Four: A game idea

[Shreyas Sampat]

Four is an idea I've been mulling over for a while; I'd like to make a game out of it but there is a problem that I'm not sure how to tackle.

The characters of Four* have time perception like normal humans have depth perception; their minds process, unconsciously, tiny bits of data that that taken together provide a fairly strong impression of what happened in the recent past, or will happen soon.

Just like depth perception, this faculty is governed by lots of information-filling processes that can be tricked, so time perception only works well in a familiar setting, when familiar people are involved.  Time processing is slow, though; Four characters hate being surprised because it screws up their future vision royally.

What kind of a mechanic can represent this future-sensing capacity?  I'm thinking that some relative of the Donjon "fact" mechanic could work here.  One thing I'd like to represent is that once the characters start to surprise each other, their time senses start to break down.  That's where I'm hanging up.  How do I deal, mechanically, with surprise?  I'd like this to be a game rather focused on intrigue, as well; I'm looking at the mechanics of In The Court (see the thread, probably still on the front page) as a basis.

*: They have vision in the four dimensions: up/down, left/right, near/far, recently/soon.

[Ben Lehman]

What kind of a mechanic can represent this future-sensing capacity?  I'm thinking that some relative of the Donjon "fact" mechanic could work here.  One thing I'd like to represent is that once the characters start to surprise each other, their time senses start to break down.  That's where I'm hanging up.  How do I deal, mechanically, with surprise?

BL>  Thought:  The "surprise" is, effectively, Fate vs. Will.

Let's start with a base Fatalistic mode:
Everyone rolls an ordered sequence of dice at the beginning of each scene.  Everyone can see each other's dice, etc.  Each time that they take an action -- any action -- they use those dice to determine effecaciousness of character action during the scene, possibly adding another random dice roll to the end of the chain after each action.  This could, if properly massaged, result in a very tactical, plodding play of very tactical, plodding characters (the sort of personality that I might imagine future-viewers would have.)

But, at any point, someone can decide to "go against the grain--" effectively doing something that they are not "supposed" to do and scrambling the fuck out of everyone's future sense.  In this case, one of three things could happen, mechanically:

1)  All dice are rerolled, which would screw up everyone's plans.
2)  A certain "duration" of dice are randomized "as they come up," which means that no one knows what is going on until it happens -- they future sense is totally blindsided.
3)  Dice are rerolled as in 1), but the "duration" of the future sense also shortens, only gradually growing to it's proper length -- essentially, the chain of dice become longer.

Thoughts:  I like 2, myself, as it seems to have a nasty bite to it.  Should there be some sort of cost for scrambling Fate?

yrs--
--Ben

[MPOSullivan]

man, the visuals alone would be worth the price of entry on this game.  seing a person at different stages of their life all at once, like some crazy DuChamp paintinggone even more horribly wrong.  someone does something outside of the paradigm of space-time andanyone with future sight sees the distortion.  can they smell it too?  taste it?  playing with the five senses and time perception would be so much fun...

okay, now, down to the nitty gritty.  conflict resolution in this game is going to be a blast.  the way i see it, i would use a deck of cards for each player.  normally they would have so many cards flipped over from the top of the deck, say three, that everyone can see.  these represent the next three actions that the person is going to take.  now, whenever conflict happens, a player has to declare their actions for every card that is visible, so in the above card setting, everyone would have to work three steps ahead of the game.  

so, lets say that player one, named bob, declares that his actions will be
1)kill player 2's character.  player 2 is jordan.
2)bob will then jump a chasm to get away
3)bob will then hide in the shadows on the other side of the chasm to avoid detection.

now, lets say that bob and jordan compare their totals for their actions and, lo and behold, jordan's character doesn't die.  this momentarilly breaks time, as it was the intent of the one player to kill the other, but it didn't work.  this, in turn, creates a distortion that shrinks the time-sight to two cards into the future.  another distortiona nd it becomes one card, and so forth.  

after every turn passes, players refresh their timeline (a fun name i just made up to represent the cards) to max and declare a new action for the one card that they just filled in, always staying so many rounds ahead of the game.

or maybe, i think this may be even better and create for better instances of dischordance, players have a timeline, like above, but the cards aren't flipped face up, but all hald face down.  a player may look at his own cards in the timeline but cannot see the other players.  players must stilll declare their actions so many rounds in advance.  now, since players hear each others actions in advance, they get to decide their intended outcomes.  but, since players can also see the future, they can nudge it in slight ways, bending karma to their will a little.  in this fashion, players are able to arrange the face down cards in any way that they want for their action draws.  thus, lets say in the above example that Bob had drawn, in order, a 7, a 4 and a Jack.  now, he definetly wants to make sure that he kills jordan, so he decides to shift his Jack into slot one, bump his 7 onto jumping the gorge, and leave the 4 for hiding in the shadows.  

now, lets also assume that jordan declared for his three actions
1) evade Bob
2) trigger detonator in room (oh yeah, there's a bomb strapped to Bob's chest.)
3) jump out of the window before bob blows up.

lets say that Jordan has his cards in the following order King, 4, 7.  now, this means that Bob's action doesn't succeed and he gets some nasty time-space feedback.  now, because of that, Bob will only be able to flip flop the cards in the first two slots on his timeline than all three.

the fun of this is that it forces players to make defined decisions, such as "I kill him" or "all things go according to plan" without any hint of fault.  you're going to have a lot of fun with IIEE, but it should be a blast to work with.  

also, if you haven't read it yet, pick up the Invisibles graphic novels by Grant Morrison et al, they're all about four-dimensional beings and their perspectives and shit.  fantastically warped.

okay, it's three a.m. local.  g'night everyone!

laters,

   -m

[Shreyas Sampat]

So my idea is this:

The characters all have highly-developed social perceptions.  It is this that permits timesight, and it is this that makes timesight difficult; the characters are all capable of hiding information from each other, which makes their time perceptions go awry.

Characters are described by their social skills and perceptions:

[*]Manner: The skill of reading double entendres and coded messages, or of exhibiting motives that may or may not be false.
[*]Empathy: The skill of imbuing a statement with subtle undercurrents of meaning, or of detecting the motives that others have.
[*]Truth: The ability to control what information one consciously reveals to others, the ability to tell whether another is lying.
[*]Falsehood: The ability to conceal a lie or discern a half-truth.
[*]Presence: The ability to control the focus of a social situation (attract or escape from attention, change the subject smoothly) or detect a conversation's underlying emotional state.
[*]Speech: The ability to control the state of a conversation (escape from embarrassment, change the mood) or to detect who is in control of its focus.
[*]Accord: The skill of bringing two disputors to an intermediate agreement, used in lawyering and haggling.
[*]Dispute: The skill of arguing one point against another.  Used in debates, etc.[/list:u]Characters also have goals of one kind or another, and get some kind of carrot for completing them.

Any of these actions can be done instantly or continuously; continuous actions are usually of the 'information-hiding' kind, and these disrupt the time perceptions of others.  They can also provide you continuous bonuses to other actions.  But this is dangerous, because continuous social action requires constant awareness of how one's actions will be interpreted; it is powered by futuresight, and not your own!  It is powered by the futuresight of its victims. (I promise that this makes sense to me.)

So, while running continuous actions, you have a tactical advantage, but at the same time you're setting yourself up for a fall if someone's timethink snaps (because someone else tried something too clever, more likely than not).

I hate mechanics today.

[Spooky Fanboy]

It seems to me that there should be a cascading dice mechanic of some sort that increases the rolls of everyone with 4D sense for every round that things go according to plan. As soon as someone deviates, everyone is reset to their base rolls, possibly with a penalty as well.

I'm curious, Shreyas, as I see this is primarily a social game (combat being too chaotic and disruptive, I suppose), what do you see the characters doing? What kind of world exists around them?

[Shreyas Sampat]

Combat can be played out at the level of feinting and strategy rather than tactics.

As for where I see the game going... what does a bunch of oracles do?

Fight Crime!

Well, no.  That would be too easy.  I think it would be nice for it to be a game of political leaders jockeying amongst each other for alliances and the like.  I should put in some mechanics for persuasion, with allowance for persuading your victim without him knowing it.

[MPOSullivan]

heya Shreyas,

Are you a comics reader?  if so, maybe you should check out Sleeper, put out by the Wildstorm "Eye of the Storm" imprint.  It's about a covert agent who is inserted into the illuminati group that secretly runs the world.  it's totally got secret societies and people manipulating politics and all kindsa crap.  it doesn't have oracles in it like your game, but it's one of the coolest approaches to secret organizations i've ever read, and it is based in a world of superheroes, so maybe that can be kind of a stand in for your seers.

also, how's the system coming along?  i meant to ask... and, i also have another question.  what is this future sight like?  i kept meaning to ask for clarification on this.  is it like the data-processing that Colin Laney does in Idory, by William Gibson, where your mind takes random facts, processes them down into "chaos math" and finds the solution of near future outcomes?  or is it more like the classical "i can see death in your future" kind of thing.

laters

[DevP]

I think card-based resolution would be key: you can hide the effects of resolutions later in the stack without necessarily revealing them, etc. As I see it, players have chronoloical queues of cards (where the card value v. opposing value would result in allowing X number of current / future facts to be narrated): these queues are built by the player drawing a card, showing it to all, adding it to his hand (1 or 2 hole cards at most) and enqueing a card face down. So, information hiding and delaying of some impulses to distort impressions.

[hix]

Pre sleep thoughts + lots of reading strategy essays for 'Puerto Rico' and 'Settlers of Catan' equals this:

Four people at the table.
1 is GM.
3 play the single character.
3 (a) is character in the future.
3 (b) is character in the present.
3 (c) is character in the past.

The GM frames the situation as if it's just been resolved. 3(a) gets to plan what she wants to do.

3(b) then gets the actual in media res situation described to them - ideally with new information that might make them want to screw over 3(a). Hell, let's just call them FUTURE, PRESENT, PAST.

Repeat the process with PAST. They get all the info leading up to the situation and might do something completely different.

Here's the key: make it gamist. Give each player reasons to want a different version of the future to come around.  Give different advantages to each position. Introduce a points system so that at the resolution of each situation, the 'winner' gets to decide what they want to be next: Future, Present, Past or the GM (setting up the next situation).

How do you cut between FUTURE, PRESENT and PAST? I don't know. What's the resolution system? I don't know. Cards sound good though.

Hope that's vague enough to give ideas and not constrain, but not too vague. Love the idea, love the title.

Steve.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Thanks for the thoughts, everyone.

I'll start a new thread when I have something concrete enough that I can ask for more specific critiques.

[Doctor Xero]

I'm a little unclear on one point about this future sense,
if characters can truly sense the future, how can anything surprise them?

What I mean is: what enables a PC or NPC to surprise someone with
future sense or otherwise disrupt his/her future sense without the person
already sensing that in the future there would be an attempt to surprise
him/her or otherwise disrupt his/her future sense?

If anyone can disrupt it without special effort, it must not be much of a
future sense.  Unless each person can sense that in the future someone
will be surprising him/her but  can do nothing about it because it is
ordained to happen, sort of like the lifelong conundrum which haunts Jon
Osterman/Dr. Manhatten in Alan Moore's brilliant *Watchman* comic book
series, which ultimately renders the characters knowledgeable about the
future but helpless since they can use the knowledge to do nothing which
they are not already ordained to do.

Or is this more of a probability sense?  In which case it can be fooled by
clever feints and trickery, such as the means X-Men used to fool the
future sense of the villainess Destiny of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
in the reprints from the 1980s (?) (the first alternate future storyline in
which future Kitty Pryde stops the assassination of Senator Kelly).

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

Is the future sense a selective perception?  If so, then that means that
someone with future sense will most likely sense the future only of those
people or places upon which he/she is focusing attention, with the
exception of very "loud" futures, just as we tend to focus our sense of
sight or hearing and therefore can miss things we weren't "paying
attention to" unless they are very bright or very loud.

If it is a selective sense, the mechanic can be handled as follows:

Any character with future sense can demand to know what the target of
his/her future sense will be doing the next three turns.  If the target is
a place rather than a person, the character's player interrogates the
game master about what will take place at that locale over the next
three turns.  Only that person or that place which is the target of the
character's selective future sense can be so interrogated.  Thus, if no one
surprises the character, he/she will always know exactly what a person
will be doing or what will be taking place at a certain locaton  (until the
character uses that future knowledge as a sort of "insider trading"
knowledge to change that future).

A character with the advantage of multi-tasking might be able to
interrogate two or even three targets.  A character with ADD might be
able to interrogate four targets but only for the very next turn rather
than for three turns ahead.

This would avoid the helplessness of creating a preordained timeline for
PCs and NPCs and would avoid the uselessness of a future sense which
can be disrupted by anyone who feels like it.

Would that fit your needs?

Doctor Xero