Feel like disappearing into a haze of hatred? Feel like a lab rat lately? Then you'll be right at home merely in reading Keith Senkowski's Untitled entry, let alone playing it. This is totally William Burroughs + Dangerous Visions + The Fisher King, with a sticky note stuck to the front.

Keith, you certainly maxed out hatred with the presentation alone, although "rat" is comparatively weak. If you really want to get that in there, then I'd suggest some GM guidance for presentation of stuff which invokes it more ... now, how to do that via the narrator's ravings, in the text, is an interesting problem.

At first, I was put off by the self-reference to gaming. I've kind of been-there-done-that in Over the Edge.

I see it all now. You, me, the others. Even the fucking Researcher. We are all in this maze together. We are all trapped and at the whim of men beyond this reality. We are fiction to them. Puppets to be moved as we see fit. Some play us.

This sort of reminds me of Lacuna in that the reader is left to puzzle out "what the game is" before playing. I'm impressed Ron figured out that much of the mechanics. I got as far as figuring out it involved 10-siders. Going back and seeing mechanics described in text I've already read is kinda spooky.

Regarding presentation, that's probably the bestest / most-disturbing "faux psychopath" document I've seen. I especially dig the post-it note on the cover. But if this should happen to win an award, does Keith have to leave his prize on the "L"?

Ron's suggestion of players creating crazy artifacts has me tickled. A bunch of adults sitting around the table prodigiously scribbling like kindergarteners creates a very amusing mental image.

Ron,
Thanks to the contest Ron.  Got me off my ass to do this.  I had been thinking about an artifact game for a long time, but couldn't really wrap my head around it.  It took a little prodding and found it to be a rewarding experience.  Unfortunately now I am trying to figure out how to do it with every one of my ideas.  For isntance in my game idea The House that I have been tinkering with I am trying to find a way to incorporate a doll house into the game mechanics in some fashion.  You pushed me down a dark alley you fucker and I can't resist wallowing in the filth.

Ron wrote:
Feel like disappearing into a haze of hatred? Feel like a lab rat lately? Then you'll be right at home merely in reading Keith Senkowski's Untitled entry, let alone playing it. This is totally William Burroughs + Dangerous Visions + The Fisher King, with a sticky note stuck to the front.

Ron wrote: Keith, you certainly maxed out hatred with the presentation alone, although "rat" is comparatively weak. If you really want to get that in there, then I'd suggest some GM guidance for presentation of stuff which invokes it more ... now, how to do that via the narrator's ravings, in the text, is an interesting problem.

Ron wrote: At first, I was put off by the self-reference to gaming. I've kind of been-there-done-that in Over the Edge.

I see it all now. You, me, the others. Even the fucking Researcher. We are all in this maze together. We are all trapped and at the whim of men beyond this reality. We are fiction to them. Puppets to be moved as we see fit. Some play us.

Hey wait, then again, this is basically the "what is an RPG" part of the rules. Right. The whole text is a manual for the rules, not Color fiction. It's hard to keep my sight on that, but when I do, it's great. I really enjoyed how the gaming mechanics were present in the bulk of the text via Color and raving (glowing diamonds, etc), although granted, I probably couldn't have figured it out without the final page.

Ron wrote: The actual rules are basically My Life with Master, with the addition of a neat shared-pool thing. It is remotely possible that your character might actually not spiral down into a pit of awfulness, and as far as I can tell, it's a matter of making sure you put back into the pool more than you routinely take from it.

Ron wrote: I am just a wee bit puzzled about some details of resolution, including just what you do with the dice you've rolled now that you've eliminated high values with 0's. Let's see ... say I roll 5d10, and I get 0, 3, 4, 4, 9. I get that the 0 and 9 go away. Now what? Did I get a 4 (highest value) or 11 (sum), or what? Also, ties aren't explained, unfortunately. If I had to guess, I'd say that the player-character has to beat the opposing value, not just match it.

Also, "Aiding Others" rolls against what? Control? Or does that "others" refer to other player-characters, instead of the Others? I think that's it ... in which case, the helping-roll would simply roll against the same opponent. Is that right?

Ron wrote: I'm assuming standard scene-conflict presentation and basic play, but that does seem boring. I recognize that the GM must present "only hard problems," but how about an example or two? Yes, I know I wrote Sorcerer. Speak loudly and clearly for everyone in the room.

Ron wrote: It'd be neat to have everyone generating horrible little scritchy-scratchy psycho artifacts much like the game text as they go ... that might even play a role in generating what happens next.

Ron wrote: So Keith! Can we expect to see a copy of this for sale? I like the idea of someone at GenCon saying, "Hey look, someone left this trash on the shelf," and a booth-guy saying, "No no, man, that's one of the games ..."

Larry,

Good.  I want to creep folks right the fuck out.  Kinda a theme I got in the work I do.  At the same time it concerns me that you had trouble puzzling the shit out.  I want it to be invisible (the mechanical content), but at the same time I want it, by the end or reading, to hit you in the fucking face.

Is it wrong that I'm tickled pink that you think it's the bestest/most disturbing "faux psychopath" document you've seen?

Keith

funny, since I haven't read Burroughs, I was thinking of Frederick Pohl's "Tunnel Under The World" or the movie "Dark City", but without the aliens. or maybe with the aliens; it's up to the group to decide what the Researcher really is, isn't it?

... although there was one adaptation of "Tunnel Under The World" that made the whole thing a plot by advertising men. that certainly has potential...

So I am toying with the idea of how to add artifact creation to the game.  I'm thinking of maybe having the Players write shit down on index cards or on their copy of the game would be even better.  Everything they write becomes real in the game environment.  Every little doodle, every sentence, every sketch becomes a part of the reality.  How to moderate that I don't know. 

Maybe they can only be past events or something?  Maybe they can only be introduced to a scene that your character isn't in?  Maybe they can't directly benefit your character?

What the carrot is then for creating this shit, I don't know.  Maybe the writing is the only thing that can stop the spiral, the Humanity loss.  Maybe by introducing one of these elements you have been writing through the game you don't lose Humanity that scene or don't gain more Haze?

Just kinda thinking outloud here.
Keith

John,

Don't know Tunnel Under the World, but Dark City was definately an influence.  Love that fuck'n movie.

As to what the Researcher and the Others are, I leave it up to everyone to decided what they are.  At different points I thought of them as existing and as being figments of the imagination of all these crazy fuckers.  I mean, you have to ask yourself, how reliable is the source?  He killed his wife after all.

Keith

Hi Keith,

I agree with you about the iffy-existence of Researcher - but I also think some pointers about how to introduce him, it, them, etc, into play would be a good idea.

For instance, who do you see even mentioning the Researcher during play? The GM, at all? Or is it strictly a player-interpretation, character-raving thing? is there any authority over the Researcher or his minions? Do you think identifying the hand of the Researcher is a matter of being buried in the Haze, or of clearing it?

And no good saying, "Uh, whatever the group wants." Various dialogues about PTA and Dogs are convincing me that many people will have no idea whatsoever, and won't even recognize that such a choice is there.

It might interest you to know that I teach a course about rats. Usually I don't bring my non-Forge life into the forum discussions, but in this case, this anecdote might be useful for play and possibly design.

Just last week, I assigned my students an in-class essay about rats and learning. They (the students) had been exposed to the idea that learning, per species, has parameters regarding what can be learned as well as what rewards learning.

Rats, for instance, learn to navigate mazes quickly and easily. A very effective means of negative reinforcement for them is induced nausea - they "get" that feeling yucky means "bad decision this time." Contrary to popular belief, they don't perceive electric shock in the same way. It hurts them, but they don't learn from it.

Humans, on the other hand, learn other stuff quickly and easily, like languages (as kids anyway). They really aren't too swift at navigating mazes - even if you think you're "good at directions," you're pretty pathetic compared to a rat.  A very effective means of negative reinforcement for them is shame/status. To humans (and dogs), electric shock not only hurts, but indicates failure and disapproval, and as such is extremely aversive.

The students did quite well, but they did struggle. It's awfully hard for people to understand that non-humans are often very cognitive and capable of sophisticated behavior ... but not our behavior. We tend to make two groups: "pepole + little furry people" vs. "weird blind meat-robots." To state that creatures do internally construct and deal with the world much like we do, but in a way and with priorities that reflect their evolutionary/ecological history, not ours, is a very hard concept, at least at first exposure.

Imagine a rat placed into a human-type problem-set, rewarded and punished by the absence/presence of electric shock! This is pretty horrific - the animal has no idea what is being asked and no idea how this "hurting" thing is supposed to be involved.

I also asked the students whether humans really can "learn anything and everything" as commonly imagined, or whether we can learn something well/quickly when social consequences are not involved. I think a few existential-crisis fuses blew at that point, although many of them did try bravely, which is all that matters at this point in the term.

So, anyway, it seems to me that your game does exactly this with humans: placed into a problem-set that is not socially constructed but rather about something they don't "get," rewarded and punished by some feedback they can perceive but cannot understand as related to their decisions ...

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Good questions.  I seem to suffer from the delusion that everyone will know what to do cause I do.

I think identifying the Researcher is simpley the illusion of clearing the Haze.  The characters think they are getting answers, but the problem is that the answers don't make any sense.  With that in mind I think that the initial introduction of the Researcher has to be by the Players, either collectively or individually.  However once he is out there he becomes the GM's toy.  Now how to convey that passage of control in the text will be tricky.

As to the Others, I think they could be introduced by the Players or the GM and once they are let out of the box and into the environment, they stay out of the box.  The GM untimately controls both, but in the case of the Others, their nature is defined by anyone at the table, making them a solid in the environement, while the Researcher is defined by the Players and then filled with contradictions by the GM, making him the nausea you mentioned affecting the rats.

That is some crazy interesting shit.  I'm glad I ignorantly was able to grab it.  It seems I got mad skills and don't even realize it.

Keith

The Spiral needs to be inevitable I think.  I shouldn't even
have Good Acts listed I think.  Everything you do should lead to the
eventual bottoming out.  The game isn't about winning.  It's about
getting a taste of your life spiralling out of control.  It's about
sainity and how flimsy reality is.

Keith,

Now mind you, I'm pretty dense at figuring out mechanics from game texts to begin with.

Some of the bits that throw me off are the various equations scribbled in the margins. I see that bit of non-prose symbolics and start looking for a mechanic. Then I realize it's just the sort of mathematical recursion that a schizophrenic would latch on to.

I also kept figuring the highlighting was some sort of cue for "This is a mechanical element."

Would anyone who didn't already know about dice pools be able to figure that mechanic out?

Ron,

I'm actually really excited to discover you are knowledgable about Rattus.

Hey Spooky,

That's a good point.  The illusion of the hope for a better day is a nice contrast.  The key for the game I think is that it has to be an illusion.  Sure someone may somehow pull it off, but the odds are ridiculous on the scale of me walk'n on the moon.  Maybe removing the Good Acts isn't what is needed but instead more ways to fuck up.  Dunno.

Larry,

That's a good question.  Something I need to clear up.  Part of me though doesn't want people to be able to explain it all.  I would rather it be more like, "How the fuck do we play this?"  "Just read it dude.  It will make sense by the end."

Keith

Sorry for late post, but I'd think more ways to fuck up is the way to go.

Right now, the suspense of will they escape or won't they is one of the key things driving this game, and IMO the big source of suspense. Once that is fully closed off, it becomes a matter of sending characters as lab rats through the maze, not for education, but for amusement. That can grow old real quick. (Witness Kill Puppies for Satan; while a fine game that does what it sets out to do, after awhile it becomes obvious that the characters are at a dead end.) In Untitled, as it currently stands, there really isn't even the distraction of "kewl powerz" or "joining the enemy" as an alternative. Playing the game for comedic value (like kpfs or Paranoia) isn't really an option, either.

Of course, long-term play might not even be on your radar screen. But if it is, the hope of escape will be the hook that draws people back, while the entertainment value of "how will character X fuck this up now?" will provide interest along the way. 

H'mmmm ... count me as a dissenter. I think that Hope needs to be real, and the Maze can end.

Now, in-game, that might not be pretty. The endings of Brazil and Pi come to mind. But in game-mechanics terms, I'd like to play the game in which that's a possibility.

And yeah, it doesn't have to be a very big possibility.

Best,
Ron