For Ben: The heaven game.

[Valamir]

I started off really excited about this game, but I have to say...this whole time thing seems like a complete distraction.  I'm not sure what you gain from a game perspective by having a bizarre definition of time.  How does this "all things happen simultaneously" notion make game play better.  It seems to me to be one of those higher order philosophical issues that makes for an obstacle in play.  

How would you portray this

there is no such thing as "before" in angelic perception. This means that you can say, "I come to the portion of Azazel that is being persuaded by Samael and try to convince him to be loyal", but you must keep in mind that all angelic action is, from their point of view, simultaneous.

In a movie?  

If you can't come up with an easy way to demonstrate this in a movie, how are GMs going to demonstrate this in a game?

Seems to me to be a big ole Gordian knot and the solution is to just cut it...i.e. skip all this bizarre time as a point stuff, and just focus on what the purpose of play is.

[Shreyas Sampat]

You make a good point.

And I'm just contrary enough to want to go against it just because it is good, and I want to be able to say, "I surmounted that challenge and made a playable game out of it anyway!" But I'm aware that it's a problem.

Unfortunately, it's really important to me to make angelic Decision (with a capital D) irreversible. And the only way I see to accomplish that is to have celestial time be incomprehensible from the point of view of terrestrial time. Does that make sense? I don't like having unexplained holes in my cosmology.

Edit: That is to say, I am open to alternatives, but I'm really fond of this one and would rather try and make it work than abandon it.

[Valamir]

Ok, angelic decisions are irreversible...

Question.  Is a decision by an angel to "walk across the street" irreversible because every action an angel makes becomes immutable.  Or is there some special Angelic Pronouncement that is immutable...like an oath or vow that cannot be changed but has become cosmic law.


Forgive my terrestrial bound mind here, but I'm not seeing the connection between this goal and incomprehensible time.

It seems to me that if all things happen simultaneously...then all decisions happen simultaneously...then every angelic event in the universe is both simultaneously not started and already finished.  Then there's nothing else to do...

On the other hand if dealing with immutable Angelic Pronouncements then knowing which Pronouncements have been made and which haven't seems a useful thing...which would suggest a normal time flow.


But maybe I'm not actually grasping yet what the players are supposed to be doing in the game...

[FredGarber]

What about sort of a "Herman's Head" meets "Paradise Lost?"

Perhaps each player would play a... personality in God's Mind.  Each one has certain powers to make the Creation->Fall->Judgement sequence to play out in a certain way.
 The short term goal of the game is to get the Universe to happen how you want it to occur, not how your fellow personalities wants it to occur.

 Each player has opportunities to introduce / change something in the universe as we move around the table.  Once we go all the way around, we look at the Universe that has been been created, and the Story of the World (Creation->Judgement Day) is narrated based on the elements in play.
 (note: This would let you have a "Roll your Raphael Dice vs. My Uriel dice, and I need 10 success for all 10 plagues!  or some other mechanic that involves manipulation of Angels, Free Will, Nature, etc)

   There are some key events that happen : The Garden, the Flood, the Exodus, the Redemption, the Seal of the Prophets, the Rapture, Judgement Day, etc.  HOW they happen is determined by the choices of the players via play.  Maybe the Flood is actually just confined to a few countries, because there were more Righteous People in play than just Noah, this time, and Unicorns remain in play.

Now for the big twist, where this game becomes a RP Game instead of just a Game.
   Then the whole Creation->Judgement begins again.  We get intercharacter conflict, because each player has already seen something of how the other players want the Universe to be created.
  The next time around, does each player make the same choices?
Can they influence the other players to change their allegiences, and maybe even their vision of how the Universe should be?  How will they use their powers, and shape the Universe?

I imagine, as a moment of play, we have The Metatron griping with The Shekhina about the fact that The Lucifer keeps using his level 99 Tempt power in the Garden of Eden, causing a Fall from Grace, and the Christ isn't stopping him, so that he can put Crucifixion into play and cause the Redemption.

[Shreyas Sampat]

There are strangths and weaknesses to forum discourse. I think we've run into a weakness here - this conversation has moved very rapidly and along several different foci, and along the way it's lost its immediate usefulness for game design in favor of brainstorming. And it makes my head hurt.

So here are some conclusions and clarifications:

Angels are instantaneous entities. They only ever make one choice. There is no strong need to play out the angels as characters, really, but the players should decide the pattern of their influence as a part of setup, the Creation (or something) phase.

Before apportioning influence, each angel may Fall.

Influence may be used in two ways:
One, it may be spent to affect certain junctures in human history, to guarantee that they end in that angel's favor.
Two, it may be reserved; reserved influence acts passively, skewing all events in its favor.

For a real-world example: I interpret Holiness (as contact with the divine) as a force that was primarily spent on critical points, while Compassion was more evenly distributed, and Bounty (who Fell and became Greed) is more or less all passive.

Once this work of Creation is complete, play goes on with humans.

Every point that an angel spent influence on should be played out, briefly, to show how it ended in accord with that angel's will.

After each of these scenes, a related scene should be played out where only passive influence is a factor.

That, above, is the skeleton I'll be working from... expect mechanics shortly.