountaintop.  Muscles might be able to lift a ton or more above one's head. 

Explanation of these things will be simplified in-game.  Characters know about heredity, and may have even heard about genetics.  But they probably do not know the secrets of breeding the biological suits and weapons, which only few have access to.  Characters know that crystals "grow", but don't quite have the chemistry to know how to seed a pool of mineral water from a spring or cave such that a crystal will grow into something suitable as a knife.

These marvels of technology are not created based on thousands of years of experimentation and working on the shoulders of genius.  For some species, creating technology has become half-instinct, a relic of being bred as tacticians and sorcerers in Mu "armies."  As much as possible, though, beyond these biological abilities, and the reality-bending force of the Mu, the laws of physics are our laws of physics.

As this is a fantasy setting, I'm not trying to base any cultural elements or locations, at least not specifically, on the world we know.  I don't want to take the direction that this is our past.  This is not Earth's human-neolithic era.  This is the neolithic era of a fantasy world, with its own dark past and hopefully its own future. 

Again, I'm not trying to limit what other GMs may wish to do with the game, I just don't want to incorporate any "leading" ideas into the game as I create it.  I don't want to set in canon that there is any relation to our world, that there was any past great civilization, or that their future will be anything like our present.  If I were to do that, I'd feel as if I were dragging this world into yet another stereotypical rut from which it could not be pulled out.

Something I forgot to post initially: One of the few signs of uniformity in the Mu is that the Mu has its own set of mental symbols it uses to psychically control creatures.  All language has arisen based upon this symbology.  So even different dialects are mutually intelligible, and even Sleepwalkers awaken with linguistic ability.

A note about my second question, on the association games:  I don't want the "rules" for how Mu work to involve any dice.  If you think of the ERA d6 system as the superstructure, you can think of the rules for Mu as more of a setting-entrenched subset of the system.  Ideally, there would be a systematic way for the GM to roll up a Mu, or even think of one without any tables, and determine what clues the players might get.

I don't want the rules to require any real in-game knowledge, either.  A beginner to the game should be able to understand them and know how conceptual Taiji works, and yet I don't want there to be much of an increase in ability with experience.  The only way I can think of is to make the ideas for Mu theoretically infinite.  I keep wanting to turn it into a numbers game somehow, but I keep having to stop myself there.  I know I could get closer to these goals, but that wouldn't fit with the theme of the game.  I could also create lists of association groups, but I don't want these associations to require charts as much as logic. 

Thanks for your thoughts, both of you.  I appreciate the feedback.  Yeah, the whole caps/small letters thing is kinda ugly.  I think I'll stick with "Mutaiji" as the official name for now.  My playtesters seem to like it better, too.

In case anyone is wondering, the "Mu" character I'm using is 夢, the character for "Dreams" or "Nightmares".  It is in reference to the dreamlike logic they follow, and their ephemeral nature. 

-Jason T.

[Abkajud]

Really interesting setting and feel! Wow!
I'm really interested about what the Mu used these hominid armies for. I'm guessing they fought each other with them, which I guess would mean that there are various Mu "factions" or something. Sleepwalkers might even find themselves going after other sleepwalkers sometimes, not just humanity in general.

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Abkajud,

That really would make sense on certain levels.  My sense of the Mu is that they don't sense the world as humans do, and have distinctly inhuman motives.  But they still have motives.

If, for instance, you were to play Mutaiji from the perspective of the Mu, I could think of a couple ways it would play out.  These are probably more useful for modeling the Mu from a GM perspective than to actually make a game out of.  I'm just using this to describe, to gamers, how the Mu might think.

Simpler, less developed Mu would simply be performing their role.  The goal is what they are currently doing.  The game is to keep a mechanism running; the mechanism being their very existance.  This might even be something benign, like changing the color of the moon's reflection on the water.

Mechanisms for beings of moderate power could be something like simply having one's sleepwalkers peel the bark off of every tree in sight.

For the more advanced Mu, living creatures would be game pieces, and the goal of the game would be to get those game pieces into odd configurations conforming to some complex, insane ideal.  The positions on the board would not necessarily be physical space, but rather archetypes and mental constructs combined in mad combinations.  This might seem, from the outside, that someone is trying to stage the later act of a play based on an LSD trip someone had inside a meat-processing plant.

Especially from the perspective of the powerful Mu, two Mu could easily have conflicting ideals in the state of their "game."  The fact that humanity was bred and born of the Mu means that the current state of humanity probably meets some unifying ideal among the Mu, just as much as it means the same for the deranged horrors it also birthed.

But achieving these ideals certainly wouldn't be something as simple as fighting over territory.  Their "territory" is a matter of setting upon reality their ideas of what reality should be. 

And certainly conflict between humans could be played out by the Mu, but couldn't the conflict itself also be the goal of the game?  Rather than simply be to destroy the sleepwalkers of other Mu, could it not simply be that a single puppeteer Mu wishes for a certain strange type of war?

-Jason T.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jason,

Are you familiar with the game Primitive? I think it's laid some great groundwork for the kind of game you're talking about, although it's very different in some ways. You should especially look at its language rules because they are the complete opposite of what you've described. I say this not because I think you should "do it like Primitive," but because comparisons of different but functional options are worthwhile.

Best, Ron

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Ron,

I took a look at the concept online.  It looks like an interesting game in its own right, but I don't think it's what I'm looking for here.

Even if I were going to focus on linguistic barriers in this game, I actually have my own ideas I'd like to try out for that.  But when I went over the concept of what I really want to do with Mutaiji, I.E., exploring the forms of the mind and basic human existentialism, I decided that two people playing cherades with each other or trying different variants of the word "Ugh" would really get in the way of that.

Don't get me wrong - I understand the profound connection between language and (especially human) thought.  I know that how we think about the world can be shaped by how we choose to communicate our thoughts about it.  But Mutaiji is about the fundamental kinship of our homonid cousins to us.  I find it sad that only through fantasy can we really transcend our differences.  And in that fantasy, I choose not to highlight them.

That said, if there is anything in Primitive besides the language rules you think I might benefit from looking at, maybe I'll still consider it.  Right now, though, I think resources like Anthropology textbooks and encyclopedias might be of more help in my effort to mine for prehistoric color.

------

I'm trying to coalesce some ideas on the conceptual exorcisms / association games right now.  Let me just say that exploring how we look at things and what connections/associations people make in their minds is making turning it into a game harder.  Everyone thinks different, so I somehow inevitably have to connect my associations to tradition, myth, or simple worldly knowledge.  Initially I was thinking well, certain things are self-evident, like a circle is round.  But the general case isn't so clear cut.  Once I have something that might work, I'll post more on that. 

-Jason Timmerman

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jason,

I don't think I was clear enough about my goals in suggesting you look at Primitive. The goal was: check out Primitive as a counter-example for purposes of comparison. In other words, not "see Primitive for how to do your game," but rather, "see Primitive as a different thing from what you are doing, in order to nail down issues for your game."

You've stated your goals clearly and I fully support you not focusing on language issues (not that you need my support). Here are some things that I hope will be fun to consider, and which I hope will not give the wrong message that I must have conveyed by suggesting looking at Primitive.

At some points, there were as many as six distinct hominine species present in the same areas in central, eastern, and southern Africa. I know your setting isn't fully historical, but this historical point is inspiring and cool enough for me to look forward to all your various character options.

Me, I like Australopithecus. I mean, graceful little dudes, fully bipedal, about four-foot-five, runnin' around the plains in what were probably clan-like, extended-family groups and troops. Heads like chimps, but head placement, and tooth structure, like us. Hands, thumbs, the works (a little different from us on these, but not much). What were they like, cognitively? Probably not much different from chimps, but hey, chimps are pretty damn sophisticated and their social/emotional world doesn't seem much different from ours, so A. africanus and A. afarensis would probably be pretty familiar at that level too.

What was life like, for a more familiar human-type (some sort of Homo erectus, or early H. sapiens), in the presence of multiple hominid species? Not only some H. habilis, but some australopitchecines too. That boggles me. How did they interact? It's fascinating. I curse the tendency of large-ish mammals to go extinct, which has left our clade with the sole surviving species of ourselves. I want Lucy to be a living critter, damn it.

I realize that you're not making a game called Physical Anthropology 101, so I'm not bringing all this up to show off, nor to start a debate about the technical details. What I'm sayin' is, it's incredibly cool to use the reality of multiple, contemporary human and human-like species as an inspiration for your setting. And further, offered with full understanding that this is your game and not mine, it would be also cool to have the full range available, including australopithecines.

As a side point, I can recommend some references that challenge the widespread notion that "how we speak is how we think," if you're interested. I offer this because I think the point is consistent with your goals for your game, as you're stating them here. But that kind of moves us away from game design and will probably prompt a hideous reactive flame-war if we discuss it in detail, so if you're interested, send me a private message.

Best, Ron