Looking for some help on Phaeries

[c_stone_bush]

Hey all,
I have been an RPGer for as long as I can remember now, and I have always liked designing my own stuff. In fact I don't think that I have sucessfully played a single campaign with any system, because I was always too busy tweaking the rules or creating a new world to play in. Anyway, I recently came up with an idea for a game but encountered some difficulty fleshing it out, and am looking for some help. The basic idea is that phaeries and other mythical beings are still around and interactin with the modern world in all sorts of funky ways. The PC's would be people in touch with their spiritual (wrong word?) side, and therefore have some hint of what is really going on. I guess it would be like Call of Cthulu with phaeries and such replacing the mythos monsters. My problem is that I am a ver scientific person, and am having trouble explaining why the phaeries are still there, why no one else has caught on to what happening, and so on. Any ideas on how I could merge the mythical and modern world together would be greatly appreciated.
Chris

By the way if this is in the wrong forum I apoligize. There didn't really seem to be any correct place to start this post.

[JimmyB]

If people still believe in them (and people do) why shouldn't they be there?

Bear in mind that science is only the most current, and most comprehensive, way to explain and model things. Spirits or fey are much more primal. Why shouldn't a camera be powered by an imp for example? Personally I find it much easier to believe that than the chemistry thing, even though I can give evidence for the chemistry, and none for the imp.

Alternatively, maybe both are around, with science gradually driving out the fairies, or the fairies acting to produce the results science expects?

[Mike Holmes]

The hidden world concept - the idea that there's stuff going on under our noses, but we just haven't noticed - is problematic in general. Certainly if the phenomenon were small and isolated, this wouldn't be problematic. If all the fairies in the world live in a small village in a hill in Wales far from people, then it's believable that they could exist undiscovered. The problem is that most hidden world games presuppose that, in fact, there's all sorts of faerie activity going on all over. So how do you make that believable?

Are you familiar with Changeling? WW's WOD for faeries? There's another game in design here called Crux that's also about the same thing.

Games like this often use the creature's magical natures themselves in order to explain why they haven't been discovered. Perhaps they're invisible, or effectively so. In Werewolf from WW, the explanation is that werewolves are so magically fearsome that viewing them causes normal humans minds to omit their existence. There are lots of possible explanations of this sort.

The next question is "accidents". That is, eventually somebody somewhere is going to find some sort of evidence for these creatures. So where are these people? Well, some would say that there would be accidents, and that people who claim to have seen these creatures or have other evidence would be treated as crackpots. Indeed, that's what we do in the real world. I'm sure you can find an internet site somewhere where the subject is a real belief in faeries. But who would believe it? The idea is that the group collective consciousness isn't prepared to accept the idea of faeries (or aliens, or whatever). So, when the hidden is discovered, it doesn't become generally known or accepted as real.

Now, how do these methods stand up in terms of enabling a suspension of disbelief? Well, not too well, IMO, and unfortunately. The magical ability to remain unseen is an obvious plot device. If you accept it, then all is well. But all too often the explanation just seems to sit there and say, "I'm just the convenient explanation that makes this all possible." Not good.

The problem with the explanation of "accidents" is that, IRL, the people claiming to have seen faeiries are, for the most part, crackpots. That is, if credible people did come forward with credible evidence, I'd believe it. But watching UFO shows on TV, I always have to laugh at how obvious the fakes are, or how someone is mistaking a camera lens imperfection for something in the distance. My favorite was the one I saw where these strange lights were hovering in the sky, which I immediately identified as artillery flares. Even when people tried to explain to the observers that these had come from the nearby military base, they were reluctant to believe it. The claim then is that, well, of course, the military is in on it too, and they don't actually have flares that look like that. They do, of course, I personally fired hundreds in my carrer in the military. Oh, but now I must be part of the conspiracy, right?

Anyhow, I won't debate the actual existance of these things.

The point is that there's a lack of logic and evidence to the crackpot methodology. Enough so that a person like myself thinks that they could tell the difference between a hoax and the real thing. So, in a game like this, you'd expect that at some point somebody credible would become aware, and that the cover would be blown. So I find it hard to buy. And from what I've heard from others, I'm not the only one.

OTOH, I've played WOD games before, and enjoyed myself.

What you have to do, essentially, is ask the audience to accept this one incongruity in the setting. And, for purposes of play they will. That's not to say that your BS explanation can't be well worked out. And perhaps you will be the designer to come up with the explanation that's better than the rest. But there'll always be doubters. So, for them at least, you have to beg their forgiveness, ask them to suspend their disbelief, and move on with the game.

To an extent all RPGs ask this of the players. The characters aren't real, even if you play, say, yourself. The world they maneuver in isn't ours, no matter how closely you model it to ours. Never mind something like a fantasy game in which you're expected to accept magic. So, on some level, the player has to accept some responsibility to suspend disbelief.

Now, are there better and worse explanations? Sure. But they're all just BS explanations. So start with what you need to have happen and start heading backwards to plausibility, and see where it takes you.

One method I can suggest is to allow your creativity in this area to affect the rest of your design. You can reduce the "explanation" feeling by trying to ensure that the explanation is involved in the rest of the game and not just relegated to supporting the single fact of why the world is hidden. Thus, if it's magic, then make that magic what the game is all about. Make the "invisibility" seem to flow logically from the rules, and not as some addendum. That sort of thing.

If you could give a few more details on what "phaeries" are like, they it would be a lot easier to help out. I can make up excuses all day long, and not come up with one that fits your world view, much less one that can fit with the rest of the game in a less obvious manner. So what are they like?

Mike

[c_stone_bush]

Thanks for the feedback you guys. I have heard of WW's Changeling game, but know nothing about it, and will have look into this Crux game. Sometimes though I deliberatley avoid looking at ideas that are similar to my own, so that I come up with a completely original solution (even if it later turns out to be the same as someone elses).

I have kicked around the "magical technology" (ie imps making cameras work) idea alot and while I like it in general, I didn't want the setting of this game to go down that road. I would save that idea for another game, one where the magical science played an overall larger role.

You bring up some very good points Mike. Simply making the phaeries invisible to hold the game together is a cop out in my opinion, and eventually someone of a creditable nature is going to let the cat out of the bag. I like the "magical beyond what our brains can comprehend" idea, but someone, somewhere is eventually going to figure it out. I think that I will have to sit down and really think about what the phaeries are, so that I can give you guys (and myself) more information to build upon. Two solution right off the top of my head are:

1) Phaeries are invisible because that is simply the way they are. They have no physical form, and are simply manifestations of energy, kind of like a poltergeist or a boggart. Of course people can still sense them to some degree (a gut feeling, tingling sensation, etc.), as well as see the physical results of the phaerie's interference, and I suppose that a few people would even try to prove their existence with fancy measuring devices (like those bogus paranomal experts or ghost hunters), but who listens to those people anyway. Since most people don't believe in things they can't actually see, this could explain why the majority of people aren't aware of them.

2) Rather like the first idea excpet that the phaeries are from a plane of existance that has more dimensions than us. I have always been fascinated with this idea after reading William Slater's "The Boy Who Could Reverse Himself". For those of you not familier with the book, imagine a 2 dimensional world complete with 2D people. Now imagine what it would look like to one of those 2D people if we stuck our 3D hand down through their world. All of a sudden a circle would appear out of nowhere (the tip of our middle finger), followed by two more circles on either side of it (our other fingers and thumb), all of which would eventually merge into a flattened oval (our hand), and finally a large circle (our wrist and arm). Now imagine what it would look like if a higher dimensional being walked through our plane. There would be 3D blobs and shapes of all kinds that suddenly appeared, disappeared, changed color and size, merged into one another, and did all sorts of weird stuff. The more I think about this idea though, the less I like it to explain phaeries.

Well, I definately have some things to think about. Thanks for your help in this matter. I will post more about what phaeries after I have "discovered" it for myself.
Thanks,
Chris