Right on Palaskar

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I then assigned a race to each of these viewpoints.

This was my approach as well: try to take worldviews and symbolic rituals and insert them systemically into the game itself. My thinking was that if one includes ancient symbolism (and yes, Christian symbolism is ancient; 2000 years is quite some time ago) into the system of the game itself (i.e. assigning cultures or "races" to them) then the players will be imersed in this rich symbolism, unable to escape.

The analogy was this: If you have a group of people in a car, say one of the new ones with onStar, DVD, XFM, and other gadgets, these people can choose to focus on any one aspect of the entire system (the car) they wish. For example, they may want to just chill and watch DVD's, or listen to satellite radio, or whatever, but they are still in a car. No matter how they slice and dice the entire system into managable chunks, the car is still a whole car. And in this way, the system/car itself will drive the players in a given direction. For example, a car can only travel in certain ways. Even if the players want to take off for the moon, the car/system will not allow it to happen.

Furthermore, the GM as the driver can choose to draw attention to one thing or another. Conider driving. Rarely do you pay full conscience attention to every single detail--radio, what gear you are in, talking on the phone or OnStar, controlling the gas, controlling the brake, steering, etc.--but you are still able to drive. Same deal with the game. The entire symbolic system of an EPG (see top post) is too large to handle all at once; it has to be broken down into manageable chunks.

One way of doing this is to, as Palaskar suggested, assign various aspects of the symbolic system to specific concrete people or events in the game. Continuing with the car analogy, the drivetrain does not broadcast radio, it just drives the wheels (or whatever it does, i am not really a car expert :) ). In this way, the GM/driver is able to bring the players'/passengers' attentions to specific, concrete objects in the game/car, such as a culture or behavior.

Does this really work, or do players just get distracted and do whatever they want?

Well, it worked when i was playing. However, as the creator and GM (Speaker) of WindSpeaker, our team was definatly biased. In random people's hands, i am not sure how this would fair. But, i hope to get a feedback system set up on my (now crummy) website to help with this.