Digging among the various Mainstream and whatnot threads in the Big Five, including Gay/Gamer especially but also a lot of others, I stumbled on a weird thought.

Most of that discussion is about how to get gaming in a sense out of the closet, to appeal to the mainstream, and so forth. Now from a practical, economic standpoint, that seems to make sense. You figure, more purchasers = more sales. And that’s true, of course, but I think it misses one element of gaming culture that’s very important.

Which is that lots of gamers, like members of many subcultures, identify strongly and in a sense proudly with their own freakiness. I should say, “our” freakiness. You see this if you visit a con, where people “come out” dressed up in chainmail and the like, or as favorite anime characters, or whatever. They’re proud of being weirdos, ill-understood, and the like; it’s the same kind of attraction that made The Cure so powerful for so many listeners: nobody understands me, I’m different, I have to hide who I really am.

For old U of Chicago refugees, you might remember a comic strip called “Misery Loves Comedy.” There was a funny one where there are fifteen or so people walking along the street with their heads down. Each one is thinking the same thing: “I’m all alone, nobody understands me, nobody is like me, I’m different.” Yes, exactly!

I think this is one of the big selling-points about V:tM. Your character is a super-powered geek, and nobody knows it but others like him. He’s dark, and dangerous, and evil, and full of angst. Just like geek culture, except empowered.

I bring this up for two reasons.

First, I didn’t see (though I didn’t read every post carefully) a defense of this marketing strategy in those threads, nor a defense of the “we’re not mainstream and that’s the whole point” perspective. But it must have come up before. Any links?

Second, I’m trying to design Shadows in the Fog in such a way as to produce this “in-group” effect, a kind of tunnel-vision that I associate with occultists and conspiracy-theorists. The idea is that the players rapidly generate an insanely complicated private universe of references and sub-surface meanings. They have the power to manipulate these things for personal (character) power, through magic, and for personal (player) power, in that the more of this stuff they mess with at a time, coherently, the cooler they are and the more accolades they get. This was the theory behind the old “vote for the best” system, now dropped with some rueful thoughts. And if it works right, within a relatively short time it will be impossible to explain to an outsider what the game is really about, and why it’s cool, because the thing has become wildly insular.

If you’re thinking, “You’re trying to create a cult,” there’s a lot of truth in that. The one big difference is that there isn’t a charismatic leader who makes freaky demands. The whole cult-like phenomenon is supposed to happen within the group, without a top-down force. My ideal case would be a game that gets rolling so powerfully that the players are prompted to write enormous emails to each other, essays, analyses, and so on. They start doing a huge amount of private research on how “it’s all really true”.

I’ve seen hints of this even in Jere’s Age of Paranoia espionage version, even though that deliberately stripped off a number of systems intended to promote such effects. Jere has been sending us the “Secrecy News” posts, which are recent analyses from the intelligence community about what’s doing in (mostly) US intelligence agencies and in Washington. A number of times, people have replied, “Gee, it sounds like X character is still up to his old tricks.” And one player has been grappling with the personal difficulty of playing his character because he seems just too damn real – and a neocon asshole who sort of invented push-polling. Why should that bother him? Because reality and fiction have begun to blur, I suggest.

Now with all that in mind, I’m wondering if anyone has thought about this phenomenon and how to encourage it deliberately within gaming. I realize that’s in some ways contrary to the “get out and sell copies” approach, since it’s deliberately constructing an isolated community, but surely this has been thought of before?

Suggestions?

Concretely, of course, even if nobody’s done it before (or you in particular haven’t), any ideas for doing it effectively in this game?

Thanks.

Hi Chris,

My take on the issue is that this strategy has already been thoroughly established as the default for role-playing commerce, to the extent that those who have fully exploited it don't even realize that it's a strategy - to them, it's "how it's done," or even identify the strategy with "the environment," with no further reflection.

The difference between this outlook and my own is the core reason why no really useful dialogue occurs between me and folks who currently work for White Wolf.

A useful parallel to consider is superhero comics, in which a love of superheroes was perceived as the defining feature of people who like comics, and thus many companies dashed to "own the market" through glutting these customers' needs. It was disastrous, frankly, and now, both comics companies (the ones which sell comics, rather than license for movies) and stores are most successful when treating this particular market as the adolescent introductory material it is.

So, back to your question, I think that the outlook you're describing so well does exist, that it is extremely pervasive through most role-playing companies' marketing and creative strategies, and that it is commercially vulnerable to "interference competition" tactics. In other words, the bigger and flashier company automatically wins, mainly by dominating the attention and shelf-space of the middlemen (distributors and retailers) before the customer-based market sees anything.

From my perspective, this is no big deal, as the market that they're sewing up isn't my target market in the first place. But that's my take on the issue, anyway.

Best,
Ron

Chris,

I think this has come up before, but no specific threads or links pop into my brain.

I view the dividing line between "mainstream" and "geek culture" as a major and significant one, so much so that I designed a game and (badly) marketed it to span this dividing line deliberately. All along, I intended Nine Worlds to be a game that used ideas from games and theories that rejected traditional notions (read: "geek notions) of what RPGs should be like, but appealed to "geek culture" in terms of content and genre.

That is, I created a game targeted at, say, Mage: the Ascension fans with the goal of showing them how they could have more control and bring more "magic" to their gaming with a radically different system approach.

The game sold well at GenCon, and has had lukewarm success since. My marketing aims are, frankly, weak, but I'm hoping to change that with some new approaches.

I don't have any ideas for you in terms of your system. It sounds to me like you've already built a system that does what you want.

But, now you've got to get people to "bite." How do you help them create identity? Do you provide them a medium? (For example, a forum for your game where they can assume personas.) Do you create content outside your game product/publication that reinforces the identity? Do you provide them a place to post their own content?

I think these are some ways to make it happen. Unfortunately, I'm not doing much of this. I hope to. And, I hope this helps spark some ideas for you!

Matt Snyder wrote: But, now you've got to get people to "bite." How do you help them create identity? Do you provide them a medium? (For example, a forum for your game where they can assume personas.) Do you create content outside your game product/publication that reinforces the identity? Do you provide them a place to post their own content?

Hi,

Chris, are you very familiar with InSpectres? Although the tone, experience, and thematic questions of the game are very different from what you're talking about, the "questions and investigations by the players create the back-story of the mystery" process sounds very similar.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: My take on the issue is that this strategy has already been thoroughly established as the default for role-playing commerce, to the extent that those who have fully exploited it don't even realize that it's a strategy - to them, it's "how it's done," or even identify the strategy with "the environment," with no further reflection.

A useful parallel to consider is superhero comics, in which a love of superheroes was perceived as the defining feature of people who like comics, and thus many companies dashed to "own the market" through glutting these customers' needs. It was disastrous, frankly, and now, both comics companies (the ones which sell comics, rather than license for movies) and stores are most successful when treating this particular market as the adolescent introductory material it is.

So, back to your question, I think that the outlook you're describing so well does exist, that it is extremely pervasive through most role-playing companies' marketing and creative strategies, and that it is commercially vulnerable to "interference competition" tactics. In other words, the bigger and flashier company automatically wins, mainly by dominating the attention and shelf-space of the middlemen (distributors and retailers) before the customer-based market sees anything.

Ron Edwards wrote: Chris, are you very familiar with InSpectres? Although the tone, experience, and thematic questions of the game are very different from what you're talking about, the "questions and investigations by the players create the back-story of the mystery" process sounds very similar.

No, Chris, I think the fault it mine and my misreading, not yours. Sorry. I think I paid more attention to the earlier portion of your post, like:

First, I didn’t see (though I didn’t read every post carefully) a defense of this marketing strategy in those threads, nor a defense of the “we’re not mainstream and that’s the whole point” perspective. But it must have come up before. Any links?

Matt Snyder wrote: ... how people seemed to me to conflate a game and its design with a game and its personal identity. Does that make sense? You mentioned the allure of Vampire, and yet from my perspective the game system and its design doesn't create that cult-ish identity.

To attempt to bring myself 'round to the conversation, you're trying to do something that most games consider, well, "outside the game." Things like inter-player emails and such. Now, I think it's very interesting to make that an actual part OF the game. My question, then, is how do you encourage that behavior. What rewards exist. I ask because I'm ignorant. I haven't done more than skim Shadows, but maybe my question will get you thinking more consciously about carrots and sticks to get people acting like a buch of cultists! Then again, maybe you're already there .... can't say from my uninformed position.

Also, how can you write the text in a way that helps people do what you're saying. Could you have instructive text or even examples that show people the various ways, including various communicative tools, they might create their own conspiratorial community? For example, maybe you have a section on email exchanges, or maybe one on actual written correspondence. Are there things to avoid (I dunno, like writing out of character or something)? Are there techniques that help increase the mystery? Etc.

I think one of the keys in getting players to do this is making sure everyone knows all the pieces on the table. THEN, they can use whatever mechanism exists to figure out which pieces are actually "REAL." So, how do all the players actually communicate with one another about all these pieces and strands of possibility?

Don't all gamers do this, all the time, with all their games?

*blinks innocently*

Apparently not.

Seriously, though, I think that creating a tiny-little-community who has their own cultural reference is really really easy, because that is the natural order of the RPG group. All you have to do is make the game engaging, and have big styles and themes (or generate them in play) which the players can parse into the real world.

Here is an anecdote from my play. I was a secondary GM for a game called Threshold -- so I worked on some of the background with the main GM and helped run the first few sessions. Threshold was a really successful game in a social context -- the players just really dug the whole thing, because there were easy symbols to attach themselves to and also because the GM was doggedly committed to running the game come hell or high water.

Threshold, despite being a surreal science-fantasy world, had a lot of precedents in both literature and modern cultural stuff, including (heavily) a Japanese TV show called Serial Experiments Lain. At one point, unrelated to the game, a large number of us got together to watch Lain. The Threshold players (well, some of them) rendered it literally unwatchable because every time there was something that they percieved as "Thresholdy" they blurted it out, loudly, to each other and laughed. Or at least giggled.

I was in on the jokes, even, and I couldn't stand it.

RPGs naturally create subcultures. All you need to do is let them thrive.

yrs--
--Ben

Ben,

Yes, they do. But what I want to do is encourage this to become obsessive and basically crazy, and to blur the distinction between reality and fiction. In-jokes are one thing; paranoia is another.

Sure, if gaming didn't already do this to some degree, this would be insanely difficult to produce. But since the do, I want to capitalize on it. I do not see a lot of gaming consciously designed around this effect, but that's precisely what I'm up to.

Do you see?

clehrich wrote:
Do you see?

Hey Chris,

I don't really have much to add to this conversation, but one possibly misaimed question.

Are you interested or trying to create a game that "purposely" tries to break the game experience out and beyond the inherently delimited "life-space" of recreation to something that extends more directly and concretely into the daily or "real" lives of the players?

Ben,

I know what you're saying, but I don't think it's that simple. Not every game I know produces this effect. Not by any means.

Jay,

Yes. Which is also by way of answer to Ben. If it works, this creates a cult-like effect that isn't really quite the same thing as anything but Vampire fandom, and yet it's so totaly insular that it's obsessive and manic. Isn't that fun? :-) I'm overstressing this, but it's interesting me right now.

One thought that might help with the referee aspect: when E. R. Jones was starting Multiverser, he created his own character (himself) and began play as himself run by himself. A day or two later he brought the other players in as (themselves) friends of the one character who was already there, and his character informed their characters of what he had already learned.

He still handled the mechanics, which were in their infancy, and most of the description of the fantasy world, but I think there was a degree to which being one of the characters made him less like the referee, and having been their first made it natural that he would know things the others did not.

--M. J. Young

I dunno, M.J. That's getting a little reflexive and recursive even for me!

Interesting idea, though. I'll think about it.

---
Incidentally, it occurs to me that what I'm trying to capitalize on here is just exactly what makes the dreadful Da Vinci Code so popular, which is the "gee, do you think it could really all be true?" effect. For some reason, that sort of thing seems to be in right now -- I suppose it never really goes out of style -- and that's what I'm playing with. Besides, everyone's convinced that all the cool stuff happened in the Renaissance, and I'm certainly emphasizing the early modern bases of Victorian magic, so I suppose there's "grip" there. Anyway, just in case a reader out there is looking for another more concrete example of the effect I'm talking about.

Don't get me started on the DVC, okay?

Couple thoughts:

What you're really talking about here, in my mind, is what Neel once talked about as the creation of shared symbolic language. Example: in the game world, butterflies are the spirits of the dead, with all this neat context wrapped up around it (maybe they emerge from people's mouths when they die, maybe killing butterflies condemns the souls to hell, whatever). So, whenever the players encounter a butterfly, it instantly brings up all these other unspoken connotations and communicates a vast horde of meaning all at once. This is what the best arcane, developed game setting's do. The players spend a whole session just to determine that the Prince is, yes, a Malkavian. And then they collapse into a fit of reactions ("That explains so much!" "How could you do this to us?!"), based all this pool of shared opaque-to-the-unfamiliar knowledge.

What you want, then, I think, is to facilitate ways that players can collectively develop their own symbolic language, but a certain type of language that mimicks the kinds of occult stuff that you're interested in recreating. This, I think, will instictively draw them into the kinds of cultish activities that you're looking for.

Jonathan,

Have you read the most recent draft of Shadows in the Fog? There's a section near the end called "Why this way?" which goes into the theory behind it. Shared language of symbols -- way ahead of you, man. The question is whether this creates that effect, which I think it does but we'll have to see.

Actors do this a fair bit, where the character and actor seem to disappear and become one. Only had the happen to myself once, and it was really weird. It was easy enough to, because the character dealt with some situations I'm very accustomed to myself, so it wasn't that much of a leap from territory that was distinctly "me" to territory that was distinctly "him". Character's name was Nick, his grandparents called him "Nicky", and my girlfriend is Nicole and goes by "Nikki"...got so bad near the end of the run I was responding to "Nikki" when someone said her name! Other character quirks crept in though were erased once I got back to "Nate", but the cast had the same kind of thing you're talking about - the in-jokes, the feeling that there was more to this world outside of our own, what was displayed on stage, the feeling that you're unsure where the character stops and the person begins.

Incidently, that was the best performance I think I've ever done. In a city where musicals are all that sells because of the huge cast of little kids bringing their extended familes, we were a straight show that sold out almost every night WITHOUT the benefits of adverstisement...just word of mouth "You HAVE to see this play!".
Hm...theres an idea for you. Try to get in on a local theatre act as part of the tech crew or something. A mine of that kind of social interaction! To this day, I still greet one of my 'grandmothers' from the show as her character (Ada) and she me as her 'grandson' (Nicky!), and no one realizes we're NOT related.
So yea, it can be done, and easily. Just need strong characters, strong players, and a strong, compelling world behind it. Wouldn't even say rules or 'rewards' are explicitly needed.

clehrich wrote: Compare this to Nephilim or Unknown Armies, two games I know fairly well. They create a fictional background world, the Nephilim or the Avatars, and set up a character world that participates in it. That's fine, but you have to like the background world as presented. Note that games like this (CoC is another example) sometimes -- often -- stress a difference between what the GM knows and what the players know, so as to create the mystery: they have to figure it out, you see, but the GM knows all about it.

What I'm trying to do is construct a play-mode in which all that background world is generated in play.

clehrich wrote: What I want Shadows in the Fog to do is get players to make this stuff up within play, then get deeply into it as a small-group dynamic. This creates insularity and isolation, but it also creates (I hope) a kind of weirdly inbred, paranoid, claustrophobic sense that "we're the only ones who really know the truth." And that's exactly the mood I want for the game, you see.

Hasn't Greg Stafford already achieved this with Glorantha? You've certainly got all the references for those who are in the know, even more obscure references that lurk in the collective memory, and the blessed hand-carved tablets of Greg himself. The whole thing appears to exist in a sort of existential dubiousness half-in and and half-out of the state of being "a piece of fiction", and contains, to my eye, a quite strong anti-scientific, 'relativistic' message which is in large part projected into the real world.

I dunno if this will be helpful, but I've had a minor experience like what you're describing. It wasn't exactly connected with one game in particular: it was just connected with a bunch of gaming friends.

In the city where I went to college there was a building near the apartments where several of us lived. Its name was "the Terrence Building." It was about twelve stories tall and abandoned. It was down the block from the psychiatric hospital. A suspicious cluster of high-tech radio antennae crowned the building.

My gaming friends and I began speculating about how this building was really some secret CIA intelligence base. That led us to do some research. Turns out it used to be the psychiatric hospital.

We explored the grounds in person. The front lobby was chained closed, and through glass panes we could see it had fallen into conspicuous disrepair. But when we went behind the building, we noticed a sleek black satellite dish on an upper story. Approaching the back doors triggered some kind of mechanical noise, like a mechanism failing to open. We found a sign on one side of the building that told of a nuclear fallout shelter beneath: and on the other side, we found a crack in the boarded-up windows. We could just make out some flourescent lights in the room beyond. They were on.

We fled the grounds when a police cruiser rolled by.

Naturally this all led to more wild theories: was the Terrence Building still used to house some of the worst mental patients? Was it haunted? Was there a cult inside summoning some Chthuloid elder god? The Terrence Building cameoed several times in our one-shot horror games and in our World of Darkness LARPs.

It was an in-joke, but it was funny partly because we really didn't know how much of a joke it was. If at all.

Actually, John (Kirk), you'll find that Chris is probably already quite familiar with the workings of cults, as I think it somehow pertains to his field of study. See his article on Ritual Discourse, for example, in the articles link at the top of the page.

That said, Chris, is there something that you can tell us about how this works that will give us an idea of how to help you facilitate what you're looking for.

I do agree with John, that, from what I know of cults and such, that the idea of being in possession of knowledge that is in limited circulation would be cool. The thing is, given that we're talking about single games, with limited groups, I think this is default - but won't feel special because there'll be no percieved demand for the information. I think that's key, actually, what makes information special is that it's a theoretical bargaining chip, or token of coolness.

But I have an idea. :-)

First, there seem to be two levels upon which we're operating, and two ways to look at either of those. Some people have picked up on it from one POV - the idea being to have people be involved with it as though it were somehow real, vs the information only being in-game. But also, the comment about blogs makes me think that we're also talking about information from the inside of the game being shared with a somewhat larger community.

Here's what I'm thinking. And I so get a design credit for this if you put it in! Players can contact players in other games being played of SitF, and incorporate data from those other games as though it had happened in thier own game. Essentially all SitF characters in play everywhere are all in the same game. London is large, and can handle this as long as the game doesn't become as popular as D&D (you should be so lucky).

So what happens is that this information becomes something that's local to your group, but has a potential value outside of it. So the players, knowing thier own information, now have that bargaining chip to deal with other players.

Now, of course this is going to cause tremendous continuity problems in theory. That's where the GM comes in. He gets to veto anything that's brought in that doesn't make sense to the game's continuity. What this means is that a player can't just bring in any bit of info, he has to get stuff that matches his game.

The neat thing is that, the more this happens, and the more that information changes hands, the more all games will start to have similarities, and seem like each other. Continuity problems from game to game then just become "rumors" in effect.

What do you think? I'm so excited about this, I'm going to go off immediately and start a blog. I want to be the first source of information on the game worldwide... :-)


This said, I agree with others that, while not all games produce the effect desired here, that you've designed for this effect, and that I think that it'll happen (even if you don't use my idea). That is, I think you've already got the design that will do what you want it to do. Only playtest will say for sure, but I'm pretty confident.

In any case, BTW, all of this has given me even more of an idea of what the game should be like, and now I'm pretty much raring to go. I have very little of that original vision problem that I was having. Consider putting information from some of these threads into the game text.

Oh, one more thing. You're going to at least need a disclaimer - I know it's ugly, but given what you're looking at doing, I think you'll have to have one. But here's the thing - overdo it. Make a big deal out of the disclaimer. The more you do so, the more the conspiracy theorists will grab onto it as an attempt to hide the fact that "IT'S ALL TRUE!"

In fact, for those who want to remain sane about the whole thing, include material on how to deprogram and such. :-)

This indemnifies you while making the atmosphere more what you want.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Players can contact players in other games being played of SitF, and incorporate data from those other games as though it had happened in thier own game. Essentially all SitF characters in play everywhere are all in the same game...So what happens is that this information becomes something that's local to your group, but has a potential value outside of it. So the players, knowing thier own information, now have that bargaining chip to deal with other players.

Mike Holmes wrote: In fact, for those who want to remain sane about the whole thing, include material on how to deprogram and such. :-)

Keep repeating to yourself, It was only a game, right? It was only a game....

Mike Holmes wrote: Actually, John (Kirk), you'll find that Chris is probably already quite familiar with the workings of cults, as I think it somehow pertains to his field of study. See his article on Ritual Discourse, for example, in the articles link at the top of the page.

Here's what I'm thinking. And I so get a design credit for this if you put it in! Players can contact players in other games being played of SitF, and incorporate data from those other games as though it had happened in thier own game. Essentially all SitF characters in play everywhere are all in the same game. London is large, and can handle this as long as the game doesn't become as popular as D&D (you should be so lucky).

Now, of course this is going to cause tremendous continuity problems in theory. That's where the GM comes in. He gets to veto anything that's brought in that doesn't make sense to the game's continuity. What this means is that a player can't just bring in any bit of info, he has to get stuff that matches his game.

The neat thing is that, the more this happens, and the more that information changes hands, the more all games will start to have similarities, and seem like each other. Continuity problems from game to game then just become "rumors" in effect.

What do you think? I'm so excited about this, I'm going to go off immediately and start a blog. I want to be the first source of information on the game worldwide... :-)

This said, I agree with others that, while not all games produce the effect desired here, that you've designed for this effect, and that I think that it'll happen (even if you don't use my idea). That is, I think you've already got the design that will do what you want it to do. Only playtest will say for sure, but I'm pretty confident.

In any case, BTW, all of this has given me even more of an idea of what the game should be like, and now I'm pretty much raring to go. I have very little of that original vision problem that I was having. Consider putting information from some of these threads into the game text.

Oh, one more thing. You're going to at least need a disclaimer - I know it's ugly, but given what you're looking at doing, I think you'll have to have one. But here's the thing - overdo it. Make a big deal out of the disclaimer. The more you do so, the more the conspiracy theorists will grab onto it as an attempt to hide the fact that "IT'S ALL TRUE!"

John Kirk wrote: Excellent idea, Mike. But, I still think the game needs a hierarchical structure to the secret knowledge. Otherwise, each group only has one bargaining chip. The key here is that the game would have to provide rules on how to construct the "secret knowledge database". When one group interacts with another and obtains its "rank 3" knowledge, the receiving group can respond in one of several ways:

The rules would have to ensure that any information incorporated into a group's low-ranking knowledge bases would have to make logical sense from the higher-ranking knowledge bases' perspectives. Thus, negotiations between groups would involve changes to make the conformity happen without either group actually knowing why the other group wants the changes.

M. J. Young wrote: Sample game text from this section:

Keep repeating to yourself, It was only a game, right? It was only a game....

That's sick, M.J. I like it. :-)

Yes, both of you make an excellent point. By overstating the degree to which this is all fiction, no matter how much maybe it looks like history, it's really all fiction, so don't deceive yourself, blah blah, you provoke exactly the kind of paranoid conspiracy stuff that I want. Nifty!

Hmm. This cult thing really seems to be getting at the core of what this game is supposed to be about. Pity I didn't notice it earlier, eh? But I suppose it's good that I finally got there!

Hi Chris,

You're familiar with De Profundis, right?

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: You're familiar with De Profundis, right?

clehrich wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by "rank 3." What does this mean?

clehrich wrote: I very much don't want to construct a system of certain knowledge that is secret and only available to the cool kids

clehrich wrote: I'd think the best way to do this would be a special board or forum on the web somewhere for SitF games, where people can share information, play events, etc. I'm no web guy -- I don't have the remotest idea how to set up a board or whatever -- but I can look into it.

I'm not sure how much veto stuff would really be necessary. The only thing I think would require this is material that is definitely fiction.

Anything historical, for which there is some kind of reasonable evidence, is automatically non-veto-able, barring a discussion within the whole group and an overwhelming majority decision to block it. That, of course, would ipso facto make the use of credible historical evidence more powerful, because it can't be stopped or blocked by fiat.

De Profundis was what immediately leaped out at me, too. There's another, more centralized, set of precedents as well. West End Games did some aggregation of play reports to influence metaplot development for their TORG line; RPGA does something similar for their Living X gameworlds. These examples are probably more centralized and the scope of contributions too narrow to generate the effect you're looking for, though.

I wonder if the way to do something like this would be with a "trusted user" blog-like community using something like Scoop. You'd definitely need some way for users to acquire "credibility" and to rate the quality and consistency of each others' contributions.

The internet is changing gaming forever, isn't it?

Good points, Mark (and welcome to the Forge).

I, myself forgot to mention earlier that I thought that this would have some similarities to the "Living" series of RPGA games. Again, as you point out, Mark, the question is whether or not you want to get more decentralized with it.

The whole Credibility/Rating concept sounds great to me with respect to this. Allow the community as a whole to determine who's ideas count and whose do not. This creates the cult effect sought, I think.

And, well, for me the internet has drastically changed my gaming. So I can only agree. And it's been all good, too, IMO (but, then, I'm a technology freak).

Mike

There is a concern expressed about whether the entire creation will be consistent; I'm not certain it's entirely warranted. Mike's point (if I'm attributing it right) that someone might have lived at an address that was chosen for a fictional person caught me. I'm like, so what? Conspiracy theories almost always fly in the face of a fact here or there, and often contain internal inconsistencies. There are a lot of ways these are handled.

• Well, they said that Churchill lived there, but that's what they wanted you to think.• But of course, Churchill was Moriarty; he couldn't use his real name to buy property.• Yes, of course, Churchill was a simulcrum; but he was also a cultist.• Yes, the cultist Churchill was replaced by a simulcrum, but that was later.• Well, no, we're not sure whether Churchill was a cultist or a simulcrum, but with the amount of cult interest around that property, he must have been one of those.

Remember, if you don't see the conspiracy, you're either duped by it or part of it. Facts are subject to doubt, because someone may have manipulated them.

--M. J. Young

I agree, MJ, that this is a fine way to get the info into your game. There are probably other angles as well. All I'm saying is that it needs either GM monitoring, or a mechanic to ensure that it's all handled somehow. The game's magic system and feel are, yes, all conducive to this.

Or you can just play Dada SitF, and have contradictions just be a normal part of play. :-)

My point is not that contradictions are something that needs to be eliminated from the meme pool, just that there has to be a process for dealing with them when they occur. Hence I think the decenralized version can work and work fine.

Mike

Mike, I think you're sort of missing MJ's point, which to my mind is on the money.

Okay, so you decided that, what the hell, David Rhys Jones lives at 421 Kensington, WC.

Now somebody suddenly announces that there actually was a David Rhys Jones, and he lived on Queensway. Or that there is no 421 Kensington because the numbers only go up to 200.

The correct answer is not, "Okay, this is now the official answer." That's disinformation. You can't trust the Man, you know.

The correct answer from the Man (as it were) is, "Aha. Noticed that, did you? Fine, but do you know what it means?" The correct answer by a player is, "Aha! It's all so clear to me now!"

Contradictions are where you start. They're how you know there's something wrong, that there's a crack in the surface, something They haven't been able to cover up. They have made a mistake, and you are the only one to notice it. That's a Clue (or clew, if you like) to The Big Thing. This is a serious methodological principle for these folks -- and for Robert Darnton, a serious historian as well, but he'd have a fit (of laughter or anger I don't know) if he knew I was claiming this connection.

You people really need to read some maniac conspiracy theory. Slow, man, very slow. Haven't you all read a lot of Ken Hite? We used to do this of an evening, you know. At one point he had this vast file called "The Secret History of the World and Places Therein," which began with the Fall of Atlantis and continued on, a couple thousand years later, with the Creation of the World. It was all downhill from there.

You gotta read stuff like this if you're going to do this seriously with a wiki and everything, or the serious nut-jobs are gonna laugh you out of town. Forget X-Files, man. You know my problem with X-Files? Too damn obvious. All those plots and aliens and stuff? Kiddie games. You know my problem with Foucault's Pendulum? Too many historical errors. You know what? I'm not alone. Not even close.

Jeez oh man. A few little petty contradictions like house numbers? Look. If the guy lived at 421 but there is no 421, because the numbers go only to 200, you first need to know the question.

- Did he just say 421 in order to drop some kind of hint? Is the number a code?
- Did he actually live in the area, but 421 is a kind of hint of where he really lived?

So now I need to know whether it matters that half of 4 is 2 and half of 2 is one, so I have 4 + 4/2 + (4/2)/2. Which incidentally is 7, if you're counting serially, and do you know how many planets there are in the real system of the planets, as used by the great magicians? Do you know how many colors there are? Right... 7. Coincidence?

Probably, because that was much too easy. See, it could actually be 42, because you figure you can always add 1 for the Unity, right?

I've really got to write a running log of how this stuff works....

No, I do get it.

Mike

Mike was in part suggesting system support I think. What comes to my mind is some sort of 'no contradictions, only more conspiracy!' rule. Some actual in game reward is given for translation contradictions into further conspiracy.

It would be interesting when those translations cause contradiction between groups, which creates further translations which cause futher contradictions and so on and so forth. It really becomes a nasty cycle and something I'd hate to suggest if it didn't seem to fit the design goal.

Anyway, I think you need to give a reward...to push that rock over the edge and start the avalanche. No reward and it may stifle the process with people just looking at contradictions and thinking 'that isn't fun!'

Hi!

I'm wondering if the "Baronien-Spiel" (barony Play) of FanPro's DSA (The Dark Eye) would qualify for this.

Basically the "Redax" (from "Redaktion", i.e. the editorial staff responsible for the game and its continuity) is delegating the administration of a geographical area (usually one barony, hence the name) of the fictional game world Aventurien to selected people or groups of people who are more or less free to do their own thing with "their" barony as long as this doesn't interfere with the world at large and the plans of the Redax for the overall meta-plot (the whole thing isn't one-directional, however, als described below).

Those "Baronie-Spieler" (barony players) are interconnected with one another so that they can coordinate their efforts to create plots that affect more than one barony and get more bargaining power when trying to get the Redax to go a paricular route.

A good example of this happening was a cooperation of the Thorwaler-faction (basically Vikings lite; avowed enemies of slavery with a combination of "might makes right" and a basic democratic government structure and coincidentally the only faction on the continent where men and women are 100% equal) with the Horasreich-faction (the technologically most advanced faction of the continent with a Musketeer feel and a lot of courtly intrigues that nomially rendered them ineffective at projecting their power (which often was ignored by both the players and the Redax when it didn't mesh with their plans for the meta-plot) that only recently seceded from the Middle Kingdom, the other Big Player[tm]).

The Thorwaler-faction wanted their Thorwalers to become more like the Vikings in real live: introducing a more gritty feeling, a few slavers here and there, and a more centralized power structure for the up to that point "almost childlike in their innocence, yet brutal, barbarians". And the conflict should introduce a few technological advancements to level the playing field for the future.
The Horasreich-Faction wanted to show off the superior military might of their Kingdom, needed a reason to not invade the Middle Kingdom (which was severly weakended after the return of an evil wizard king that left the Horasreich basically unscratched while fucking with everyone else to the point of almost taking over the continent) and the right to ask for favours in the future :-)

So the following plot plays out:

A Thorwaler captain and his crew make a looting expedition up the main river of the Horasreich, loot (and level) a few surprised hamlets and take a rather important religious figure prisoner (to show off among their peers and for the ransom).

The Horasreich launches a totally overkill punitive expedition against the whole Thorwaler-"Kingdom" (whose "King" can't return the priestess, as demanded in the Horasreich ultimatum, because the has no direct controll over the captain), level the capital to the ground with heavy artillery, sink every ship in the general vicinity that doesn't sail unter the Horas flag, level a few hamlets on some sparsely populated islands and claim those as new territory of the Horasreich and act altogether like the pissed off, power-drunken bastards they are :-)

The Thorwalers get their act (politically) together to avenge these shameful events, but just aren't up to snuff against the high-tech army of the Horasreich. Nevetheless, after a while the whole thing becomes a low-level conflict followed by a tedious armistice when the Horasreich realises that they can't project their power that far away (or at least lack the political will to do so) while the Thorwalers realize they won't raze the capital of the Horasreich anytime soon. Basically the Thorwalers lost but the Horasreich only leaves a token presence to make a point unwilling to face the costs of a all-out war.

Now, the Redax had their say with these events. As had regular players who were consulted at Conventios by both Redax members and barony players about their feelings and opinions regarding the ongoing developments. But the main force was the combined might of the barony players.

Wolfgang,

Welcome to the Forge!

It's an interesting model. I'm not sure I want to use it, but I will read over your post slowly and carefully and think about it.

Thanks!

Actually, Callan, I think that the reward is already there, really. What I was getting at is that the group merely needs some process for "inprocessing" data arriving such that the mechanical rewards that exist can be applied. This would include any interpretation on arrival.

So, for instance, if the group is using a great big notebook to record trumps played and the like, when a bit of information came in from another game, it would get discussed by the group, or handled by the GM, or whatever, and then entered into the record for official use in the game.

This could happen, say, at the beginning of each session of play, or players could have some time between scenes to do this, or they might be able to officially enter something at any time into the game.

The only question is when the information starts having game mechanical effects, and what the agreed to information is. Might simply be that the player who discovered the fact gets to enter it any way they like whenever. But I'd suggest against that for several reasons.

What's acceptable or how to deal with information in terms of things like contradictions, or poorly thought up information, or just stuff presented without evidence of it having come from an official source of some sort, would have to be local, or have some guidelines presented.

Mike

Welcome to the Forge!

It's an interesting model. I'm not sure I want to use it, but I will read over your post slowly and carefully and think about it.

Wolfgang,

What you describe sounds not unlike the "Living Greyhawk" thing that some D&D people do. Is that accurate? If so, you're right: you have to have a huge established fan-base and name recognition in place, and large-scale organization. But it's an interesting point, even for something obviously very much on the opposite end (such as Shadows in the Fog), since it seems to spread and maintain itself almost entirely through word-of-mouth connections and such, which is not dissimilar. Interesting....

I'm not at all convinced that Americans don't take to such things; "Living Greyhawk" is an obvious example, but there are others. We just make noises about how individualistic we are -- and then sign up for anything that will make us just like our neighbors in the same suburb.

(sorry, just a little cranky since the election...)

clehrich wrote: What you describe sounds not unlike the "Living Greyhawk" thing that some D&D people do. Is that accurate? If so, you're right: you have to have a huge established fan-base and name recognition in place, and large-scale organization. But it's an interesting point, even for something obviously very much on the opposite end (such as Shadows in the Fog), since it seems to spread and maintain itself almost entirely through word-of-mouth connections and such, which is not dissimilar. Interesting....

John Kim wrote: My own impression is that the tendency of gamer toward individualism is true, particularly in the indie crowd local to here. Consider this: you talk about how you would like it if "Shadows in the Fog" had a bunch of people writing up cool stuff for it. Would you or have you done any such work for someone else's game? My experience is that most people prefer to work on their own campaign world, homebrew, or system rather than supporting what is out there.

What's cool about this is that, since it's not official, other sites could start as other nodes, with whatever restrictions they like on what goes up. And, again it will be local as to what gets into what game.

I keep envisioning a distributed model that grows on it's own, and therefore does not need the maintenance of the "Living" model. Call it "viral" world creation.

Mike