Wave Inspired System

[chronoplasm]

OK, so in most systems, character stats will usually grow with time right? They don't really get weaker with time unless they are negatively affected by some kind of enemy.
Well, I was thinking of some kind of system where characters will naturally have up-periods and down periods. Each stat will have three properties:

Waveform (Choose: Sine, Square, Triangle, Sawtooth)
Wavelength
Amplitude

I guess my biggest inspiration here is my depression. I have periods where I basically produce more seretonin, and I have periods where I produce less seretonin. I usually have a sharp rise once I hit rock bottom, then a slow decline as I work my way down. It's fairly regular, but I'm taking medication to do something about these low points.

I think this might work for that game Pathodyne I've been trying to come up with, where your sixteen character classes in the game are inspired by Myers-Briggs typology and mental stats and physical stats aren't clearly differentiated from one another (that is, no Cartesian Dualism or whatever. Your mind and your body are so closely linked that mood will affect health and vise versa.)

Anyway, I was wondering if you guys could help me brainstorm for this.

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Let's see... Brainstorm... Brainstorm...

It might just be easier to keep track of just 2 waveforms:  One for Sensing/Feeling and the other for Thinking/Intuition.  That way, when Sensing is high, Feeling is low, etc. 

What about a semi-apocalyptic event that caused several moons to appear, and these moons are screwing with human personality, each with a different period/month (=wavelength)? 

Or perhaps each character has purposefully decided to undergo a process (like taking a drug) to increase one of the four stats, automatically decreasing its complement.  Then, in the drug's "down period," the complement actually resurges and overtakes the stat that was boosted?

One interesting thing I could see going on here is that the GM could brainstorm a lot of Bangs based on these two dualities (thinking/intuition and sensing/feeling), where the player has to choose between the two.  Of course, whichever stat happens to be higher at the moment will be a factor, since it will give them an advantage in the roll.  But will that choice give them an advantage in the long run? 

Since the characters' classes get decided as they gain levels, could this waveform also decrease in amplitude?  I mean, could the stats themselves start to take on shape as the characters' swings in personality start to level out?  Might that be the goal of the game, much like someone with depression gaining control over the low seratonin state?

-JT

[chronoplasm]

Hmmm... That would be a pretty cool goal for the game.

One thing my psychologist told me is that depression doesn't neccessarily have to come from one big traumatizing event or anything.
Rather, a small event will decrease seratonin production a little bit, but given enough time it will go back up and stabilize. However, if another small event were to occur before you could stabilize, your seratonin would go down even further. It might not go down that far, but it will still take that much longer to go back up. Enough small sad events piling on top of another can eventually drop your seratonin down into the gutter. If it stays like that long enough, it could stick that way.
I think this could make for a pretty neat game mechanic.

[masqueradeball]

A friend of mine had an idea of a game where the characters existed in a virtual world, like the net in cyberpunk or whatever. Maybe in a setting like that you could have mental states drastically affect physical reality, or a game about ghosts or dream lands, where one's psychological view of themselves at the moment creates their body and physical effects on their body directly effect the mind.

Do you think that would help.I don't know anything about Pathodyne, is it discussed in another thread.

[chronoplasm]

Its discussed in another thread, but not very well. I didn't have a grasp for the Power 19 when I started it and I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do. Now I have a slightly better idea.

I think some kind of dream world would work for this game.

Hmmm... so I'm thinking that this game should focus more on Person vs. Self conflict where the monsters you battle are representations of your character's inner problems.

[J. Scott Timmerman]

So, is what you want here some sort of Death Spiral?  I.E., something bad happens, which increases the chance of more bad stuff happening later?  Eventually, though, you've got to hit the trough of the curve and come back out, though, right?  But, if I understood your first post, ups and downs apply separately to separate stats.  So a death spiral might just increase reliance on the other stats. 

You could combine the complementary stats idea (where one stat increases when the other decreases) with the idea that whatever stat you choose to use in a fight is the one that gets damaged by the monster's attacks.  That way, the PC will usually choose the highest stat, which gets whittled down during the fight, but when it's low, it'll be raised up again because its complement is being attacked.  Maybe this doesn't fit so well with the idea that a stat could get "stuck in the trough," but hey, just throwing out ideas.

I kinda dig the dream world idea here.  I don't know much about Bliss Stage, but have you taken a look at that?  The monsters don't necessarily represent inner problems, but your armor and weapons against the monsters are your character's self-esteem and love for other PCs.  Maybe some food for thought there.

-JT

[chronoplasm]

Death spiral, exactly.
Hmm... maybe combat in this game shouldn't be about beating the enemy down to 0 HP but about knocking enemies out of balance? While one stat is reduced down to the negative numbers another stat gets so high it becomes unwieldly. Ideally you want your character to be nice and balanced but a more unstable character might get special bonuses.

[masqueradeball]

Your last post has me thinking strongly of Yin/Yang or the four medieval/Greek humors and how they were suppose to effect a person health. Instead of trying to kill and opponent you might try to trick him into driving up his Yang so much that he goes insane with passion or some such. The idea here is that in limited doses, you'd be willing to increase your Yang (or whatever, say maybe, your Extroverted in the Myers-Briggs example) but if you went a little to far, it'd go out of control. I really like how cognitive play could be, where instead of rolling to hit you'd be trying to figure out through in character interaction how to send your opponent over the deep end.

[chronoplasm]

Oh yeah, I'm definately leaning away from dice rolls on this one.
I'm thinking that there should be three factors in affecting characters' stats.
1) Personal choice. Players should be able to make decisions regarding how stats are distributed, but this is only one part of it.
2) Environment. Players can be affected by their surroundings and by characters or monsters in their surroundings.
3) Predisposition. How characters and their abilities change over the course of the game has a lot to do with how their base stats were distributed.
However, players may choose how they want these three factors to be weighted depending on what kind of story they want and how they want the game to progress.

[masqueradeball]

I'm not sure I understand the how the third factor would play out. Can you offer some examples?

[chronoplasm]

Certainly.
Some characters will naturally be more inclined toward a certain characteristic, and over time that character will drift back to it.

For example, lets say that one character is naturally uncontrollably emotional. From the beginning of the game, that character fights to try and control their emotions. Over time, you can learn to slow down the rate at which the brain juices build up, and you can counteract them with other brain juices to try and keep yourself at a nice middle ground. However, if you don't keep your character maintained, you gradually revert to your default state.

[masqueradeball]

Thats really cool. How do you feel about the idea of the stats being "blind" so that the players can't see what their current X Score is, and just have to guess. Since these scores would reflect how the character felt there would be times in play where a player would attempt to do something and be told that he's motivated to something else...

Like, say a character's prone to Greed and a fellow party member leaves their purse behind while the go to the little girls room. The acting player, knowing how important Greed is to their character states that they're just gonna leave the purse alone. The GM would then check their Greed score (which had drifted back to uncontrollable levels while the player wasn't looking) and say something like "You can't resist taking her things. Knowing this, what do you do?" or something.
Of course that example isn't that great, but... hey, off the top of my head and all, but if you could formalize that kind of exchange so it worked in play I think it could be pretty cool. I always wanted a game that some how simulated the fact that people are, sometimes, very out of control of how they act and what they feel.

[chronoplasm]

I'm not sure about blind stats, but I think the latter idea there could be pretty cool if done right.
That is, the player wouldn't be compelled to do something against their will, but players could be dealt damage if they go against their instincts.
That is, a greedy character could resist taking the purse, but it would be painful to do so. However, by taking the pain, the player could become less greedy.

Perhaps knowledge of your own stats can be a reward for gameplay? In the beginning, you don't get to see the numbers, but later on you do. Perhaps there can be some spells that allow players to gain this kind of knowledge?
I don't think I like the idea of hidden stats just based on my own playing preferences, but I could make this game open to houseruling on the matter.

[masqueradeball]

Yeah, hidden stats are cool in one sense that that not knowing can make system elements more compelling, but it also makes the game feel less cooperative. I can see the ups and downs. I've personally had good experience with hiding the mechanical aspects of play, but I could see where it could go wrong. At any rate, you should definitely turn this concept into something more concrete, I'd love to see where it goes.

[chronoplasm]

Oh definately, I'm really starting to like this idea.
I think I'll have the blind vs. visible stats thing open to house ruling, but I prefer that the players have some involvement in figuring it out simply because figuring out all the waveforms might be a little too complicated for one person to handle.

OK, so I'm thinking each character is represented by two waveforms:
Black Bile (SJ) vs. Blood (SP)
Yellow Bile (NF) vs. Phlegm (NT)

These will each have a substats which you use to determine how your stats oscillate over time.
These substats include:
Attack:Decay
Sustain:Release
Amplitude