The World is My Character Sheet

[GregStolze]

Mmmmkay, one of the things I did with REIGN was stat up social structures so I could bring them into play and beat them against one another. 

Now I'm working on PROGENITOR, a setting for the superhero game Wild Talents.  I started with one idea ("Kansas farmwife in the late 1960s gets Superman level powers and starts using them with no idea that they're highly contagious") and am now looking at just how fragile history is when confronted with (say) a guy who can personally create oil equal to the weekly output of Saudi Arabia.  (He's a prick, by the way.) 

What I'm struggling with is how to mechanically chart the course of history from 1968 (when it deviates from our timeline) through 2001 or so.  I plan for the PCs to have a major impact, even if they don't KNOW they're having a major impact.  So what are the elements of history?  What are the equivalents of Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom and Dexterity for global events?

-G.

[soundmasterj]

The way I have is, there is a world sheet and 1 character sheet for players. Whenever it is allowed to change any character sheet (not often), you might alternatively change the world sheet; so if you may add a trait to your sheet, "defeated the mountain barbarians with words alone", you might alternatively change the world sheet: new world trait, "the mountain barbarians got converted to christianity". This is an actual play example. I think I settled for the world sheet.
Traits are freeform and there is no mechanical difference between world and character sheets.

But to actually answer your question, hm…

I would say something like
War
Science
Art
Hunger&Disease
if you were to plot the entire history. For a shorter period, you could maybe make up nations as characters. The soviets get War:X, Moral:Y, Wealth:Z, Science, Population etc. But I think the interactions and how attributes change would be more important then what they actually are.
Nature

[C. Edwards]

Hey Greg,

If I were to break history down into discreet chunks I might use categories like Economics, Armed Conflict, Pop Culture, Religion, Crime & Punishment, Industry, etc.

I think the difficulty appears when we take the historical event and try to chart the (often far reaching) effects of that event. The aftermath is where we see changes in Societal Structures, Values & Mores, Human Rights, Legislation, and so on which can be history making events themselves. So we're looking at this cascading effect where big event leads to, even if slowly, what looks like another big event, and so on.

It might be easier (or maybe just more fluid and organic) to have a sort of distabilization scale to work from when the characters do what they do in the game. Something like the guy creating large amounts of crude would have an incredibly high distabilization rating, particulary in the economic realm. Of course, you majorly disrupt the economy and that can lead to other disruptions, such as armed conflicts.

The distabilization rating could be used to make a saving throw in whatever you consider to be the primary historical category for that action/event. If the save fails then you make saves for other categories that may be relevent to the action/event. If the primary category makes the save, perhaps the event didn't cause as large a change as expected, or something happens to mitigate the effects of the action.

So, there is the skeleton of an incredibly simplified way to handle something as intricate as history on a large scale. Hope it helps.

-Chris

[Guy Srinivasan]

Some (to me) obvious possibilities: SCOPE, IMPACT, OBJECTIVITY. Say scaled 0-5.

SCOPE: This is a measure of how much stuff is directly and clearly involved in the event, at the time.
IMPACT: This is a measure of how much the event directly and clearly changes the course of history.
OBJECTIVITY: This is a measure of how much counterfactual historians in various possible futures would agree on the contents and implications of the event.

Some ad hoc, not-to-be-taken-as-position-papers examples:

World War II - Scope 5, Impact 5, Objectivity 1
9/11 - Scope 1, Impact 4, Objectivity 3
Hurricane Katrina - Scope 3, Impact 2, Objectivity 4
CFCs etc phaseout - Scope 2, Impact 5, Objectivity 5

[GregStolze]

This stuff is gold -- even if I decide to go a completely different way, these suggestions are really helpful.  Just so you know. 

Hm, what if there were 3-4 primary categories like, uh, Science/Stability/Environment/Economy and then secondary categories made of the influences of two together.  OR, it could be comparisons. 

If Science < Stability, you get war tech.  If Science > Stability, you get medical tech and consumer goods.
If Environment < Economy, you get a good year of crops and mineral finds.  If Env. > Economy, it's a thin year.  (Hm.  Don't like that one much.

But let's see how many permutations you get with four categories, ABCD, you get... AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD.  Six interactions.  That sounds like a pretty reasonable number, actually.  Hm...

Another thought I've had (reading this thread) is that there's a baseline provided by Actual History, right?  And that when the events as created by the supers (GMC and PC) deviate from it, there's a tendency to pull back towards it, no matter how far off they go.  This isn't any mystical or scientific thing: It's a convenience of game mechanics.  The baseline serves as the amalgamated effect of all the stuff that isn't covered by either (1) the big categories or (2) the effects of metahumans.  OR, you could have the original line, and then the secondary line created by the GMCs, and a third chart for how the PCs knock THAT off kilter.  But it really needs to have that cascading effect, for sure.  The PCs need to understand that if they're working at the early edge of this history, killing one third generation supervillain early in her career the math of the epidemic means they've forestalled a potential 200,000 empowerments. 

(The way powers work is, the Progenitor created 10 offspring the first ten times she used her powers on others.  She had a 90% chance of contagion every time she used her power until she'd created those ten.  Each of those ten Tier 2 powers has an 80% chance of contagion until they create 9 offspring.  Each of those Tier 3s has a 70% chance until they create 8, and so on until you get the Tier 10s who have a 0% chance of spreading it.)

-G.

[soundmasterj]

You could make up freeform traits on the fly whenever something happens, representing deviation from the real world as a percentile:
"Soviets are a lot more liberal (compared to actual history) 135%"
"Africa is way more developed (ctah) 156%"
and the percentages have some kind of internal drive to return to normalcy.

[Vulpinoid]

Another thought I've had (reading this thread) is that there's a baseline provided by Actual History, right?  And that when the events as created by the supers (GMC and PC) deviate from it, there's a tendency to pull back towards it, no matter how far off they go.  This isn't any mystical or scientific thing: It's a convenience of game mechanics.

That's the kind of thing I was discussing in this response in the timestream thread.

Localised events may deviate, but over time they'll probably stretch back to the regular timeline as we see it. If events don't gradually go back to our timeline a completely new version of reality is created.


I'm also intrigued by the choice of...

(The way powers work is, the Progenitor created 10 offspring the first ten times she used her powers on others.  She had a 90% chance of contagion every time she used her power until she'd created those ten.  Each of those ten Tier 2 powers has an 80% chance of contagion until they create 9 offspring.  Each of those Tier 3s has a 70% chance until they create 8, and so on until you get the Tier 10s who have a 0% chance of spreading it.)

Why the deliberately finite number of people with powers at each level? 1 at tier 1, 10 at tier 2, 90 at tier 3, 720 at tier 4, etc.

Or do the character have a chance to improve their powers through experience/training/further mutation/absorbing one another's soul essence, etc???

Just wondering, that's all.

V

[GregStolze]

Why the deliberately finite number of people with powers at each level? 1 at tier 1, 10 at tier 2, 90 at tier 3, 720 at tier 4, etc.

Or do the character have a chance to improve their powers through experience/training/further mutation/absorbing one another's soul essence, etc???

The idea is that there's one way to get superpowers, and it's to catch it from someone who uses their powers on you.  Thus, there's an unbroken chain from every super back to the progenitor.  It's to encourage connections between characters that are less contrived or arbitrary.  It touches on a less-examined phenomenon of "creating your own nemesis" -- Batman creates the Joker, in some versions Superman effectively creates Lex Luthor, Spiderman creates Venom... and both Batman and Spiderman were, in turn, created by other criminals. 

The bigass history thing was a case of having some chocolate and some peanut butter and neither one seeming QUITE delicious enough on its own.

The percentage idea seems nice -- it could lose a point every time it gets rolled I guess -- but it assumes the GM knows what the baseline of history was.  (I want to sell this to people other than just Ken Hite.)

-G.

[Wordman]

So what are the elements of history?  What are the equivalents of Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom and Dexterity for global events?

Are your really talking about stats for the events themselves, or for the actors that create them? As an example from d20, while a wizard and a dragon may have stats, the event of the wizard killing the dragon really doesn't. I suppose you could create some like Duration, Collateral Damage, uh... Weather?

I suspect you are more after stats for the actors involved in the events, at least those relevant to cause and effect for global events. Some of the responses have dealt with this approach, some have dealt with the events themselves. What are you really after?

Rather than suggest stats, just some comments on what affects history:

Geography: This is actually a huge factor in history. Egypt isn't Egypt without the Nile. Greece without the islands is a totally different animal. An America that isn't geographically isolated from the eastern hemisphere has a totally different fate. You could generalize this into something like "Situation". Maybe this is what is meant by "Environment". Another obvious generalization as far as events go is "Proximity"; that is, a nation is more likely to create a significant event with a nation closer to them.

Resources: Control of resources matters a whole bunch. Venice builds an empire entirely because they control salt. Hilter loses a war partly because the Allies gain control of the Middle East, starving his tanks of gasoline. One way to think about this is as "Input" into both an event and its players.

Production: Resources are useless if you don't know how to put them to work. Prior to the "modern age", sitting on a huge petroleum reserve doesn't really do anything for you. One way to think about this is as "Output" from a player, but Input into an event.

Technology: The importance of technology (using a really broad definition, including development of science) to history might not be what you might think it is. The main reason it changes things is because it can change which Resources are important. As an example, salt was a massively important driver in history, right up until technology allowed its production for nearly nothing. As mentioned, oil was really of no consequence until technology required it. On a smaller scale, tech changes the nature of war (for example, the invention of the stirrup), but this is sort of window dressing on history. While some event might hinge on if this weapon can beat that defense, on the grand scale those specifics don't matter as much. A more abstract notion of this effect is that technology greatly increases production.

Culture: This includes religion, personality and so on. By "personality", I mean things like national character or motivation. Culture is really responsible for two things at the grand scale: motivation and influence. For an example of the first, in 1412, China probably had ships capable of circling the world, yet the "Age of Exploration" (and its consequent exploitation) was launched by the west almost a century later. Why? Because China recalled her ships, due to worries both isolationist and financial prudence. During the "Viking Age", Norse people did lots of sacking and pillaging, even quite a bit of settling, but very little actual conquering or "empire building". As far as influence, culture changes history by virtue of virally infecting other cultures it touches, but in unpredictable ways. Chinese porcelain, for example, wound up shaping a good deal of Germany's history.

Luck: You don't have to read much about America's Revolutionary War to discover that a great deal of the eventual American victory relied on pure dumb luck. If not for a thick fog, for example, the entire army should have probably been destroyed during the Battle of Long Island. Similar, weather-related "miracles" saved the rebels on a few other occasions as well.

Mules: Named after a character in Foundation, a mule is a person that drastically alters the status quo. Common perception is that a mule is a "great man" who alters history; but this is probably not really the case. More often a Mule is just someone who reached a particular point in time and space, and assembled the pieces around him into something totally new, and changed the world as a consequence. Henry Ford was a mule, for example. I mention these only because, by definition, mules are difficult to simulate with rules. Historically, they make the "rules" around them break.

Honestly, you also might want to take a long look at Civilization, as well.

[Wordman]

But let's see how many permutations you get with four categories, ABCD, you get... AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD.

Warning: irrelevant math geekery follows.

Technically, what you are after there are "combinations", not "permutations". Order matters for permutations, but not for combinations.

The general formula is C(n,k) = "n choose k" = n! / (k! (n-k)! ). Or, in Excel, combin(n,k). So, for "four choose two", you need C(4,2) = 4! / (2! (n-k)! ) = 4*3*2*1 / (2*1 * 2*1) = 24 / 4 = 6.

A permutation would be P(n,r) = n! / (n-r)!. So, P(4,2) = 4*3*2*1 / 2*1 = 4*3 = 12. (The permutations being the combinations you mention, plus the reverse of each one.)

In an attempt to provide some use to you for this post other than mathematical masturbation (too late!), other combinations of two elements:

C(3,2) = 3
C(4,2) = 6
C(5,2) = 10
C(6,2) = 15
C(7,2) = 21
C(8,2) = 28
C(9,2) = 36
C(10,2) = 45
C(11,2) = 55
C(12,2) = 66

Ten combinations of five traits doesn't sound unworkable either.

[chance.thirteen]

A REALLY brief first idea.

If the course of history is important, I would likely examine the major events of the time period, look for common factors I thought I could quantify enough that went into the events, then alow player actions to change those underlying factor ratings, and see if things change. It would probably get mired mainly in a "do you cause this event to happen when it didn't, or this other event to not happen, that did" thinking though.

EG economic challenge (changing tech, changing markets, changing resources), faction satisfaction (issues of class, race, sex), how contrasting the new is to the established, and so on.

Really vague.

[JoyWriter]

I agree with wordman, the things on the character sheets should probably not be events but dynamic things that persist from year to year: One shortcut is to grab some structuralist set of historical records, say Marxism, Foucault-ism, Diamond-ism, some old Confucian business, and mash them all together. Ok I say shortcut, more of a baseline for work. The idea I have is that all these guys say (in varying amounts), "this" is the thing you need to look at for history, the big driver of change, and you can say, maybe you're all half right, or right more in different places.

So on the Marx end you have "production" and industry and who controls it, on the Foucault end you have language and cultural "obviousness", on the diamond end you have geography, agriculture and disease and on the Confucian end you have social stability and the respect of social groups for each other.

Creating a counter-factual history is a pretty big narrative game in itself, because of what it says about what is fundimental and what is coincidence in our lives, and so I wouldn't make the above too strict. But I would allow hinge points, (which given you have superheroes will probably be quite big!) where you can change the big trends in the above stuff, which are vaguely sketched out in "normal history" form, and I'd probably have the GM be able to set the importance of the different trends as what is "really" going on, so when you decide how much the world has changed, you look at the different trends, and focus on them according to the influence you have set for them.

[GregStolze]

Technology isn't that important?  Y'think?  If a supergenius in 1988 got up one morning, had some coffee, took a decent-sized dump and CURED AIDS... that's going to be pretty huge.  (Or if he gets up and decides he's going to make AIDS faster acting and airborne...)

Version 2.0 was rating each year with four global factors -- Technology, Religious Intolerance, Violence and Economy.  Then I realized that while two of these (tech & economy) are generally things people value and want to increase, the other two (Violence and Religious Intol) are considered bad.  Or, at the least, MY values are pro tech and econ, anti violence and intolerance.  So now I'm trying to decide...

1) Do I want to rework those into all positives?  Peace, Technology, Tolerance and Economy?
2) Do I want to rework those into all negatives?  Violence, Ignorance, Sectarianism and Poverty?
3) Are there advantages to having derived factors that are composed of a 'good' thing plus a 'bad' thing?  (For example, the effects of lots of intolerance and lots of economic development... hm, sounds like a slave economy...) 
4) For deriving my secondary factors, do I want to do Peace-Economy, for example, or Peace+Economy, or the average of Peace and Economy?

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

-G.

[soundmasterj]

- Technology, Religious Intolerance, Violence and Economy.

Again, there's a lot of interaction amongst those. Violence benefits from intolerance and Technology, technology benefits from tolerance and economy etc. So these aren't really on the same plane.

You could try distinguishing "mental" and "physical" attributes reflecting on each other (technology and economy being physical f.e.). Wow, this might be the only sim proposal I ever did.
I would still go with freeform traits. For example: Intolerance isn't specific to religion and (shitstorm incoming!) the intolerance used by totalitarian regimes on any side of the economic or religious spectrum doesn't look much different for the ones suffering nor for the ones doing the hating. Nazism, Kambodcha, on a much smaller scale racism in every country, religious discrimination today … If you were to adopt a trait "tolerance/intolerance", I would have it modality neutral and add freeform specifiers ("Tolerant:9(Buddhist)", "Tolerant:-15(Fascist)").

But my main point would still be that you need a good mechanism for how different stats affect each other.

[chance.thirteen]

Would Cultural Intolerance be a more encompassing term than Religious? I see religion as part of culture, since countries often have disaparate versions of the same religions. However, I admit my goal was to encompass the ethnic and tribal violence around the world. Sadly, those place are usually so very poor, that economy+violence is what draws in the real powers, and creates the large scale conflicts. The tribal wars just continue like always.