The Calligrapher's Sword

[Ted E. Childers]

Qualities run a scale of three steps - Slightly, Rather, and Quite, corresponding to d4, d6, and d8.

Hey howdy Shreyas,

I can't stress enough how much I LOVE this idea.  I've fell in love with this concept ever since Marvel Super Heroes introduced (as far as I know) the idea of using a word descriptor in place of numeric rank.  Instead of saying he has a 50 in strength, you would say he has AMAZING strength.  

Slightly, Rather, and Quite is brilliant.  Each rank corresponding with a die is also a neat twist.  Are you going to continue the trend with d10, d12, and d20?

A cool idea that comes to mind with regards to dreams is the thought of using a dream interpretation book to help you design stories.  Find out the true meaning of being chased by a sissors wielding maniac or being slowly eaten by ants (well, at least what they mean in whatever dream book you pick up).  It could really help with coming up with ideas.

- Ted

[Shreyas Sampat]

Ted,

I'm not going any farther with the dice mechanic.  The farther I expand it, the faster it breaks down, in two ways:
The numbers become less useful.
The descriptors lose meaning.

To prevent this, I centred the attribute levels around the default die, and used descriptors that I felt had a self-evident relationship.  To be perfectly honest, I don't know what I would name higher die-types, though lesser ones could be 'Hardly', 'Not at All'...
As it stands, a character gets one quality of each level.

As for dream interpretation,
I thik that would be appropriate for a more realistic dream game, that aims to describe the psychological experience of dreaming.  As it's evolved, this game is much more about experiences in a world that shares qualities with the dream-world, but has its own arcana.  When I already have the complexity of Words and Calligraphy, I wouldn't want to add that as an explicit technique, though it would be interesting to use as a source of ideas.  Besides, my most interesting dreams never showed up in the books.

My current thoughts on the Calligraphy system:
I'm working on a set of symbols right now.  In order to keep from going insane, I'm making them as the Cartesian product of 12 'themes' and 9 elements.
The Elements are Earth, Water, Wood, Fire, Metal, Air, Space, Light, and Darkness.  I'm distilling the associations of various cultures to get useful, interesting correspondences for all these.
The themes are more nebulous; so far there's the 'pure elements' theme, which is the set of elements themselves, and the 'representative animals' theme.  Other themes might include emotions, mystical numbers, etc.

[Peregrine]

Hi, thinking about the setting (and taking into account that you are trying to steer away from dream interpretation too much), I still think you might find Jyngian Archetypes interesting. Even if just becuase they are pretty primal, adn we do see them again and again in stories, they'd strike a chord with players while at the same time being kind of surreal.

Maybe look some up onthe web, but in particualr I was thinking the shadow-self, the dark side of us could be good to work with. Either internally (ala Star Wars/Golum) or externally (ala Earthsea) a shadow-self would probabl be the most terrifying opponent a character might have to face in the dreaming.

Incidently, I think you've made a good point about the skill steps above.

Just an idea

[Shreyas Sampat]

*rereads topic*

On Dream Interpretation:
On further meditation, I think that this material will be valuable to me, the designer, as I work on the game.  I'll definitely look into it.  However, I don't want the game to be about interpretation.  It's about lucidity, creation.
So, things like dream interpretation books and Jungian archetype theory would make bloody awesome setting material, but at the same time, they should be a backdrop for the action going on in front of them.  I find that players, confronted with this kind of wild world of shifting images, pull up archetypes and symbols well enough on their own.  Thanks for the suggestion, guys.  It was my fault I didn't recognize its value for so long.

The Shadow-Self:
This is a really cool idea.  I want to look into the literature further before I do anything with it, but I agree that that sort of adversary would be one of the most powerful things you could put up against a player.

[kaworuiskool]

Wow. I had a similar setting idea once, watching utena. It's really neat to see your take on it. I see those Jungian archetypes have goten involved already. Oh, and fighting with words is just the perfect invention for opposed resolution. Makes me want to find players and sit them down with this one.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Adversaries in The Calligrapher's Sword:
Adversaries in this game are unfailingly a character's psychological demons.  These can be vaguely divided into three categories: Guilt adversaries, Fear adversaries, and Temptation adversaries.

I don't have a lot on what differentiates these, but as I see it, the shadow-self corresponds to the Temptation adversary, Guilt are spectres of those the character has harmed, and Fear is ...fear.

Since these creatures aren't quite cool enough to be Dreams, but are certainly not people, they're a whole different type of dream-being, with some new thing rather than Awake or Asleep as their third quality.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I put up a working version of the game (basically finished, awaiting the The Script and examples of play) at http://www.geocities.com/torchbearer_rpg/calligrapher.html.

[Jonathan Walton]

Hey Shreyas,

Finally got a chance to read through the new CS draft.  Sorry it took me so long.

First thought:  Wow.  Really evocative.  Early on, I was doubtful that your mechanics were going to gel well with the concept, or, at least, figured they weren't going to gel as well as in Torchbearer or Rain.  You've proved me wrong.  Though the mechanics are a little dice-heavy for my current tastes, they do a nice job of doing what you want them to.

At first, I didn't really get "Import" at all, trying to figure out why you were making such a big deal about understanding what was going on.  But in the randomness of dreams, that IS a big deal.  I guess my mind was drifting more towards the stable dreamworlds of Lovecraft and less towards organized chaos.  Still, some examples of unexpected, bizarre occurances would be helpful.  In that vein, including examples of just about everything, like you did in the current draft of Torchbearer, would be sweet.

In the "other things that confused me" category, your description of the required dice in the mechanics section is a little opaque.

You will need three six-sided dice of one color, and a d4, d6, and d8 of three other colors; this makes twelve dice total. Of these other colors, assign one to Awake/Asleep, one to Aware, and one to Intense.

Okay, does this mean all the d4's are the same color?  Do you have matching sets of 1d4, 1d6, & 1d8 of three seperate colors?  After a while, I can figure out what you mean, but it isn't obvious at first.

Another mechanical issue: Is it possible to use more than one Quality die in a single roll?  Is it possible to use more than one Illumination at once?  If either of these are the case, I don't think getting a 6+ is going to be that hard.  I do like the way you've stacked the deck towards stagnance, confusion, and sorrow though.  Really captures the feeling of dreams.

Speaking of Longing, Import, and Sorrow, they seem inconsistantly named.  For instance, if I assign Sorrow a value of 8, that seems to mean that I should be "very Sorrowful" when, mechanically, it means I'm "not very Sorrowful."  But, if you change them to reflect positive values (say, "Joyful"), it puts a happy spin on the game that does it a disservice.  Not sure what I recommend there.

That's all I've got for now.  Of course, I'm dying to see them dream language you're working on, but that can wait.  I'll let you know if I come up with anything else.

[Shreyas Sampat]

On Dice:
Yeah, this phrasing bothered me for a long time.  What it's supposed to say is that you need a set of three different dice in each colour.  ::goes and corrects that::

Yeah, the mechanics are pretty dice-heavy.  I don't know how much I like that, but it certainly works okay on paper, so far.

On Examples:
That's tonight's project; examples of play, right after I finish the laundry.  No telling how good they'll be, but it's always worth trying.  I think I'll try to continue the thing with Ethan and the Duchess turning into birds; that was cool.

On Mechanics:
Yes, to both of your questions.  The hopelessness of the situation is more or less illusory; you can always make yourself feel good spending Somnolence or tossing around Words.  (Well, if you can afford it.)  

I think you, a few lines up, gave a possible answer to your own Sorrow question.  Notice you said "stagnance, confusion, and sorrow"?  Well, I could never give up Sorrow.  It's essential.  But stagnation and confusion... lengthy words, but so powerful.    (I really want to use Ennui for one of them, but which?)  How about Mystery, Sorrow, and Suppression?  (I can't really find a good "opposite pole" for Longing; Suppression and Ennui are it.)

On the dream language:
I'm going through my tarot and "ma jiang as divination" books now, and trying to derive designs that are not only elegant but also drawable by ordinary people, at least recognizably.  It's hard.  I'll post a few on the site and drop you a line about them when I can.

[Jonathan Walton]

Maybe if you gave a specific list of the dice that were needed, and suggested colors for each Quality?  So you say "Red (1D4, 1D6, 1D8)," etc.  That would certainly make things clearer.  I think the dice-heaviness is probably okay.  You'll just have to see how it works in playtest.

"Sorrow" is perfect.  "Suppression" doesn't really do much for me, though; I vastly prefer "Ennui."  And your "Mystery" trumps my "Confusion," just by being much more evocative.  Perhaps you could justify "Ennui" by claiming that it's not actual accomplishment that matters so much in dreams, as much as clarity of purpose.  The moment you stop caring about outcomes, that's when you become stagnant and unable to move forward.  What d'ya think?

Keeping my fingers crossed on the dream language.  I'm sure it'll rock.

Later.
Jonathan