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Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is a thread in the GroupDesign series, focusing on nailing the 'Axes' (the scales in the balance in Schrodinger's war.)

A lot has been said on this topic in the 'Advanced Archivism' and 'Mix your Own metaplot' threads. To succesfully contribute to this thread it is not mandatory that you've read them, but it's advisable.

In this thread, we'll

1. Define WHY Axes are important
2. Choose the appropriate Axes
3. Define the mechanics governing those axes

If you're lost at any point, my sig will point to the index, feel free to PM me. Note that this is a 'Nailing' thread. Other than new ideas for Axes, this is not about brainstorming - this is about getting stuff written down for non-insiders to read.

Define why axes are important
They're not. Or rather, the terminology of "axes" might be problematic. After a bit of discussion with Doug Ruff, he's convinced me that while the basic concepts or themes are important, the articifial construction of some geometric model could be a stumbling block later on. Now, keep in mind I'm not speaking for Doug here, this is simply what I walked away from our conversation with. I'd like to hear from him on this topic to see if he's thinking along the same lines or not.

Choose the appropriate axes
Hmm...I have no strong opinion on this, which is quite out of character for me. Allowing humans free will vs. protecting them from themselves is a good one, but other than that, I'd still like to hear more opinions on this topic from folks with more to say than me.

Mechanics of the axes
I'm thinking that each axis (or theme) has two opposed traits. Normally, the Archivist can raise of lower these in conjunction, but some secret elements (specifically, the exact abilities and capabilities of the host) will lead to having these traits become unbalanced, which is a bad thing.

Quote from: Tobias1. Define WHY Axes are important

No dilemmas, no drama. And no gameplay challenge, either. If there is One Good Thing and you simply seek to maximize it, or One Bad Thing and you simply seek to minimize it, then you get "Old Skool D&D" where play is (1) "What weapon does the most damage?" and (2) "I swing at him!"

But if there are two Good Things, or three, or four, and they aren't entirely compatible -- maybe you can get more of everything at once, sometimes, but it ain't easy -- then you have dilemmas, and trade-offs, and fun. Every one of the original Star Wars movies has an example of this: Do you trust your targeting computer or the mysterious voice in your head? Finish your Jedi training or cut it short to save your friends? Defeat the villain or redeem him?

Stories are about choices. So are games. Hard choices are challenging and dramatic. The "axes" -- in the sense of several bipolar oppositions between Good Things that aren't compatible -- give us a structure of what the Hard Choices in this particular story-game are going to be about.

Quote from: Tobias2. Choose the appropriate Axes

Remember the idea here is Good Things that are either incompatible or at least in tension with each other (which, by the way, inverts my original idea in Nailing Mechanics about the primary tension being between Fade and Burn, two inherently bad things. Being wrong is one of my hobbies).

One axis that appears to be generally agreed to is "Transcendence vs. Humanity." Transcendence is what makes Archivists distinctly cool, namely the superhuman, transcendent knowledge ("Logoi") that allows them to soar above mortal existence, vs. what makes human beings human, which I'd argue is the passions -- love, hate, etc. -- which connect them to one another and the mortal world. Clearly, when you have superhuman characters messing in human events, both their ability to Rise Above and their ability to Connect are necessary, and the balance between them is crucial.

(But to some degree a mortal human can have "Transcendence" in the sense of rationality and scientific/mystical understanding that lets them see beyond mundane, animal reality).

The other emerging axis, still less well defined, is "Free Will vs.... Whatever." Clearly, when you have superhuman characters messing in human events -- both through Possession of individuals and altering history as a whole -- the whole issue of "when do you let them choose for themselves, even if they might choose wrong?" is (or should be) unavoidable.

Now what is Free Will opposed to? We've struggled to define this variously as happiness, security, control, survival, harmony, and a few other things, and not yet found quite the right term for the concept. But clearly giving free rein to Free Will is the risky choice, so whatever the opposite is must be the safe choice -- the Good Thing which freedom, ill-used, can put in danger.

Any suggestions intensely appreciated.

Quote from: Tobias3. Define the mechanics governing those axes

Being on deadline at work, I have time for just a quick sketch of concepts.

I do not like the idea of 1-to-1 tradeoffs between opposed values, or sliding scales -- both of which are implicit in the term "axis" (if you move towards one end, you automatically move towards the other). So I'd actually agree with people who've criticized my earlier attempts to map these dilemmas out in terms of a Cartesian coordinate plane: As a mechanic, that is indeed too rigid.

If we're talking about opposed Good Things, and if we want to allow a possibility, however slim, of "reconciling the opposites" and letting people have both at once, albeit with great difficulty, then another approach suggests itself:

Each character -- conceivably every human and Archivist -- and each culture -- maybe even human civilization as a whole -- has a rating in each of the four Good Things: Passion/Humanity, Knowledge/Transcendence, Free Will, and Whatever (Security/Safety/Harmony/etc. please help me someone!). The higher the rating, the better the Good Thing -- but if a Good Thing is way higher (or way lower) than the opposed Good Thing (e.g. Transcence > Humanity), then the result is a degree of Badness equal to the size of the imbalance.

Transcendence > Humanity = Burn-out, as the blinding light of your knowledge makes you incapable of seeing what is worthy of being attached to in the ordinary people around you.
Humanity > Transcendence = Fade-out, as your higher nature (and this could be a mortal's higher nature, or a civilization's, not just an Archivist's) is submerged in your turbulent emotions.

Free Will > Whatever = Chaos, as you (individually)/society (collectively) take incompatible paths that lead to conflict and destruction.
Whatever > Free Will = Stasis, as you (individually)/society (collectively) conform to a single, safe path and close off all other options.

EDIT:
But if you do manage to increase two opposed Good Things to high levels while keeping them in balance, you become much more powerful (and enlightened) than someone who maintains the balance at a low level. If Transcendence and Humanity are high and balanced, you have a sort of saint, someone connected to and compassionate about humanity yet without human limits ("fully human and fully divine," to use the Christian term about Jesus). If Free Will and Whatever are high and balanced, you have someone who Does The Right Thing not out of compulsion or conformity but by choice.

Free Will vs. Orthodoxy?

Free Will vs. Homogeneity?

Free Will vs. Garauntees? (Garaunteed Safety, Garaunteed Reward In Afterlife, stuff like that - kinda loses its symmetry with the other Axes this way, thought, I think.)

How about: possibility vs. achievement?  The question being, does one try to preserve what already exists, by bending every novelty into a support for it, and breaking those that won't bend?  Or, does one encourage the novel, bending the established to accomodate it, and breaking it if it won't bend?

Free will lands on the side of possibility.  Integrity of history lands on the side of achievement.  History's integrity is threatened by free will, but it's also made of free will (every achievement was once only a possibility.)  An Archivist might prevent a Host's dangerous decision to preserve the timeline ... but prevent too many decisions, and the timeline loses its virtue, is not worth preserving any longer.

Quote from: Andrew MorrisDefine why axes are important
They're not. Or rather, the terminology of "axes" might be problematic. After a bit of discussion with Doug Ruff, he's convinced me that while the basic concepts or themes are important, the articifial construction of some geometric model could be a stumbling block later on. Now, keep in mind I'm not speaking for Doug here, this is simply what I walked away from our conversation with. I'd like to hear from him on this topic to see if he's thinking along the same lines or not.

Yes, I am. Fortunately, I think Sydney's post makes it clear that a "geometric" model isn't the main purpose of Axes. In which case, my main objection is to the name "Axes", because of the association with a geometric model (which may confuse our future readers.)

At risk of oversimplifying all the posts made on this topic, it appears to me that the main reason for having something like Axes is to identify key tensions within the setting, and ensure that they find a place within the mechanics. That's it. The devil, of course, is in the detail, but I would like to know whether this analysis is accurate, as it would help me to understand whether or not we all have the same goals for this thread.

I guess that's my answer to thread question #1.

So, I'm going to go on about what the tensions may be (sort of answering #2) and suggest where these can be accomodated (#3)

But before that, Sydney has made a major suggestion, which is the concept of Opposed Good Things. I like this concept a lot, and I think that it has a definite place in the system. However, I don't think that it is a cornerstone of the system, insofar as it should be the "base mechanic" within the game. I hope the reason why I think this will become more clear later, but for now I just want to say that some tensions are better represented by a "one or the other", directly opposed mechanic.

OK, moving on to #2 and #3:

Humanity vs Transcendence is a great tension, and I think that this one isa good fit for an Opposed Good Things mechanic. I think this is beginning to play out in the Advanced Archivism thread.

I also think this tension is generally present within any mechanical system for describing the mental state of the Host and/or the Archivist (whether Posession is happening or not.) This means there is a connection with at least part of the Burn/Fade mechanics.

Chaos vs Order is another key tension, and it may operate in more than one area. However, this one is a "sliding scale".

I believe that this tension is directly present in descriptions of the Host Time Tunnel, and it's elasticity (or lack of.) Again, I'll save the details for that thread. But I think that the mechanic for Elasticity will implement this tension nicely.

On the smaller scale, this same tension manifests as Free Will vs Certain Future. Whether either of these are a Good Thing depends on your viewpoint, and I don't think that can be changed for the mechanics.

(oh, and "possibility vs achievement" fits right in here.)

All of the above aren't new to this thread, but I think the next one is: Individual Good vs Greater Good. This is definitely compatible with Sydney's Opposed Good Things; characters should be seeking more of both. However, scaling this down to a mechanic is harder (and I'm not sure that it should be done) because, to me, it's rapidly becoming the central Theme of the game. So many of the difficult choices suggested by this game are directly linked to this theme, such as:

[*]Do I hurt my host in order to secure a better future for the world?[*]Do I hurt myself to secure a better future for the world?[*]Do I cooperate with other Archivists to preserve the balance, or pursue my own agenda?[*]Do I carry on fighting, or Fade into blissful oblivion?[/list:u]One way of supporting this with the mechanics is to ensure that there is a way of measuring your actual progress in Schrodinger's War. We've talked before (contracycle especially, IIRC) of giving statistics to whole cultures, which the Archivist can influence. Perhaps one step beyond that is to come up with stats for the whole Host Time Tunnel (Elasticity being one of them) that show the impact of the Archivist's actions on the whole of History. But I think that is a whole topic to itself...

Before Capes was even Capes, I had a fuzzy notion for creating Tensions dynamically through player choice.  I didn't use it, but maybe you guys can.  It went roughly like this.

Draw a star.  Take five "Good Things".  Place one of them on a point of the star.  Now choose one of the two points opposite that one (i.e. connected by lines).  Choose another Good Thing.  Put it there.  Those two are now in tension.  Continue until you've filled the points of the star.

Exempli Gratia
         Humanity                 Humanity opposes Transcendance and Order
                                  Chaos opposes Order and Justice
Chaos                Justice       Justice opposes Chaos and Transcendance
                                  Transcendance opposes Justice and Humanity
                                  Order opposes Humanity and Chaos
    Transcend.   Order
In play you then kept values for each point of the star.  The Tension is the difference between any two opposing values.

Say you increase Humanity from 0 to 3.  Now you have a three point tension between Humanity and Transcendance, and a three point tension between Humanity and Order.  If you increase Order to 2 you reduce the tension between Humanity and Order to 1, but increase the tension between Order and Chaos to 2.  And so it goes.

Hey, Tony. I quite like this idea. It creates both the tension between the aspects, and avoides the "sliding scale".

Here's an idea:

Earlier it was a suggestion that the Archivist choses the value of each of the aspects (boost Transcendance to 5 etc). You can only change the values once per "turn" or whatever way we have organising the play structure.

If one value is higher than another that it is in tension with, you choose whether to assign burn or fade to yourself or the host equal to the tension value.

Or maybe, there is a tension "thresh hold" that increases as the Archivist increases in power in character advancement. That would mean that once a tension is increased to above the tension thresh hold THEN you start taking burn or fade equal to the TOTAL tension. So that the better your archivist gets, the more flexibility the archivist has when changing the axes values but the moment something goes over the tension thresh hold you get hit with a VERY large amount of burn or fade. That would eliminate the issues with character advancement and D&D style "getting hit with 100 arrows and an axe to the head and still going strong".

Why axes are important

I think that they are as they are a way of focusing the concepts that the game revolves around. They are  a way of presenting the issues an difficult decisions as well as the imbalance between two Good Things.

Choose the appropriate axes



As for the axes themselves, I don't view them as a geometric design, and if we don't present them as a geometric design then it shouldn't be a problem. What they are meant to be is a way of presenting these mechanics

Hey, Tony. I quite like this idea. It creates both the tension between the aspects, and avoides the "sliding scale". However, the star formation also creates tensions between things that I don't think that really should be in tension.

Here's an idea: ( Mechanics )

Earlier it was a suggestion that the Archivist choses the value of each of the aspects (boost Transcendance to 5 etc). You can only change the values once per "turn" or whatever way we have organising the play structure.

If one value is higher than another that it is in tension with, you choose whether to assign burn or fade to yourself or the host equal to the tension value.

Or maybe, there is a tension "thresh hold" that increases as the Archivist increases in power in character advancement. That would mean that once a tension is increased to above the tension thresh hold THEN you start taking burn or fade equal to the TOTAL tension. So that the better your archivist gets, the more flexibility the archivist has when changing the axes values but the moment something goes over the tension thresh hold you get hit with a VERY large amount of burn or fade. That would eliminate the issues with character advancement and D&D style "getting hit with 100 arrows and an axe to the head and still going strong".

Why axes are important

I think that they are as they are a way of focusing the concepts that the game revolves around. They are  a way of presenting the issues an difficult decisions as well as the imbalance between two Good Things.

Choose the appropriate axes

I think that the axes as they are are well designed.

Humanity/Transcendance: this is a good one, it forces the player to make difficult game and metagame choices. The face off between transcendant knowledge and power vs. the textured passion and emotion of humanity. This is a difficult choice to make and the imbalance is dangerous.

Chaos/Order: I would more set this one as a "setting axes" not on the character sheet. One that is affected by the overall actions of the archivists (perhaps at the end of each session the GM would make an arbitrary decision about which way the overall actions of the archivists would bump the scale. I would set this also as a sliding scale, as you cannot have equal amounts of chaos and order. If either of these are imbalanced then perhaps there are both mechanical and setting changes, for example: In a predominantly chaos oriented setting not only is the world unpredictable and full of conflict but is extremely open when it comes to options, but people have more free will and are harder to control. However, in a predominantly order based setting, there are almost no other options available but hosts do as they are told.

With chaos and order presented that way, I suddenly see two new possibilities (not incompatible): Chaos and Order replace the need for a Free Will/Whatever and the elasticity of the timestream is determined by the Chaos/Order levels. The more chaotic the more elastic, the more order, the more "stiff" the timestream is. I think I'll go post in that thread now too. Anyways, back to the axes:

So, that leaves only one axes for the characters, and one axes for the setting in total. That should be quite manageable mechanics wise.

As for axes presented as a geometric construction, it only really depends on how we describe them and how they look on the character sheet. I think that if "axes" is no the best word, I'm sure we can find a new one. (feeling optimistic today ;))

Luck,
Kirk

"Chaos" has two problems as a term, though: Its connotation is negative (very rarely do you think of chaos as good), when I'd prefer to have players choose between opposed Good Things; and it applies primarily to the macro level, not really to the individual (very rarely do you think of an individual as "chaotic" outside of D&D), when I'd prefer to have the same values operating on both the macro and micro levels.

So I'd propose "Freedom vs. Order."

{crossposted with Nailing HTT}

So how would you propose having the Freedom/Order axis work on an individual character level?

Luck,
Kirk

Off the top of my head, "Order" on an individual level would mean orderly, predictable, safe, even conformist behaviour -- i.e. orderly behaviour by individuals adds up to an orderly society, just as the exercise of freedom by individuals leads to a free, even anarchic society.

My view on Freedom and Order is this:

Freedom/Order on a personal level, as well as a cosmic level, is a measurement of the amount of control the Archivists exert over the individual or HTT. The more order they impose, the more likely they are to get what they want to happen, but at the cost of reducing the Host or History to a meaningless thing, which can only survive by being controlled by the Archivists, which I assume is normally considered a Bad Thing by most Archivists.

Quote from: mholmes52Freedom/Order on a personal level, as well as a cosmic level, is a measurement of the amount of control the Archivists exert over the individual or HTT.

[quote"I, myself,"]orderly behaviour by individuals adds up to an orderly society[/quote]

I think these two ideas can be reconciled -- are, in fact, complementary: One obvious way to exercise control over people is to make them tidy, predictable conformists.

Now flip that around: Logically, the experience of having an Archivist control you erodes your free will and makes you more Orderly.

Quote from: Sydney FreedbergNow flip that around: Logically, the experience of having an Archivist control you erodes your free will and makes you more Orderly.

Except that the Archivist may be less Orderly than his Host...

I think that "Freedom" vs "Order" isn't quite right, but I appreciate that "Chaos" isn't right if it's a negative thing.

How about "Order" vs "Change"?