Sense of Wonder

[Shreyas Sampat]

Those of you who have been watching the games I've been working on may have noticed this common thread: I want my games to have an air of wonder.
I think I've been doing this because I first tried it with Torchbearer (a beta is available at my website, linked in sig), and I'm not sure I've succeeded; the game certainly allows the sense of wonder to happen, but doesn't enforce it.  In fact, I'm starting to think that there are mechanics in TB that work against that goal.

The biggest doubt I have is with conflict resolution.  In Torchbearer, the mechanics do very little; they serve only to indicate who has authority over a conflict, and permits that person to deal with it however he chooses.  Heck, I have all kinds of doubts about this disconnect between character effectiveness and the system.

At any rate, my question is this:
What games foster a sense of wonder for you, and why?  If it is possible to create wonder mechanically, how does one go about doing this?

[szilard]

My initial reaction to this is that wonder is often created when players have expectations that are significantly less grand than what they experience.

I vaguely remember having a sense of wonder when playing through Keep on the Borderlands back around 1981 or so. I had no clue what I was getting into. There were monsters! and magic! Wow!

Now, of course, I'm a couple decades older and jaded. Wonder is harder to come by.

Creating a sense of wonder mechanically? I'd venture to say it is impossible. On the other hand, there may be some mechanics that facillitate it more than others.

Stuart

[Jonathan Walton]

Mechanical wonder, I would deign to say, often comes about when you have a really simple and elegant method used for accomplished mind-bogglingly big or cool things.

Example 1: Nobilis (spend a fews points, drink the Pacific Ocean).
Example 2: Continuum (travel through time and space, without any mechanics at all)
Example 3: kill puppies for satan (blow up a baby seal, summon the fires of hell)

For instance, wonder might come about if you make a single roll for a character to be able to defeat an entire army single-handedly, instead of rolling for each orc.  Better yet, it would be more wonderful if the character could grasp the unity of the orc army and crush it in his hands, causing the orcs to run away in scattered clumps.

Any time you do something simple to accomplish something grand, you create wonder.

[Matt Snyder]

My take on wonder is that you're seeking something you never imagined. I argue the best means to do that in a game is have your fellow players surprise you. Ultimately, that creativity is up the them, but you can encourage them to participate mechanically. Many games do this, but many traditional RPGs distinctly do not by virtue of either explicit or assumed rules on who "unveils" the world, typically via colorful narration. I think many games here on the Forge -- and elsewhere, naturally (case in point: Drama Dice & Seventh Sea put creativity in the hands of players) -- are making this an overt agenda. I know I am!

[ZeOtter]

I really think a sense of wonder comes from coming face to face with something bigger than yourself.  Meeting a celebrity comes to mind, or the first time you see the Grand Canyon.  The problem is that these feelings are different for everyone.  

Games that have inspired wonder in me... White Wolf's Mage, DP9's The Jovian Chronicles, Biohazards Blue Planet.  

Why?  Setting in my opinion creates wonder.  As a player mechanics have always taking a back seat to story for me, that is just the way I am, I know it doesn't make for good game design all (most but not all) of the time but mechanics in my mind tell part of the story help create a mood if you will.  Wonder is a mood that you can only glimpse for a moment before it is gone, it doesn't linger so my suggestion would be worry about what your wonder turns into when it is gone.

[Valamir]

I think Matt hits on what it means for me.  Many of us harken back to that sense of wonder we had when we first discovered roleplaying.  It was new it was something we hadn't seen before.  Every pit trap was "wow how clever"...and "you mean there are spikes at the bottom...neat"  Encountering new monster after new monster was amazing and thrilling because we hadn't all memorized how many hitdice a Lurker Above had or the best way to remove Stirges and Rot Grubs.

Games that attempt to deliver wonder through setting I think succeed for a few but fail for most (IMO) for a number of reasons.  One is that few players are willing to NOT read the splatbooks cover to cover when they come out and let the GM reveal the setting piece by piece in play.  Another is that once you've seen it...its no longer new.  In many ways I think advancing metaplot is an attempt to keep the setting fresh and new and hense "wondrous" by continually reinventing it.  Most of us here would agree that that doesn't generally work.

So how does one keep conveying the sense of "I can't wait to see what's just around the corner" and "wow, that's amazing I never expected that to happen"?  There are possibly several ways, but the way that seems to have most potential for me is player empowerment.

The best way (again IMO,OC) to be absolutely certain that you're not sure what's around the corner and that you'll frequently be confronted with the unexpected, is to make sure that there are several peoples creative juices flowing and mixing together.  Unless the GM is the god of all GMs I can't see how any one person can ever equal the creative power of all of the players combined...ESPECIALLY jaded "seen it, done it" players like most of us are.

[Paganini]

Shreyas,

My opinion is that color is most responsible for the sense of wonder. It's difficult to envision mechanics that facilitate a "sense of wonder." It's one thing to say something specific, like "The mechanics encourage players to make decisions of ethical weight." A sense of wonder is something vague and personal. If you're talking about a sense of surprise, or discovery, though as Ralph and Matt seem to be indicating, then I think mechanics can facilitate. My best example of both is Shdaows . . . extremely simple mechanics, but the color that Zak provides drives play. In terms of discovery and surprise, the mechanics work very well, because there's a lot of player narration . . . you never know what's gonna happen next.

[Brian Leybourne]

I really think a sense of wonder comes from coming face to face with something bigger than yourself.  Meeting a celebrity comes to mind, or the first time you see the Grand Canyon.

Sorry, this is a bit of a "me too" post, but I just wanted to say you have it exactly. IMO anyway.

About 4 years ago I was driving around the Western US. I had no real interest in the Grand Canyon (It's just a big hole in the ground, right?) and was very Bah Humbug on the whole drive up there.

And yet I will never forget the moment a little after I walked from the car to the guardrail, and looked down. Yes, it's a hole in the ground, but it's a fucking big one. And there was a tour operator nearby talking to her ubiquitious group of camera toting tourists, who I overheard saying "Look at those little green dots down there" (I looked, and sure enough there were tiny green specs, pinprick sized). She continued "Those are 100 foot tall trees". At that moment, my mind seemed to just explode and this amazing feeling of wonder shot through me. A moment I will never forget.

The only time I ever really came close to that feeling in RPG's was the first time my brother played me through the introductory adventure in the original D&D redbook, when I was about 9 or 10. My first time roleplaying, and it was a similar feeling. I have never really recaptured that in roleplaying. I can love a game, I mean really love it, but that sense of wonder, so recently experienced again when I saw the Grand Canyon (thanks for the blast of memory, ZeOtter) is hard to recapture (some games like Sorcerer and TROS came very close when I first read/played them). If you can make a game that awakens that in the player, then you can truly call yourself a game designer.

Brian.

[Tim C Koppang]

Hmm... wonder?  Mechanical wonder?

I'll follow the developing trend here and define first what wonder means to me.  The two things that come to mind at once are the unknown and the feeling of something larger than myself.  Actually, when you stop and think about it, those two things are in a lot of ways the same.  Something larger than yourself is almost necessarily something unknown--or at least something indefinable.  Or perhaps something just too big to wrap my meager human brain around.  While seeing things that are brand new to me are an easy sell when it comes to wonder, I don't hold uniqueness to be a requirement for wonder.  Call me romantic, but I can still look at a sunset and find a sense of wonder in it.  How can something so big and beautiful, something so emotionally simple and yet scientifically complex, exist in this world?  And how lucky I am to see it.

So maybe it has to do with paradox--maybe mystery, or even ambiguity.  When opposites come together to form something that just works, it can be wondrous.

Now, how do you encourage this feeling mechanically?  Gaaaa...?  Good question.

Much, I would venture, has to do with player creativity.  As has already been stated, everyone participating needs to have their imaginations involved and working.  Player empowerment is one way to do this (and I'm talking about Directorial power here).  It encourages everyone to contribute, and therefore can avoid problems of boredom that lead to stagnant responses.

However, I've played in a few Traveller games wherein the GM was solely responsible for supplying setting and adventure (heck, I'd almost call it Illusionism).  But in these games I can honestly say I felt wonder.  The point is, I was still involved with what was going on.  This was not mechanically encouraged however; so I don't think it's really all that helpful of an example.

Still, once you've devised a system that encourages everyone to participate (as most good designers try to do), you will still need to devise mechanics that will instill wondrous events/people/things/whatever into the game.  Participation is not the only step towards the creation of wonder.  And yet this is the stage at which I'm thrown for a loop.  Perhaps a reward system wherein players are encouraged to imbue the game with mystery.  Maybe you could do something with metaphor.  I think that wonder can also be created by the sense of anticipation realized--some possibilities there.

Hmm... not really sure though.

Corny line coming up:
I guess wonder is really a wondrous thing after all.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

OK, you're talking about a sense of wonder, and I'm assuming it's wonder for the players and not necessarily the characters. This, to me, sounds like Color. Talking about anything mechanical is System. They are two different elements of roleplaying, but they can effect each other.

IME wonder can come from elements in the game not being defined mechanically. I remember a conversation I had a few months ago about the Cthulhu mythos and game stats for the old gods. To me it seemed ridiculous to want to have stats for the old gods, which are supposed to be massive cosmic beings that the very idea of them drive men to madness. It seems counter intuitive to think of Cthulhu as such be have his stats laid out all nice and neat. How can you know he has Stregth 225 and not go mad?

So I seem to be thinking that one way to delevop wonder is to have an absense of mechanics.

[Mike Holmes]

I'd state your point differently, personally, Jack. Inappropriate use of Mechanics can crush wonder, certainly. But I don't think it's solely the mechanics themselves.

I think that the principle here is that narration brings about wonder, and only if done right. Can one incentivize that in play? I think it's not impossible, but certainly difficult.


The hardest part about wonder is that the player has to adopt an attitude of naivity and vulnerablility that, as Ralph points out becomes more difficult the more jaded one becomes. One has to be open to being moved in this manner before it can happen. And that's not common outside of children.

That said, it occurs to me that a suitably flakey ritual or ceremony at the beginning of play might help. In OTE, the GM is supposed to read the disclaimer, which I think is supposed to be a ritual mood-setter. I could see a more extensive ritual enabling wonder.

I can also see such a ritual keeping people away in droves. Not everyone wants to be vulnerable. The ideal, wonder imparted to a jaded soul, is probably contradictory and impossible.

Mike

[Le Joueur]

In gaming, I've found the most reliable way to invoke a 'sense of wonder' in my players has to do with how you deal with the unknown.  It comes in two parts.  In the first part, you can't be using 'known' or familiar material (wonderment with the familiar is difficult at best).  This pretty much eliminates any game that takes a 'Monster Manual' approach; how mysterious is a rust monster or a piercer?

The second has to do with 'scope' and control.  If you plunge the characters into a world brimming with mysterious unknowns, where all the things they base their value systems on is clearly in the hands of others, and then you slowly reveal that these same characters possess some unexpected ability to control those others, you'll see the players' eyes light up with the dawning possibilities.  This is especially good if you loft the scope to 'world threatening' levels by the end.

That's the best brief explanation I have.  I've used it time and again unfailingly.  That's why I go to so much detail to delineate the Mystiques in Scattershot.  The first Mystique revealed from the above is 'who controls you;' the second is 'how you can control them.'  Measured revelations yield a consistent wonderment.  I'm about to start over with my current group for something like the ninth or tenth time in the same 'world.'  I think I'll use 'humble-looking, fell weapons' this time.

We've also decided to use this principle to create a 'færies in the modern world' supplement and escape the 'Monster Manual' approach that White Wolf Studios had (has?) with 'Fairy: the Banality.'  Instead of things like redcaps being treated racially (or whatever adverb you like), we're using them as 'philosophical boundaries;' if you don the red cap, you'll be thought of as being a maneater (and probably better hang with the 'redcap crowd' cuz they eat you if you 'wreck their rep') no matter whence came your flesh.  It leads to much mystery (we hope).

Fang Langford

[Paul Czege]

That said, it occurs to me that a suitably flakey ritual or ceremony at the beginning of play might help. In OTE, the GM is supposed to read the disclaimer, which I think is supposed to be a ritual mood-setter. I could see a more extensive ritual enabling wonder.

Doesn't The Everlasting RPG provide instructions for guided group meditation and lucid dreaming in support of gameplay?

Paul

[Mike Holmes]

Doesn't The Everlasting RPG provide instructions for guided group meditation and lucid dreaming in support of gameplay?

I shoulda known that somebody had already thoght of it. :-)

Mike

[Shreyas Sampat]

Ok, thanks.  I had some ideas about wonder, and this more or less reinforced them.  To summarize (correct me if I'm wrong), we think wonder comes from:

[*]Discovery: learning something amazing, unlocking some new ability, unveiling secrets.
[*]Awe: Coming upon something much bigger than oneself, or something much more fantastic.
[*]Mystery: The unknown is wondrous by virtue of the possibilities behind it.[/list:u]And all of these things, ultimately, are Colour, and the only way to
mechanically create wonder is to mechanically encourage wondrous Colour.