[GroupDesign] Schrodinger's war: Nailing HTT and GL

[Michael Brazier]

1. Are the Archivists the first residents of the Great Library?
2. Do any other creatures reside in the Great Library?

I'm assuming that by "any other creatures" you mean creatures who do not, like Archivists, originate from the Host spacetime, but are native to Archivist time and the Library.  If so, I vote no for the default.  If there are such creatures, working out where they came from becomes an alternate focus for the players, taking attention away from human history.

OTOH, you could have a lot of fun with alien Archivists -- Archivists originating in a non-human sapient species of Hosts -- who start appearing in and meddling with human Hosts because, in the future, humans came to their home planet in starships and caused many dramatic events there.  Especially if the consequences were mostly bad, so the aliens would be changing things to prevent human starflight and set their history back on course...

3. Does the Great Library actually represent the extent of the physicality of the entire Archivist space?

The answer depends on how one answers #2.  If there are creatures native to Archivist time the Library (defined as the Archivists' collective memory) is built within their space but can't be coextensive with it.  If not, the Great Library and Archivist space can be confounded.  Since I voted no to #2, I vote yes here.

4. Can Archivists travel any distance instantaneously within either spacetime?

I'm not sure that it makes sense even to think of "distance" in Archivist space, so I vote yes, trivially.  As for Host spacetime, I suggest that Archivists can possess Hosts anywhere and anywhen, but cannot affect that spacetime in any way except by possession; while beginning and ending a possession takes no Archivist time.

5. Is the dual spacetimes model described above a core element of the game, or is it open for customization?

Core -- creatures native to Archivist spacetime are an option, the origins of Archivists spacetime are a variable, but what's in the model is all necessary.

[Doug Ruff]

In the main, what Sydney said.

Main difference is #4. Once an Archivist has a connection between Host and Archivist dimensions, travel between these is instantaneous. However, making the link may take time.

Thee are also limits to where the Archivist can travel. In the Host dimensions, there has to be someone to possess (a different version of Nate's question: could an Archivist possess Lassie?) In the Archivist dimensions, "travel" is between memories, if a memory is being actively kept secret, or is hard to find (obscure), then this takes time too. In the Archivist dimensions, travel is at the speed of research....

Michael: I so want to play around with "alien" intelligences in this setting, but I think it's Option rather than Core.

However, some Archivists may no longer be recognisably human, despite their origin on Earth.

[contracycle]

Besides, if we, as designers, marry one explicit explanation and set of morals to the game,
1) We'll probably disagree on details ourselves and
2) Alienate a whole segment of players because, as illustrated by us disagreeing, not everyone shares the same ideas and beliefs.

1) we shouldn't need to be ideological fellows to work on one project together
2) thats not a serious concern at this time, and shouldn't be ever.  How many heartbreakers have we seen that set off down the dark path of "what the customer wants"?

They get to answer their own questions about morality, causality and why things are as they are.

If we set up a big showstopper of a central theme - time travel - and then dodge the need to explain it, I would expect the end result to be very disapointing.  Certainly I would find it so.  The best it could achieve is a kind of sub-Quantum Leap,  a series of trite morality plays that merely uses time travel as a backdrop element to set up the action.  If that is what we want to build, then we should forget about time travel totally and build purely "moral conflict" systems.

[daMoose_Neo]

...then we should forget about time travel totally and build purely "moral conflict" systems.

~_- Kinda lost me here.
What I've been advocating is enough generality for us, as designers, to avoid an enforced 'moral conflict' system and let the players work it out themselves.
Theres a huge difference between specifically going after (in design) what the 'customer' wants and what I'm looking for, the open ended capability. With the open ended explanation: Archivists are a quasi-all knowing, time traveling, incorporeal entity working against a dark temporal force, there is still a lot of room for interpriatation.
Your 'Last  Judgement' campaign could still work, in this instance the Nemesis being Satan or other devils/demons, tripping through time as well to tempt humanity and lead otherwise good people off track so that when the Archivists go to make their case they find these utterly corrupt individuals. Players could easily be the enforcement arm of the Archivists in your setting: Working against the Nemesis faction so that humans are seen as they really are, for choices they make, not because some possessed person did something henious.
However, by the same token, I think messing around with alien Archivists would make an interesting sci-fi setting.

Forge has a number of games that, yes, cater to a specific setting or character, but take a look at Sorcerror, one of the more (most?) successful around- the game deals with freaking demons! And yet, Ron does his best to avoid any specific religious affiliations- thus, it could be a demon in japanese terms which could be more or less a really foul/obnoxious spirit, or it could be a blood bathing terror ala the hell-fire and brimstone Christians.

To me, a good game gives you the tools, the mechanics and the backdrop. The players provide everything else. I think we're on a good course for the backdrop portion, filling in enough blanks to make it interesting but leaving enough open for the players to make it their own. We don't need to explain why the players are doing what they're doing, just how. They'll take care of the rest.

[daMoose_Neo]

~_-
Cross-post with Axes Thread:

The topic of aliens came up and Doug made a comment about 'Archivists [who] may no longer be recognisably human, despite their origin on Earth.'

Just a thought: Too much Trancendance and they become so alienly removed they can no longer possess a Host or care to (think trying to use Digital signals with an Analog-only reciever) or too much humanity/compassion they lose sight of their trancended state of mind.

Posting this both places because this *might* be a step onto explaining the Nemesis. We've already agreed for the most part Nemesis are Archivists as well, but how about Archivists taken to an extreme?
The Nemesis could possibly be a 'horde' of these Archivists who have forsaken so much humanity they no longer have their own identity, possessing only the Collective Mind.

In which case, mechanically, we'd still have Humanity and Trancendance as two parts of a scale, with the Archivist finding middle ground, the more sophisticated the Archivist, they more they can draw on both spectrums without slipping into either.

[Andrew Morris]

Contracycle, I'm not sure I agree with you here. I never thought that time travel was a central theme in the game at all. In much the same way that "horses" aren't usally the main theme of D&D, time travel in Schrodinger's War exists as a tool for the characters to use in the game world. Or did you just mean that you wouldn't like a game that has time travel without explaining how it works?

[contracycle]

Time travel was one of the big ideas for this project.  I don;t think we can just present players with time travel without explaining it in some degree, becuase otherwise it is not something they can think about, explore, or use, it's just a plot device for arriving at the action.  Thats not necessarily a big deal but it has to be one or the other IMO.

Moose wrote:

Forge has a number of games that, yes, cater to a specific setting or character, but take a look at Sorcerror, one of the more (most?) successful around- the game deals with freaking demons! And yet, Ron does his best to avoid any specific religious affiliations- thus, it could be a demon in japanese terms which could be more or less a really foul/obnoxious spirit, or it could be a blood bathing terror ala the hell-fire and brimstone Christians

I know, I criticise that as a mistake.  Or at least, I think Sorcerer relies too much on the implicit western view of demons as deceivers, liars, manipulators.  This does not pertain in all cultures and hence, depending on the culture of the reader, the implied unhappy relationship between demon and sorcerer may not occur.  There should at least have been a side bar on the riole of demons in Western mythology, IMO.

[daMoose_Neo]

Time travel was one of the big ideas for this project.  I don;t think we can just present players with time travel without explaining it in some degree

The 'some degree' I still feel should be 99% mechanical, 1% rational, the 1% being "Take this anywhere you want, but here are some ideas". I think we're on enough of a track that I could do with the game as I wish and so could you.
Time Travel still is a big idea, altering time for whatever purpose is the purpose of play. Why players are doing this, I really think should be left to the play groups. I really can't see how not laying out a concrete "why" affects the final game or design, as long as we lay out the mechanics and make sure the players have enough information to form their own world or understanding. If we box ourselves in as designers, however, we can easily run into situations where we go 'Hey, thats cool! No, wait, cant' do it...doesn't work with the rest of the background.'

Re:Sorcerror
Generally 'demons', no matter the culture, aren't good. There are differences (IE the 'foul'/obnoxious vs. blood bathing terror),  but anytime a demon is concerned things don't go well for anyone. Different forms of spirits or extradimentional entitites can be benevolent, but I haven't seen anything really where Demons are ever the good guy (cept Buffy & Angel...there were couple 'nice' demons...weird).