hidden world fantasy

[joshua neff]

My friends & I are starting to design a "Hidden World" fantasy game--you know, like Changeling, only more narrativist (& less restrictions on the imagination). Basically, I want it to be the kind of game where one could design any kind of character one wants--a Dumbledore-type wizard, a werewolf with a heart of gold, a dragon cursed into human-form, a djinn trapped in a bottle for a thousand years, a mischievous faerie, a middle-of-the-road normal average person who gets dragged into lots of strangeness.
Anyway, because I want it to be narrativist, I've been trying to think of what the general Premise-with-a-capital-p is in that kind of "hidden world" fantasy--Harry Potter, The Secret of Platform 13, Charles deLint, Weaveworld, Sandman, Neverwhere, Doom Patrol, The Books of Magic, Artemis Fowl, & the World of Darkness games (& RPGs of a similar bent--Witchcraft, Nightlife, Nobilis, UnderWorld.)
(This all came from me thinking "Wow, I like Changeling a lot, but dammit, I think I could do it better".)

Is there a Premise common to all these examples? Is there a thorny issue that calls up all sorts of moral questions & pulls the players in? Is there something that ensures the protagonism of the player characters?

[Ron Edwards]

Josh,

Much of the source material concerns MATURATION. The hero is often dealing with the decisions, responsibilities, and even freedoms that come with being adult. It's not universal to the sources, but it's very common.

I think the failure of many of the games in question to address this is precisely why some people consider their content "adolescent" - they have an arrested, stuck in the early teens feeling to them, because they have no mechanism or content for addressing and completing the issues they raise.

Best,
Ron

[joshua neff]

Ron--

Interesting. Last night, my friends & I were talking about it, & we discussed "being stuck in the middle", between the "fantasy" world & the "real" world. Which I think goes along with the "maturation" issue--stuck between childhood & adulthood.
I suppose Changeling sort of addresses this with the Banality & Glamour mechanics, but I don't think they address it very well. Or rather, I don't think the way the stats & mechanics are set up work all that well in regards to the issue of "maturation". (Although to be honest, I can't think off the top of my head how I'd do that particular part of the game better.)

[ This Message was edited by: joshua neff on 2001-09-16 15:35 ]

[James V. West]

Soemthing else that might help get a focus on premise is the idea of the hero's journey as presented by Joseph Campbell. The hero is called to action, he leaves the safety of his home and enters a world in which he is a stranger, he deals with that world and then returns home with wisdom used to benefit his fellows. Roughly.

Most stories are based on this formula to some extent, but I find that actually looking at it and seeing how it could apply to what you're working on really helps.

Later

James V. West
http://www.geocities.com/randomordercreations/index.html

P.S. every time I've tried to tackle a game, comic, or other idea with as much scope as what you're talking about here, I've ended up in artistic hell...make sure you get that initial nugget of inspiration into a consisitent form of some kind.

[joshua neff]

James--

Actually, I've found the Campbell Hero's Journey to not really be all that helpful. To me, it falls under the same umbrella as Jungianism & Freudianism--everybody has their own interpretation of what it all "means", so it ends up being pretty soggy.

I completely agree with your point about focus, which is why I brought this up here--to help me focus. My friends & I came up with several key points that need to be firmly established for this game to "work"--Premise is one. Another is the reason why the "hidden world" is hidden--it's not just a setting issue (I'd rather there's a little established setting as possible), it's part of the whole "genre" (for lack of a better world).

[Epoch]

Josh,

I don't think that hidden world fantasy has a premise (as the term is used here).  Some common themes in hidden world fantasy include:

• The rational, explainable world is (better/worse) than one of mystery and illusion
  
  
• Humankind has become more monstrous than "real" monsters
  
  
• People willfully blind themselves to the truth in favour of what they'd prefer to believe.
  

And, of course, lots of hidden world fantasy games or other works have had themes which did not particularly relate to the setting -- for example, the "default" theme of Werewolf: The Apocalypse appears to be, "People doom themselves," which, obviously, doesn't require a hidden world fantasy setting to expose itself.

Anyhow, you might turn the above themes into premises, like:

• Which is better, the rational world or the magical one?
  
  
• Are humans more monstrous than real monsters?
  
  
• What happens when there's an unpleasant but ignorable truth?
  

[Mike Holmes]

Yep, I'd say that there is not much of a common thread in these stories, because such stories are a vehicle, really. Like fables, they exist to make highlighting certain things possible. In fables, animals are the characters because it is easy to overcharacterize an animal (if you're bothering to anthropomorphize them anyhow) to make it archetypical or to make it display some characteristic in a blatant fashion. Of course tortoises are slow and steady.

Same with fairy tales. The are allegory for real world problems and as such serve as a tool to make it easy to create stark dichotomies and easily grasped pictures of situations, etc. Which is why they're often aimed at kids. They're relatively easy to comprehend, and often innoffensive.

So, I think that you can make you're game about whatever. And it should be relatively easy to do. I like the Mundane/Magical Better/Worse or vice versa one listed above. And I'm a sucker for the whole Good/Evil thing, though you'd have to make it especially good to not just be a rehash of a zillion other games.

Hmmm... actually I'm trying to think of a truely effective narrativist good/evil mechanic, but I can't come up with one. Anybody got a good example of a classically narrativist good/evil mechanic (don't anybody say alignments; I'll laugh my arse off)? Lots of good sanity/humanity mechanics that work around the problem, but how about just pure good/evil like you're likely to find in a game of fairy tales?

Mike Holmes

[Ron Edwards]

Mike,

I'd say Little Fears comes pretty close.

Best,
Ron

[Uncle Dark]

Josh-

You left Neverwhere off your list.

On question which is ignored or quickly answered and then passed by in most of these is "why is the hidden world hidden?"  When this is answered, the answers are pretty flimsy, or at least not well applied in the games.

Lon

[joshua neff]

Lon--

Yeah, I left a lot of stuff of the list, actually. But Neverwhere's obviously a big influence.

I agree regarding the "reason the hidden world is hidden". My friend Gregg feels this is the most important thing to work out. Yeah, most of the time it's fairly lame. (As much as I love Harry Potter, the rationale behind hiding stuff from Muggles--"They'd always be bugging us!"--is pretty weak. Going with the "fantasy world=good/rational world=bad" idea, it makes a bit more sense: the hidden world is hidden out of self-preservation, to avoid being attacked by the "forces of reason". Rather Doom Patrol, that.)

[Mytholder]

Well, the first question might be "is the hidden world actually hidden, or can we just not see it?". I mean, in  half the examples given, the otherworld isn't actively concealing itself from "normality", it's just invisible or inaccessible to the vast majority of people. In Sandman, the Endless don't hide from humanity...if anything, it's the other way round.

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-09-17 12:17, Ron Edwards wrote:
I'd say Little Fears comes pretty close.

Hmmm... I'm not sure which mechanic you're referring to. The Kings and things in from the Closet are certainly evil. But that is simply setting driving the Good/Evil thing. The relevant mechanic of Innocence is very much not a good/evil thing, IMO.

I'm thinking more like melodrama, or something. The corny example that I keep coming up with is Luke Skywalker. Imagine he's got a Goodness stat similar to Humanity in Sorcerer. He gets tempted by the Dark Side and anger causes him to slowly move that direction. In the end, though, he not only pumps his own Goodness stat back up to max, but brings Vader's up as well with it.

If you look at a number of Pendragon's Virtues together, in composite they form the sort of thing that I'm envisioning. Lots of potential for protagonism with this.

I think an interesting premise for a "hidden-world" sort of game would be "Can the denizens of the real-world and hidden-world coexist without destroying each other?" Hmmm... not well stated. Let me try a more extensive example.

There would be some essential conflict between the worlds, the obvious choice being that lack of belief or faith in the "Real-World" is killing off fairy land. So the fairies want to do something about it. Some advocate making themselves known, but the paraniod point to earlier ages where the fairies were hunted down when they came out, and thus it remains against fairy law to act openly (very Vampire this). Those who are hawkish advocate just killing humanity so that the problem of disbelief will cease. The real problem is that while this is probably the most effective tactic, this pushes the fairies towards the unseelie, or evil.

So, how do you remain good while ensuring your survival and that of your kind?

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Mike,

It seems to me as if the interactions among Soul, Innocence, and Fear are an excellent candidate for your variable of interest. I see the interactions/confluence among the three as being the "goodness" thing in the game, exactly as you describe for a package of Traits in Pendragon.

If we have to be talking about one of them, then Soul comes closest to an out-and-out "goodness" variable in Little Fears, especially because the character does not lose it when he or she grows up (if they grow up), unlike Innocence.

To all,
Sorry about verging on thread-hijacking in this case, 'cause I really am following the main point of the thread with interest. This side-issue engaged me ... if it goes much farther, Mike and I should take it elsewhere.

Best,
Ron