Kitchen-sink setting::premise-good/bad/needs work?

[Steve Dustin]

Thought I'd shoot this game setting/premise by this forum to see what the reaction is. It's not even remotely original and borrows liberally from several sources, but (I'm hoping) it's pieces comprise a somewhat unique and interesting whole.

First off -- my narrative premise is (I believe): given the choice between accumulating personal power (and survival) or saving the disintegration of reality with little reward (and against great odds), which would you choose? I see it fundamentally as Egotism vs Self-Sacrifice/Sainthood.

Unfortunately, I saw in one of these threads, "Save civilization," is not much of a premise, so...

Ok. It's a kitchen-sink setting a la Feng Shui or TORG. Various realities (I'll call them spheres) are impinging on our reality (right now I'm calling it Material Prime). Various gates to these spheres are scattered across the globe, in hidden locales. These gates are ancient constructs of 100,000 old. Various people (aren't there always?) are interested in securing these gates, for various reasons, good and bad. This impinging is causing the disintegration of Material Prime.

These spheres aren't concrete "other worlds" with distinct histories and geographies so much as 'archetypes' of their respective "genre" (for lack of better term). The internal consistency of these spheres need not make total sense; since they are largely iconic and representational.

Areas around the gates tend to be influenced by the sphere. A gate to prehistoric Lost Gondwana would exhibit feral, savage aspects. Near-bye animals would be larger, ferocious. Plants would grow into impassable vines and jungles.

Humanity's collective unconsciousness taps into these spheres, and draws upon their power, comprising a big chunk of what we are about. Individuals can channel this, developing a "Superego" related to one of the spheres. The "Superego" has cool archetypical powers, but the more you indulge your Superego, the more you transition to that sphere, eventually leaving Material Prime forever. This is part of the premise--here, power gain sets up an 'escape' from the main problems at hand instead of facing them.

The game focuses on 5 spheres, although others are possible:

Lost Gondwana -- ER Burroughs Tarzan and Pellicudar, King Kong, Land of the Lost, Primal Rage video games. Anything with a savage and 'prehistoric' flair (in that kind of 30s pulp way)

Shamballah -- Tibet, Shrangri-La, Eastern religon, martial arts fantasy. Anything with the exotic Asian flair, and mysticism. From wuxia action to serene find-yourself grasshopper stuff.

The Forever Reich -- Nazi Aryan-racist fascism. Haven't decided if its really Nazis (as in alternate reality WWII) or just Nazi like.

Land beyond the Forest -- Universal Monster movies, Transylvania, Gothic horror. If anything could ooze cheese, it would be this, but I sure like the set-pieces for this stuff. Desolate lands with superstitious villagers, crumbling castles, dark skies. Injecting a sense of the unknown would be good. Giving it a more medieval-Black Plague-Inquisition backdrop and rejiggering the seriously ridiculous cliches may still give this life.

Technodystopic -- I don't have a better name at the moment, but this sphere plays a major part in the setting. It's the machine world of the Dero. Think more Matrix/Terminator then straight Cyberpunk. Deros may or may not be 'alien Grays' in the classic X-Files mode, but they've struck deals with the most powerful men on earth (you know the drill -- US gov/corporations/media -- anyone who makes more money then me). The men will live, get to move on, the Dero gets to suck the world dry. PCs should be given the option to join these men -- and live -- and watch the remainder of the world die (horribly) or fight them to save Material Prime (which is quite an uphill battle).

The disintegration part of the spheres. When I mean disintegrating, I do mean disintegrating. Not a re-figuring, or becoming something else. Going away forever. Which is really bad, because I've decided there's something special about Material Prime and its connection to all these spheres.

This is why the powerful made the decision they did to go with the Dero. It's all going to end anyway, so why not rape and pillage what we got now, and save ourselves? Likewise, I'd like to give this a sympathetic angle of some kind.

I'm also considering a 6th sphere -- Celestia -- which has been moving away from Material Prime, and is inaccessable at the moment. Getting Celestia back in alignment with MP will stop the disintegration, and basically end the game. Celestia is paradise in that salvation heavenly way.

This began as an exercise in creating a modern day occult/archeological action-genre with Lost Worlds. You know, like Tomb Raider, or something similar. I like the idea behind Feng Shui, but I sure don't like its tone or execution, so I wanted my kitchen-sink setting to be way less goofy and more serious.

Then I've found this site, and now I want the setting to handle complex characters, exciting conflicts, and variety of different "levels" of setting complexity. I want stories more then setting simulation, so "setting-driven narrative premise," is the way I want to go. While the traditional set-up of occult archeologists has a "Global" scale, I also would like it to handle "local" scale. I've become quite enamored of the campaign idea of street urchins brought into conflict with 'powerful people,' and a gate to one of these spheres at "The End of the Alley."

So what else? Well, basically, does my premise seem viable? Does my setting fit my premise? Is there a better one? Is it too cliched? Which aspects are overly so, and is this project a greenlight or a red-light? And can the premise be sustained in global and local campaigns?

Any feedback would be more then great, it would be awesome.

Thanks, Steve Dustin

[Mike Holmes]

Interesting. What you're proposing is essentially a Narrativist version of the multi-genre thing. I like it, and I think that you've nailed the Narrative Premise down well. I'm not sure, but others here may wonder at your overabundance of setting for a Narrativist game. But I think that, executed properly, there's no reason it can't work. Would be one of the first Narrativist games to do exploration of setting primarily.

(It is your intent to do a Narrativist game, right? Note that all the comments around here about a Premise needing to be a question only refer to Narrativist Premise. All other multi-genres that I'm aware of are very Gamist [Rifts] or Simulationist [Torg].)

A question, what is the repercussion of fading from the normal world towards one of the others? Do you experience action penalties or something in the "normal" reality? Are all characters from the Prime reality or can they start in other realities? Do characters from other realities have the same perspective, i.e. that the Prime is, well, prime, and their homeworld is not?

Hmmm...

Mike

[J B Bell]

Hm, it's a somewhat cursory read on my part, but I'd say part, at least, of the problem here is this:  you have Setting, and Premise, but no Situation.  The setting is weird, but there is no inherent tension in it beyond the usual depressing power imbalances we're all familiar with in ordinary history.

Now, full disclosure--this problem is interesting to me because I, too, designed a kitchen-sink setting a little while ago.  In brief:  humanity blows itself up with war and manufactured plague; later realizes that it definitely is going to go extinct without drastic action; it builds Gates to another dimension as a way to colonize; but the Awful Demon Thingies come through right at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and beat the living crap out of humanity, becoming the dominant class; however, they bring in magic {a la Shadowrun, but, well, different}, which saves biological life.  The setting is a few hundred years later, with humans stuck with low-tech because demons don't "get" tech very well and so it's outlawed.

I hope you can see that this is a setting with plenty of potential for adventure in it, but it doesn't force adventure.  If you're a human, you can do okay as a merchant or whatever, as long as you don't mind that, well, humanity is enslaved.

If Sorcerer were a Simulationist game, it would basically be like any other modern setting, with some cool magic rules.  But Situation is there:  you are a Sorcerer, a very particular kind of person who is guaranteed right at the get-go to have an intense, and quite possibly short, life.

Mmm, I get the tasty feel of structure emerging here.  Pardon my out-loud brainstorming.  Say you have a big Setting.  To get Situation out of it, you need strictures on most likely several points--Sorcerer accomplishes this by basically allowing only one kind of protagonist; it's broadly defined, but as a kind of person in the world, well, there's only supposed to be a few hundred of them in the whole world of 6 billion people.  So "what kind of character can you be" is a pressure point.  It can generate much more precise Premise.

I would venture that other points you can apply pressure on to strengthen Situation and Premise might be:  kinds of opponents faced, time scale, spacial restrictions (hey, what if the earth is so messed up by all these other universes pressing on it, only narrow "railways" can be occupied by normal humans?)*, social isolation, and, well, other stuff.

The funny thing in Narrativism (and I assume, since you talk about Premise, that that is what you want to shoot for--if you're doing Simulationism, this stuff won't matter as much) is that it's rather more important what choices you take away than the ones you allow.  Sorcerer looks very restricted, yet it's been applied to an incredibly diverse range of situations.  I submit that the restrictions give it the dramatic pressure that makes it go "pop!" in people's brains when they consider different settings for it.  You can see this in the thread or two about spy games using Sorcerer--at first it seemed very ill-fitting, but Sorcerer's bones are so strong that it forced the spy genre to fit its Premise and Situation tendencies.  (I'm still not convinced it's a good idea, frankly, but the process of deformation was quite evident.)

Anyway, I hope this is of use to you--it has been to me, clarifying why my earlier campaign fizzled so badly.

--TQuid

* Postscript:  I swear I was not thinking of literal "railroading" here.  But it does illustrate a difference--as a Narrativist GM, dishing out defeat should restrict options to increase tension, which is like railroading in one way; the "bad" kind of railroading is that you pull players along one, predetermined track, while others are illusory.

[Steve Dustin]

Mike says:
It is your intent to do a Narrativist game, right?

Yes. My intention. I'd like to hook this setting to some version of the mechanics hinted at in the Scenario Mechanics thread below. I don't see any reason to attempt a multi-genre Simulationist or Gamist designed game. Otherwise I'd just make it all D20 (one of my initial ideas).

I'm trying to nail down the Premise of this first, though, before I specifically jump to mechanics. After reading Ron's essay a zillion times, I'm shooting for a game that has a setting-driven premise, which--from the way I read it--has the characters grow into the conflicts of the setting. (Right?) Hero Wars and Castle Falkenstein are used in the example, but I have neither (nor any interest in either), so I'm curious how they approach this tack mechanically.

A question, what is the repercussion of fading from the normal world towards one of the others? Do you experience action penalties or something in the "normal" reality? Are all characters from the Prime reality or can they start in other realities? Do characters from other realities have the same perspective, i.e. that the Prime is, well, prime, and their homeworld is not?

I want pursuit of power to interfere with a goal of saving the world. The more personal power you gain, the more powerless you are to actually stop the demise of the Earth.

I'm not sure how to translate that to "vanished" character from Material Prime, but it has to be significant. I'd say just giving someone's "Superego" a penalty on actions in our reality is not significant enough. Maybe if they were entirely powerless in our reality, or ephemeral (like a ghost).

It should reflect the idea that the PC has gone into a kind of "infantile" state, escaping the world's problems into a "power" fantasy. Its satisfying the self over the wellbeing of others. With that said, indulging in the "Superego," should be intoxicating. Until they completely vanish, I'd say a character should gain significant bonuses to actions.

I hadn't thought of characters from other realities. I'm likely to say no, at the start, since I'm seeing this as a kind of occult/conspiratorial game at the moment. But I'm not totally satisfied with that either.

Thanks for your input.

[Steve Dustin]

Tquid says:

Hm, it's a somewhat cursory read on my part, but I'd say part, at least, of the problem here is this: you have Setting, and Premise, but no Situation. The setting is weird, but there is no inherent tension in it beyond the usual depressing power imbalances we're all familiar with in ordinary history.

Depressing. I'll make a note of that.

Does Situation have to be character specific? I was considering saying that everyone has a Superego (BTW, I don't plan on sticking with superego), and then have that fact put the PCs on the baddies radar. But I decided that maybe too limiting for PCs. Now I'm not so sure.

Then again, maybe I could chuck big sections of the setting, have it only be a straight X-Files conspiracy game with the PCs exhibiting special powers, and now on the run because of that. Keep the reality disintegration, but junk the goth, pulp, wuxia and fascist worlds. It may make me more sane to do it that way.

That's paring down the options. Or, I could go with allowing characters from other realities, and I don't know, create a whole new premise, I guess.