Re: Post Game Chef Apathy the Calling Looking for Hearts and Minds

[logos7]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Joshua MacKay, and I'm just coming out of game chef, with a game half designed and was wondering if I could get some help/reflection upon it. This is my first time on the forge really, so be kind.

What kind of game is it...

well to put it shortly, its an alternate take on the cthulhu mythos. In this game you play apathetic people dealing with the mythos. Apathy is the main currency of the game, often deciding if your succeed, turn into a cthulhu cultist (and therefore out of the game) etc. The Point of the game is to explore apathy ( and to a larger degree the americana that comes with it, rather than the psycological state itself) and the mythos from a little bit different angle.

What am I taking away from Game Chef...

I think the biggest thing I am taking away from game chef is the awareness of the twofold goals of my game. A lot of my reviews found the game conflicted. Part of this is my own fault (I got more than a little polemic and into the realm of how a GAME should be played as apposed to my game) and part of this is that I genuinely want the game to be about apathy but still a fairly trad RPG, which means doing stuff.

If you want to here the Ben Lehmen mini review see it here (or go straight to the source at gamechef here and reviews here )

[spoiler] Apathy: The Calling

This game can't seem to make up its mind what it's about. I should admit upfront that I'm biased against it because I don't really care for the Cthulu mythos (like some of lovecraft's stories, never really got into the whole corpus, though) and I've not played Call of Cthulu, which it seems to be a reaction to. But, still, there are some serious contradictions in the text, which is sad, because there are some really smart mechanics in the game.

So, one thing that this game might be is a game about apathetic losers who don't give a fuck that the world is going to shit, so that makes them immune to it. That's a neat idea. It's totally contradicted by the idea that apathy lets you use magical psychic powers, as well as the idea that the GM needs to goad the character into doing stuff (shouldn't they, you know, not do stuff?) Some of the sassy PVP stuff, like bidding apathy to screw over the other players, totally fits with this.

Or it could be about fixing Call of Cthulu, in which case all this apathy stuff is pretty much directly opposed to the whole "investigate nonsense, then die" cycle which the game's advice text perpetuates, as well as the "GM must entertain players, players shouldn't do lame bullshit like fight each other, don't kill the characters until the climax!" stuff (why have nifty PvP mechanics if you're not supposed to use them?) and the "don't play with yourself!" A great big old screed on how to run Call of Cthulu, which isn't this game (or is it?) I can't tell what the game is trying to do at all.

Ultimately, this game needs to decide what it's actually about before I can really comment on it further. I will note that the nifty apathy mechanic (it is nifty!) is broken by the GM having infinite apathy, since that makes it basically worthless (yes, you get a point of apathy for failing. It doesn't matter, since the GM can just set the bar one higher next time.)

Personally, I'd like the see the game develop into the first game of the two, a sort of internet savvy kill puppies for satan. Let me know if you keep developing it, regardless![/spoiler]

Either way, the text on the website is currently in the process of revision, and I was wondering if I could convince some people to try my game a little bit more.... either way thanks for your time and consideration

Logos7

[Ben Lehman]

Hi, Joshua!  Thanks for entering game chef.

It might help to have:
1) A link to your game's text.
2) Some explicit ideas about what you want to work on.
3) A summary of the salient parts of the game's rules.

For myself, I'd still really like to know why the game has both PvP mechanics and a lecture for the players not to fight: it seems like that's at the crux of the issue of the conflict between the rules and the advice text.

yrs--
--Ben

[Eero Tuovinen]

Hey, I loves my Cthulhu, unlike Ben. Let's see...

(Ben: there is a link to the game text in the first post.)

The premise seems a bit zany to me, frankly. I could see a really wicked Mythos game that worked with the emotional angle, but the focus on just apathy seems super-narrow to me. The text as it stands doesn't really do much to sell me on the premise - is goth emo subculture apathetic in terms of this game? Apparently watching a lot of television is. Perhaps the game should go into a bit more depth about the culture of apathy, to show that it really defines a generation as the text says.

The text is entertaining to read, although a bit strained in places. The concept of characters hearing the table-talk as voices in their heads seems like the core of a whole another experimental game. The rules-text is wonky (mixes up players with characters and such), but I think I can parse it. Having Cthulhu be a mentor for the characters as prospective cultists works for me, it's a good campaign hook.

You might consider having the GM apathy bid work by giving apathy to the player - so if he bids 4 apathy and wins, then the player gets 4 apathy. This way it's not as arbitrary what scores the GM bids.

The apathy angle doesn't mesh very well with the whole investigator thing, I find: your adventure structure seems like default Call of Cthulhu, which seems weird when the characters presumably are some of the most apathetic individuals alive. I'd expect these characters to spend their time pining after ex-girlfriends or watching television instead of running around town solving mysteries. I suspect that you actually expect characters in this game to be played contrary to the apathy angle - the game would be certainly traditional if you wrote in a slew of apathy superpowers only to have characters run around blowing things up in the usual rpg model anyway, with no apathetic behavior in sight!

Close reading of the text (mainly, the monster section) indicates that characters are expected to go on adventures and kill monsters in this game. Fine and dandy, but the apathy thing still weirds me out - how can you be apathetic and fight a monster at the same time? Sure don't know. It feels to me like the game is hampering itself - the idea of gaining a point of apathy for losing a conflict works, though, so perhaps the main problem is just the apathetic gloss - take the same mechanics and name apathy "Despair" or something and it seems to me that most of the conceptual difficulties go away.

Actually, what this game reminds me more than anything else is a modern web-comic. It's all there from fake attitude to self-referential breaking of the fourth wall. If I was in your pants, I'd run with the apathy and the characters who hear the players but trash the mythos, so you could have a game about gag comedy in the coffee shop. Characters could be mascara-faced teenage girls and boys, their pet robots and whatever else you get in those web comics. Of course that's still rather far off, considering that trad game structure can't handle that type of game, but it's what I'm inspired towards by this. Except Cthulhu as mentor, that inspires me towards a Mythos game. But without apathy and OOC discussions going on in character heads.

Conclusion: if you want to keep the apathy and still have a traditional adventure type experience, I guess your best bet would be to turn the scheme around and have apathy be the paralyzing agent that actively prevents characters from acting instead of being their hit points. That way a player won't feel that he's doing a good job playing his character by not caring about anything, as his character is actually fighting against the apathy to act. You might even keep the power-up functions if you want, but the main thing would be to make apathy something external to the player experience so he wouldn't need to try to play a character who cares about nothing and still runs around looking for deep ones.

I recommend checking out Don't Rest Your Head; it has a similar premise in that the characters reach an altered state of mind and, as a result, can see supernatural enemies others ignore. That game actually does a lot of the things you're doing here, it seems to me - I might steal the headline technique for DRYH, now that I think of it.

[logos7]

That (players not fighting) was part of the polemic bits that i was talking about. I think that the idea that players can interfer without fighting is not as counter intuitive as some think, but that little bit belongs in a respective blurb about DMing and is not intended so much as a how to play, but a how to dm (or rather what to avoid).

As for the ceiling type, rather than floor type of apathy, it was considered originally in tandum with the Hp floor.  I kind of like the idea of cribbing off webcomics, god knows i had a pet section planned that never really hit paper yet. Perhaps I  will go read don't rest your head, it does sound simular.

As for the why I'm posting, I surpose the real question is does this game do something that other's don't. No need to reinvent the wheel after all. I surpose I will have time to think about it at work tomarrow...

Thanks for your comments, God knows it takes time and effort to get responce back to people like me, and I would just like to thank you for your time and effort.

Logos
~Thinking, 
Thinking,
Think...

[logos7]

I surpose my big question now is , after my revision, is this looking like it should just be shipped off to 10km10kt or should i continue revising. If your interested in taking a look at the revision try a look here

www.freewebz.com/ggnewb/apathy.pdf

and yes the grammar is still a ways off in to do list.

thanks for your time.

Logos