Indie Supplement Design (?)

[James_Nostack]

For the past three years I had been running an IRC campaign based on TSR's Alternity game.  Now that the game has finished gloriously--thanks in part due to Forge peeps--I'd like to write up Setting and Style of play advice and post it to the lively Alternity fan community.  Hence this is not Indie Game Design per se, but sort of like Indie Supplement Design.  I hope this is in the correct folder.

I've never done anything like this before, so I'd appreciate advice.  What I envision is a poor man's version of Sorcerer & Sword which takes an existing game into new directions in terms of content and theme.

Usual Alternity Gameplay Paradigm - Heroes are intrepid space-bucaneers.  They fly to the planet of the week, zap some funky space aliens, and collect high tech gadgetry.  (The system allows for filing a lawsuit against funky space aliens instead, but it's essentially Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon stuff.)

The Style of Play I'd Like to Foster Instead - Heroes are political operatives/memetic engineers.  They arrive in an exotic community where futureshock technology has created conflicts reflecting the Human Condition in the post-industrial world.  Players end up taking sides, effectively saying, "This is what it means to be human.  This is how societies ought to operate."

Given that the system I'm using is fixed, how do I go about encouraging this kind of scenario preparation and play style?  My audience is a bunch of people who are not familiar with most of the Indie Gaming stuff.

[James_Nostack]

Though not immediately relevant, here is my idea of a table of contents--

1.  Sketching a Setting - which would advocate a Sorcerer & Sword style way of whipping up a high tech transhuman solar system, mainly through in-game wise improv.  Some of the funnest parts of running my campaign came from inventing stuff on the fly; most Alternity players, however, are conditioned to view a 300 page setting book as vitally necessary.

2.  Foring a Hero - mainly advice on what kinds of protagonists and background characters are suitable to this kind of game.  Character concept stuff.

3.  Plotting a Story - this is, of course, the most important part of the book since it affects the actual in-game play experience, but I'm placing it here because logically you need characters to make it work well, and the characters have to be situated in a setting. 

4.  Playing the Game - this would handle stuff like Conflict Resolution, narration rights, and that kind of thing.  It's how the Story material in Chapter 3 gets implemented on a moment-to-moment basis.

And then there would be appendices, consisting of my own setting info, some game stats and minor house rules, and a couple of plots.

=====
The main thing I'm wondering about is the advice in Chapter 3.   You've got this thing that everyone imagines they understand: Human Nature.  But the premise of this setting is, "Human Nature does not exist--now what?  How should people react when they have the freedom to be both more and less than human?"

This is complicated because my own scenario prep work for this campaign was totally intuitive and I don't know how to tease out a good structure.

From what I understand, the kind of play I'm interested in is somewhat analogous to "Dogs in the Vineyard."   Perhaps there's a New Technology that has caused a Problem (or Obliterated) an Old Verity.  This Problem has a Ripple Effect on the community, so you've got this society in upheaval (or in conflict with itself).  Then the PC's barge in, and get asked to settle this thing?

Are there other ways to do this?

[MikeSands]

Are you sure you want to put all the transhuman changes into places the characters visit and pass judgement on?

I'd think that a lot of the appeal (definitely for me) of such a setting would be the opportunity to judge this stuff by exploring it with your own character.

It's hard, though. I've been thinking about this kind of thing myself, as a reaction to the GURPS Transhuman space setting, and haven't come to any conclusions.

[James_Nostack]

Hi Mike!  You're absolutely correct: there are options for playing a trans- or post-human character, either from character creation or modifying a "baseline" character in later play.  Exploring in this way is a very powerful statement.

BUT!  This has design considerations.

1.  What exactly are you exploring?  Clearly there are some in-game mechanical benefits to playing an uplifted dog (good sense of smell, etc.), but these are fairly trivial compared to the psychological aspects.  I've never seen a game handle non-human psyches very well.  (Elves and Dwarves are just humans in funny suits.)  Does the Forge have anything in its toolbox for playing non-humans?

2.  In my game, I assumed that there would be various techno-cultures based around these posthuman modalities, and the players ended up feeling revolted by these cultures.  They opted for a "defending human nature in an inhuman world" type of thing, ala Winston Smith in 1984.  This is a legitimate response, but I don't want it to be the only response--so I need to give advice on building cultures that are less repulsive.

[Gamskee]

Clearly there are some in-game mechanical benefits to playing an uplifted dog (good sense of smell, etc.), but these are fairly trivial compared to the psychological aspects. I've never seen a game handle non-human psyches very well. (Elves and Dwarves are just humans in funny suits.) Does the Forge have anything in its toolbox for playing non-humans?

From my own basis on how to make something not human, give it a biological basis. An uplifted Dog, though intelligent I assume and perhaps capable of human emotion, would still be a very different creature due to its biology. For one thing, their sense of 'love' in a chemical sense would be different as dogs do not mate for pleasure, but out of instinct.

Their would be no special colors to them due to color blindness, so any society these dogs formed would not have much in the way of color aesthetics. However, considering their advanced sense of smell, they might develope 'smell arts' based on concocting interesting fragrances.

Dogs are pack animals and have litters, meaning the average family will be huge, especially if they took up the practice of having extended family. Considering the many breeds of dogs, they might have some parallels to human race relations, which may or may not break down depending on how instinct and their frontal lobes combine.

Having no hands would likely have a pretty big effect on them, unless given technology to overcome this disadvantage. Technology they use would have to be mouth built and operated. I could see using agriculture, planting thorn bushes and such, to try and create little perimeters to keep any predators or rivals out, pulling them back vines that were wound about them by guardsmen.

You get the point. A good deal of what humans have is based in our biology first. Hope this is helpful and not annoying.

[Rob Carriere]

1.  What exactly are you exploring?  Clearly there are some in-game mechanical benefits to playing an uplifted dog (good sense of smell, etc.), but these are fairly trivial compared to the psychological aspects.  I've never seen a game handle non-human psyches very well.  (Elves and Dwarves are just humans in funny suits.)  Does the Forge have anything in its toolbox for playing non-humans?

Excellent point, but do you need to handle those psyches with your game mechanics?

You clearly have machinery in place for building `exotic communit[ies] where futureshock technology has created conflicts reflecting the Human Condition in the post-industrial world.' Couldn't that very same machinery, on a smaller scale, produce an `exotic character where futureshock technology has created conflicts reflecting the Human Condition in the post-industrial world'? For the kind of game you seem to be aiming for, that'd be the crucial bit; the psyche behind it can then be the responsibility of the player who wanted the character in the first place. Phrased a little differently, I'm suggesting making the psych simulation subordinate to the human condition conflict, as that seems to be where the interest lies.

SR
--

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Not sure if this will exactly help, but I'll throw it out anyway; resources are always good.  Three of my favorite shows that dealt with non-humans and their psyche were Babylon 5, Lexx, and Farscape.  If you ever have a chance to take a look at these, I highly recomend it.  They might help you get an idea on how to create not-human-ish PCs and NPCs.

Peace,

-Troy 

[James_Nostack]

Excellent point, but do you need to handle those psyches with your game mechanics?

Not necessarily through game mechanics, but I do want players who roleplay an Artificial Intelligence to give an indication, both to the GM and to other players, that the character isn't human.  It isn't a little man hiding inside a box.  I want there to be an inescapable vibe around the table that this character is psychologically different.  Preferrably I wouldn't have to resort to something as heavy-handed as game mechanics to accomplish this.

Let me give you an analogy, so you'll see where I'm coming from.  In a "Buck Rogers" style Alternity game, I played a Space Iguana.  As a player with a lot of spare time on my hands, I'd come up with a lot of cool details about the Space Iguana culture in general, and my character in particular.  But due to the GM's style, I never got a chance to insert these details into the story.  The campaign ended, and I began talking to the other players and revealed some of these details, and they said, "Whoa!  We never knew!"  It was a bit like the neighbor who's lived next to you for decades and then you find out he's got this whole other life. 

So the problems with a weird posthuman PC would be...
1.  The player must brainstorm how such a weird character would think and behave;
2.  The GM must afford opportunities to demonstrate these quirks.

In the analogy above, I had done #1, but the GM was getting in the way of #2.  Right now I'm thinking that the problem might be the allocation of responsibility: a player might not care about funny suits, and a GM might be too fixated on his or her story to accommodate players who do care. 

Perhaps the GM or the group as a whole should figure out #1 -- "Who are the Lobster-Cyborgs?  What are they like?  What kind of reputation do they have? etc."  This means that everyone around the table has put some thought into this culture, and therefore has a vivid image of how this PC might behave.

For #2, you could set up a system where the player can proactively insert scenes to demonstrate the character's transhumanity in order to gain some kind of resource.  Thus, instead of waiting for the GM to do a plot entirely devoted to Space Lizards, I could say, "While we're in the middle of this unrelated plot, let me insert this scene where I visit the Space Lizard Embassy and roleplay these quirks."

Do other games operate that way?  If not, does it at least sound plausible?

[James_Nostack]

You clearly have machinery in place for building `exotic communit[ies] where futureshock technology has created conflicts reflecting the Human Condition in the post-industrial world.' Couldn't that very same machinery, on a smaller scale, produce an `exotic character where futureshock technology has created conflicts reflecting the Human Condition in the post-industrial world'? For the kind of game you seem to be aiming for, that'd be the crucial bit; the psyche behind it can then be the responsibility of the player who wanted the character in the first place. Phrased a little differently, I'm suggesting making the psych simulation subordinate to the human condition conflict, as that seems to be where the interest lies.

Rob - the notion of doing all of that on a sliding scale, from individuals to communities, is intriguing.  I'll have to think that over.  Right now the "troubled community creation rules" are really sketchy, but I'll see what I can come up with.

[MikeSands]

This isn't really answering anything, but maybe supplemental to my previous comment.

You talked about exploring what happens when people can be more and less than human... this seems like a good place to start when building mechanics and setting elements.

Player characters could be defined by what separates them from baseline humans (i.e. us). E.g. X is a copy of a human personality housed in a utilitarian mining robot body.
Communities that the PCs deal with can likewise be defined by what they have that separates them from communities that we have today.

I'm not sure how (or if) you want to balance these...