Preface: This is the latest thread in the GroupDesign project, tentatively titled "Schrodinger's War," a collaboratively designed game about incorporeal "Archivists" who jump through time and space, possessing human hosts to alter history, constantly forced to balance the welfare of their individual host with their objectives for humanity as a whole. Also currently active is a thread on Feel of Play; the previous mechanics thread is Drafting Mechanics; the most concise (if somewhat out of date) overview of concepts occurs in the thread Nailing mechanics; other threads are indexed here. But reading through all these past threads is by no means required -- all Forge-folk should feel free to participate.

Tobias op den Brouw, the originator of the whole GroupDesign idea in the first place, has come up with some draft mechanics which he PM'd me and which, with his permission, I reproduce below (lightly edited for formatting). As I see it, Tobias's key insight here is cutting through the Gordian knot of "what values should the game be about" (as painfully wrestled with in Nailing Axes) by having each gaming group create their own moral "pillars" as part of preparation for play:

Tobias wrote:
Part 1 of 3 - Prep.

(The parts are: 1. Prep; 2. Your character, Human Hosts and Possession;
3. Play, Schrodinger points, Passions and the Timeline)


Schrodinger's War

1. Prep:

- Remember that this game is about giving up life to be become an Archivist, able to possess people and make them act according to your passions to make an impact on SpaceTime. People live their lives (and thus have skills and experiences related to) driven by their Passions. Time is cyclical, the same themes, memes, genes, passions, dominances, learning, etc., happens over and over again. All of SpaceTime is connected by a great Field. Events that are well-known and had big impact have many far-reaching ripples in this field (like a big stone thrown in a pond) and are harder to change. There are, however, unobserved points with a disproportionate impact on history and Passions – these are the points at which an Archivist may most effectively make his mark.
- I am assuming the players are (almost) all the Archivists that exist – and represent great power and great responsibility.
- You may make any decisions as a group, or entrust them to a Game Master (GM).
- Given the above, decide whether the reason all players gave up normal life is due to a common goal or not. If it isn’t, decide on the common reason why you(r characters) would interact anyway. Examples:

o Common goal from the start: all the players were scientists who made an accident go horribly wrong, causing damage to space-time. They are all in it together to repair the damage
{Sydney's thought: or the players all belong to an ancient mystical order seeking to preserve [Whatever] throughout the centuries....}
o No common goal from the start: all the players had their own reasons, in their own timeframe, to want to become Archivists. Now, an unknown party (Aliens? Other Archivist? Technological Time-travellers from the far future? Is messing the entire timeline up.
o No common goal: everyone’s out for themselves. All the players and characters are looking out for their own agenda – thus coming into conflict or making alliances.

Note that it’s a good thing to talk, as group, about why you’re playing the game and what you like from it anyway (Social Contract, etc.)
- Decide on the founding Passions that will be ‘in play’ in this game. This is part of what the game will be about, so choose things you wish to experience. Two Passions are always present at the start of the game: Fear and Desire. In general, it’s a good things to add as many passions as there are players of the game. A group of four players may add Love, Agression, Hate, and Curiousity.
- Decide on how these Passions are related (connected) to each other. These connections are the ‘natural’ order of things in your universe, and the normal way one emotion might lead to the other. An example might be:

Love <-> Desire <-> Fear <-> Agression <-> Hate (Curiousity not attached anywhere).
- For each Passion, there has been a moment in History which was the pinnacle of that passion. It is a grand example of what that Passion in action may accomplish. Decide for each Passion that has been defined, what that pillar is, for your game, and which person is associated with it. This is most likely also the most well-known figure from that era. Example for a time-spanning grand-impact campaign:

o Pillar of Love: The start of Christianity, Christ
o Pillar of Desire: … (fill in)
o Pillar of Fear: The Inquisition, Gui/Torquemada
o Pillar of Agression: Killing Fields of Cambodia, Pol Pot
o Pillar of Hate: WWII / Hitler
o Pillar of Curiousity: Moon Landing, Armstrong; or Columbus’ Travels, Columbus

Or for a smaller campaign, centered around the “Wild West”:

o Pillar of Curiousity: Great Push West, Cody/Clark
o Pillar of Agression: Wounded Knee, Custer
o Etc. etc. etc.

(Note: no offense, religious statement or value judgement intended by these examples).
- Try, if you like, to decide on a measurable goal for your story-telling. Some groups may like the idea of measuring the ‘damage’ they need to repair as Archivists as a certain change they need to accomplish in the human timeline (the scientists in our example, might want to decrease the Passion/Pillar of Curiousity, Increase the one of Love, and decrease the one of Fear). Groups where everyone is pushing their own agenda may declare a victor at some point of personal power, or some level of their Passion in the human timeline. Others may want to set a deadline on the number of evening’s they’ll play. Since SW is a fairly abstract game, this will help you to know where you are in the story, what urgency there may be, what pacing you need.
- Make your Character. Think of a reason why an individual would give up being human, with all its benefits, to become a time-less disembodied ghost. Also think of a reason why your character will be interacting with the other characters. This may be anything from ‘seeks companionship’ to ‘acts so extremely that others are forced to react – or swallow’ – but make sure you’re not acting in a vacuum. See the chapter on character creation.

Tobias, that's an interesting take on Passions. I think it definitely merits some discussion. But as to your overall mechanics, I didn't see anything about character creation or conflict resolution rules. Do you have any idea how you want those to work? Or are we only discussing the Passion mechanics here?

As you can see, this is part 1 of 3.

I've got the cores of part 2 done, but it's just something that works, now, not something that generates excitement.

Part 3 is a vague nebula of concepts.

I work on this as much I can, when I get inspiration - which isn't too often, unfortunately.

Feel free to comment on this, if you like, but I'm going to do part 2 and 3 based on this anyway. Of course, improvements I like will be taken on board. :)

Tobias wrote: As you can see, this is part 1 of 3.

Core mechanic is that there are 2 core Passions, and each player adds one (or the GM does). This is mentioned, but may be unclear?

I'm thinking of skillweb-esque allowing you to act on non-core passions for your character at a penalty of the number of steps removed. It's not a core mechanic for the game, though. Connectivity doesn't make them stronger per se, but a highly-connected Passion may have other defaulting to it through the web more often.

Tobias, yes, that is mentioned, but I'm wondering where the authority lies. Does the GM make the decision to either choose Passions or allow the players to each pick one? If there is a dispute, who decides?

Passion-web: So, you are encouraging Passions that are closely related through this method. Is that intentional?

Also, who decides how the Passions are related and when/where the pinnacle of the Passion lies?

1. A Suggestion

These Passions & Pillars are as clear a case as you can get of deliberately and explicitly addressing Premise. Which is cool. But remember what Ron Edwards & others have said about Premise sometimes being implicit, and/or emerging in play. As a practical matter, you don't always know what a game (or story) is all about until you're partway into it. So perhaps groups should be allowed -- even encouraged -- to leave one or two Passions/Pillars undefined during prep, and then, as the game evolves, and they discover unexpected things that interest them, define Passions & Pillars to fit them?

E.g. if after two sessions of play, everyone realizes that their characters keep on running into issues of "free will" vs. "duty," and that some of the most exciting moments of play revolved around these two themes, they could retroactively define them as fundamental Passions.


2. A Question

Tobias wrote: Two Passions are always present at the start of the game: Fear and Desire.

Tobias wrote: I've got the cores of part 2 done, but it's just something that works, now, not something that generates excitement.

Sydney, I also wondered why those two Passions were predetermined, in a game where it seems we're giving the players the opportunity to determine most elements from the get-go. Perhaps this can be retrofitted to answer my earlier question -- the GM can define two "core" Passions, and each player can introduce one of their own.

Allowing the Passions to be introduced during play is cool, but will probably require us to design the character creation rules with this in mind. If a Passion suddenly becomes part of the game, and everyone already has their characters created, no one will have skills that tie into the Passion. Character creation during play would get around this. Of course, so would not tying skills directly to a specific Passion. Any thoughts as to which way to go on this?

One thought would be to allow Archivist characters to have a sizeable pool of "unspent points" that they could turn into traits at the player's choosing during play, instead of having to spend them all during prep.

And we've already explicitly talked about the idea that Host Passions can be "defined during play" (whose phrase was that again?), and any mechanic that allows that can allow for suddenly realizing that, say, Love For Fuzzy Bunnies is a key Passion/Pillar of the game and every Host needs a rating in it.

Thanks for the feedback Andres and Sydney.

Sydney - I'm not saying the pillars are the end-all-be-all of the premise that can and will be explored with this game. They are a large part of it, of course, as well as the goal the players will define. There is, I think, plenty of room for some emergent/implicit premise.

Of course, I'm not opposed to an elegant retrofit, if that makes playgroups happy - but for now I'll assume that pre-defining aint broke. If, during playtest, it becomes neccesary (and it might), we'll see further.

Why are Fear and Desire invariants? Personal vision on my part - I think these are the two driving passions in human existance, and leaving them out would be like leaving out the 'heart'. Sure, you can tell an interesting story about the rest of the organs, but it wouldn't be complete. That's just my personal vision, though - playgroups that don't like it can easily chop it out. For now, I'd like people to play as written, though.

As to the invitation - thanks. I will not take you up on it, though, because of two things I see possily happening that I think are undersirable:

1. I'll allow myself to stop after I post something half-baked
2. The discussion coming from a half-baked part 2 will be interesting, long-spanning, and in the end, will only distract me from finally getting something that internally complete.

Authority - I am going for GM-less (as an option, at least). At this moment, 'each player may add 1' is the mechnic. Each person's contribution is considered equally valid - if someone really wants to add Passion X, the game is played with Passion X, unless people wouldn't play in that case (breakdown of the group). In this case, I'm relying on 'we want to play this game together, can't we agree on this set of Passions, please' interaction to get things straight. This will probably need to be stated explicitly.

Passion-web and close-related passions: do you think Fear and Desire are closely related in Real Life (TM)? In the game they are mechanically, that's true, but don't focus on this overmuch yet (please), the passion-web's one of the things that's not fully clear to me yet (on the other hand, asking me pointed question will force me to come up with answers, so if you like that approach, keep asking them! ;) ).

Good catch on the 'who decides how they are related'. Will have to ponder that. Maybe it's like domino's - Fear starts connected to Desire, and anyone adding one adds it in a link to one of the already existing Passions.

When - where the pinnacle lies - either the player making the Passion decides, or the group talks about what they think is cool. Simple voting in case of deadlock.

Sydney - Pools for players are a big thing in parts 2 and 3, yes. And Transcendence is one of the 'research' traits that will allow you to increase that pool the quickest, to lift a bit of the veil...

(edit: this post added due to crosspost with Sydney's previous)

As I've been stewing over this -- and PM'ing back and worth with Doug Ruff -- a sudden thought strikes:

Defining a historical moment as a "Pillar" of a particular value is what gives it strategic significance in the war (Schrodinger's War) to reshape the course of history. So perhaps choosing what moments are Pillars can be a strategic decision.

Drawing some earlier ideas about rating the impact/importance of events and individuals, some resource management might be in order here: perhaps X amount of Impact/Importance associated with each Passion, and someone (the GM? a designated adversary player? the players sometimes acting as their own opposition?) can invest that Importance into different historical events, which become Pillars.

E.g. if the game (not talking about a specific character now, but the game-world as a whole) has Passion: Hatred at 10 points, you could split that up so that WWII and the Holocaust are a Pillar of Hatred rated 6, the sacking of Byzantium by the 4th Crusade is rated 2, and, oh, I don't know, the Manson Family murders are rated 1, with 1 point in reserve to be spent in-play to define a new Pillar on the spot. (Note there is NO WAY to use this system and accurately rate every historical event; this is inherently highly selective -- in GNS terms heavily Gamist/Narrativist but not at all Sim).

Now, part of the strategy of the game -- as people have discussed it in earlier threads -- is to work "in the shadows" of history, where little is recorded, to subtly alter the precursors to Big Events, and thus ultimately change the Big Event itself (the equivalent of capturing the high ground). Further, a lot of these changes will be "the Bedford Falls effect" (see A Wonderful Life) whereby the basic nature of the world doesn't change, but the tone and atmosphere, and the wellbeing of specific individuals, does change.

Using the (barebones idea of a) system I've just outlined, the "Bedford Falls Effect" might manifest mechanically as follows: Archivists go back in time and are nice to Adolf Hitler as a young man, encouraging him to pursue his career in painting and not to mess with politics. At the end of that mission, if it succeeds, the power of Hatred is set back. World War II still happens -- as I've written in previous posts, major events tend to be "overdetermined," with multiple causes -- but one of the factors that contributed to WWII being so bad is removed, so the war isn't as horrific. The Pillar of Hate value for WWII goes down from 6 to 5.

Does any of this make sense to people? I'm braindumping while avoiding a deadline so I may be less than clear...

{EDIT for afterthought: Presumably a direct assault on a Pillar is more difficult for higher-value Pillars -- hence the importance of mucking about in the dim past rather than diving right into the Big Event itself. But once you weaken a Pillar, it not only becomes more vulnerable to direct manipulation, but it also may have cascade effects on subsequent events}.

Wait a sec...
Syd, me likes, synapses firing.
What if these pillars aren't important in the scope of history but important in the scope of what the Archivists are doing or in an INDIVIDUALS history?
Thus, to myself who was minimally impacted by WW2 (closest was my grandmother's husband (step-grandpa?) fought in the Pacific), WW2 might have 0 significance. But, to another situation, another person, you could ramp that up to even an 8, meaning if the Archivists wanted to change Person A you'd have to minimize the impact WW2 had on the person- not neccesarily stopping the war, but handling one or two events within the course of the war that impacted this person or that.

It makes sense and looks good to me. I don't see any obvious problems with it. My first thought on reading it is that there should be a similar mechanism for character creation. Also, the specifics of exacly who determines what should be defined. Who chooses Passions? Who determines what the level of the Passion is in the game world? Who allocates points to the "Pillars" of each Passion in history?

Personally, I think that the number of Passions should be equal to the number of players plus two. The GM starts things off by naming a Passion, with each player choosing one, proceeding around the table in clockwise fashion. After the last player has chosen a Passion, the GM chooses another one that fits in to what was already been declared, hopefully to tie Passions together. The players (but not the GM) all vote for what should be the most important Passion. The GM breaks any ties, either by decision or randomizing factor (e.g. coin flip, dice roll). Then a vote for the second most important Passion is conducted, and so on, until all the Passions have been ranked. The first gets a rating of 10, the second a 9, and so on down to 3 (no Passion can be lower than this). The person who named the Passion allocates where the points are distributed through history as Pillars. Any unspent points in a Passion are saved and used throughout the rest of the game by the player who created the Passion.

Anyway, that's probably got a lot of holes in it, so I'd like to hear some feedback on it.

Sydney Freedberg wrote:
{EDIT for afterthought: Presumably a direct assault on a Pillar is more difficult for higher-value Pillars -- hence the importance of mucking about in the dim past rather than diving right into the Big Event itself. But once you weaken a Pillar, it not only becomes more vulnerable to direct manipulation, but it also may have cascade effects on subsequent events}.

Although I haven't posted to this particular thread before, I've been keeping a close eye on it - and congrats to Tobias for actually putting something forward!

However, this particular snippet got me thinking:

Sydney Freedberg wrote: These Passions & Pillars are as clear a case as you can get of deliberately and explicitly addressing Premise.

Re: Wiping out Humanity-
That strikes me more as setting than something directly tied to the core mechanics. On a system level, do we HAVE to provide the reasoning for everything? Myself, and the folks I game with, would be able to sit down with a book about disembodied spirits altering time and come up with their own (very long) list of the particulars.
The exact premise will vary per group I'd think, with something a little vauge on the system level, such as "what does it take to change the course of the world?". It could be a literal Bedfordf Falls effect: The life of one man will cause an entire 'world' (Bedford Falls) to hang in the balance. Or, it could involve altering a handful seemingly random events so they don't come to a head (what was that movie...LA Confidential doesn't sound right, something about X Days in the Valley?)
Anhilate the world, however, and you cement broad, far reaching events (nuclear cataclysm, alien holocaust, wrath of God) into the system. Least is my take.

daMoose_Neo wrote: Re: Wiping out Humanity-
That strikes me more as setting than something directly tied to the core mechanics.

On a system level, do we HAVE to provide the reasoning for everything? Myself, and the folks I game with, would be able to sit down with a book about disembodied spirits altering time and come up with their own (very long) list of the particulars.