[GroupDesign] Schrodinger's war: Nailing Axes

[Kirk Mitchell]

Just one thing, at the moment, the current direction of discussion about the Order/Change axis (which sounds pretty good, as both are fairly neutral concepts, neither good or bad, just are) really lean towards behaviour and roleplaying rather than any mechanics (at least on a micro level). This is cool, but I just want to get a clear idea of where exactly we are heading with this.

How about there is a order/change axis for the host, the archivist and the setting. Some sort of imbalance between them, for example the archivist being extremely biased towards change, and the host being biased towards order would result in the archivist being more likely to attempt to change the host, but have more difficulty in doing so. I dunno whether this would be shown through mechanics or would simply be roleplayed through actions. However, all the other axes have mechanics so i don't know which way we want to do with this. Thoughts?

Luck,
Kirk

[Andrew Morris]

How about "stability vs. change?" Or "safety vs. progress." Uhm...wait a minute. Are we just re-wording the Freedom vs. Safety "axis" here? I thought this was a different one, but it seems pretty much the same.

[Sydney Freedberg]

I think we're getting lost in words -- and as Acting Foot, I use my nigh-impotent authority to declare that this must stop!

The issue appears to be defining "Freedom vs. Whatever." I think we all have a fairly good handle on what Freedom and Free Will mean -- the ability of individuals and, collectively, human civilization to choose their own path without interference, even if they then choose wrong. And I think "Freedom" (as opposed to "Change," for example) is (a) something we're going to inevitably deal with in the game (b) on both the individual and macro levels (c) and which is clear moral good. (People can of course debate all of this).

The source of confusion is the "Whatever" -- and I don't think tossing out more alternative names for it will solve that problem. So let me suggest we spend some time trying to describe what the equal-and-opposite Good Thing is that stands in opposition to Freedom. Once we've got a better idea of what we're talking about, then we can find a name.

Some of the elements of "Whatever" that have come up so far and are worth trying to include: Safety; security; control; harmony; order; happiness; "the right thing." The common factor may be about "being right with the world" -- in harmony with one's fellow humans, the environment, even with What History Should Be -- and if necessary subordinating one's own desires to that rightness.

[Doug Ruff]

I humbly disagree.

I believe we started to come off the rails when we started lining up Freedom against Order. Instead of two Axes, we ended up with one "fuzzy" Axis.

A few posts ago I recommended Order/Chaos as one of the Axes, and amended this to Order/Change because the word Chaos implies "bad" to many people (me, I blame Moorcock, but that's another story...)

I've also recommended Free Will/Certain Future as a second Axis, and I don't think anyone has commented on this yet. And I think the reason for this is that Certain Future doesn't sound "good" enough in comparison with Free Will, to fuel the hard choice we are looking for.

However, I think this is where the Opposed Good Things starts to unravel a bit (sorry, Sydney.) Because we are looking for the single Good Thing that could sit on the other side of the Axis with Free Will, and it doesn't quite work that way.

The thing is, most of the protagonists in the game (and especially Archivists, as they have a privileged vision of the future) are looking to secure a better future, and make it stick (ie Certain) - but they don't agree on what future is best, or why.

So, one Archivist may be looking to secure a better Certain Future which is based on "happiness", whereas another may be promoting a Certain Future based on "safety". The Darkchivists may be promoting a Certain Future based on "everyone bows before us."

So it's Free Will versus Determinism, with the twist that in this game "Determinism" means "that which I/we determine".

So, forgetting the names for a moment ("Certain Future" is somewhat inelegant), am I on the right track?

[Sydney Freedberg]

I humbly disagree....

Well, obviously I humbly disagree with Doug's humble disagreement (I think that there can and indeed mustbe a single definable opposite good to free will, we just haven't got there yet). But we need to hear from more people.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[Andrew Morris]

I've lost the thead of this thread. Can someone post what all the working axes are? I know we had at least two different ones.

[Sydney Freedberg]

I don't think anyone's debated "Transcendence vs. Humanity" much, but we're all over the map on what to do with "Free Will vs. Whatever," such as:

Free Will vs. Orthodoxy?
Free Will vs. Homogeneity?
Free Will vs. Garauntees? (Garaunteed Safety, Garaunteed Reward In Afterlife....)

And then

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.  .....

And some from Doug that redefine Free Will as a subset of a larger issue:

Chaos vs Order is another key tension..On the smaller scale, this same tension manifests as Free Will vs Certain Future.

How about "Order" vs "Change"?

And likewise from Andrew:

How about "stability vs. change?" Or "safety vs. progress."

And then TonyLB proposed a funky five-pointed star thing where every value has TWO opposites:

Humanity opposes Transcendance and Order ...Chaos opposes Order and Justice ...Justice opposes Chaos and Transcendance ...Transcendance opposes Justice and Humanity...Order opposes Humanity and Chaos

[Doug Ruff]

Beaten to the punch... thanks for doing this Sydney.

There's one more I suggested earlier in this thread: Individual Good vs Greater Good (or Individual vs Society, if oyu like.)

[Sydney Freedberg]

Yeah, I left "Greater Good vs. Individual Good" off because Doug, immediately after proposing it, wondered aloud if it were such a broad and fundamental question that it didn't work as a specific axis (aka bipolar opposition).

And now to argue with myself, complete with long theological exposition!

(1) Dharma?

Maybe the opposite of Free Will is Dharma. This is a Hindu term with no exact translation into English. The one-word equivalent is "righteousness" (sort of) but a fuller meaning (again, sort of) is "the way you are supposed to behave based on your social role." E.g. a warrior had ksatriya dharma requiring him to be a brave and honorable combatant, a father's dharma requires him to provide for his children, and so on, and so on. In other words, it's not just morality, it's the moral obligations specifically incumbent on your existing relations to other people.

(N.B. Dharma has a few dozen other meanings in Hindu and Buddhist thought, but I'm focusing on this one, derived from studying (in translation!) the Mahabharata, the gigantic Sanskrit epic of which the Bagavad Gita is just one small part.)

One of the fascinating things about dharma is the ancient Indian sages themselves recognized it has its limits: In the Mahabharata, the heroes (the Pandava brothers) end up having to go into rebellion against the legitimate but corrupt rulers of the kingdom; and at the end, the good guys wind up in hell, because they have violated dharma, while the bad guys are in heaven, because they fulfilled their expected social roles.

And later on dharma, i.e. righteousness, which is all about your current obligations, is explicitly contrasted to moskha, i.e. liberation, enlightenment, transcendence.

Which means...


(2) Not two bipolar oppositions, but a four-way opposition?

I've been positing two axes, each a bipolar opposition of values, in which Humanity (which I've in the past equated with passion) opposes Transcendence (which I've equated with knowledge of the true nature of the universe, or logos), and Free Will opposes Whatever. Instead we may actually have a four-cornered opposition, rather like TonyLB's pentagram of morality a few posts back, in which each value is in a dynamic tension with the others. Each value is opposed to each of the others, but each is also allied to each of the others, at the same time. Instead of a Cartesian coordinate plane (which was always ugly), imagine a box with each of the values in one corner, and each one connected to the three others by a double-headed arrow.

To make this a little less abstract, let's talk (tentative terms) about Dharma, Transcendence, Will, and Passion:

Dharma opposes Will because one is about living up to expectations, and the other is about doing what you alone choose; but both Dharma and Will are about mastering your emotions (passions).

Dharma opposes Passion because Dharma is about subordinating your personal desires (Passion) to the needs of those around you; but both Dharma and Passion link you to others, either as objects of desire (love, hate, etc.) or subjects of duty.

Transcendence opposes Dharma because Transcendence lifts you above the concerns of the world, whereas Dharma makes you address those concerns; but both subordinate your personal Will and Passion to something greater than yourself, whether it be social obligation or cosmic truth.

Transcendence opposes Will because Transcendence is about embracing a cosmic truth greater than yourself and Will is about doing what you damn well please; but both Will and Transcendence cut you free (or cut you off) from mundane human obligations and connections.

Transcendence opposes Passion because Transcendence lifts you above your mortal desires whereas Passion drags you down into them; but both give you tremendous driving energy to break free of ordinary social limits.

Will opposes Passion because Will chooses what the ego wants, whereas Passion blindly follows what the Id wants; but both Will and Passion are about doing what you want regardless of constraint.

Obviously there are holes in this concept, but do people think it's worth exploring?

[Michael Brazier]

Sounds good to me ... except that I'd leave out "Will", leaving a triple opposition.

Yes, I know this will seem perverse, but bear with me.  Passions, dharma, and transcendence are all motives for action; but will is the power to act, not (in itself) a reason to act.  If we defined "will" as a class of reason for action, but excluded the animal (covered by passions), the social (by dharma) and the spiritual (by transcendence) aspects of humans from that class ... what is left behind?  All that occurs to me is the wish to dominate, to exert power over whatever one encounters; and that isn't a Good Thing that becomes bad only in excess.  The will to power is bad per se, producing evil consequences if it appears at all, to any degree.

I see the triple working like this:

Passion/Duty/Spirit balanced: A person (or society) in balance; personal desires fuel the performance of social roles, which in turn leads to knowledge of what lies beyond

At low levels: The person/society is contented, but not energetic or inspiring
At high levels: The person/society is a Wonder (building a society like this is probably the goal of a campaign)
[/list:u]
Over-strong Passion: "If it feels good, do it!"  Social roles are felt as confining to the natural impulses, and self-indulgence distracts the person/society from the voice of inspiration
Over-weak Passion: The person/society lacks vitality
Over-strong Duty: The person/society demands conformity and is bound to ancient laws and customs; unlicensed passions and strange insights are condemned as unravellings of the social fabric
Over-weak Duty: The person/society is in chaos
Over-strong Spirit: The person/society is rapt in a heavenly vision, and cares little for natural passions or social networks
Over-weak Spirit: The person/society is strongly pragmatic, even cynical, and dislikes abstract thought and imagination
[/list:u]

[Michael Brazier]

Linking this with history-changing: make people and societies that balance passion, duty, and spirit difficult to influence -- their causes and effects have an inherent strength, depending on the level they're balanced at.  People and societies that are out of balance, in any direction, are more easily swayed.  And the technique for making a society better, if it's balanced, is to push it off balance, then try to control how it swings.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Hmmm. I'd been thinking of Will aka Free Will as "capacity to make choices for oneself" rather than as will to dominate. But you can argue that the capacity for moral choice is so fundamental that it does not belong as one value among many, but as the fulcrum upon which the others (duty, transcendence/knowledge, passion) are balanced.

Now, I'm not saying Michael's convinced me that a three-legged model is a sturdy tripod rather than a crippled quadruped; but I'm intrigued and definitely willing to consider it.

So what does everyone else think?

P.S.:

...the technique for making a society better, if it's balanced, is to push it off balance, then try to control how it swings....

Now that sounds like playing with fire. Which is great fun if it's your fictional alter egos and not the players themselves who get burned...

[Doug Ruff]

I'm beginning to find it difficult to contribute to this thread. I'm going to try to explain why, but it's tricky, because I think I'm coming from a very different direction, and don't therefore understand what is going on. I may offend as a result, but this isn't intentional.

I understand the specific "systems" for arranging Values in opposition with each other. All of them are good. However, this leads me to believe that none of them are good. Because they are all good.

It's entirely possible to line up Values in direct opposition (Axes) as a "sliding scale", or as "opposed good things". It's also possible to line them up in triangles, squares, cross roads, stars, pyramids, you name it. All of these arrangements provide an interesting thematic arrangement for the game. But why is it necessary to settle on a particular arrangement as being the only way, as expressed within the mechanics, that these themes or values can interact?

This is the source of my original concerns about a "geometric" model, and what I'm seeing in this thread is increasing my concern.

Again, all of the suggestions are valuable; setting up any of these arrangements can help to create a great theme for the campaign.

So why is this Core? Why can't we just say:

"There are many Values that can come to the fore in this game. By taking some of these values and exploring how they can support and oppose each other, you can create your own unique themes for your campaign. Here's some examples to get you going."

I suspect that the answer to this involves the need to come up with a "core mechanic" for the game that expresses the "core values". To which I say, there are other core elements that need to be addressed first, which are "thematically neutral" (and therefore setting neutral). For example, "possession" and "how to change history". These are the true core of the game. These may engage some of our values already. But I don't see the need, at this point in the design process, to tie ourselves and our players down to an additional system of values, which we and they may not share.

In other words, if we are going to have a system for this, please can we make it player- or GM- definable? In the same way that FATE allows you to pick your attributes (Aspects) without forcing you to select from a list?

[contracycle]

We can't say that because its too wish-washy.  The game has to have some solid parts, and mostly that has to be the mechanical tension expressed by system.  The geometric models are an attempt to construct underlying principles so that system can be laid on top of them, to express them.

Sorcerer, which is the explicit model for this game, does not specify what constitutes humanity (or demons) but does establish the need/want tension mechanically.  I think, anyway.

[Andrew Morris]

Hmm...I'm somewhere between Doug and contracycle. I haven't been that involved in this thread for the same reason as Doug -- I think any sort of geometric model is the wrong way to go. On the other hand, I agree with contracycle -- we need to define certain things, rather than leaving it up to the players. So, I would like the core themes identified, but not locked into a particular geometric model...right now, at least. I'd like to totally drop the terminology of "axes" and start talking about themes, unless everyone else is opposed to that.

Oh, and contracycle, where did you get the idea that Sorcerer was the explicit model for the game? I mean, it's entirely possible that someone said that somewhere in one of these threads; I just don't remember it. The only thing that comes to mind were a few occasions where we compared things to Sorcerer -- and if I recall correctly, most ended with "and that's how Sorcerer does it, which isn't what we want for this game" or some such.