The World is My Character Sheet

[C. Edwards]

It seems to me that the source category for ground zero, the catalyst event, is easily determinable. What doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me in terms of creative effort and time & handling during play is attempting to predict, using some version of real world historical benchmarks,just what particular effect(s) the catalyst event is likely to create. The possibilities are vast and the truly interesting stuff is likely to be unpredictable anyway. When the changes are wrought by the immediate and overwhelming use of superpowers, all bets are off.

A different approach would be to start from a base set of categories for the essence of the changes being made. I'd use something like Creation, Discovery, Transformation, Control, and Destruction. A particular event could cause changes of one or more type across one or more of your higher level Historical Categories (Technology, Violence, etc.), and you could split them between short and possible long term effects. Randomizing the type of effect, and applying it to your Historical Categories, while referencing whatever real world timeline(s) you're including in the game, seems like a relatively painless way to go.

Besides, if superhuman powers are involved, it's probably fine for some crazy and unpredictable events to take place as a result. Even in real world history there are many events we look back on and go "what the hell were they thinking?".

[Wordman]

Thoughts?  Like the traits or d'you want different ones?

Again, what do you think these are traits of? Events? Actors? Time periods?

[JoyWriter]

I can't quite see how pure values for each value each year helps, I don't quite see how it produces alternative history. Is it just that violence would be spiking in 1992 say, but is stopped by the hero? That feels more like a graph than active traits.

Here's what I was trying to get at, or part of it (my idea was pretty multi-valued even to myself);

Say someone creates the aids cure, in the very early 80s, does it:

increase the power of african nations?
keep homosexuality private and secret?
get used by a powerful elite and bargained for favours?
not get used because people don't trust the genius?
undermine medical companies who didn't get it first?
allow the further destruction of gender roles and so bring peace?
cause massive population growth and further global warming? (ick, I hate pop control arguments)
further increase the "debasement of society"?
lead to him being worshipped and made really powerful?
allow amazing inventors/leaders to be born who change society?
cause massive spy combat to break out to control him?

and so many others!

It all depends on what is the core of history for you. If it's all just the upwards progress of technology, then have that as a stat, if it is the influence of classes, have that, if its community cohesion, corruption, artistic virility, capacity for dissent, climate, religion, feng shui planning, quality of soil, or whatever, that effects how things will go.

I don't want to jam you with too many possibilities, but my idea is that you grab these different contradictory histories that people have made and sketch them out in super-brief. Then allow players/GM to decide how much they want the history to be about this or that, and so how much changing one will skew the world off course.

Now in this version, you are not creating stats in the conventional sense, as characterising marks that tell how this thing is able to change stuff, you are using them like a kind of sensitivity test, so you can say that stopping that one rock concert really will change the world, if you want to!

[GregStolze]

Again, what do you think these are traits of? Events? Actors? Time periods?

Sorry, should have answered earlier.  They are the traits of the global zeitgeist, I guess, shifting year by year. 

My plan is to have the real world events of the year (listed as a nuance-free fact dump) and the changes wrought in the "Progenitor" timeline.  Each year would have ratings in the traits.  There would also be a list of "hinge points" -- events that have big, ongoing effects if they get knocked off path.  (Stuff like "saving MLK" or "Johnson runs for another term.")  The stats would give GMs guidance on how to determine where history is headed as the years roll on.

-G.

[Wordman]

In other words, they sound more like a way of keeping score, rather than "traits" in the typical gaming sense. That is, do these traits actually get used for something (other than monitoring)? For example, does the "global zeitgeist" ever make a "Religious Intolerance" roll? Or, can something in the game make use of the value of that trait for something?

Is it useful to track the "deltas" of the system. That is, if "Religious Intolerance" went up last year, does that have any effect on making it harder or easier to make it go up again this year?

Random thought: a system like this is vaguely like the notion of "Words" in In Nomine. Words weren't actually numeric traits in that system, but maybe they should have been. The idea if that various entities (archangels, for example) have a "word" that they "promote". (Jean is the archangel of Lightning, for example, with all of its metaphorical meaning.) One way of "keeping score" in the war between heaven and hell would be sort of similar to what you describe: a numeric rating given to the importance of all the various Words, year by year. In that sense, these Words would be the "global zeitgeist", which, in that game, they actually would be.

[Vulpinoid]

They are the traits of the global zeitgeist, I guess, shifting year by year. 

Purely global, or do different regions of the world have different ratings, allowing a group to see how their actions impact on a particular area while other parts of the world are only impacted by knock-on effects?

Just wondering...

V

[GregStolze]

I was planning for nations to have an (essentially static, or at least hard-to-change) set of modifiers.  So the US would be +1 Violence, +1 Tolerance, +1 Economy, +1 Science.  Japan, I'm thinking -1 Violence, -1 Tolerance, +2 Economy, +1 Science. 

THAT might be a good place to keep score too.  It's a lot easier for a single superhuman to make (say) England more violent than the whole world...

-G.

[soundmasterj]

so you did incorporate my modality neutral tolerance proposal?

you could in addition to the various nations make up overlapping entities like the church, women, democracy etc. all influencing each other

[contracycle]

The Illuminati game might be worth a look for inspiration.  It has Groups which are organised by tags and a power rating, so for example the FBI are "Government, Strait, Violent" (IIRC).  It isnpossible to change these tags so that the FBI become "Government, Weird, Violent", or conceivably all the way to "Corporate, Weird, Peaceful" (each term has an antonym).  Needless to say that sort of change would have quite an impact on how the group operated.

Fore your porposes it might be possible to give states similar tags and allow events to change them, and also then have the current set of tags determine which events occur.