What system(s) might best facilitate these desires?

[clehrich]

Is that perhaps stating it too strongly? Going with Walt's Stance and Power thread, are you really saying that the players have both the Stance and the Power to make it stick? ... Or is that actually the intention behind SitF?

Well, I don't want to hijack the thread or anything, but in SitF there is a certain element of us-vs-GM, in the specific sense of what has been called "Cluemaster" behavior as a good thing.  Events transpire, and the player/character says, "Aha!  I know what this means!  It means XXX!"  The point is that if it's reasonably clever, the GM really is stuck with it, and the cleverness is adjudicated by the group, not the GM.  In a game of conspiracies, secrets, and raving weirdness, how hard is it to add in one small local twist, anyway?  Now of course the GM can overrule, if he really wants to, but I really really don't want him to.  But if he just can't possibly deal with the nightmare into which his player has just precipitated him, which is to say the player is cleverer than he is when he himself has (mostly) the upper hand, then the player should be rewarded with a little grovelling behavior on the GM's part.

I once upon a time called this a form of Gamist behavior in SitF, and got mildly zapped for it, but deep in my secret, evil heart I still say it's Gamist.

[Valamir]

Interesting, I didn't realise SitF had that strong of a Gamist element.  And it certainly sounds like a Gamist element to me.  

I don't think its really off topic either, since it would be a major distinction from the other games that were offered here in answer to the initial query...pointing it out seems entirely appropriate.

[Eric J-D]

Clehrich wrote:

Well, I don't want to hijack the thread or anything, but in SitF there is a certain element of us-vs-GM, in the specific sense of what has been called "Cluemaster" behavior as a good thing . Events transpire, and the player/character says, "Aha! I know what this means! It means XXX!" The point is that if it's reasonably clever, the GM really is stuck with it, and the cleverness is adjudicated by the group, not the GM.

Hijack away.  This is an interesting concept, although not one that I am particularaly looking to include in my own play.  On the issue of whether it is Gamist or not, it seems to me that it could be rightly called Gamist if the system itself encourages and rewards this type of play (i.e. us-vs-GM) but that it might also simply be an unstated part of the Social Contract in which play occurs.  Or, of course, I could be completely wrong.

I am curious Clehrich, does SitF have a formal mechanic or set of criteria for how the players adjudicate the cleverness of the player's/character's contribution or are these largely unspoken and unformalized?  I ask because there seem to be trade offs in both directions.  A more formalized approach might prove overly constraining for some players and for some styles of play, while a less formalized one might occasionally lead to very different aesthetic preferences and understandings of what constitutes a more clever player contribution.  What's your thinking on this?

zhlubb

[clehrich]

[edited for me being stupid]

Umm.  Zhlubb, you ask a really good question here, and one that's haunted me somewhat.  The mechanics in SitF are relatively squodgy (is this the opposite of crunchy?), and all come down to one Resource used for everything:  Tarot cards.

Now if you do something truly amazing in play, the group can just right now award you an extra card.  The rules say that this should be amazingly rare, i.e. the sort of thing that happens once in a long while, and everyone talks about it for weeks.

At the end of the session, there's a little voting thing, where people vote on Best Action, Best Scene, and stuff like that.  The idea is that most of this should be well-nigh unanimous, or a clear tie.  If the group doesn't see eye-to-eye about Best Scene, then there probably wasn't one worth rewarding.

Now the Gamist element of it comes in when you realize that the Tarot Trumps are used to rewrite the universe around you, which is to say to do magic, and that in order to do magic, you have to interpret the Tarot cards.  The remaining cards are used for everything else, and you have essentially total control: your object is simply to get what you want to happen for the minimal resources, i.e. for the fewest, lowest-value cards.

The trick is, every time you play a card, there is the potential that others will bid over it, thus taking your nice scene away from you before you get to do it.  If you initiated the action, you sort of get first dibs, but you can be Trumped, at which point magical stuff happens.

I don't know if I'm explaining clearly, but the point is that the way you use cards, and the way you describe what happens when you use them, equates directly to both player and character power.  In essence, use of Trumps especially amounts to the character -- note emphasis -- having Author-Stance narration rights within the universe.  You get rewarded for doing this well, because you get more power, and as an occultist freak, you want power pretty badly.

Ultimately, the game is supposed to blur the line between player and character, but backwards.  Instead of playing your character as you with a funny hat, your character becomes a kind of Author-Stance participant in the construction of the universe.  But the character, since his life is on the line, is almost automatically a sort of munchkin power-gamer.  So you indulge that side of yourself through the character.  If you can make the universe reel, as a character, then you get more power as a player, and this makes the GM reel.

The thing is that it all sort of trickles down through the system.  The GM can overrule whatever he likes, but there's lots of explicit text saying that if he does, he should abase himself and grovel, treating the overrule as in effect evidence that he has lost this trick in the card game.

Does any of this help, or make any sense?

[Eric J-D]

Hey clehrich,

Just wanted to let you know that I will respond to your latest post as soon as I get the time to really absorb it.  I think I should also read a bit more on SitF so that my response is as informed as possible.  In the meantime, should we split this thread so that others can read your latest post and respond.

I'd be happy to have someone close this one since I got the answers that I was looking for.

Cheers,

Eric

[Mike Holmes]

I had another thought. There's a game being developed called COTEC: Million Worlds. Do a search for it in the Indie Design forum. Not out yet, but promises to be much more Sim structured than Universalis, while still having the exact sorts of controls that you're looking for.

Mike