[Mayhem] Power 19

[mogunus]

1. What is your game about?

Mayhem is about the fabric of sentient culture, as expressed through mythology. Normative behavior and mythology evolve together, and influence the course of civilization.

2. What do the characters do?

The characters experience life in their world as mediated through their culture and mythology.

3. What do the players and GM do?

The players replace their own cultural and mythological norms with those of their character. Then, they describe their character's in-game behavior based on these assumptions and beliefs about the world.

The GM facilitates this by generating the myths, cultures, and geography of the game world, and describing these to the players.

4. How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

There are two settings. One is a meta-setting: using tools from comparative mythology, the game provides abstract schema upon which to build plausible myths and corresponding cultures. The other is a specific instance of this schema which I have lovingly handcrafted as an example for GM's. The setting is rich in myth which is shown to interact with the state of each game-world culture. This reinforces the two-way link between myth and behavior that the game seeks to depict.

5. How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?

Character creation begins with the selection of a game-world era in which to role-play. The player examines available cultures, selects one, and chooses a social role within that culture for his character. On the basis of this role, he generates family status, in-game property, and a personal history. He develops a Personal Narrative based on cultural norms: this is a collection of phrases or paragraphs detailing his relationship to the core myths of his society. He rolls dice to determine what his physical limits are.

This reinforces clear perception of the Myths which drive a culture, at the level of individual behavior and attitudes. Each of us constructs our own personal narrative out of the spectrum of stories available. A culture is not a monadic set of totally consistent myths: there are many threads in each mythology, many of which can be set directly in opposition to each other. A character is a tool for examining the relationship between the story that an individual crafts for himself, the greater space of myths available in his culture, and the effect that this relationship has on behavior.

6. What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary?)

The game rewards actor stance play. The closer a player comes to immersing themselves in game-world myth and cultural norms, the more they-as-character react to in-game stimuli as plausible inhabitant of the game-world would react, the more they are rewarded.

Meta-gaming is punished.

7. How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished?

I am unsure. Experience points are awarded for character actions which are consistent with the character's personal and societal myths. These allow the player to improve their character's in-game social standing and abilities. For example, a Druid accumulates XP by performing specific rituals, making use of their oral literature to advise high-status individuals of their culture, and teaching others. After enough XP has been accumulated, the Druid can "unlock" more powerful rituals, such as elaborate sacrificial rites involving an entire community which can have dramatic in-game effects.

8. How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

Narration takes a back seat to credibility. The Players, if they so wished, could chose to play farmers or villagers. Nothing much would "happen," but they would get a chance to explore, in-depth, the religion, myth, stories, and month-to-month year-to-year folk culture of an alien people. I am about to run a few sessions in exactly this idiom. I will post the results.

Conventionally, players will tend to choose professions and roles that involve travel across the game-world. More stuff "happens" as they interact with different cultures and people, generating a plot, but this is secondary to their exploration of the interfaces between cultures through myth and narrative. Since players like to pick characters from a diverse background, it will often be the case that the party is in an area in which their own culture dominates, with a group of strangers in tow. This is a fascinating tool for exploring the interactions between differing societal myths and narratives.

9. What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? Why should they care?

The game provides a rich storehouse of myth and history for the players to explore, through characters embedded in the context from which those myths arose. The game is meant to go on through several character generations. The players can watch and participate in the give-and-take between myth and behavior.

10. What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?

I have started a separate thread for this topic. Briefly, I am attempting to integrate task variance, character skill, physical limits, and task difficulty to provide a strong sense of in-game causality.

11. How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?

The resolution mechanic is meant to provide a strong sense of in-game causality. This would reinforce the player's sense of their character as an entity in a consistent world.

12. Do characters in your game advance? if so, how?

Each profession represents a pool of expertise and knowledge developed by the character's culture. A profession is organized into abstract "abilities" which are shown in a tree format. The player spends XP and time to improve themselves professionally, gaining nodes deeper into the tree, which represent greater professional development, altering their personal narrative as it changes their social status and efficacy in the game-world.

13. How does the character advancement reinforce what the game is about?

Implicit in any professional subculture is the narrative of personal improvement and achievement. The advancement shows the character's evolving personal narrative as embedded in their chosen profession(s). This changing personal narrative forces corresponding changes in how the character relates to society's myths as a whole, providing yet another "hook" for the player to feel the dynamic, living nature of the in-game myths and their impact on the individual.

14. What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?

For the GM, the game provides source material and tools with which to weave a plausible fabric of myth and culture. I have drawn on anthropology, comparative mythology, and history for this. The rulebook includes a fairly extensive annotated bibliography of the sources I used to construct the meta-setting. I think that many GM's will enjoy this.

The game produces a virtual space with a powerful focus on the interactions between myth and individual and societal behavior. The players should be able to immerse themselves in that space using their characters as vehicles, and think largely in terms of game-world culture, myth, and logic.

15. What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?

The various ways in which magic is integrated into myth receive extra attention. Each magic based profession has a wildly different style for casting spells, and all mechanics are unified under one "grand universal theory of how the universe works."

The system is programmable. For the Sorcerer (a laborer specialized in magic, and thus found only in city-states and other associated cultures) spells are described by flow-charts, which players can create and arrange to their own ends. The components of the diagrams (boxes and arrows) are given, the players may arrange them in any way they see fit. This system is patterned after the finite state machine in computability theory, and can be sued to express many creative patterns.

Magic is integrated into the culture of the world: in-game entities do not find it frightening or odd, it is simply a part of life.

16. Which part of your game are you most excited or interested in why?

I am interested in the experience of the players and the experience of keeping up a virtual world that responds vividly to player action. Also, I am interested in the meta-issues that come up when we play a role playing game (itself a form of mythmaking and story telling) that focuses on the relationship between society, the mythology, and the individual. Using creative myth to explore the impact of myth on sentient life is appropriate and pretty amusing to me.

17. Where does your game take the players that others can't, don't, or won't?

My game places heavy emphasis on swapping out of game culture for in game culture in the mind of the player. To fully experience the mentality of an in-game entity is the goal of play.

Also, the programmable magic system is totally deterministic. There is great potential for creativity and exploration of system there.

18. What are the publishing goals for your game?

Eventually, I want to make a nice set with a big map and a GM book and a player book and some cards. I will have pdf's for all the books, available for free online. I will print and bind the books and cards at a local copy shop for my own use. After I figure out how to generate high-quality maps with a computer (I can't draw to save my life) I'll have a local copy shop print out a nice one on large, poster-sized paper, and probably get it laminated. There will be no art, as I am too broke to afford that.

19. Who is your target audience?

My target audience is me and my friends. I want the meta-setting available, because I have found that when I run games, I often work with a similar set of assumptions each time about setting culture and mythology, which, upon examination, have proven to be surprisingly general.

The people who play in my games will enjoy the exploration of system and the extra flexibility that the meta-setting will give me in generating setting. I will be able to present a more consistent, vivid picture to my players, quicker. They are also very interested in the new magic system, and in the description of character roles as very strongly embedded in myth and culture. This is essentially how we've been playing for the past couple years or so, but I am now writing a system to support that properly.

So, audience size: 10 - 15 people, plus whoever finds the game on the internet and feels like printing it out.

[mogunus]

I just noticed that I posted my power 19 with no specific questions. Shame on me. Here are some questions:

• Are there any already-written games that treat this sort of objective? Maybe I am missing some sources that I could really be learning from.
• Does it help to elaborate, in the rulebook, on the meta-physical idea behind the character generation process? I consider character generation to be one of the few meta-game activities that a player will participate in: generating a "likely character" whose back-story and family tree are then retconned into the game world.
• The power 19 (and my rulebook draft) do not treat game-world power dynamics. A game that tries to model society should have a system for handling how in-game social status works. I am lost on this. I have always been very suspicious of things like "charisma" ratings and using dice to resolve social interactions. Is it enough to include a hearty dollop of expository writing on per-culture power dynamics, and telling people to "just role-play it" or would people enjoy some exploration of system there? Are there any games that handle this in an expressive way that I could examine?
• I need a consistent way to handle knowledge and memory. Currently, I just let characters know things that they should know based on their in-game roles, and when a character attempts to commit something new to memory, their crystallized intelligence limit is used in the resolution roll, along with any domain-specific knowledge skills which could help them remember that particular item. Are there any games that handle knowledge and memory particularly well?

Any other suggestions and comments are welcome. I am sure I will think of some more concerns and questions soon.

--Marco

[markhaselb]

• The power 19 (and my rulebook draft) do not treat game-world power dynamics. A game that tries to model society should have a system for handling how in-game social status works. I am lost on this. I have always been very suspicious of things like "charisma" ratings and using dice to resolve social interactions. Is it enough to include a hearty dollop of expository writing on per-culture power dynamics, and telling people to "just role-play it" or would people enjoy some exploration of system there? Are there any games that handle this in an expressive way that I could examine?

You could let the characters gather currency for different social interactions. Let's say you have respect value and favor value. Succeeding in tasks/conflicts that impress members of your culture earns you respect, helping your people earns you favors from specific characters. By spending respect points you could gain some influence in a council or something like that. Spending the favors could achieve the same (i.e. you ask the character that owes you a favor to support your opinion in the council), but this could also be used for getting material support or whatever you like.
Maybe you should focus on this part a little more than on the combat system, since your game concept is a lot about culture and social situations.

[JoyWriter]

The name "Mayhem" doesn't seem to suit your game at all! It seems much more static than that. In fact that is the bit I'm not getting a feeling of at the moment, moving parts. You mentioned the idea of creating a world that responds in a substantial and nuanced way, and this is something I find quite interesting: In developing a setting in some detail I like to create maps of influence, so I know what will happen if they push this person a certain way, or this comes from outside and sets things rolling over there.

It seems like that kind of thing could be a model for how social stuff works in the game; it sets whether or not you have a change influencing someone in the normal course of events, and so tells you who can get to the person you need to influence. You might have no traction with a man of influence in the town but may be able to influence his romantic daughter via common myth influences, and then get her to help you buy this other farmers land. Tell her a story about a ghost in a pond you say he will drain, something like that. Equally, if that man then falls ill, you will feel the effects through the links you have created, or through other links that he has that might come round to you.

Also there is a big gap between "just roleplay it" and dice; if you structure convincing and influencing, with blank prerequisites for success, (like my connections of mark's favours) then you can still have choices. If an argument does become heated, then it could move into some more random mechanic, as the results are more in doubt then. I'm slowly liking "blind bid" more and more as a mechanic, but dice based ones can work very well too.

[mogunus]

Heh. The name is more of a working title, I'm unsure what I actually want to call the game.

I like your point about "moving parts." I am developing a "social currency" model, along with the influence diagram you describe. These are very good ideas.

It might not be made clear in the power 19, but there are fairly large, varied trees for character advancement, which include social aspects. This is, on consideration, the chief source of dynamism in the game (changing character's roles in society and the group due to professional/peronal advancement). The other source is the slower change of myth/culture across time. I should really probably fix this. I like the the relationship map idea for that purpose.

So, with social currency, a relationship map, and personal/professional development trees, does that sound like enough moving parts? Can people think of anything else?  I've been concerned with anthropology/myth stuff for so long that I don't think I've adequately thought through the game for individual characters.

The development trees are, unfortunately, in drastically different stage of completion. The druid is the only one that I would really call close to done. I can post that later today for comments.

Question: Is the better to post the druid in a separate thread, or should I just post it in this thread? I don't want to clog "first thoughts" with [mayhem] posts.

--Marco

[JoyWriter]

Up to you really, three threads isn't a flood, but more than that would be a bit heavy. You could post a thread for advancement trees and start it off with the druid. The very fact you didn't mention it much here means were likely not to cover the same ground!

As to whether it's enough parts, perhaps you could think about the rate at which you expect events to occur; if you want to deal with large scale changes over lives of characters, perhaps you want to make the timescale run in weeks or years? In that case people's social changes should be coming back at them at a reasonable rate. But on a daily weakly basis, well it's probably not meant to be a soap opera, so other stuff would have to take it's place!

That's one way to look at it, another is the dimensionality of changes they produce, like an x,y graph: people may be changing stuff in the social arena, but what areas of their life would they have to manage but don't come into that? I say manage because you've said you want it to have choices, so I was trying to think of what people have to make choices about that aren't their relationships to other people, and where like in a social environment their choices can come back to make more choices.

Another thing to bear in mind, if that's not food enough for thought, is that combining the mythological stuff into each of the consequence mechanics. I tried to do that by focusing on the cultural similarities between the farmer and the influential man's daughter, but I'm still a little at a loss to think how to put it into things like farming, fighting or crafting. I suppose it depends where you want the overlap of actions and beliefs to be, whether they will actively affect effectiveness, or whether they will just relate to motivation.

[Adam Dray]

Hi, Marco! Welcome to the Forge.

That's a lot to digest but I'm gonna try. I'd rather do it a piece at a time, starting with #2. Your #1 is fine for now, but think about it as your back cover text. Would you buy that game? Would you even know what it meant if you read it with very little other context? You want to make that a bit clearer. But on to characters:

2. What do the characters do?
The characters experience life in their world as mediated through their culture and mythology.

I don't buy this as the answer. This could be part of the answer for any game: Star Wars, Misspent Youth, Dogs in the Vineyard, even D&D. Rephrased, this only says, "They live in the world."

While they're living in the world, what are they doing? What are their stories about? Here are some examples from other games:

• Star Wars: The characters are heroes who, as part of the Rebellion, fight against the evil Empire. They might be starship pilots, nobility, soldiers, jedi mystics, or farm boys with a destiny, but they all find themselves alone and in need of friends and help against the Empire.
  
• Misspent Youth: The characters are disaffected youths in a dark science-fiction world. With a clenched fist, they fight against the Authority and struggle to maintain their ideals in the face of the hard choices thrust on them by the adult world.
  
• Dogs in the Vineyard: The characters are "Dogs," defenders of the faith. They are teenagers -- every one a virgin -- who get chosen by their community to go get a couple months of special training, given a gun, and then sent out to distant towns to separate the faithful from the faithless. Each is empowered by God to be judge, jury, and executioner.
• D&D: The characters are heroes who explore dangerous places outside of civilization, kill terrible monsters, and seek fortune and forbidden magic. Over time, they become more powerful so that they can tackle even greater challenges. Eventually, they are powerful enough to challenge beings of godlike power.

So, in your game, what do the characters do?

[Adam Dray]

I have all kinds of things I want to talk about. I won't go point by point in a huge megapost because I think it will be too much for you and me to process. I prefer to go bit by bit, one at a time, till the thing is done.

Here are some general thoughts I have though. I don't want to lose these. Oh, and please interpret my criticism as overwhelming enthusiasm for your project!

A. If your game is about culture and myth, why do you care so much about modeling in detail the physical causality stuff?

B. It seems to me that demonstrating culture within the game is about introducing "new" behavior and properly modeling consequences. This means you really have to think about how the social stuff works. It doesn't have to be social hit points, but you at least need clear guidelines for resolving social conflicts. Most important, these guidelines/rules need to produce play that showcases social consequences.

C. It seems to me that the game is concerned with a very Simulationist kind of play. Let's set up this world and these cultures and these myths, set some characters in it, and -- not see what happens to them -- see that the right things happen to them. Who decides what is right? The easy answer is the GM, but consider that for it to really work, whenever something important happens in the game, every player has to be nodding her head and going, "Yeah, right, that's awesome." That is, I don't think you want the players discovering the world at every turn, though that can be fun, but rather affirming their vision of the world. Of course, your design goal of actor stance and no metagaming is at odds with editorial control of players during play. You can front-load this as much as possible: the players can define these cultural aspects themselves.

D. Consider dice mechanics for figuring out not how people (NPCs, the populace, cultures) react in social challenges, but what their norm is. That is, you can go into certain social challenges without knowing the answer! The player describes what his character does, and then the roll determines if that is indeed how the people expect him to act. This lets the player stay immersed in character and actor stance while creating cultural details in a sort of subconscious director/author stance. Cool, huh?

[Bill_White]

I agree with Adam about the conceptual disconnect between the causality-focused design and the myth-producing goal. My game Ganakagok pursues the latter with a tarot-like deck of cards for situation generation; Brennan Taylor's "How We Came To Live Here" covers similar ground. Hunt for Jason Godesky's "Fifth World" design diaries if you want to see a designer struggling to make mechanics fit the setting and even generate it. For the sort of detailed, sim-friendly cultural exposition you seem to interested in, check out Luke Crane's "The Burning Wheel" and its offshoots.

[Simon C]

I'm pretty interested in the way cultures are expressed in RPGs.  One of the things I often see that stikes me as both unrealistic from an anthropological point of view, and also boring in play, is the idea of cultures as monolithic bodies of practice.  I'm talking about things like:

"The Bongo-Bongo are polygynous, and so the chiefs take multiple wives.  The commoners wear grass skirts, but the chiefs and other nobles wear bark-cloth.  If you kill an animal, you have to say a prayer to the animal's spirit".

All those things are interesting and plausible cultural traits, but they're not how cultures actually work.  The reality is more like this:

"Chief Arthur has three wives, which most people in the village think is fine, except for a couple of the older women, who say he can't support them.  One of his wives is really unhappy with the situation.  Also, one of the elder women of the village has two husbands, which most people think is outrageous, but she's powerful enough to make sure no one complains too much.  The nobles wear bark cloth most of the time, because no one else can afford it.  Unfortunately, Ben the trader imports the bark-cloth, and he likes to wear it himself.  The nobles want to make sure he doesn't sell it to anyone else, but he's a businessman, he'll do what profits him the most.  Most people say a prayer after killing an animal.  Some people say it's to stop the animal spirit haunting you, others say it's to make sure you keep finding more game.  Some of the younger men have stopped saying the prayer at all, and the elders think that they're going to bring disaster on the village.  Some people pay an old beggar to say the prayers for them."

In other words, it's super complex, and varies from person to person.  I wrote a little mechanic for helping to generate this kind of thing.  You can find it at my site, here: http://simoncarryer.googlepages.com/npcgenerator

Feel free to steal that idea, or use it as inspiration.

Cheers,

Simon

[mogunus]

Hello all! Thanks very much for your responses. They are of a very high quality, and have given me a lot to think about.

C. It seems to me that the game is concerned with a very Simulationist kind of play. Let's set up this world and these cultures and these myths, set some characters in it, and -- not see what happens to them -- see that the right things happen to them. Who decides what is right? The easy answer is the GM, but consider that for it to really work, whenever something important happens in the game, every player has to be nodding her head and going,

I actually think that I am concerned with seeing what happens to them, not seeing that the right things happen to them. On the other hand, what you describe when the goal is to see that the right things happen sounds very interesting. I am making a decision-tree of my design decisions and their consequences, and this would be a major branch that I consider.

This ties into something that I think my power 19 did not correctly communicate: the game is not about creating myth so much as examining how shared myth works to produce behavior on the social and individual level. The hope is, I can establish a rich enough fantasy mythology and simulation of decision making on a communal level works to make this possible.

To Simon C: a thousand times yes! I can't stand the portrayal of cultures as monolithic. The most important part of character creation is selecting personal narratives: those stories and mores from one's culture that they support. In your example above, each stance on an issue and the reasons for it would comprise a "narrative." These change over the course of the game with character age and experience.

Further: on the "who decides what is right" question, I would be concerned with seeing what is "most likely" in the world tends to happen most often, so that it seems like these cultures are embedded in a world with physical properties like our own. This is why I am concerned about modeling physical causality in depth. On the other hand, it is really beginning to seem like this just steals focus for no good reason, and players/GM can basically gloss over those things. It really isn't what the game is about. The idea was, a warrior has a "warrior-ing" mini-game, a priest has a "priesting" mini-game, etc, to get the players to feel as if they are really assuming those roles, and to provide a backdrop of in-game activity. The more I think about this, the worse of an idea it seems to be. I don't really need those things, do I, because characters are really much better distinguished by their Narratives anyway.

Modeling social consequences is something that I am working very hard on. I will post my system when I am done. I have a system that uses currency for this. It is mostly based on theory from a book called "The Circular Structure of Power" about community, power, identity, and politics. It may even be playable.

I really can't think of a good answer for #2. In the default meta-setting, characters would spend their time dealing with the community that they live in. They gather and spend social currency to survive.

The culture portrayed by default is pre-industrial. Depending on their social standing, characters are either concerned with basic survival, or with maintaining their power over those who exist on the edge of starvation. This may or may not be conscious. It should be noted that some in-game cultures are also pre-social-differentiation.

"Characters respond to what their culture tells them to do, either by doing it and being rewarded, or not doing it and suffering the consequences. "

Obviously this is a mix. Characters can buy into parts of their culture and not others, and there certainly exist sub-cultures to join (this is one of the major things modeled in the social currency system). Based on their personality, physical limitations, and upbringing, characters balance their positive and negative reactions to culture, and attempt to survive while not doing things that offend their personal sensibilities too much.

That is not much better than "characters live in their world." Am I missing something very critical?

Sorry about the long post, and thanks for the excellent feedback.

--Marco

[Simon C]

Modeling social consequences is something that I am working very hard on. I will post my system when I am done. I have a system that uses currency for this. It is mostly based on theory from a book called "The Circular Structure of Power" about community, power, identity, and politics. It may even be playable.

This!

This is the first thing you've said that's got me really interested in this game.  Tell me more!

[Adam Dray]

I fear I wasn't clear on some points.

When I talk of seeing the "right" things happen in play, I'm not talking about morally right. I'm talking about "right" as the GM and players see it. The opposite is "wrong," as in, "That's wrong! I don't believe it would happen that way." "Right" is when the players are all nodding and agreeing that things would happen that way, even if they had no idea it would happen that way until the GM explained the consequences of their characters' actions.

I think you're unintentionally hedging on the "who decides what is right" thing:

Further: on the "who decides what is right" question, I would be concerned with seeing what is "most likely" in the world tends to happen most often, so that it seems like these cultures are embedded in a world with physical properties like our own. This is why I am concerned about modeling physical causality in depth.

Someone has to be creative during the game, right? If a player says that her character is going to wear pantaloons instead of the traditional reed skirts, knowing it may upset the Jalori tribal elders, then someone must judge what happens. Someone must apply consequences. Even if somehow a dice system can be employed to make certain decisions for you, there will be an element of creativity involved in interpreting the dice. Even if the the guideline or rule is to apply what is "most likely," someone has to decide what is most likely and reasonable and intelligent people can disagree.

What I'm asking is, when reasonable and intelligent people disagree, how does your game help them come to agreement? It may very well be that you're thinking, "that's the GM's role, of course." It doesn't have to be so, however, so I am asking.

I'm glad I could shake up your assumptions a little bit regarding modeling physical causality. Before you dedicate 50% of your rules to stuff that is not the core of the game, consider handwaving all that physical stuff with a simple, universal resolution mechanic. Better yet, tie it into your social stuff. A fighting mini-game and a priesting mini-game and so on could all conceivably use the same resolution mechanics and all be bettered by cultural color. Martial arts draw on rich culture. Priest stuff (which could be traditional leadership and counseling roles, mythic psychopomping, or game-inspired divine spellcasting) is nothing without the culture it lives in.

If nothing else, make sure that the acquisition, maintenance, and improvement of these mini-game skills and resources require help from the community in which the characters live. You don't want a game full of sociopathic loner characters.

I really can't think of a good answer for #2. In the default meta-setting, characters would spend their time dealing with the community that they live in. They gather and spend social currency to survive.

This is pretty vital. Full stop. You have to have a clear idea about what characters are doing when they play.

Perhaps your setting is too generic, too meta? Is something happening to their community or is this slice-of-life play? When you say "dealing with," that could mean anything. Is this an adventure game, with battles against other tribes or against monsters? You say they need social currency to survive. Do these physical threats come from within the community or from outside it? Do the characters leave the community to fight them and then return home, albeit changed, a la Hero's Journey? Or is this more like a bunch of peasants, trying not to get sold into slavery and trying to get their crop in before the local feudal lord beats them, eking out a sorry existence on turnips?

I feel you're trying to say, "They can be anyone, doing anything!" but you'll be better served by getting specific. Maybe you need to tell us a little more about this meta-setting and how it becomes an actual setting in practice.

[mogunus]

As of current, I would say that the GM would help reasonable and intelligent people come to an agreement. I am very interested to know what my other options are. Examples or some illustration would be very helpful. Mostly, I think the dice system makes some decisions, and the DM interprets.

If nothing else, make sure that the acquisition, maintenance, and improvement of these mini-game skills and resources require help from the community in which the characters live.

So far, this is reflected in the training system. For ability acquisition and improvement, characters are dependent on their community. I haven't yet given much thought to the use of abilities though. I want to take a look at making  characters dependent on their community in a way that is abstract and streamlined for the resources they need to accomplish their role in society, without descending into such minutia exact spell components, equipment, seeds, etc.

Better yet, tie it into your social stuff. A fighting mini-game and a priesting mini-game and so on could all conceivably use the same resolution mechanics and all be bettered by cultural color. Martial arts draw on rich culture. Priest stuff (which could be traditional leadership and counseling roles, mythic psychopomping, or game-inspired divine spellcasting) is nothing without the culture it lives in.

This is exactly what I'm going for, and your advice on unified resolution is great. I've decided to chose that branch.

On the subject of what the characters do: I've done some thinking, and my answer is "confront the Other." They can leave their home, the Other can come to their home, or the Other can be an element in their community. The DM provides a situation in which the characters are brought into conflict with the Other, and the players must decide how to react to it. This should be an open-ended conflict with many options for resolution.

[Noclue]

On the subject of what the characters do: I've done some thinking, and my answer is "confront the Other."

Yay! Finally a potential for some mayhem...

Up until now I've been getting a feeling (I'm not saying my feeling is accurate) that the game is basically a museum of culture and myth and the GM is the docent. Character creation and world building seemed to be where the fun was to be had...and its completely meta. Then suddenly, I'm an actor and meta-gaming is punished. My ability to change things is limited to my PC's actions...but, ho! There's a profession to follow and a skill tree to climb, and I get XP if I follow my profession properly. I couldn't help feeling that I wanted the horseriding nomads from the steppes to sweep down the plain and start slaughtering all the docile villagers. I wanted the vikings to sweep up the river and lay seige to their castles. I wanted Martin Luther to nail a manifesto to the museum door and the iconoclasts to destroy all their statues.

I mean, that's also how cultures interact and change, isn't it?