[GroupDesign] - Mix Your Own Metaplot

[TonyLB]

On the moral-lessness of Archivists... I'd worry about making a character that is too far divorced from the player's mindset to be an effective avatar for their concerns.  If you want to go 'big picture' and say "The fate of the timestream is more important than the murder of a million peasants in medieval China', fine everyone can sympathize there.  But if you're just flat out saying 'The proper arrangement of petals on a cherry tree, with no other consequence, is more important than the murder of a million peasants' then I think players will find it difficult to relate.

If you do want to go big picture, I find that no single principle lends itself more to moral atrocity (and I mean that in a good way) than this one:  "It is more important that humans have a chance to solve this problem on their own terms than that the problem is actually solved."  Obviously this is for local-level problems like millions of dying peasants, not the archivist-level problems that will be the main focus of the story.

[Andrew Morris]

Heck, this could mean the players are ALL the currently existing archivists - no society of NPC archivists out there.

Ooooh. Now that's an interesting idea.

If they're out of space and time, and have always existed - doesn't that deny a human origin?

Not at all. I'm talking about non-time and non-space here, not just something as simple as very, very, very far into the past or future. Past and future, along with cause and effect, are meaningles concepts in the Great Library. Concepts like "origin" only matter if you're talking about a linear timestream, which simply doesn't exist in the Great Library.

[Tobias]

If they're out of space and time, and have always existed - doesn't that deny a human origin?

Not at all. I'm talking about non-time and non-space here, not just something as simple as very, very, very far into the past or future. Past and future, along with cause and effect, are meaningles concepts in the Great Library. Concepts like "origin" only matter if you're talking about a linear timestream, which simply doesn't exist in the Great Library.[/quote]

Hmmm maybe I wasn't clear enough.

There have been several posts regarding 'becoming' archivist. While we could ignore that, the point has been made (a few times) that there should be some way of identifying with the Archivists, and that the best method would be to give them some recognizable human traits. Thus, a becoming.

And on the linear timestream - well, I've had thoughts about that as well. In writing up my own core of the rules, I'm trying to get to grips with which mechanics should reinforce the concept of fighting Nemesis, for a time-travelling group. I've come to a few tentative hypotheses that I'm basing development on:

1. There should be some advancing point of 'now' or 'the latest realised time', which is indeed proceeding linearly (or at least, there is no realised future yet beyond that end).

Why? Well, because if all time has already been (or exists currently), then there is no sence of urgency for the players. They can exist, even if the Nemesis has already happened (completely), so they have all the time they need to change things.

Another reason is the 'shielding' of 'important events in history' which has been mentioned a few times. If a point of time exists where the nemesis has happened, that point would likely be shielded as the mother of important events.

This implies that all Archivists that exist are from any time before the now-point.

I would like each player's action to have some repercussion on how the 'now-point' evolves and events at the now-point are recorded and then 'shielded'.

2. The players need to be able to have a measurable effect - otherwise, they might as well be listening to the GM unfold the story. They should be able to have this effect without the GM protecting some historical occurences as more 'important' over other ones - in other words, the mechanics should provide an impartial 'threshold' for when certain aspects of an event become shielded.

I've been thinking that the importance of an event is directly related to the amount of in-formation that is available about that event, and it's impact on history. (The spelling of in-formation is due to my reading of Ervin Laszlo's "Science and the Akashic Field" - I recommend it).

I thought the Prime recorder of information and the importance of an event might be the Great Library itself. Currently I am working on getting the following 2 concepts or options to work with the previous hypotheses:

a. The Nemesis is in the future, and it's happening is predicted with current knowledge with a degree of imperfection, as well as the method of averting it. (This means that even after all the Archivists efforts, and given the time-pressure on the players, Nemesis might very well happen. Like MLwM, the pressure could rise at a defined rate, and at point X things will wind up good or bad).

b. The information stored in the great library is actually a sum of all the memories that the archivists have had while in their hosts. Memories of sense perceptions, thoughts, feelings. For 'general browsing' on topics, an Archivist perusing the library gets a sort of average of all the information recorded by archivists on that subject. The archivist has the possibility to examine a specific Archivist's version, though, and it is considered good archivist form to indicate the trustworthiness and importance of memories for the benefit of others.

(c. (spinoff of b) i'm working with the thought that both thinking and conversation are possible for archivists while in the great library. The first is really hard to negate, but the second one might only be a (default) option).

As I'm writing, I'm splitting things up into:

- Core
- Optional, but with Default option.
- Optional, fully

If people have suggestions on how players can have both a sense of urgency and the capacity to have an impact, while there's a fully realised timestream, I'm eager to hear of it - if you find the totality of time existingmore important than a 'now-point', that is.

Tobias

[contracycle]

A priposition based on some expeirnce playing Mage.  Maybe some ofd this appears in Continuum, I dunno.

When you are a mage, you can do nearly anything.  Thats not strictly true but its near enough that it stands as a working principle.  Lets say you find yourself in an irreconcilable difference with another mage, what do you do?

Well, the simplest thing to do is to teleport into their location and shoot them, or similar.  Direct and to the point.  Unfortunately because it is also obvious, its doomed.  Its doomed because your opponent can ALSO do nearly anything, so you are playing your main strength aginst their main strength on ground of their choosing.  Not good.

Therefore: the only plan with a reasonable chance of success is one the opponent cannot reasonably anticipate.  And thats quite tricky.

Now what strikes me as a potential parallel here is the kind of gimmicks bill and tedd pull with time travel to get themselves out of binds.  Maybe the point of a manipulation is to, say, make sure person X is wearing red shoes instead of brown shoes, for some reason, ona certain day.  Now you could just teleport there in the night and paint their shoes, or replace them, or something equally direct and obvious.  But that should not work - what you should have to do, in order to solve your problem, is figure out 4 or 5 interactions with this person that have the result of them wearing red shoes instead of brown shoes.

This is actually a sort of Groundhog Day model of trim-travel, because in effect the players might be repeating the same scene over and over again with one new ingredient added to see if that, at last, brings about the required result.  And this alos goes to an extent toward the identity of the archivists, becuase in such a model the tiniest detail is critical.  Maybe this person is wearing brown shoes becuase of a traumatic  experience in kindergarten - if you can find that out and fix it before it happens, the problem is solved.

This is not a finished concept but goes some way to establishing a framnework of "what do you actually do" in this game.

[Andrew Morris]

Hmmm maybe I wasn't clear enough.

There have been several posts regarding 'becoming' archivist. While we could ignore that, the point has been made (a few times) that there should be some way of identifying with the Archivists, and that the best method would be to give them some recognizable human traits. Thus, a becoming.

Right. Maybe I was the one who wasn't clear. Archivists come from humans. These humans come from throughout our timestream: past, present, and future. As soon as they become Archivists, the concept of time ceases to have any significant meaning for them. There's no conflict, as far as I can see. If it makes it easier to envision, think of the Great Library as a totaly separate timestream, with no relationship to the "main" timestream (that's inaccurate, but it might help).

1. There should be some advancing point of 'now' or 'the latest realised time', which is indeed proceeding linearly (or at least, there is no realised future yet beyond that end).

That's fine, too, but it kills the non-dimensionality of the Great Library, or at very least, its non-temporality. We could incorporate the recent idea that there is a maximum "distance" the characters can go backward in time, by saying there is both a "now" and a window into the past. For example, Archivists can only travel to the time period exactly 1000 years ago.

If a point of time exists where the nemesis has happened, that point would likely be shielded as the mother of important events.

Unless we say it's not. Maybe that rule doesn't apply to time travelers or agents of temporal change, or something. Maybe it's just not protected, and the "why" of it is a big mystery.

...in other words, the mechanics should provide an impartial 'threshold' for when certain aspects of an event become shielded.

Or the opposite -- the GM decides when events are shielded, and the rules show how the characters can overcome the shielding and alter the event.

The Nemesis is in the future, and it's happening is predicted with current knowledge with a degree of imperfection, as well as the method of averting it. (This means that even after all the Archivists efforts, and given the time-pressure on the players, Nemesis might very well happen. Like MLwM, the pressure could rise at a defined rate, and at point X things will wind up good or bad).

I like this idea, but not in conjuction with time travel. If we go with this, I'd say scrap time travel.

[TonyLB]

How about if we scrap Time Travel, but don't scrap Era Travel?

Specifically, from the limited human viewpoint, the dark ages happen after the Roman Empire, but before the Rennaisance.

The Archivists know this to be false... history is proceeding in all of these Eras simultaneously, and causality flows as easily "forward" and "back" as it does "north" and "south".  

But the human mind isn't capable of perceiving that, so it takes all the events of every era and tries (with very mixed success) to stitch them into a single line.  It gets ridiculous little errors, but they are glossed over with yet further elaborate rationalizations:  The eastern capital of the Roman Empire falls after the Dark Ages?  The Dark Ages in Germany wind toward a close with the RISE of the Holy Roman Empire?  What sort of glue are these humans sniffing, anyway?

[Andrew Morris]

Tony, uhm...hmm...what? I'm lost, probably because everything I know next to nothing about history other than it happened in the past. I think I get the basic concept, though, which leads me to a question. How do you reconcile that folks can be born at the end of an era, but then live through into the next one?

[TonyLB]

Folks can't be born in an era and then live through to the next one.  The beginning of another Era is irrevocably past.  Time doesn't flow forward from one to the next like they're on a line.  That is a fable that humans have created to explain the world.  

From the Archivists point of view there is only one Now.  But there are many Eras, and it is Now in all of them.  Where Humans foolishly see history or coincidence, the Archivists see the causality of the Eras mixing and pulling at each other.

Now, in the Roman Empire, the Senators are arguing violently.  The repairs to the winter harbor at Ostia are, as ever, the topic of debate.  A previously reticent Senator has recently come across a spectacular landscape painting in an antique dealer's stall, depicting the harbor in its glory.  It has swayed his opinion, and with his help it looks like the funds to complete repairs may be approved.

Now, in the Dark Ages, an italian peasant is throwing rocks at the water.  The water is bluer, seems deeper, now then it ever did before.  But then, it is a summer's day, and no raiders have struck the village this year.  Small wonder if everything seems glorious.  On the spot he makes up a little tune, barely music, more bare emotion.

Now, in the Rennaisance, a painter hums a little tune.  It just popped into his head, but now that he thinks about it he recalls that it is an old folk song.  He must have learned it in his youth.  He puts the finishing touches on the landscape of the harbor, possibly the finest work of his young career.


Heh... maybe a bit too abstruse for a game.  I like it though :-)

[daMoose_Neo]

I think the Bill & Ted approach works quite nicely.
It was kinda cool the first time watching it with them wondering about something as mundane as "Where are the keys?" in the begining only to find that they need them near the end, and the simple idea of "I know! After this, lets go back and grab the keys BEFORE I lose them and plant them...right here! Dude, look, there they are!"
From 'outside' the timestream, a traveler can concievably do all sorts of things to our "Past", "Present", and "Future". Rather than focus on an Archivist time-flow, why not make that part of why they need hosts? Use them for a frame of reference or perception.
Not only are they incorporeal, but their perception of time is "Everything at once", and need the human element to streamline Time itself to make any kind of effective change, as well as intereact with the physical world.

[TonyLB]

Oh, I like that.

"Why do I need a Host?  Alright, imagine you're trying to hit a baseball.  You obviously can't do that if you see all of time at once."
"Obvious?  What's obvious about it?  You'll know exactly where the ball is going to pass over the plate!"
"Yes, but I'll also know where every other ball that has ever or will ever be pitched is going to pass over the plate.  You will never understand how exhausting it is to pick out one particular ball from the chorus.  It's a marvel that you humans do it so casually."

[Andrew Morris]

Tony, that clears it up a bit for me, but I'm still wondering how objective facts (and don't get me into how that's a misleading term) fit into the Era concept. I mean, if I can trace my heritage back into medieval times, doesn't that contradict the theory?

Nate, nice, very nice. I also like the idea. The Archivists are essentially too advanced to be able to mentally "gear down" and interact within the human concept of linear time. This only works if the Great Library is non-dimensional and non-temporal, though. At least, it only works well if that's the case.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Wow, this discussion moves. Forgive me if I backtrack a bit....


(1) The Macro Dilemma

the only real component of system we have is burn/fade, which tackles only a single topic, the relationship between host and archivist. Perhaps the key to designing your own metaplot and/or game in this case is to establish another mechanical system that in some sense contradicts or operates at cross purposes from this burn/fade relationship.

Agreed, 100%*.  We need a macro-level dilemma to go along with the individual-level dilemma of burn vs. fade. Now, I had been thinking in terms of scaling up Fade/Burn applying it to whole societies -- i.e. Fade vs. Burn in the relationship between Archivists and mortal human civilization. But I think your idea of having the macro level involve a different trade-off at right angles to individual-level Fade vs. Burn is more interesting, because it creates a four-way dilemma.

Now, what the heck is the "Macro Dilemma" (to coin a term)? The easy answer is "that's a customizable setting option, we can have a bunch of 'em"; but I suspect the game would be stronger if we could find one clear macro-level dilemma that held constant across all settings, just as fade vs. burn holds constant at the individual level.

That said, I'm blanking on what the Macro Dilemma should be, and the only way to figure that out is to throw out a bunch of alternatives anyway, whether or not we ultimately whittle it down to one. I really like Tony's idea for a start:

no single principle lends itself more to moral atrocity (and I mean that in a good way) than this one: "It is more important that humans have a chance to solve this problem on their own terms than that the problem is actually solved."

Which, framed as a bipolar opposition, is something like "freedom vs. happiness." Is it worth risking unhappiness (or extinction...) as the price of making your own choices freely? Or is it worth compromising people's freedom by forcing them towards happiness (and survival)?

Which ties nicely into the next big issue....


(2) Moral Ambiguity, the Nemesis, and Tragedy vs. Transcendence

the fundamental conflict so far established is to PREVENT the status quo from changing, or to reverse changes that have been made in the status quo

Initially, I wanted the Archvists to be...well...not evil, but certainly without human morals or scruples. So, going back to that, how about the idea that countering the Nemesis is just a part of the overall Archivist agenda?

Again, I think you guys are closer to the right answer than I was. My conception of Archivists vs. Nemesis had been pretty black-and-white: The Nemesis is a clear "end of humanity," not so much in terms of the planet blowing up as in terms of the self-perpetuating and dehumanizing totalitarianism portrayed by George Orwell in 1984, or some consumerist, market-tested, and equally dehumanizing dystopia where the advertisements recognize you by your retinal patterns and address you by name, rather like the world of Minority Report.

But there are other, more ambiguous options that sacrifice some of that moral clarity in order to gain interesting dilemmas. Take Aldous Huxley's Brave New World: Most people is drugged and psychologically conditioned into conformity, but they're all happy, while the tiny minority that live by the old ways retain their individuality at the price of being pretty miserable -- so who's right? Is Nemesis the survival of the drugged-into-contentment Brave New World, or is Nemesis the prospect of its collapse back into people being free to suffer? Or take Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End ( SPOILER WARNING: the "happy ending" of the book is that all the world's children psychically unite into a single supermind and transcend mortal existence, leaving their parents and the human race as a physical species to die off. Is Nemesis something that prevents such a glorious transhuman ascension? Or is Nemesis the ascension itself, and grubby old-fashioned humanity the thing worth fighting for?

Incidentally, this ties back to the question (in the original post) of whether Archivists are tragic, transcendent, or both. My original take, again, had been strongly on the tragic side -- that the loss of the flesh is a sacrifice that can never be entirely made up for. But this potentialyl gets us into a kind of White Wolf Wraith: The Eternal Moping type of teenage angst. As people have said, yes there should be tragic self-sacrifice, but being an Archivist also needs to be gloriously transcendent and even fun, dammit (hey, we're supposed to be making a game, right, not an ordeal): After all, you can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone, learn the secrets of the universe and manifest Wikkid Kewl Powerz.


(3) The Nature of Time

There should be some advancing point of 'now' or 'the latest realised time', which is indeed proceeding linearly (or at least, there is no realised future yet beyond that end).  Why? Well, because if all time has already been (or exists currently), then there is no sence of urgency for the players. They can exist, even if the Nemesis has already happened (completely), so they have all the time they need to change things.

Again, I think I agree. Some sense of urgency is essential to drama -- otherwise, you don't have to make Hard Choices, you can keep tinkering until you get it perfect (or get bored trying ...) -- and it's hard to have urgency and eternity at the same time.

From the Archivists point of view there is only one Now. But there are many Eras, and it is Now in all of them.... Now, in the Roman Empire, the Senators are arguing violently. The repairs to the winter harbor at Ostia are, as ever, the topic of debate....Now, in the Dark Ages, an italian peasant is throwing rocks at the water [and] makes up a little tune... Now, in the Rennaisance, a painter hums a little tune....

Damn it, Tony, stop being brilliant. That said, maybe chucking out the whole concept of linear history is a bit much -- but I can translate your concept into the idea of having multiple "windows" that allow travel into the past only at given moments (only at a "critical temporal nexus" if you prefer), one window in each "era," and those moments are themselves advancing linearly through time. Note that this restores the possiblity of urgency -- your window may move too far for you to affect events or close altogether!

(Doesn't Feng Shui do essentially this same thing, in a light-hearted way?)

And I agree with the emphasis on leaving more or less fixed the Big Established Events of history -- which can be "locked down" as various people suggest, if only by the Schrodinger's War principle that everything thoroughly observed is fixed. Instead, it's much more fun to play with subtle stuff that slowly builds up over time -- rather like Tony's music and painting examples. I'd frankly started thinking of the classic two-fisted Archivist mission as being something like this:

Go back in time to just before the Christian mob burned the Great Library at Alexandria (or the Vikings sacked the Christian monasteries of Ireland): You can't prevent the disaster, but you can have your Host gets away with some crucial piece of literature (or work of science, or whatever) and hides it. Then you can go to the Renaissance and make sure your Host there finds it, ensuring that this particular benign meme is preserved and reinserted into human civilization -- which, ultimately, will help prevent the Nemesis from happening.

And I love the dilemma of "I can see all the baseballs in history at once, how do I hit the right one?"


*(Note in self defense: I did state explicitly back on the last page of Nailing Mechanics) that our goal should not be merely to refine my draft mechanics, but to try actively to break them -- and this is clearly one of the holes we were trying to find.)

[TonyLB]

Take one...

Incidentally, this ties back to the question (in the original post) of whether Archivists are tragic, transcendent, or both. My original take, again, had been strongly on the tragic side -- that the loss of the flesh is a sacrifice that can never be entirely made up for. But this potentialyl gets us into a kind of White Wolf Wraith: The Eternal Moping type of teenage angst.

... add one...

The Archivists are essentially too advanced to be able to mentally "gear down" and interact within the human concept of linear time.

Shake liberally.

The loss isn't of flesh, and all its glorious messiness.  The loss is of the blissful, irresponsible, powerful childhood idyll of linear time.

This (to me) implies that Archivists need to suppress or forget some of their great wisdom in order to get close enough to human mentality to take a Host.  That's why they're in danger of Fading.

Maybe the Burn mechanic does more than simply show the host too much about how non-linear time and reality are.  Maybe if you accumulate too much Burn your archivist remembers too much about the true nature of reality, and finds itself unable to relate to the ignorant and powerful vision of linear time.  Essentially you'd get ejected back into the eternal moment of the Great Library, and have to go through whatever painful (and perhaps damaging) ordeal you originally suffered to be able to take a Host.

[Sydney Freedberg]

And this from the guy who said

I'd worry about making a character that is too far divorced from the player's mindset to be an effective avatar for their concerns.

This is really cool, Tony, but it may be unplayable..... It certainly begins to bend my brain, and I'm trained as a historian (well, actually, that may be my problem: I'm trained to think in terms of linear causation through time).

[Doug Ruff]

OK, here's a suggestion for the Nature of Time - this builds a bit some some of the previous concepts.

Firstly, there are two dimensions of time. Hosts can only perceive one of these dimensions, Archivists (and their ilk) can only perceive the other.

To help visualise this - imagine a "tunnel". At one end of the tunnel is the beginning of Host-Time, at the other end is the end of Host-Time.

Hosts cannot see the tunnel, they travel inside it, in one direction only. This is Life, with all it entails.

Archivists stand outside the tunnel, looking in. To an Archivist, all of Host-Time is one big Now[/] (Thanks Tony.)

However, Archivist-Time also moves, in one direction only. And as Archivist-Time passes, the nature of the tunnel can be seen to change

[Tricky bit: in Archivist Time, the future state of the "time-tunnel" is a function of it's previous state - a bit like the Game of Life.]

At any point in Archivist-Time, an Archivist can enter Host-Time at any point of the tunnel - they can also leave the tunnel, return to Archivist-Time and re-enter at a different point in Host-Time. From the Host-Viewpoint, this is effectively "time travel".

[This is also the only way the Archivist can influence how the tunnel will appear in the Archivist-future, they need to make the changes from within the tunnel.]

This means that Archivists can observe the whole of Host-Time from within Archivist-Time, step inside the tunnel to make changes, adn then step out again to see the effects.

What an Archivist cannot do is travel backwards or forwards in Archivist-Time, they are trapped in this, just as securely as Hosts are confined to the limits of their own Host-Time.

To paraphrase the famous saying: You can't step into the same tunnel twice.

(Note, "stream" may in fact be the better word, I just wanted to avoid this at first as "timestream" already carries a lot of connotations.)

Is this workable, or just insane?