Game Idea concerning immortal characters

[Henry Fitch]

Being a narrative (or char-sim?) game idea that as yet lacks a system:

Premise: How are human relationships different given isolation and infinite time?

Another could be, Do people really change if you give them long enough?

The answer to both could easily be "no," even if that isn't gramattical.

What I've got: Takes place in our world. Only difference is that a few people are immortal, completely unable to die. I'm not sure why, but I lean towards either "they just are" or "each one has his own reason." In any case, there are three general rules:

1. They're basically human, except for number 2 and hundreds of years of experience. This one is flexible.
2. They really can't die. There isn't any way to do it. Elaborate suicide might be an option, but I'd discourage it.
3. The PCs are the only ones.

The game would probably start long in the past. There'd be two modes of play. One is used when the PCs are apart, and is done as quickly and generally as possible. Some system here might be necessary, but I'd like to keep it as close as possible to "everyone describes in general terms what they do for the century or so until we meet again." If they want to act against each other indirectly, the result should almost always be stalemate -- it's the personal conflict that's important here, to be resolved personally. Time should be spent almost entirely on those rare meetings. It might be a good idea for the immortals to hash out a set of "rules" between them, a very good one being "we meet at this bar every hundred years."

The focus of this whole thing is meant to be on the characters, their motivations and emotions, and the relationships between them. Everything that isn't a PC, particularly regular humans, should be downplayed drastically. If they meet human resistance, have the mortals fall like tissue paper. What I'm going for is essentially development in a vacuum, just a vacuum with the world painted on it.

Does this make sense? Would it work? What should be done about system? My instinct is to go very system light, very drama and/or karma. It would be interesting and thematically appropriate to go GMless, but I don't know if it would work.

(edited for grammar)

[Henry Fitch]

Hmm. Uh.. hmm. I really hope this is within the forum guidelines.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

One suggestion would be to use an epistolary (letter-writing) format, like Gothic Monsters or De Profundis (either around-the-table "writing of letters" in a narrated form OR have player actually mail letters to one another...or use email).

The F2F meetings ("See you guys in ten years, it's been real.") could be handled in a LARP environment (actually meet in a bar, restaurant, park, etc.).

One of the elements of Interview with a Vampire that really grabbed me (cuz lord knows the writing didn't) was the idea that despite any bad feelings between them, two immortals will probably hang out with one another, just because they can't relate to anyone else. You could go for the immortal lovers/companions angle (Lestat and Claudia), the "eternal soldiers" (like Cap America and Wolverine or Ramirez and MacCleod) or the immortal rivals angle (classic vampires RPG stuff or MacLeoud and The Kurgen).

A game like this could easily fall into "My Dinner with Andre"-style immersive roleplaying. Nothing is really *done*, but the characters just chat and comment on the world and their lives. Personally, I enjoy this kind of thing if it's in the right context (ie: lots of emotional energy is invested). But it's hard to do more than a few times...it can get quite boring if there are no interesting conflicts to settle.

A series of smaller "historical" games, each with its own premise and setting, but with the same characters, could be interesting. Essentially, it's a linear time travel (one without all the madness and gee whiz SF of actual time travel). Write down a bunch of these mini-games and pinpoint one engaging conflict to snag the players' interest. When the conflict has been deal with in some way, that game ends and you can jump forward in time...

Okay, I talk a lot.

[Henry Fitch]

Also, linear time travel is just right, but I'd like it mostly as a backdrop. First we're arguing during the Crusades, now we're arguing during the French Revolution... I don't have any problem with players becoming involved in these types of events, actually, but I'd rather they did it as a way of getting at/supporting each other. It would be either cool or awful if they changed something majorly and you had to branch off into alternate history...

My main inspiration for this, by the way, is an issue of The Sandman in which the God of Dreams meets this one immortal human in a tavern every hundred years. One cool thing that I'd like to include is that legends spring up around them; people think that the Wandering Jew and the Devil meet there every year, and such. Also, the regular immortal is pretty behind-the-scenes important in history - he helps invent slavery, helps set up a deal to give Shakespeare his talent, and so forth.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Yes, I would use the "walk through time" element NOT in typical time travel fashion (ie: muck with history) but rather have the characters:

a) Comment on history as it happens (like the angels in Wings of Desire).

or

b) "Make" history in a linear-for-the-characters but non-linear-for-the-players (in other words, the players engineer their characters to be involved with making history come out as planned, as if they were there all along).

Does that make sense?

[J B Bell]

If you want it Nar-style, this could be done with super-extended Scene Resolution.  I'm thinking here of HW's example of a courtship--different scenes, with points from success bringing you towards your goal, while failures of course set you back.

How to avoid the changing-history problem?  Well, maybe the conflict isn't over the events as such, but how they get accomplished.  So everyone is bored and decides to create a great artist--Michelangelo, frex.  Ah, but who becomes Michelangelo.  I have my favorite, you have yours, and we're rather vain immortal bastards, so There Can Be Only One.  This loans itself to non-lethal competition, methinks.

Player A:  I'm discrediting B's Bard.  I'm going to prove that his plays were all written by Isaac Newton with forged documents.
Player B:  Very funny.  I'll use the new printing-press that I had that guy Gutenberg come up with to slam Newton as a Catholic and ruin his career, then replace him with my guy Purushky.

Then perhaps they'd roll modified not by their own unearthly skill levels, but by the influence they control.  This could get amusingly Gamist, too, a sort of slalom through history, not a grand conspiracy but a bunch of ultimately somewhat petty battles that don't make any actual difference, even if there might be rather metagame-horrifying modifications to (in)famous personage's stories.

To make it matter to the PCs, maybe they have something like Humanity--except it's defined as their own connection with their long-lost human heritage--the more crassly they manipulate their pawns, the closer they get to Humanity 0, which would mean utter, total callousness and inability to form real bonds with humans.

Hm, starting to sound like a Sorcerer mini-supp.  Pardon my bias, it's an easy groove to fall into.

--JB

[Henry Fitch]

Cool ideas, Bell, that sounds like a fun game. Probably not the same one I'm thinking of, though. I think my opinions about how this should work are sliding progressively closer to "is it really a game?" experimental-theater territory.

[Kenway]

This kind of reminds me of Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series where a bunch of "Immortals" like Death, Time, Fate, War, etc. control man's destiny over the years and try to avoid being manipulated by Evil (Satan).
One example:  The Black Death was more or less Satan's revenge tactic against the rest of the Immortals.
The stories in retrospect are kind of horrible, but are interesting as a source of ideas nonetheless.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

The stories in retrospect are kind of horrible, but are interesting as a source of ideas nonetheless.

Well I liked On a Pale Horse. Of course, I was 14.
Battle Circle -- now THAT was a book, baby!

As far as "experimental theatre/is it a game, is it not a game," if it has goals, rules and a play structure, then it's a game (IMO, natch...but that's a whole semantic debate that I don't see much value in exploring).

[Henry Fitch]

I agree with you about the game/theatre thing, I was just using that to describe a certain type of ultra-rules-light gaming.

And the Incarnations were good at first, I thought, especially since Anthony managed to keep his... well, pervdom to himself. But that started sneaking in in the later ones.

[Lance D. Allen]

This reminds me of an elder chronicle I was planning on running, but never got around to...

Anyhow, what I'd suggest is to allow the characters to interact on other basis' than purely during the game sessions. Allow the players to, if they wish, meet on their own time to plot and plan, and it would be like the characters running across each other in Paris or New York every few decades. They won't be able to do anything significant during these time periods, but they can forward their goals, so long as the GM (referee?) is made aware of what happened.

Also, I'd not say that their efforts against each other during the centuries apart should be ineffectual. I think it would make for a good scene if, somehow during the previous century, Immortal A managed to, through careful maneuvers and intrigue, totally liquidate Immortal B's assets. Immortal B makes it to the rendezvous point, still bitter about it, but unknowing of who his enemy was. Immortal A gets to gloat while offering condolences (or alternately declaring his manipulations, to the admiration of his peers, and the rage of the victim).
The characters should have some minimal stats for the purposes of physical confrontation (it'll happen. You *know* it will happen.) but for the most part, the rules ought to be more about influence. Most of the game would be played out during the intervening centuries, with only whatever efforts the group comes together to make being played out during actual sessions (besides just the pure roleplaying aspects, which is damned fun too.)
Also, I like the suggestion that it be played out LARP-style. (not with White Wolf's idiotic bid and paper-rock-scissors stuff, though) If it's appropriate, have the scenes take place in a restaurant or public place, and have the characters enter the scene already IN CHARACTER. Only if a time-out is called should the players ever go out of character, and there ought to be some sort of Reward/Punishment mechanic for going out of character without a time-out, or excessive player-called time-outs. Rewards should also be given for the interactions within the session, whatever they be. Subtle innuendoes, word-play, hints or even all-out confrontation ought to be Rewarded somehow if done well.

[Henry Fitch]

Hmm, what's been said... right.

Rules for influence and such are probably unavoidable. Still, making a lot of rules for something can lead players to feel like that's what they're supposed to be doing, and I'd rather not do that.

True, though, characters being able to screw each other over and such outside of meetings would be fun.

As for physical conflict, I suppose rules are necessary there too. I don't want a lot of randomization, though (especially no blasted RPS), so drama and karma are the key.

In my gang's last LARP series, we didn't use rules even for combat. We got out the wooden swords and fought. Boy, that gets you involved with your character fast. It even kinda works, as long as you remember to fight like your character would, relative to the other person.

Yeah, we're lunatics. This was in public, too.

[Lance D. Allen]

::laughs:: My last group would have done the same, as we were all into shinai fighting in some amount or another... But for those who aren't into resolving LARP violence with physical violence, you'll need them rules. For the type of game you're working on, I think Drama and Karma are definitely the right track, for combat, influence and other mechanics.

[Henry Fitch]

I still remember one time when my raw recruit smacked my buddy's half-griffon (looks human) badass in the back of the knee and crippled him. He theoretically should've kicked my ass in or out of the game. I lost an arm really soon after, though, so it was cool.

Sounds like a dumb game, but the characters were pretty well done.

[Ron Edwards]

Oh look, this thread is wandering.

I think I see where the winged-coyote guy was going with this. The idea isn't powers and mystic awful influences, and it's not even the ins and outs of a time-war, history-changing thing. Go back to the Premise, as he stated so beautifully: it's about relationships. Set it in the modern day, and the point is not "adventures across the ages," but "attitudes and adjustment of the immortal dude, here and now."

So conflicts should be about how relationships work out. Not only whether they turn out "well" or not, but about whether the pattern of behavior exhibited by the immortal guy can change. Perhaps the same-old pattern is the best thing to do, and our various modern patterns are all messed up. Perhaps the same-old pattern is hopelessly dysfunctional and really ought to change, after the umpty-umph disaster.

And how does the immortal view all the mortals? As repetitions or re-enactments of the individuals of the past? Can that perception be broken? Aaaannd (scary question) is it actually an accurate perception?

I can even grasp how the Character-experiential approach, regardless of shared-group theme-making, could be quite an enjoyable end in itself. Veeryy interesting .... and since we're in Indie Design, you're up.

So what next, O winged-dog-thing? (What's your name, anyway?) Is there an existing system that would do all this just fine? Clearly, a system that focuses on the subtle distinction between a tire iron and a baseball bat is not what's called for. And if we're after the Sim/Char thing, rather than the Narrativist thing, the whole metagame-points and Author thing isn't high-priority either.

And if you don't want to do the plain old "Um, we'll just talk, and you know, resolve stuff through agreement" deal ... what then? I'm very interested.

Best,
Ron