Shadows in the Fog: New Stuff

[contracycle]

I really like Fangs idea about structuring the plot in some visible, connected format.  I've thought about literal maps before, but the INWO analogy makes sense.  Finding some sort of mechanical way to express story, such that even those who are not perticulalrly interested in story per se, or who would prefer to approach it only from an OOC appreciation, can do so.  I want to exploit that sort of thing essentially for sim purposes, as a kinda "scene generator" or similar.

Could an explicit "tension meter" be built? Can a plot be "mapped" and tokens moved on that map?  Getting a bit off topic I fear, but I just wanted to endorse the idea of the explicit layout in some form.

[clehrich]

I want to start by addressing Mike's comments about Assumption.  My version, in Shadows, doesn't have a punch-line.  To recap, Mike wondered, once you've Assumed, game over, right?  Well, in Shadows as I see it, yes and no.  

If you really Become the card, yes, game over.  You're not a person any more.  You have no control over your own self, but are at the whim and will of the universe (plus the bending effects caused by magicians).  You're just a force of nature, as it were.  NPC time.  In one game I ran, Jack the Ripper was in fact this sort of being, a Trump (XV: The Beast).¹  Was he a person before?  I don't know; never figured it out.  But the Power that is in that card manifested (for a lot of complicated reasons) in the East End as a vicious killer.  If there was a real, physical person in there, he was long since not in control of his actions.  He just enacted The Beast.  If you caught him and talked to him, you'd just say he was totally crazy, delusional, with illusions of grandeur (read: very severe schizophrenic).  But the truth was that he was The Beast.

If you Assume the role a whole lot, you're basically an addict with a really vicious dependency.  You NEED to be that role.  Unfortunately, lots of other people want it, too, whether they know it or not.  The Trumps that are open to challenge in any given universe are probably limited, because some roles have a really powerful current avatar --- who will soon be entirely absorbed and throw the whole thing open again (see above).  But if you're vying to Assume the Emperor, well, so are a lot of people.  The Prince of Wales, for one, though he doesn't know it.  And if you go really far down that path, my friend, you're liable to end up trying to assassinate the Prince of Wales.  On the other hand, of course, you're also extremely likely to succeed.  Is it any wonder that the Fenians keep trying to do stuff like this?  The more you succeed at eliminating competition, the more you succeed at Assuming the Trump, and so the more you will succeed at eliminating competition (and so on).  So if you're an Irish radical, striving to Assume the Emperor will help you bump off the royals and get what you want (control over at least some aspects of English sovereignty).  And of course, if you really pull it off, you're going to find yourself trying to crush those stupid Irish who keep challenging what is now YOUR role.

Beginning to get the picture?  This isn't nice, it isn't happy, and it's kind of warped.  It's not sick for the sake of sick, where (as in Unknown Armies) you have to be a nutball to get involved in the first place.  No, this is insidious.  Try it --- it's just a little.  You can give it up any time you want.  There.  Didn't that feel good?  Didn't you get a little power?  Well hell, it's a long way to Assumption and all that.  Have a little more.

In all this talk about mechanics, I hope nobody will lose sight of what for me is #1 in this game: atmosphere.  That's color, and characters, and plots, and everything.  Basically it's a lot of fog, and a lot of pain, and a lot of really really grimy things.  In real life that stuff is just absurd, meaningless, intractable; we make up stories to tell ourselves that it's not meaningless, that there must be some reason for it all.  And in my own spin on the Shadows universe (which I'm not forcing), what is created out of that need for order is the Trumps.  And then people start wanting to really impose order, through those channels --- that's magic.  Unfortunately, it's all basically wrong: the universe is uncaring, meaningless, and brutal, and none of what you're doing now is really going to change that.

To put it very succinctly.  You've heard of Jack the Ripper, right?  And you know he was never caught, right?  Okay, so ask yourself: why don't you know offhand the names of his five victims?  What kind of sick, twisted world is this, that we all have heard of the murderer, but nobody gives a damn about the murdered?  Anybody out there know the names of Zodiac's victims?  Or Bundy's?  Or Dahmer's?

So as I think about the whole Assumption thing, I need to be keeping in mind that Victorian England was a place that, even more than our own society, needed to imagine that there was a consistent, rational, intelligible order to things.  So they made up order where it didn't exist, and swept the chaos under the rug.  Assumption is capitalizing on the myth of order, but in the process it causes chaos.

Hope that helps.  :)

1. Traditionally XV is The Devil, but this was the weird William Blake cards, and the image was his "Great Red Dragon."

[clehrich]

Hmm.  A lot of really interesting ideas here, but frankly I think it's going a bit overboard.  What's getting lost in this explicit tabletop methodology, is the clear analogy of player to character.  I see Shadows in the Fog as being fairly immersion-heavy, leading towards that warped reversal: the characters start to become increasingly like the players are.

When I get a chance (probably late tonight), I'm going to walk through all of Fang's & contracycle's suggestions, and try to break them down into dicsrete units.  I think a distinction can be made, you see, between the basic How To Play stuff and a series of additional fun mechanics and structures, which can be more or less added on as a group chooses.  The problems with such things, as a rule, are numerous:

1. You may imply a "leveling-up" process, where X rules are the core, then Y rules are for pretty serious gamers, and Z rules are the real thing.  We don't want that here, I think.

2. You may imply that the add-ons are "frills," things that really don't do much but are kind of cool to kick around.  I see these add-ons as having radical effects on game-play, not being "a little more peanuts in my chocolate."

Basically I take my tip from my conception of Assumption in the context of Shadows.  It's not necessary for this to exist in the universe.  Even if it does, it really may not be a particularly desirable thing for anyone actually to do.  [see previous post on Assumption]

I would like these various add-on systems to have similar in-game realities and meanings.  What I think makes Assumption attractive is that it's a character thing that sounds a lot like extremist role-playing, but with seemingly nifty rewards, which is the point.  If I'm going to add a whole lot of special things about linking up multiple cards, or swapping roles around by bidding, or whatever, they need not only to be mechanically elegant, but to have some meaning, some purpose, some analogue, within the universe.

I could really see a kind of stack of these in Volume 3, with some explicit commentaries about what's going to happen if you use them, and why this is potentially good and bad.  If the universe includes Tarot cards and Assumption, that's a different universe.  What sort?  What will be emphasized?  Similarly, if the universe is such that people's lives are hopelessly intertwined, that every time they turn around they bump into the same five guys (because you keep Linking the plots), that's also a different universe.  It's not any less occult --- it's just that the emphasis is different.  And if you combine that with Assumption, you're going to start implying that there are really only so many actual people out there --- that we're all already Assumed avatars but don't know it, and that thus Assumption is not acquiring anything, but rather discovering something that's already true about you.  Who are you, really?

But if this is required, then that's the punch-line.  Ta-da!  No need to play the game.  I say let's keep it open.  Consider adding one of these things, or maybe two.  See what happens.  You're determining a Premise with a mechanic built to support it.  But you do not need to do this in order to make the game worth playing, because all of these are specific variants on the central premise: the slide from being Englishmen in London into being Occultists in Shadow-London, and the fact that this is largely caused by you being aware of and actively opposed to such occultists -- you have seen the enemy, and it is what you will be soon, and if you try to prevent that from happening you will definitely make it happen.

Anyway, I'll work on some specific responses.

[clehrich]

Hmm.  That seems to have affected discussion sort of like Jacky affected those five ... ugh.  Vile analogy.  Forget that.  You're probably all just waiting with bated breath for my responses to your suggestions, so here goes.  Sorry it's rather long, but I have to deal with three posts, one of them very detailed.

That may be a bit confusing, constantly flipping cards. How would 'titling the cards' be confusing; for plot cards "Jack the Ripper Turns Out to be a Vampyre!" by Fang Langford and then the regular information, for GMC cards, how about Jack the Ripper as portrayed by Fang Langford?

Seems reasonable enough, if a little more cinematic than I'd prefer.  I'd rather not insert color at variance with the basic atmosphere of the Shadows in the Fog universe.

...Every Plot gets three cards: Setup, Conflict, and Climax. Ideally, the Plot cards should not be the same color as the GMC cards, just to keep things clear. On the back, write your name and the name of the stage (setup, etc.). Everybody always has three of these things going. The GM may have more, depending, but at a minimum she has the Group Plot cards. When anybody starts a new Setup card, she should write on the front a brief but clear note about what the point is. This gives some direction as things go along, but should not be taken as absolutely binding.

I think "Every Plot gets three cards: Setup, Conflict, and Climax," is a bad idea; the arcs alone should clearly have more than three scenes. (Much less other plots - or am I misunderstanding?) I think you should be able to play as many scenes as necessary for that plot to 'make the jump' to the next Stage.

You're misunderstanding slightly, because I'm not being clear.  I mean that for your plot, you're going to have 3 cards, but of course it will almost certainly take several complete sessions to get through the whole plot.  Still, as long as each one is already labeled Setup, Conflict, Climax, I thought it might be a useful way to keep everyone clear on what Episode Stage the given Plot is at.  This is the terminology problem I pointed out before: what's being marked is the Stage within the current Session (which will run through all 3), while the Stage of the whole Plot may or may not change in this Session at all.

I'd suggest bagging the pennies and only revealing past or present Stages. (Let the future remain a mystery....) Trouble tracking = overlapping; top card is present, undercard reveals (the past) only as much as GMCs in play might know (good mnemonic).

Certainly keeping a top card showing is probably the simplest way to do things, although I thought it might be helpful to have people able to refer to the whole arc of the Plot in question simultaneously.  I somehow don't think it's going to make a lot of difference which way you go about this, since the effect is going to be very similar however you slice it.  The issue is to make sure that it can be explained clearly, which right now I'm not succeeding at.

Like the Climax may be "Jack is not a rabid Vampyre, he has a musket ball in his brain pan; remove it and end the Ripper, not Jack." This kind of surprise will make for an interesting 'turn over.' Such could be 'forced' by story movement, making for an interesting mystery. (Can I force you to reveal your Climax?)

On this I'm really quite confused.  Do you mean that someone will have written this Climax before it occurs, then reveal it under certain circumstances?  I have nothing against having some notes and ideas for where things may go, but this sounds a lot like it's going to lead to everyone trying simultaneously to railroad (not so much GM-full as railroad-track-full, leading to a train-wreck).  But that sounds so out of character for you, Fang, that I'm pretty sure I'm misunderstanding.

Why does it seem necessary to move these [plot cards] around? It sounds like it'll only invite confusion. If it's still "Dave's plot" and he's only involved indirectly, it sounds like he's the 'gamemaster' for it. Since he won't have any 'links' in play, this will be obvious even if the cards remain before him.

It's true; swapping the cards around may well not help much.  My thought was that the Plot cards would sort of gravitate toward each other into an Illuminati-like structure, but it does sound rather confusing.  I do not think, though, that Dave needs to GM the plot; that's something that anyone should be able to do.  I do agree, however, that if Dave isn't directly involved in Dave's own plot at the moment, he should probably get first dibs on GM-ing.

Why not use 'bit player' cards for this bidding? Remember, if you win, you must play all those 'bit players!'

Because to take over a GMC from someone else requires its own bid.  If you want to take over a scene as GM, you should be discouraged from also taking over a lot of the characters involved; this creates "The Phil Show" rather than Phil runs a scene in which everybody else does stuff.

Links should also be marked on Plot cards, at the correct Stage, along with an indication of the Trump interpretation, if any.

Could be confusing; I'll have to think about it.

The idea here is that when you Link Plots through a Trump, this is yet more evidence about what the Trump "really" means.  Every occurrence of a Trump is a manifestation of a kind of power, a form of meaning; you need to keep track of such manifestations, so that you can at leisure (and under pressure as well) try to work out what is revealed by them.

Nah, package these with the game (as a .pdf, Trumps could printed on and cut from cardstock).

The list of 22?  Fair enough.  The Trumps?  No way.  I'm not constructing a Tarot deck of my own, at great expense and trouble, when an enormous number of gamers already have lots of decks of their own.  It'll only encourage questions about "Why did you do the cards that way and not this?" which is totally not the point.  I recommend Rider-Waite cards, since they're cheap and readily available, but there are lots of other decks.  I do recommend having a pretty standard set, but the only real requirement is that every deck in play be pretty much identical, at least in card titles.  In Volume 3 I will provide a sketch of the special Blake deck I made up, but many of those images cannot be reproduced without paying money (lots of it), and if I provided clear PDFs laid out for printing, I'd really be into royalty money.

Throw in a conflict resolution system (just to keep the 'shared conception' of the game on track) that gives 'muscle' to the player with the most 'bit players' bid in the Stage regardless of whether such work for his goals, or against.

Not sure what you mean by this.  There is a conflict resolution system already, but you seem to mean something quite specific.  Could you elaborate?

Perhaps you could incorporate "Stage" as in 'stagecraft' into your terminology. The theatre was not unpopular and burlesque came into its own. Instead of Episodes and Plots, how about calling them Scenes and Acts? Then the whole terminology of 'Stages' can be pulled in as 'Productions' with 'Directors,' 'Actors,' and 'Bit Players.' You could call Expositions things like Debuts or Introductions. And et cetera.

Hmm.  Could rapidly slip into Theatrix, though, terminologically.  I think it might also encourage grandiose melodrama and hamming, which is not my point.  What do others think on this?

[Description cut]
I like your basic vision of how the play would go, although I don't know that a bidding round is really necessary every time.  I would think most of the time it's going to be pretty obvious how things cut, and that the shifts will be effected without a lot of trouble.

Heck, I might go as far as suggesting merging pregenerated GMCs with the trumps. Used one way, they are a trump; used another they are GMC cards. (With .pdf format, the consumer can print out a new set for every 'play.') If you want to tailor to form, have 56 archetype 'bit player' card with 22 major arcana Trump GMCs would make a tarot. (But I don't suggest that - too many people are trying to make 'tarot games;' why not be original?) Hey, most of the 'bit players' are pretty predictable, why not 'card them?' A little notespace on each makes them great one-use props and differentiates them from plot cards (plackards?).

Apart from the practical difficulties mentioned before, I'm hesitant to go this far.  I think this would make a great add-on, essentially defining the nature of Tarot in quite specific mechanical and in-game terms by linking it to characters and types.  You could then explore such questions as the interchangeability of people, the seemingly archetypal character and nature of almost everyone in London, and the whole Wonderland "You're all a pack of cards!" thing.  But that's a big twist on the game-world, and one that doesn't need to be required or even used.  A good thing for Volume 3, but not, IMO, for the basic mechanics.

But that's my point. And then what do the characters do once they realize that they're characters? Doesn't this kinda end the game, like it ends Number of the Beast (the characters go off to fight against some group called the Timelords, hehe). Sure, this asks some metaphysical questions that are interesting to ponder. But does it kill the game? Is it fun to actually play? I've never got to that point, myself.

I tried to address this in the last post, about Assumption.  I think you're right, to be honest: really Assuming makes the character not human any more, not a playable character, just a force of nature in effect.  But I also think you have to be kind of misguided to want to Assume a card.  It's a Sorcerer-type Premise: how far toward Assumption can/will you go?  What are you willing to trade for that power (e.g. Humanity)?

I really like Fang's idea about structuring the plot in some visible, connected format. I've thought about literal maps before, but the INWO analogy makes sense. Finding some sort of mechanical way to express story, such that even those who are not particularly interested in story per se, or who would prefer to approach it only from an OOC appreciation, can do so. I want to exploit that sort of thing essentially for sim purposes, as a kinda "scene generator" or similar.
Could an explicit "tension meter" be built? Can a plot be "mapped" and tokens moved on that map? Getting a bit off topic I fear, but I just wanted to endorse the idea of the explicit layout in some form.

See, while I like this idea very much, I don't think it's 100% compatible with what I understand Fang to be proposing.  I think you could use tokens (perhaps numbered?) to link up plot elements and characters, creating a very formal Illuminati-like structure.  I also think this would again shift the emphasis of the game, this time toward meta-story instead of interwoven but discrete stories.  That would be quite a cool way to go about things, shifting strategic focus, but again it doesn't seem to me necessary.  This should again be in Volume 3, as an add-on.  The question for me is what sort of Premise it imposes upon the game, at least implicitly; all these mechanical add-ons are going to have a real effect on character purposes and on player Premise, and the way to figure out how exactly the mechanics should be structured is to identify this effect and then support it directly.

Any responses, refinements, criticisms, or new suggestions?

Coming Soon to a Fog-Bound London Near You (in a week or so): GMC Stock Characters

[Mike Holmes]

I want to start by addressing Mike's comments about Assumption.  My version, in Shadows, doesn't have a punch-line.  To recap, Mike wondered, once you've Assumed, game over, right?  Well, in Shadows as I see it, yes and no.

I will attempt to paraphrase to see if I have this right. Yes, a character who reaches his ultimate goal will become an NPC. No, play is all about characters trying to reach that goal, so play will not end.

Interesting. Can a player whose character becomes an NPC in such a manner claim a victory of sorts? Does this ending provide closure? Will players be satisfied with the idea of losing their characters? Or is the fact that this will occur meant to spur actor stance play that will balance the player forcing progress? An incentive to the player to put tribulations before the character so he does not end too soon?

I'm trying to get the idea behind this.


Mike

[clehrich]

Yes, a character who reaches his ultimate goal will become an NPC. No, play is all about characters trying to reach that goal, so play will not end.

In an Assumption-oriented game, I suppose it is true that many PCs will have Assumption as their ultimate goal.  That is an unwise choice on their parts, I think, but hardly a surprising one.  Play is all about characters trying to reach their goals, and discovering along the way how much they have to give up for it, and wondering whether it's worth it.  It's all about characters trying to figure out why they wanted this in the first place, or else about realizing that they can't stop, and perhaps secretly enjoying the trade-off.  Assumption is a very Sorcerer-Premise sort of thing.

Interesting. Can a player whose character becomes an NPC in such a manner claim a victory of sorts? Does this ending provide closure? Will players be satisfied with the idea of losing their characters? Or is the fact that this will occur meant to spur actor stance play that will balance the player forcing progress? An incentive to the player to put tribulations before the character so he does not end too soon?

Yes, sure, it's a victory.  I think players will be pretty much reconciled to it, because by the time Assumption is finally complete the character has had a pretty long and deep run, and has in effect transcended outside of human concerns.  If that's what you want for him, then I think you pretty much dust your hands and start on something new.  Besides, in order for the whole thing to happen, the character has to become practically a template and flowchart rather than a person, so by the time he "succeeds" he's gotten somewhat less fun to play anyway.  As for incentive to slow things down, well, I think it's going to take a really long time anyway.  I'd make it up to the rest of the group whether you're ready to finish the cycle, and then require that there be a climactic event in which you somehow overcome any remaining challengers or otherwise remove obstacles.  So it'd be a big deal, a satisfying bang.

The point, as I would run it, is that Assumption is a really dubious sort of goal for a character, requiring him to be an obsessed, single-minded, and potentially dangerous freak.  

I can easily imagine a campaign in which one character decides to try to Assume a role because it is currently mostly inhabited by a dangerous and destructive person/being.  Put this way, the Assumption is a self-sacrifice on behalf of London or England, since by Assuming you become the new power.  So everyone else's job is to keep this character on track, but also try to make him retain as much humanity and personality as possible -- if they fail, the Assumption doesn't help matters.  For example, I mentioned a possibility that Jack the Ripper is the Beast (#XV, The Devil).  Okay, so one way to end the murders is for someone else to become the Beast, someone who perhaps sees other sides to the card than just sadistic brutality (it can be a positive card in some ways).  Now everyone else's job is to make sure this happens (which means removing challengers and preparing for a showdown against the current Beast -- there can be only one :> ), as well as making sure that their pal never forgets that the Beast is not merely a creature of blood and pain.  That would require them periodically to show the would-be Beast other sides of the card, including perhaps by permitting/forcing him to play out the less brutal sides on themselves (pretty self-sacrificing on their own parts).  In the end, their friend essentially sacrifices himself on the altar of evil in order to make London a better place.

There was a discussion on the Adept forum a little while back about Faustian bargains, and I kept harping on the possibility of someone deliberately doing evil because it's the moral thing to do.  Read Goethe: that's what Faust is all about.  This present example of Assuming the Beast is the same thing.  If you become the Beast the easy way, i.e. by seeking power through viciousness, you end up being Jack the Ripper part II.  If you become it the hard way, i.e. by recognizing and embodying the positive moral implications of evil, then London is going to be a better place for everyone.

The same thing would happen if you tried to Assume a generally positive force, such as The White Lady (my Blake version of the High Priestess).  If you do this because you want to be the secret-keeper and the hidden power in the land, you're not helping anyone; when you succeed, you just put a personal spin on the same old misery.  But if you do this because you want to add everything good about (Victorian conceptions of) femininity to the nature of secrecy and power, and can stick to that, then as you dissolve yourself into the card you will positively affect everyone's perceptions of power.  For example, when a lot of science types of the era talk about the secrets of nature, they use metaphors (drawn from Francis Bacon) founded upon rape and violence against women.  If you were to make the White Lady a more positive and recognizable force of femininity, this whole conception would come to seem sick and immoral; Victorians do not as a rule try to think of women as rape-objects.  So they would approach the study of natural secrets as a seduction, a loving dance, rather than a process of forcing nature to reveal herself.

Does this make things any clearer?  Is what I'm talking about plausible, or have I just drained out all the fun from Assumption?

[Mike Holmes]

No, actually I think you've just made them too fun.

Let's say we had a game of UA going, and to start I told the players that they could either have magic, or just be normies. But that the magic stuff would mess them up.

Or a game of Sorcerer, where I can be either a Sorcerer, or just a normie.

The point is that, Freaky, and whatnot are character problems. From a player POV, hand me the Malkavian. Just because something is a problem for a character does not mean that it is, in any way an incentive to refrain from playing that sort of character.

Christoffer had a similat problem with his game. He had wizbangs in his game who could use demonic powers, but only at the risk of becoming all twisted. Well, that's not a disincentive to play this sort of character. It's interesting, and incentivized, therefore. The only players who are put off by this sort of thing are the Gamists who see it as a tactical disadvantage (something the GM can use to hose them). I assume this is not a Gamist design.

So the question becomes not, "How do we make these characters less interesting to play?" because it's a cool idea, and I want to play it. But rather we need to ask, "Are the other character types as interesting to play, and if not, how do we make them so?"

Otherwise I'd just make it a game about characters on the road to Assumption.

Mike

[clehrich]

Mike,

Glad to hear that we're on the same page about this.  Insofar as there are Gamist elements in Shadows in the Fog, they kind of fall by the wayside if you bring in the Assumption thing.

I do think other kinds of characters can be lots of fun as well.  You see, the thing about Assumption is that it's based on a set of cards within the game-world (one of the reasons I'm not forcing this on anyone).  So every time I play The Beast, I'm manipulating that force, right?  But if my buddy Phil over there is becoming the Beast, I'm also manipulating him.  That's a dangerous thing to do, but that's what real power is about.  One argument would be that real power is about NOT Assuming, but being able to control cards at will.  In a very Assumption-oriented game, however, you'd set up a kind of slippery slope, where you get better at manipulating a card the more you do it, and the more "in tune" with it you are in your own life.  Of course, this tends to encourage specialization, and also encourages you to live the card.  And this does indeed make you more powerful -- and push you into the Assumption race, exactly where you didn't want to be.

I see the really powerful magician as a sort of perfect dilettante, constantly skirting the edges of serious danger but never quite falling into the trap of Assumption.  He'll never attain the kind of power that his pal who's into Assuming does, but on the other hand nobody will ever be able to constrain his will.

Of course, if you really work out all the details (and I have not as yet), there is the danger of Assuming the Magician (#I)....

[Mike Holmes]

OK, so falling into Assumption is a player choice in play, really? Then it's all good. Just like the temptation to summon and bind yet another demon in Sorcerer. Assumption is zero Humanity. Very cool. Sounds like fun to me.  

Mike

[Le Joueur]

That may be a bit confusing, constantly flipping cards. How would 'titling the cards' be confusing; for plot cards "Jack the Ripper Turns Out to be a Vampyre!" by Fang Langford and then the regular information, for GMC cards, how about Jack the Ripper as portrayed by Fang Langford?

Seems reasonable enough, if a little more cinematic than I'd prefer.  I'd rather not insert color at variance with the basic atmosphere of the Shadows in the Fog universe.

Okay, I missed the tone of the game; the point was putting a 'title' on the front of the card (nothing on the back).

I'd suggest bagging the pennies and only revealing past or present Stages. (Let the future remain a mystery....) Trouble tracking = overlapping; top card is present, undercard reveals (the past) only as much as GMCs in play might know (good mnemonic).

Certainly keeping a top card showing is probably the simplest way to do things, although I thought it might be helpful to have people able to refer to the whole arc of the Plot in question simultaneously.  I somehow don't think it's going to make a lot of difference which way you go about this, since the effect is going to be very similar however you slice it.  The issue is to make sure that it can be explained clearly, which right now I'm not succeeding at.

But where's the surprise, the intrigue; if I already know how it'll play out, what makes me want to play?

Like the Climax may be "Jack is not a rabid Vampyre, he has a musket ball in his brain pan; remove it and end the Ripper, not Jack." This kind of surprise will make for an interesting 'turn over.' Such could be 'forced' by story movement, making for an interesting mystery. (Can I force you to reveal your Climax?)

On this I'm really quite confused.  Do you mean that someone will have written this Climax before it occurs, then reveal it under certain circumstances?  I have nothing against having some notes and ideas for where things may go, but this sounds a lot like it's going to lead to everyone trying simultaneously to railroad (not so much GM-full as railroad-track-full, leading to a train-wreck).  But that sounds so out of character for you, Fang, that I'm pretty sure I'm misunderstanding.

A tough concept, but how are you planning?  I thought you had such information already 'on the table.'  Are you saying that generic cards saying nothing more than "Crisis," "Climax," and "Resolution?"  (Or whichever, I'm composing this offline, but I wish I could look this up.)

See you can 'have the climax' without the railroad.  Remember the 'shared gaming' thread?  You don't specify how the climax happens, just the 'tension point.'  In the above, the other players have been approaching Jack however they like; they want to kill him, they want to bring him to justice, they want to join him, they want to question him, it isn't affected by the Climax card.  (There's a trick to it.)  However 'they get there,' once they arrive, their actions precipitate the revelation of the card; that signals the apex of the climax.

Just a thought I've been working on for other stuff.

Why does it seem necessary to move these [plot cards] around? It sounds like it'll only invite confusion. If it's still "Dave's plot" and he's only involved indirectly, it sounds like he's the 'gamemaster' for it. Since he won't have any 'links' in play, this will be obvious even if the cards remain before him.

It's true; swapping the cards around may well not help much.  My thought was that the Plot cards would sort of gravitate toward each other into an Illuminati-like structure, but it does sound rather confusing.

Cool!

I do not think, though, that Dave needs to GM the plot; that's something that anyone should be able to do.

I thought there were surprise revelations involved.  If there's no mysteries, there's no reason for a shepherd.

Why not use 'bit player' cards for this bidding? Remember, if you win, you must play all those 'bit players!'

Because to take over a GMC from someone else requires its own bid.  If you want to take over a scene as GM, you should be discouraged from also taking over a lot of the characters involved; this creates "The Phil Show" rather than Phil runs a scene in which everybody else does stuff.

Oh, I got the part about major characters, I'm talking about the 'supporting cast.'  The thug, the shopkeeper, the fishmonger, his wife, or victim #4, just the 'bit characters.'  How about using them as the coin of wagers rather than pennies?

Nah, package these with the game (as a .pdf, Trumps could printed on and cut from cardstock).

The list of 22?  Fair enough.  The Trumps?  No way.  I'm not constructing a Tarot deck of my own, at great expense and trouble

Sorry, I'm thinking like an artist again.  I'm an illustrator and my wife went to fine arts college, art is something we have so much of I forget what it's like for other designers.

I withdraw the suggestion.

Throw in a conflict resolution system (just to keep the 'shared conception' of the game on track) that gives 'muscle' to the player with the most 'bit players' bid in the Stage regardless of whether such work for his goals, or against.

Not sure what you mean by this.  There is a conflict resolution system already, but you seem to mean something quite specific.  Could you elaborate?

I mean I was completely contemptible in that I neglected to look at the actual game.  I was speaking broadly.  Since you've already 'thrown in a conflict resolution system' you've nearly got it, get it?  Kinda like rhetoric (sorry that didn't come through).

By the by, you do understand the difference between a conflict resolution system and an action resolution system, right?

Perhaps you could incorporate "Stage" as in 'stagecraft' into your terminology. The theatre was not unpopular and burlesque came into its own. Instead of Episodes and Plots, how about calling them Scenes and Acts? Then the whole terminology of 'Stages' can be pulled in as 'Productions' with 'Directors,' 'Actors,' and 'Bit Players.' You could call Expositions things like Debuts or Introductions. And et cetera.

Hmm.  Could rapidly slip into Theatrix, though, terminologically.

And Theatrix stole it all from 'real theatre,' I don't see why only one game ever made can use theatre terms.

[Description cut]

I like your basic vision of how the play would go, although I don't know that a bidding round is really necessary every time.  I would think most of the time it's going to be pretty obvious how things cut, and that the shifts will be effected without a lot of trouble.

Perfecto!

I really like Fang's idea about structuring the plot in some visible, connected format. I've thought about literal maps before, but the INWO analogy makes sense. Finding some sort of mechanical way to express story, such that even those who are not particularly interested in story per se, or who would prefer to approach it only from an OOC appreciation, can do so. I want to exploit that sort of thing essentially for sim purposes, as a kinda "scene generator" or similar.

Could an explicit "tension meter" be built? Can a plot be "mapped" and tokens moved on that map? Getting a bit off topic I fear, but I just wanted to endorse the idea of the explicit layout in some form.

See, while I like this idea very much, I don't think it's 100% compatible with what I understand Fang to be proposing.

Nah, it's better.

Coming Soon to a Fog-Bound London Near You (in a week or so): GMC Stock Characters

Any responses, refinements, criticisms, or new suggestions?

Um, maybe some examples of previous Assumptions (so I don't jump to any conclusions - it's just a joke)?

Fang Langford

[Piers]

I like the way you're going with the marking Trumps thing, particularly the addition of Assumption.  The issue of how to structure things is important, though I think it sort of handles itself most of the time.  The most important thing is to get the players to start seeing the world around them through the lens of the Tarot--the occult mindset is all about re-reading the world in terms of signs and portents, and the way that assumption takes over.  And that's what I really see you pushing for in the game.

I think that structure won't be too much of an issue so long as there is some fairly informal limit on how many Trumps a player can have active at a particular time--five-ish sounds about right to me.  Ten or so might be too much to keep track of, and we want the players defining events not creating an incoherent mass of plot strands.

How about this as a way of structuring the Trumps currently marking things:

A sheet with a standard Tarot reading layout, either a (fairly simple) one for each player or a (much more elaborate) one for the campaign as a whole.  Maybe a combination of both.  When the player marks with a Trump the player chooses where to put it in the spread.  Essentially, it would order the active trumps into a sort ''relationship map," but one that is in and of itself up for interpretation.    

It'd be kind of nice to include some of the other non-Trump cards in the mix too, as all Trump readings are a bit odd.  Maybe draw one from the deck every time a Trump is played.

I really don't know my Tarot too well, so what sort of spreads might be appropriate is something you'd have to think about.

And maybe rearrange things (redraws non-trumps?) every time a Trump is resolved.

Anyways, a reading would also put a finite limit on the number of Trumps out in the campaign, and act as a focus for interpretation.  It might be a bit too tight a framework, but it might work.  You'd probably have to playtest to tell.

Or--as a sort of halfway house, how about a reading from the deck at the start of even session/plot-arc or something (another reason to argue about that sort of definition).  Lay it out and record it so everyone can see it and refer to it.  Once a reasonable percentage of the Trumps are assigned it might be a useful catalyst for stories.

Oh, and what about adding a Trump or two to character creation as well--to give characters something to start from.  (May or may not be appropriate depending on how the starting characters relate to the occult world.)

Piers

[clehrich]

Before Spooky pops up and smacks me in the head, here's what's doing on Shadows in the Fog.  I'm not going to give a whole lot of updates and such for a bit, and for those of you who seemed fascinated by the game, here's why and so on.

1. I suddenly have a whole lot of actual job crap to do, without warning, and it's not going to clear up for a bit.

2. I'm trying to get somewhere on the Sourcebook (Volume 2).

3. I think this thing really very badly needs a playtest at this point; I'm starting to spin my wheels.

SO....

A. Please feel free to go playtest this, making any and all changes you feel like making.  I'd love to hear about it.  I gather that Simon has done a bit of this, although I don't know quite what happened.  Don't wait for a finished product: you'll turn blue and die if you hold your breath that long.

B. I will post update notes when I think there's enough material to warrant an additional PDF file.  The next thing should be the big-ass GMC stock character list, which is nearing completion, then the London Poverty and Poor Law thing, which needs serious trimming.  I will make sure that there is always a complete single PDF version available, so you don't have to keep downloading bits and pieces if you don't want to.

C. I don't expect I'll get a real playtest until July or later, I'm afraid.  By that time I might have a working draft of Volume 2, but it's pretty unlikely; chances are that the volume won't be done until next Christmas.  Sorry!  I landed an academic book contract, and now I actually have to get off my ass and finish the damn MS -- oy.  If I get a playtest, I would hope to have a complete working copy of the rules book (Volume 1) by September.

One last note: Because of a mistaken click in the top right a couple weeks back, I missed all the posts after my last one (i.e. Mike, Fang, and Piers).  I'm not going to restart the threads, unless you guys want to do so.  Many thanks -- please don't think I was ignoring you (actually I was feeling a bit unloved, oops).

Thanks again.  Hope to have this thing coming together one of these days!

[Spooky Fanboy]

Before Spooky pops up and smacks me in the head,

*WHAP!!* Oops! Sorry, dude... Please continue. ;-)

1. I suddenly have a whole lot of actual job crap to do, without warning, and it's not going to clear up for a bit.

2. I'm trying to get somewhere on the Sourcebook (Volume 2).

3. I think this thing really very badly needs a playtest at this point; I'm starting to spin my wheels.

SO....

A. Please feel free to go playtest this, making any and all changes you feel like making.  I'd love to hear about it.  I gather that Simon has done a bit of this, although I don't know quite what happened.  Don't wait for a finished product: you'll turn blue and die if you hold your breath that long.

Fair enough. Glad to hear that the project is still in ongoing development. I was wondering what was happening.

C. I don't expect I'll get a real playtest until July or later, I'm afraid.  By that time I might have a working draft of Volume 2, but it's pretty unlikely; chances are that the volume won't be done until next Christmas.  Sorry!  I landed an academic book contract, and now I actually have to get off my ass and finish the damn MS -- oy.

Isn't Real Life rude and unfeeling like that? Seriously, if I get a group with some time and courage, I'll happily playtest it for you, let you know what I find.

[Mike Holmes]

C. I don't expect I'll get a real playtest until July or later, I'm afraid.  By that time I might have a working draft of Volume 2, but it's pretty unlikely; chances are that the volume won't be done until next Christmas.  Sorry!  I landed an academic book contract, and now I actually have to get off my ass and finish the damn MS -- oy.  If I get a playtest, I would hope to have a complete working copy of the rules book (Volume 1) by September.

Fiddlesticks!

I think that you ought to come by Indie Netgaming and try it there. I'm sure we could get people together to play a short session online to see how it goes.

Mike