Preaching

[Ben O'Neal]

Yeah I'm definitely liking the idea of being able to choose exactly how the NWO will work, and seeing the consequences of the choices played out before me. I think that instead of telling players exaclty what the ideal NWO will be (which will most likely not be universally agreed upon by players), you might want to focus some mechanics that handle implementation of new systems of government, and the potential results. This would be, IMHO, a much more fun game to play, and also give some serious longevity to it (what with all the tweaking to get the ideal government, and the endless potential for various combinations). OTOH, it may be quote a large task to pull off (but here, abstract concepts might become your best friend). You could also do some nifty things with the reactions of the public in a given pre-existing society to a new society order. For example, maybe capitalists won't like a NWO that minimises upward mobility in favour of material equality, whilst socialists might react conversely. So the previous government would interact with the new government, and you could also add all sorts of mad in-between mediating effects, like propoganda to minimise the impact, or simply killing all who oppose to start with a "clean slate".

Lot's of things you could do with that that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do with an immutable timeline of what will happen and what is best.

Just a thought and a friendly suggestion.

-Ben

[F. Scott Banks]

Killer Concept.  This can move in a lot of different directions.  I'm seeing Clancyesque scenarios where these kids are hunted by government alphabet-agencies and recruited to work against each other.  Personally, I'm not sure the eighties-babies would be so altruistic.  I like the scenario where these jaded adults are hired to "neutralize" the emerging generation of psi-talents.  The kids are confused about their new powers and hunted down by people who know more about them than they know about themselves.  From an anuthor's perspective, this adds particular resonance to the tired old "coming of age" theme.  

That's right Billy, your parents don't understand you, but the man in the black helicopter does...and he wants to help.

But that's from an author's perspective, where you're god, everyone does what you want (unless you've got a barn-burner on your hands, then you just write what the story tells you to) and it ends exactly how you want it to end.

From a roleplaying perspective, it's different.  Your characters aren't yours  You're still god, and you control the entire world, but the people in it do what they please, usually without a thought to the plan you had.

Hmmm, now I see why god is so angry all the time.

I'm reading a little bit of subtext in your question, but maybe I'm off.  The subtext seems to be "How do I get the ending I want from the story I've written?"  It's a valid question, from an author's perspective.

Unfortunatley, you can't.  Your players will have different world views than you will.  Your game deals with childhood and politics and no two people view those two things the same.  People usually don't "share" those ideals either.  My democracy is different than yours.  His socialist models is different from hers.  If you think politics is a hot button, start devling into the jungle of adolescence.  If your role-players are any good, your Ritalin-kids will be a handfull on their own.

Really the best you can do is present the game lore (yeah, I know it's a fantasy term, but it fits) as best as you can.  Preferably, present it even-handedly and allow players to agree with what they agree with.  This will ultimately make for a more intense game experience (because, given the subject matter, you have to embrace 'intense' rather than try to pacify it) but it will be more honest as players both pursue their character's individual game goals, and the larger goals of whatever socio-political entity they decide to inhabit.

[neelk]

My biggest suggestion is to read the text of Sorcerer, a game that could have gotten preachy real fast. It's not, but there's morals buried in there.

I'll second this recommendation, and specifically suggest looking at the discussion in The Sorcerer's Soul about the "four big outcomes". The basic idea is to think about the results of play on more than the dimension of success or failure. In Sorcerer, for example, the definition of Humanity provides a moral gradient for the decisions the characters make in play, in addition to the more familiar question of whether or not they attain their goals or not. So now there are four outcomes: success/affirm-morality, failure/affirm-morality, success/defy-morality, failure/defy-morality.

This is an extremely powerful technique for adding richness to any game, and it's applicable to many other contexts. I actually first ran across it in Theatrix. There, the authors distinguished between skillful and unskillful action, and between success and failure. The idea was that skillful characters tended to succeed due to their inherent qualities, and fail due to bad luck, whereas unskillful characters tended to fail due to their flaws, and succeed due to good luck.