[GroupDesign: Schrodinger's War] Drafting Mechanics

[Tobias]

Ok. I had a bunch of thoughts on this game yesterday evening, and they kept me awake. I wrote them all down, but i don't know if I have time to mark them all down here (at work, etc.) - and they haven't digested well, yet, but I want to share them, to some degree, at least, while they're still fresh.

All this is IMHO (this will keep me from having to type it every other sentence).

My trouble with the possesion mechanics and Free Will, which I wanted to give a place, was that I couldn't relate the 'why' of possession to a larger goal, in-game. I didn't know the ramification(s) of why the stat/mechanic would affect player action, so Free Will was meaningless from a play-for-a-goal viewpoint - it was just a bit of mechanics to capture a certain style of play at a certain detail level.

So I approached the problem from the other end, and asked myself why are these Archivists possession people anyway? Well, there's a nice explanation about the time-line being under some threat, and the archivists performing certain actions to unlock certain windows to key events that shaped the future.

So I basically thought: "I have to know about how certain actions will shape the future. I need some knowledge about how a group will resolve what it means when you shatter cyberdine chip X, or when you kill important ancestor #5."

And I got stuck, due to two reasons. One is that space-time causality was just too big of a thing to tackle realistically (or, as realistically as I need to still have some flavor of correctness, for the suspension of disbelief). The second was that I started seeing that whatever implementation I arrived at, it would either be some sort of 'group decision' thing, or it would become a real tough duty for the GM with lots of complex rules, or it would just throw all those rules out the window and time-travel would just become an excuse for cool backdrops. (None of these are a priori wrong - they're just not the design goals the group has in mind).

So I thought - well, what if I throw some basic assumptions that are hindering me out of the window? Shoot some sacred cows?

The sacred cow that lined itself right up between the cross-hairs was the one called "History is a bunch statistical processes. People (say, Hitler, to take the very common example) don't matter on a global/timescale - WWII would've happened anyway."

Why did this cow need to be shot? Because it's the cow that stood in the way of the primary player action (possess people and do stuff with them) and having meaning from that action.

So I turned it around. It hurt a bit to toss out certain 'realistic' assumptions I had floating around, but I made it: "History is all about certain people."

(Another way to think of it: what would be more effective: destroying 1 chip, or actually changing the person working on it, getting him to spend his entire life in a different direction?)

Now, I had to see if that though would/could embed itself in the framework of thoughts that were already present. I think it did.

Namely: History, and human nature/essence are described as some kind of multi-dimensional field, with 2 perpendicular time axes. (Akashic field, 0-energy field, God, you give it a name). Every human (sentient being) influences the life of lots of other humans - but on different scales. I may personally make a significant difference to the lives of about a 100 people over my lifetime, but there's no arguing that Jezus, Buddha, Mohammed, Hitler, Stalin, etc. made a much larger impact, over a much longer period of time. In other words, they made a big impact on the field of energy that permeates reality and history. They have Impact. Think of it as something not easily changed, deflected from it's nature, because the Impact had been growing to that climactic point for times on end, and the effect reverberated for time after that.

From this thought, a number of practical limitations and issues arose, for which I have a bunch of mechanics, but I am not going to post them all yet, for 2 reasons.

1. They're not fleshed out and well-written enough yet (I wonder if I can even read my tortured handwriting)
2. I want you all to mull over the thought and wrap your minds around the issues, if you would. If I present fully-fleshed mechanics, you may not see the need or desirability for certain scores/effects/mechanics, or your own creative process may be hindered by me already imprinting all my mechanics on you.

What I will share are the following basic thoughts/rules:

1. Every human has an Impact, based on the reasoning above. This impact is on a log10 scale. I have certain basic rules about lifecycles, passions, etc., that basically means that an average person will have an importance score of 2-3 (affected 100-1000 people significantly for 1 lifecycle in life and after death) to 10 (affected 10.000.000.000 people significantly for 1 lifecycle in life and post death). (if 10 is too low a number according to whatever calculations, I am flexible with the scale going higher).

2. High-impact people are hard to change, hard to affect - because their impact has been coming, and has been felt, by so much of the field already. It's not impossible, though. This makes high-impact score like the 'barrier' to key moments in history we've been referring to.

2a. After some thought, the typical Archivist, in my mind, has an impact score of 4-5 at the start. He can, in some cases, lend this Impact to his host to make him more effective. Low-Impact people have a penalty on their skill "test" (whatever resolution system we use) against High-impact people.

3. High-impact people tend to be surrounded (not just physically, but also in time) by one step lower impact people, etc., so on and so forth until we're at "average Joe's".

4. This impact needs to be tied to Passions (possible Transcendent Passions aka Otherworldly Knowledges, but I digress) to make a direct connection to player actions.

5. In practise, this means a limited number of 'pre-defined' worldtimeshaping Passions are needed, otherwise they will be overabundant and nothing will be 'special'. This is a wonderful opportunity for players to state what the game will be about - each player gets to add 1 Passion that the game will be based on (a basic 'scale' of reality).

5a. All humans/players have a 'primary' passion.

5b. This means that the pinnacle of Impact of a Passion (something I call the Monolith as working name) should also be known, or given by the players that suggest the Passions the game is based on). There's some flexibility in this - some things could be group play and commonly known, but you may also have a GM that could hide which persons are actually the Monoliths. They're likely to be well-known, though. :) )

6. Importance may or may not be reliably measurable by Archivists.

7. The change in the HTT at any time may be measured by it's deviation from the starting point. If you've changed the ways of (method yet unspecified), or killed, 5 humans with Importance of 5 with as driving Passion Dominance, this means Dominance took a hit of 5*100.000 = 500.000 points (and some other passion may have gained as many points, depending on whether ways were changed or people just killed).

8. A difference between Dark and Light may be the method of change. Dark may involve just killing off / Burning away the passions of legions of low-Impact people, Light may involve trying to 'solve' your way up the Impact-foodchain and subtly and patiently overcoming the resistance of high impact, to make a big conversion.

9. All these numbers may still need tweaking.

10. Passions stick together. Organisations and families are filled with the same driving passion (if you don't like this rule qua flavor, see the difficulties you get with vulnerabilities of key people).

11. None of this bites the current possesion rules, I think - I just haven't "solved" free will yet, but added a different stat - Impact.

Ok, I'm done, I'm behind with work and the deadline approaches fast. I may not see you all for a while (days), or I might be present, cannot tell at this point.

[Doug Ruff]

This may also be my last post for a few days - Christmas will be internet-less and I need to pack my bags (and wrap some more presents) for the journey.

Tobias, I got quite a lot out of reading your post, but probably not in the way you intended! I don't agree with all of your conclusions (more on that later) but this part of your post stood out for me:

And I got stuck, due to two reasons. One is that space-time causality was just too big of a thing to tackle realistically (or, as realistically as I need to still have some flavor of correctness, for the suspension of disbelief). The second was that I started seeing that whatever implementation I arrived at, it would either be some sort of 'group decision' thing, or it would become a real tough duty for the GM with lots of complex rules, or it would just throw all those rules out the window and time-travel would just become an excuse for cool backdrops. (None of these are a priori wrong - they're just not the design goals the group has in mind).

I think you've nailed a key, if not the key problem with the mechanics so far. This game is about Possession, but it's also about Changing History, and the History bit is (IMHO) the more challenging part of the game.

I think that, as a result of this, we've tackled Possession in more detail (as we are more comfortable about it.) This may be a mistake.

How to implement History (including "causality") within the game is likely to have the largest mpact in the game, as it will place the strongest restrictions on what players can do with the SIS.

For that reason, I think that Tobias' implementation question above is really quite important, and something I intend to think when I'm getting over my Christmas indigestion. I would ask everyone with an interest in this to do the same (the thinking, -not- the indigestion.)

However, I don't agree with the shift from events to people. The idea of working your way through a list of people to achieve something is quite cool - however, the achievement (I think) is as a result of what the people do, not who they are.

This disagreement is partly stylistic (I like the idea of a "non-entity" who would have low Impact on Tobias' scale) being inspired (or used) to do remarkable things. However, it's also based on mechanical concerns (the man who shot JFK - or better, the people who killed Anwar Sadat - could be argued to have a large impact. Did they have the same Impact 10 years before they killed anyone?

I think that Tobias' model works well with great people - I think that it is less good for people who perform great (or infamous) deeds.

However, I am going to think about (not now) about what Tobias' scheme would look like if Impact of people was replaced with Impact of events. There are lots of other ideas in there which could be useful.

So, Merry Christmas, all - and please think about how History and causality fit within the mechanics (including Tobias'), not just within conflict resolution, but also in terms of defining long-term goals for the players and measuring their progress (or lack of it) against them.

[Spooky Fanboy]

Tobias, Doug:

Couldn't you have both?

I think both Events and People could have an Impact rating, and I think you could do it so that, if things work out for our Archivist, the IR from a Person could add or subtract (depending) from an Event (and vice versa, if we include natural Events that might be manipulated via Logoi which could enhance/interfere with the Impact of a Person.)

Granted, it might involve a formula more complex than straightforward add/subtract. After all, altering history shouldn't  be as simple as "add/subtract N to/from X to get Y." Granted also, we might want to adjust it so that a low-Impact schlub might have a more effective Impact under the control of an Archivist, either through direct control (causing Burn), or through manipulating said nebbish through his personal Passions (possibly causing Fade.) Are these bad things? Also, how will we settle who gets to narrate the results?

[daMoose_Neo]

I'm slightly inclined to agree with Spooky.
Tobias, your Standard Deviation method could actually be used to rate events retroactivly concerning our own history, or proactively concerning fictional history.

We also have to be careful how we lump events. WW2 was a HUGE "event", but it consisted of so many smaller events that make up its entirety: notables include Pearl Harbor (several hours), the Holocaust (YEARS!), individual battles (Days/weeks/months), etc.

[Tobias]

Doug, Spooky, Nate - thanks for the perusal.

Doug - especial thanks for both backing me and disagreeing - I like that! Good luck with the (in)digesting of things edible and incredible. :)

Spooky - sure, events and people would be nice. I feel quite comfortable with keeping it about people myself for now (I think, I haven't tested a hypothetical actual play yet), but including events does seem cool, at least - the bomb NOT dropping on Hiroshima but on Berlin is cool, for instance.

Nate - Could you elaborate on how you'd use "my" SD method?

And a wonderful Christmas for everyone inclined to celebrate it. :)

[Tobias]

This disagreement is partly stylistic (I like the idea of a "non-entity" who would have low Impact on Tobias' scale) being inspired (or used) to do remarkable things. However, it's also based on mechanical concerns (the man who shot JFK - or better, the people who killed Anwar Sadat - could be argued to have a large impact. Did they have the same Impact 10 years before they killed anyone?

I think that Tobias' model works well with great people - I think that it is less good for people who perform great (or infamous) deeds.

My knee-jerk reaction is: "Yes. Importantce is based on their whole influence in being created, during and aftershock effects." (This leaves me open to a pointed follow-up question on slandering them when they're dead, for instance, something I'll have to think about). Note that I also extend their Impact level (and the mechanical protection it gives) to several (about 3-5) generations of their ancestors (at which point I am willing to claim killing an ancestor doesn't matter - the person was 'fated to be' anyway, so someone else will step in to help person X being born. Since their gene-contribution will be very low at this point, I overlook the effect as dismissable. Poor modeling of genetics, maybe, but neccesary for the game, imho.

As to the great Deeds: Deeds are nothing but an expression of a person. Yes, I am aware of the lack of 'cool deeds' from this approach, and I too find it a shame. Gotta find a way to make deeds related, somehow - maybe. Maybe you don't have to perform the Deed yourself, as Archivist, though - maybe you just have to change your puppet's programming, and he'll Do The Deed himself.

[daMoose_Neo]

Well, I think basing all of the importance of an event on one person is too hefty. Hitler didn't personally execute all of the detainees in the concentration camps, Hitler didn't draw up every battle plan or plan within his German empire.
You could just as easily diffuse Hitler's World War 2 by killing Hitler's propoganda minister, thereby limiting his effectiveness and letting everyone think he's a raving lunatic.

At the least, with our own history, for this to work, you'd have to account, roughly, for the number of participants in a given, singular event. WW2 is not a singular event, it is a series of events. Sacred Cow it might be, but altering individuals totally, IMO, destroys the intricacies of the whole "Change the past, save the future" concept- if we went back in time and killed every despot and dictator, it wouldn't make life better.
But, back to actually using the deviation idea- try to, roughly, calculate the score for a given event. If I recall my stats class right, falling within the first instance of the standard deviation means that it accounts for a fair chunk, 2 accounts for almost everything, and 3 is like 99.99% or what not.
So, make your changes, see how that falls into place. If, even with your changes, it falls within the first rung of that deviation, the event, as recorded, takes place, your Impact, even with these people, was too small. Make it fall within the second instance and the event changes, maybe opposite of the original (Instead of the US winning, the Spanish won a specific skirmish in the Spanish/American war), make it fall within the third rung and it doesn't happen at all.

Thus, folks of vary importance will still hold fair sway, but changing one person won't change the destiny of time.
Drawbacks- LOTS of math. Imagine having to come up with Impact ratings for all of Hitlers staff, at the first coup attempts, during his climb up the political ladder, and then finally as Chancelor of Germany.
Hard thing is, History is such that specific changes can alter huge outcomes, but they're not easy to find the exact ones.

[Tobias]

Well, I think basing all of the importance of an event on one person is too hefty. Hitler didn't personally execute all of the detainees in the concentration camps, Hitler didn't draw up every battle plan or plan within his German empire.

No, he didn't. But I've let go of the demand that modeling Hitler (for instance) needs to be 'realistic' in this fashion in this game.

[/quote]
You could just as easily diffuse Hitler's World War 2 by killing Hitler's propoganda minister, thereby limiting his effectiveness and letting everyone think he's a raving lunatic. [/quote]

Well, you CAN do this in my system. Hitler's propaganda minister is probably only 1 or 2 steps down the ladder in terms of significance. So, if Hitler is a 10, mr. Minister is an 8. Killing him will reduce the Hitler Passion Faction by 10^8 = 100 million points.

At the least, with our own history, for this to work, you'd have to account, roughly, for the number of participants in a given, singular event. WW2 is not a singular event, it is a series of events. Sacred Cow it might be, but altering individuals totally, IMO, destroys the intricacies of the whole "Change the past, save the future" concept- if we went back in time and killed every despot and dictator, it wouldn't make life better.

"With our own history." Again.

The other option is, indeed, as you sketch, the need to madel the number of participants in events, and the series of events.

And, in my example, if you go back in time, and kill everyone (actually, it'd be preferrable to change them), you DO make a better life.

But, back to actually using the deviation idea- try to, roughly, calculate the score for a given event. If I recall my stats class right, falling within the first instance of the standard deviation means that it accounts for a fair chunk, 2 accounts for almost everything, and 3 is like 99.99% or what not.
So, make your changes, see how that falls into place. If, even with your changes, it falls within the first rung of that deviation, the event, as recorded, takes place, your Impact, even with these people, was too small. Make it fall within the second instance and the event changes, maybe opposite of the original (Instead of the US winning, the Spanish won a specific skirmish in the Spanish/American war), make it fall within the third rung and it doesn't happen at all.

Standard deviation from what? For there to be some norm to reference, are we going to model the whole of history as a chain of events with Impact?

I don't think you're actually suggesting, that, though. :)

Thus, folks of vary importance will still hold fair sway, but changing one person won't change the destiny of time.
Drawbacks- LOTS of math. Imagine having to come up with Impact ratings for all of Hitlers staff, at the first coup attempts, during his climb up the political ladder, and then finally as Chancelor of Germany.
Hard thing is, History is such that specific changes can alter huge outcomes, but they're not easy to find the exact ones.

Well, that last sentence could be the reason all those Archivists are digging and compiling all this information - to find that exact Event that makes the person of Impact X so important.

And I think there are plenty of interesting stories possible without having to go all the way to the top of the Impact scale... but it would make for a natural 'powergrowth' scale for the Archivist, if the players want it.

[Michael Brazier]

A few, semi-coherent thoughts:

Possession and changing history, the core activities of this game, have something important in common: both involve making people do something they wouldn't otherwise have done.  Hence the premise, as I understand it: when, and why, is it right to force people to the action you think right?  But that commonality should be reflected in the mechanics; changing history should appear similar to possession.  I think it was Sydney Freeberg who suggested a "narrative style" for history changing, in which the players figured out how a completed mission would affect the themes of human history, then wrote a new history on that basis.

I think I see a way to do this.  Adolf Hitler's impact on the 20th century AD is profound; but the reason Hitler had that heavy impact was that he made himself into the focus for Germany's ambitions, which were thwarted in World War I.  Well, thwarted ambition is a Passion, one that many millions in Germany shared.  Why not write up whole societies as "characters", with Passions that trigger in response to historical events?  And then one might define missions for a group of Archivists in terms of creating an event which will activate a specific arrangement of Passions in a society, thus bringing about significant changes there.  Or, at one level back, the Archivists could work to seed some Passion into a society, so that at some later event it will activate and change its outcome completely.

Naturally an Archivist can't possess a society, so we would need a mechanic to express how an individual possession can affect the Passions of larger groups the Host belongs to and influences.  And that mechanic has to account for Passion losses due to Burn ... a burnt-out Host has less energy, communicates less of his Passions to other people.  (Dark Archivists don't just wreck their Hosts, they're sapping the life out of history itself!)

The Passions then become the "themes of history", as well as (indeed, because they are) the fundamental drives of humanity.  (And a truly ambitious Archivist might try to impart a Logos into human history.)

[Tobias]

Naturally an Archivist can't possess a society,

Ooooohhhh, but wouldn't it be cool if he could! ;)

[daMoose_Neo]

Well, that last sentence could be the reason all those Archivists are digging and compiling all this information - to find that exact Event that makes the person of Impact X so important.

Which could also mean killing Hitler wouldn't change the fact that WW2 errupted. It would change HOW it errupted, may bypass the Holocaust, but WW2 would still occur. Especially considering how Michael described it- thats an excellent way of looking at the situation and his rise to power.

Forgive me, I am in favor of simplifying things, but I don't want to call temporal mechanics a sacred cow- History is way too precise in its balance. Addressing it, as stands, I think we need to do something to include the complexity of historical events (fictional or non).
IMO, changing the focus from events to people gives us more of a cinimatic air to it. Go back in time, kill this one person, all changes. I'd rather see how CHANGING one person affects outcomes, or changing several people on small scales affects things.

OR

Suggestion- two ways to play?
Event Focus - more micromanagement of people and events
Person Focus - more overt actions, dealing with singular people

[Sydney Freedberg]

(Back on a proper connection after a week with a crappy dial-up AOL account at my grandmother's....)

"History is all about certain people."

Bravo. And as a trained historian (master's degree only, no Ph.d admittedly) and a journalist, I can actually justify this in real-world terms (i.e. Sim), not just game- or story-necessity (Gam/Nar). But Michael's already hit the crucial point:

the reason Hitler had that heavy impact was that he made himself into the focus for Germany's ambitions, which were thwarted in World War I.  Well, thwarted ambition is a Passion, one that many millions in Germany shared.  Why not write up whole societies as "characters"....

Standing ovation.

There's actually a book I read -- Eberhard Jackel's Hitler's World View I believe, or maybe the semi-translated Hitler's Weltanschauing (sp? my German is nonexistent) -- which finally got me to understand the role of individuals in history. There are two extremes: "Great Men (rarely women) make history, but are themselves unaffected by it" and "no individual matters, if Hitler/Churchill/George W. Bush/Ghandi/whoever hadn't done X, historical forces would have inevitably caused some else to do X." Both are wrong. What all my study leads me to believe is that an individual can have a profound effect if that individual "resonates" with the historical trends (for the examples above, German militarism turned near-psychotic after World War I, British doggedness, American idealism and blind terror after 9/11, Indian nationalism reacting vs. British Imperialism): The Great Leader is not merely a figurehead for a historical force, but someone who can tap into it and magnify it or change its direction -- e.g. a Germany without Hitler would likely have caused a World War II, but not necessarily a Holocaust; an India without a Ghandi would likely have its independence, but not necessarily peacefully; etc.

So the point of the game (to return to Tobias's point) is to influence these key people -- the "resonators" -- either directly by Possessing them, or (perhaps more interesting) indirectly by Possessing the people who influence them. (I've heard of at least one play and one movie about Jews trying to befriend a young Hitler).

Mechanically, what does this require? As Michael said, it probably means we need to stat up civilizations. Whether a civilization's Passions are a baseline set of traits shared by the typical members of that civilization, or a thing unto themselves, is a crucial question I'm not sure of.

Also, I'm intrigued by Tobias's idea of some kind of mechanical Impact rating to embody, mechanically, how important a person is, and thus both how hard their fate is to change and how many "victory points" you can get from changing it. Now, trying to compute a logarithmic scale of how many people someone's actions affected is the path to Simulationist madness, but a roughly logarithmic scale is probably necessary: i.e. don't worry about exact numbers, but an Impact 5 person is about ten times as potent as a 4, etc.

Now, this "History is People" concept works nicely with the Chen in his tea-shop concept from back in the Time Travel party thread. The key idea was that the changes in the timestream should be reflected as changes in the fate of certain individuals, people who would remain recognizably themselves no matter how history changed around them, but whose circumstances would change. Thus instead of the player-character wiping out everyone they cared about every time they tread on a butterfly in the Mesozoic Era, they would see the results of their actions in tangible changes affecting people they cared about.

Now, my limited understanding of chaos theory -- based on watching TV documentaries and dating a series of science & math types prior to my wife (a poet) -- is that chaos theory actually allows this kind of thing. As I recall, there's something called a "strange attractor": While the rest of a pattern/system may fluctuate chaotically, certain islands of order seem to recur in the same place/time over and over again.

Thus let's say that both Chen in his teashop, and young Hitler the frustrated painter, are "strange attractors." This means two big things in-game:

(1) You can't prevent them being born: Even if you kill all the ancestors you can find, the same person ends up being born from a completely different family tree. This prevents the game being one of "hunt the ancestor" (or, more gently, "get the ancestors to marry someone else").

(2) They somehow "resonate" with the fundamental historical forces -- societal Passions -- at play in their era. (As per my take on Michael's idea). Thus they embody and influence, or at least reflect, the wider historical issues, and can be used tactically (gamist) and dramatically (narrativist) to attempt to shape those issues and then see how successful your shaping is.

[Sydney Freedberg]

To follow-up and clarify (and to get back onto the topic of mechanics, having broken the rules I myself set for this forum by going off into historical theorizing):

How does the "resonance" of a key individual/Strange Attractor work, in game terms? As a first stab, I'd say it works because they can alter other people's Passions.

Probably this requires that the audience have the Passion already at a low level, or that the society as a whole have that Passion (these two propositions are the same thing if the societal-level character Traits are seen as a template for a generic member of that society: e.g. the average West European ca. 1200 AD has "Revere the Saints:1," "Fairy Lore:2," and "Backbreaking farm labor:5").

So, to continue Michael's example, let's say you have your Average German ca. 1933 has the Passions "Resentful nationalism:3" and "Dislikes Jews:1." Then Hitler comes along with "Resentful nationalism:8" and "Dislikes Jews: 8," gives a fiery oration, and pumps Average German Guy up to 5 and 4, respectively.

How to reflect this mechanically? I'm not quite sure; perhaps the standard task-resolution system could simply include "give someone a new Passion, at least temporarily" as a potential task: Your base chance of success is determined by your own Passion in that area plus any "charismatic" or "great leader" abilities; if the target already has the Passion in question, that counts as a bonus; if the target has a countervailing Passion, that counts as a penalty; and the degree of success indicates the amount you increase the target's Passion by.

The most important point here, though, is that Great Leaders/Strange Attractors start to look a little like Archivists -- they change the Passions and other character traits of those they come in contact with. One way of implementing this would be to give Strange Attractors some degree of Transcendence (i.e. Logoi/Uncanny Knowlegdz/whatever) {EDIT: e.g. Hitler might have the Logos "Seize the Moment in History" or Ghandi the Logos "Contagiously Non-Violent"}; but I'm unsure of this. I think the more fundamental question is coming up with robust mechanics for characters changing each other's traits, of which the Possession mechanics might end up being simply a (very well-developed) special case.

[Michael Brazier]

The most important point here, though, is that Great Leaders/Strange Attractors start to look a little like Archivists -- they change the Passions and other character traits of those they come in contact with. One way of implementing this would be to give Strange Attractors some degree of Transcendence (i.e. Logoi/Uncanny Knowlegdz/whatever) {EDIT: e.g. Hitler might have the Logos "Seize the Moment in History" or Ghandi the Logos "Contagiously Non-Violent"}; but I'm unsure of this. I think the more fundamental question is coming up with robust mechanics for characters changing each other's traits, of which the Possession mechanics might end up being simply a (very well-developed) special case.

"Resonators" -- people who invoke societal Passions and therefore can influence them -- are obviously a core concept here; kudos to you for that, Sydney.  Though events can resonate also: there are events which have great historical importance even when none of the people involved do, because the story of the event happens to exemplify a social conflict.  In the system, societal Passions activate as news of the resonant event gets around, and people start to act differently.

And we do, it appears, need mechanics for characters changing each other's traits -- and they need to scale, too, from individuals through groups to whole societies.  Using Transcendence for that, though, doesn't feel right ... what we're trying to simulate here is one set of people trying to persuade another, by the arts of rhetoric and dialectic.  Does it make sense to ascribe the working of ordinary human politics to the Truth beyond space and time?

[Tobias]

Sydney,

Two elegant posts (I love the way you always manage to bring high-flyers into the fold of an actual game being designed). Count me in favor of your wording on 'resonators' or 'keys'.

I also like the elegance of the parallel between Archivist possession and leader/society influences/bonuses on individuals.

As to the logarithmic scale: it works. I've done some rough calculations and wet-finger work, and 1-10 or 1-12 can capture a BIIIG range.

(I also like the fact that persons who affect history for a long period, but for a small(er) group, can have the same Impact as 'modern' persons: the Time component vs. the modern Scale (atomic bomb, mass media) component).

Michael:

As to Events - true, there are some that resonate as well (Battle of Britain, Armstrong on the moon). It would be nice to capture them. Would you agree, though, that given the premise of the game and the primacy of the possession mechanic, people come first? (If you say yes to this, I won't hold a gun to your head later, promise).

As to Transcendence being the measure of power of changing a society - it could be a supporting factor. Like Scale (bomb, media) and Time are supporting factors to Impact, Transcendence may be a more skillfull, low-level manipulation of the factors human crudely affect every day, through rhetoric and dialectic but also through other means.