In a previous thread, I was asked some interesting questions and given some interesting suggestions that I jumped to address, only realizing later that I'd drifted far from my intended purpose of working on my game's setting.

This thread is intended to continue those parts of the discussion that I wish to separate from my setting work.  Here is a part of a very interesting post which I feel belongs here, and to which I will respond shortly (though feel free to beat me to it!):

Sydney wrote:
This is a chronic, chronic problem of games that try to apply the traditional D&D/GURPS/White Wolf model to anything besides "let's win the fight at the least possible risk to ourselves." If your game-text is all about one thing -- seeking out and confronting inhuman horror, for example -- but your mechanical rewards are all about another thing -- e.g. the more fights you win, the better you fight next time; or, the more you stay at home and train, the better you get  -- then you have a fatal disconnect. The key is to figure out what kind of behavior you want from the players -- the players, the players, the players; forget the characters for a minute, they're not real anyway, they're just instruments of the players' imaginations. Then make your mechanics reward  that kind of behavior and nothing else.

This is a tremendously personal choice, but I can make some suggestions based on what you've already said:
- A "realistic" skill system that makes characters more proficient the more they practice when not adventuring is a game-killer: It encourages everyone to stay home, instead of going out and getting in trouble.
- A "realistic" money system that makes characters pay for everything, and forces players to concentrate on how much they spend and how much they earn, won't work for you: It encourages everyone to focus on money, not adventure and horror.
- A traditional "XP" system that makes characters better fighters the more fights they win, as in D&D, is a mediocre fit for what you want: It encourages getting into trouble, but never more trouble than you can currently handle -- if you have an overwhelming foe, the logical response is to go kill off some wimps first, so you can get strong enough to take on the big guy.
- A "lose to win" system, as in FATE ("Aspects"), Tony Lower-Basch's Capes, or Miller's With Great Power..., where being defeated this time gives you some kind of points that you can use to buy victory next time, and where buying victory tends to expend your points and leave you vulnerable to defeat again, might be a very good fit: It nicely replicates the whole "we lose, we lose again, we lose again, we finally win!" dynamic of many heroic stories. It can even be "realistic" if you justify it in terms of, "dang, you had to run screaming from the monster that time, but next time you'll be prepared for its horrific appearance," or "hey, you lost that fight, but in the process you think you spotted the monster's crucial weakness -- you'll be ready for it next time!" (Viz. every second episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
- A "fallout" system, as in Dogs in the Vineyard, where your character can gain new traits and abilities from being defeated or harmed, might be a very good match, too: "Okay, I barely escaped with my life that time, so now I have the trait 'I fear demons' at level 10 -- next time I'm in a fight with a demon, I can harness my fear to fight harder and win!"

Hi Carl,

Your Power 19 file is very interesting ! Great propositions from other members too!

My take for question #3:

I suggest that you bring about your Ideologies under a few "families", so that you have you players minimally work together. The player's goals would be to see their faction prosper by completing important political/social objectives.

The best example I could state would be Mage RPG, where you have 3 big factions (Traditions, Technocracy, Nephandi) each comprising a variety of positions.  Thus you could have Pro-Magic, Anti-Magic and "Resurrectionist" factions, with Ideologies within each (eg. Curative Pro-Magic, Opportunist Pro-Magic, etc.). You could even have Faction Points, representing one PC's standing and influence within his faction, and allow players to total their PC's FPs when acting together - forcing group co-operation. These wouldn't be "experience points", but a measure of your world's global change towards the goal they work for. Attaining thresholds (e.g. every 10 Pro-Magic points) could give a similar bonus to motivate and reflect the world's change. I think the online game "[Something] of Camelot" has a similar mechanism, spreading players over 3 warring factions with incentives for intra-faction co-operation.

Suppose for example that your PC group is made up of 5 Pro-Magic PCs, each with his own Ideology. By playing the first part of your campaign, they complete 5 major plot points - gathering 5 Pro-Magic Faction Points together and various Ideology points individually. At mid-time,

"Winning the game" could simply imply winning 100 Faction Points and thus deciding your World's fate, representing the Faction's advance over others and ending up with 1) a Magic world ; 2) a Magicless world ; 3) the world as it was before the Cataclysm.

Moreover, secondary Ideology points could determine, within each Faction "sucess", which Ideology dominates, e.g. a Magic World tainted by Opportunist Magi or healed by Curative Magi, etc.

Non-magi could have the advantage of never suffering from the negative effects of using magic, and perhaps winning more easily Ideology points (if not Faction points, or vice-versa).

That way you give both your players and characters a setting-oriented goal. This could be Gamist as well as Narrativist, not unlike Paul Czege's My Life With Master for ex. The GM's role could be to oppose them (if you take a Narrativist system) or to challenge them (with a Gamist system). Since I'm not convinced about the existence of Simulationist systems (at least, significatively different from Gamist ones), I'll leave it without an example, with all due respect.

Just my 2 cents.

Erick

Listen to Sydney, Sydney speaketh much truth.

I'd only tweak one thing.  Instead of a Lose to Win mechanic which does nicely fit most heroic fiction...how about a Win to Lose mechanic...the more you win, the more inevitable your finally losing will be.  That fits in with the whole struggling against an enemy who eventually must destroy you.

Something like every time the characters succeed (by some standard) the GM gets a point.  The GM then uses that point to destroy civilization.  As the players fight and win to save their own little corner of the world they hear stories about another kingdom to the west that's fallen to the Orcs.  A favorite NPC...the Good King they held in awe...the "King Arthur" figure who saved them from the "Saxons"...yeah him...how many points will it take to just kill him off.  When the PCs come back from successfully running to ground and destroying a rampaging beast they return to find their village weaping and mourning the death of the King...the death that they were powerless to stop.  The death that was inevitable.

To me...a mechanic like that (or some alternative with similar effect) just exudes menace...its different from anything out there, and it ties directly into the theme of the game.

Wait a minute...how is giving the GM the power to destroy the world a REWARD system...?

Because reward systems are for PLAYERS...and players playing your game WANT to see their character's triumphs displayed against the backdrop of ultimate futility...otherwise they'd be playing some less menacing.

And Ralph is freakin' scary.

Compare Erick's idea vs. Ralph's and think about how different each of those makes the setting, by the way: "The players get points to make the world better if they win" creates a totally, utterly different tone and moral cause-and-effect from "the GM gets points to make the world worse if the PCs win." One way you get Moorcock's Elric and Stormbringer; the other, Tolkein's Aragorn and Frodo.

Personally, I hate, hate, hate, hate hate hate haaaaaaaaaaaaaate "splats" in the Ars Magica / World of Darkness style, because no matter how hard you try, most people will look at that and go, "okay, if I want to play one of those guys, I should have these powers, these goals, and these attitudes, pretty much like everyone else in the same clan/house/tribe/whatever."
D&D's much-maligned race + alignment + class combination actually gives you a fair bit more versatility, and in fact forces players to make choices instead of just following a template: A Lawful Good hobbit thief is a very, very different character from a Chaotic Evil elven thief/warrior, for example. (Every time I think about D&D from an RPG theory perspective, I'm more impressed with it -- not that it's what I want to play, but it's damn good at what it does). Somewhat similarly, Tony Lower-Basch's Capes does a really interesting thing called "click-and-locks" in which you have one list of superpowers, and another list of personalities, and you get to pick one of each and then customize. (Check out http://www.museoffire.com/Games/Downloads/ClickAndLock.swf).

I personally am intrigued by the idea of a mechanic for "high concepts" : y'know, the Hollywood-pitch style of presenting an idea for a story or character, like "it's Wolverine -- only a 90-year-old woman!" or "a noble paladin -- who must atone for summoning a demon!" or "a humble farmboy -- whose epic destiny is to stay a humble farmboy!" Yes, "high concept" is a term of abuse, but the good ones capture something essential: dynamic situations and characters -- ones that can't possibly stay the same as they are, and which therefore can lead to dramatic stories -- are driven by paradox, some profound tension between two things that must be resolved.

In terms of the fiction, we're talking about creating situations (not the whole setting, mind you, but specific locales with a specific cast of NPCs) that are dynamically unstable, torn by profound internal tensions -- which, of course, both sides (or all three sides, or all four...) immediately look to the player-characters to resolve: say, "we must rally all resources against the menace of the Orcs and strike first before they grow too strong!" vs. "the peasants are already overtaxed and the barons restless, we must cut back the watch on the borders before it drives us into bankruptcy, riot, and rebellion!" For your game, this means looking at the setting in terms of latent conflicts that will occur and reoccur wherever the characters go.
In terms of character generation, we're talking about creating characters who can't stand still: Wherever they're from, whatever they used to do, whatever they used to believe, it doesn't work for them anymore, and they have to leave, do something else, find a new cause. The classic Wolverine / gunslinger / ronin character works on this principle, the driving paradox in this case being "I'm all alone with no worthy master to serve -- but my whole life is about fighting for a good cause -- so as soon as I run into a decent person who needs help, I will risk everything for them!" For your game, this means thinking about what a normal knight, mercenary, priest, peasant, etc. would be in this world, and then about what kinds of experiences would make normal life impossible for each, jolting them into adventure.
In terms of reward systems, we're talking about contradictory incentives that pull the players both ways. (Forget the characters, for a moment; they're not real, just instruments, etc.). Ron Edwards's Sorcerer is a classic example: Your player-character is by definition a sorcerer, and your only ability that makes you different from anybody else is your ability to summon demons, and the more demons you summon, the more powerful you become -- and the more you risk falling into madness, damnation, and death (through your Humanity score falling to zero). Tony's Capes is a freakin' maelstrom of contradictory incentives (way too complex to discuss here). For your game, this approach means thinking of two (or more) things the characters should care about and devising mechanics such that protecting one means endangering the other, and trying to protect both equally risks destroying both.

Sydney wrote:
Compare Erick's idea vs. Ralph's

Apologies, David. Feel free to delete the post.

Valamir wrote:
Something like every time the characters succeed (by some standard) the GM gets a point.  The GM then uses that point to destroy civilization.  . . . When the PCs come back from successfully running to ground and destroying a rampaging beast they return to find their village weaping and mourning the death of the King...the death that they were powerless to stop.  The death that was inevitable.

Sydney wrote:
In terms of the fiction, we're talking about creating situations . . . that are dynamically unstable

Sydney wrote:
In terms of character generation, we're talking about creating characters who can't stand still:

Sydney wrote:
In terms of reward systems, we're talking about contradictory incentives that pull the players both ways . . . For your game, this approach means thinking of two (or more) things the characters should care about and devising mechanics such that protecting one means endangering the other, and trying to protect both equally risks destroying both.

David wrote: The players know what situations give the GM points, and see him accrue them.  This will lead to a nice feeling of dread and hopelessness ("Shit, we met a nice farmer who fed us for free, something terrible will happen soon"), but may also lead to bizarre, meta-gamist choices ("No, don't ask for free food, if he says yes we'll be facing some fallout that much sooner!").

I could go on for hours about the Myth of Actor Stance, the Fallacy of Meta Avoidance, and the Dogma of Immersion...but I've done all that before.  I'll be happy to rant further on those topics if you're interested but otherwise I'll spare you the diatribe.

Instead I'll point you to my last post in  This Thread which has my most recent commentary on the topic and move on.

Above you list 2 options:
1) GM accrues points and keeps them secret
2) GM accrues points and lets players know.

I'll throw out another just to stir up some more ideas.

3) Players choose when the GM gets points.  In exchange they get something else.

Ralph's #3 - I like it. Especially because you could use it let players "buy" precisely the kind of misery they want for their characters:

example of hypothetical mechanic wrote:
FIRST PLAYER: Okay, that encounter was bad, but if we just stay on the trail, we'll be out of the forest in another two days and...
SECOND PLAYER: Two days? Excuse me, we haven't eaten for a day already.
THIRD PLAYER: Yeah, remember how we had to dump all our remaining food to keep that thing from chasing us?
FIRST PLAYER: Oh. Right.
SECOND PLAYER: So what we can get if we spend Expendiency Points?
GM: How many?
THIRD PLAYER: Five!
FIRST PLAYER: Dude, we are not going to give him that many. Two, max.
GM: Two Expediency buys you... lemme see. [consults rules and notes]... Okay, as you're walking along through the forest, weak from hunger, you see a clearing up ahead, and a little cottage, with a pretty little peasant girl gathering berries. She smiles at you...
SECOND PLAYER: No! Last peasant girl who gave us free food ended up with her father getting possessed by a demon and eating her eyeballs.
THIRD PLAYER: Yeah, we're not dragging any more innocents into this. We keep walkin'.
FIRST PLAYER: "Go back in the house, child," I say as we walk past. "Don't you know never to talk to strangers?"
GM: She shrinks back inside.... Okay, so you keep walking, and as you do, you [points to first player] start remembering this old rhyme your mother used to sing to you -- something about the Little People, and how they would bring milk and bread to those whose singing pleased them -- you think could probably hum it if you...
SECOND PLAYER: Uh, wait, is this anything like the fairy rhyme my last character's mom taught him? The one he used when our ship was about to sink?
GM: Sorta.
THIRD PLAYER: Hell no, then.
GM: Hey, I'm sure your old character is very happy with the Mermaid Queen in her palace beneath the waves.
FIRST PLAYER: To the extent that he, y'know, still can be consider to exist as an individual, sure.
GM: Picky, picky. Okay. You bite your lip and suppress the urge to hum the old fairy rhyme. Now you [points at second player] think you see a herd of deer grazing, just a little bit away. If you just leave the path for a minute, you could probably get into bowshot and bag one for venison...
SECOND PLAYER: And then get lost on the way back and attacked by those wolf-things like last time? Yeah, right, I'm just so eager to "just leave the path for a minute."
THIRD PLAYER: What else?
GM: [consulting a table] Guys, these aren't going to get any better as we go, you realize that?
FIRST PLAYER: Yeah. We know.
SECOND PLAYER: Let's go back to the peasant girl and ask her for some food.
THIRD PLAYER: Right. Figuring out how to save her sounds like more fun than another monster fight or trying to deal with the Fae again.
GM: That'll be two Expediency, please.

Valamir wrote:
I could go on for hours about the Myth of Actor Stance, the Fallacy of Meta Avoidance, and the Dogma of Immersion...but I've done all that before.  I'll be happy to rant further on those topics if you're interested but otherwise I'll spare you the diatribe.

David wrote:
The GM keeps his own score card, deciding for himself what counts as a player "victory" and tallying points accordingly.  This info is kept secret from the players.  . . . (Although "GMs, don't let your players read this section of the book!" might be a logistical issue...)

Sydney wrote:
Even the "meta" choices aren't so bizarre when you think about the source material: How often are wandering heroes in dark stories really reluctant to let people help them, precisely because they know that horrible things will happen to anyone decent who gets entangled with them? (Not just in horror: Look at Westerns, or the Incredible Hulk, or Wolverine).

Sydney wrote:
You can say, "The pit's too big to jump!" or "It's a big, scary monster" or "you feel like you're gonna die" all you like, their imagination may not be up to it. It can actually help make the fiction more concrete if you say, "It's a big pit, you need to roll a 12 on 2d6 to jump over it, good frickin' luck" or "It's a big, scary monster, look how many more dice it has than you [clatter, clatter]" or "you feel like you're gonna die, here, let me cross out all your hit points except this last one."

Oh, I'm right there with you and your friend: I love building settings, I've got a history degree and am a professional journalist so I am full of fun fiddly facts and sociological patterns to play with, I love the historical appendices in the back of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and get irritable when the Silmarilion fails to explain what the economic basis of the Second Age elven kingdoms is (who's growing the food for all these frickin' heroes, anyway?).

But.

You do not have fifteen years of play to build up this setting, like your friend E. with his "Telvas" world. Even if you did, you probably couldn't convey all the coolness in concentrated form to someone reading your game-book. So, as a practical matter, you and anyone else running a game in Lendrhald is going to have to do what E. probably did quite often for the first, oh, ten years of running Telvas: Make stuff up -- either on the spot, or staying one step ahead of the players by going home after each session and feverishly prepping the next one.

The traditional solution to this problem is to never, ever, ever admit to the players that the setting is being fabricated for their enjoyment. But this means your entire social interaction is based on lying -- either the players lying to themselves (when they darn well know that you just made something up) or the GM lying to the players ("Oh, no, that was in my notes all along, really") -- which is corrosive to real, open communication, which is a big deal, seeing that all the game really is, is you and your friends sitting around talking to each other about cool stuff.

There's at least one other way, however: a way to keep the setting "real," in the sense you're using of "driven by its own internal logic rather than by whim," even as you are inventing it on the spot. I think good GMs have always done this, although without necessarily being conscious of it. The trick is to shift your attention from getting the setting itself defined in every detail -- since, as a practical matter, you can't -- and instead focus on the process by which new setting is generated. In other words, we're talking about algorithms for creating consistent fiction. Then the players may well realize, "Oh, yeah, the GM just made that up right now," but they'll also think, "but of course, there would be a Dark Temple / legionary outpost / crazed hermit right here, that makes perfect sense!"

An example of how you'd set up these algorithms, and some factors to seed the system, for Star Wars:

Sydney wrote:
There was a great (if long and sometimes rambling) discussion of what is the bare minimum you need to create a usable setting on the fly over at Vincent Baker's blog, Anyway. My bottom-line lesson I took away is that what you need is (a) a few "rules" to generate new setting elements on the fly and (b) a couple of "seed crystals," specific and vivid images which suggest a whole bunch of possibilities.

For example, Star Wars:

Seed Crystals:
a) A really huge wedge-shaped spaceship is chasing a tiny little one! Zap, zap!
b) An old monk-dude and a dude in a mask with a black cape are fighting with laser swords!

Rules:
a) The Evil Galactic Empire relies on overwhelming brute force, not individual skill or courage.
b) The heroic Rebel Alliance makes up for limited resources with skill and courage.
c) A Jedi Order once used "The Force" for cool psychic powers, but using the Force out of anger led some to Evil.
d) There is a Galaxy-spanning civilization with interstellar travel, planet-busting weapons, and sentient robots -- but all of it basically feels like something out of the year 1945.

If everybody at the table agrees on these elements, you should be able to generate specifics as needed pretty fast. E.g. in Star Wars, "does the ship have a teleporter? Well, no, that doesn't feel very 1945 -- but launching lots of fighters does!" or "If the Galactic Empire are mostly such thugs, who'd be a properly scary villain? Ooh, a fallen Jedi!"

Last summer sometime Ninja J and I spent a whole afternoon walking all the heck over Northampton. Among many other things, we talked about a beloved old game he'd GMed; particularly, we talked about how rich and alive its setting was, how detailed. His players ate it up, he said, they'd go on and on about how compelling, complete, fully realized the setting was.

Then he told me how he'd done it. He'd taken three principles - I wish I could remember them in particular, J please step in here, but they were like "nobody thinks that they themselves are evil," "the Grand Galactic Empire is procedurally conservative," and "nobody really enjoys their job" - three principles something like those, and whenever any of his players asked him about anything in the setting, he'd simply apply those principles to create the answer.

"I duck into a broom closet." "Okay. There are a bunch of reg-77f portbrushes in there, but someone hasn't bothered to replace them yet, they're all slimy and they smell." All the details you'd need to bring the setting home, give it weight and momentum, and yet J didn't precreate the contents of a single broom closet.

Hey David, I'm going to offer a couple of points on the subject of preexisting world.  They may be of use to you, or they may be examples of irreconcileable philosophical differences.  But I'll start by saying, I know exactly what you're saying.  A few years back, the words coming out of your mouth, came out of mine.  I have a library of hundreds of history books which I've used over the years largely as RPG references.  I once spent 8 hours in a library doing research so I could accurately portray what an authentic celtic village looked like.  "This world is preexisting on its own and you're just traveling through it" was my own holy grail.

Then I got over it.

Partially this was because I no longer have the time to dedicate to that level of game prep (the rise in popularity of eurogames demonstrates that thats pretty common these days).  More importantly it was because I realized I didn't need it to enjoy the game.  So here's the 2 points I want to make on the topic.

1) Imagine a man once took a family road trip across country.  It was the greatest family vacation of his life, and he still remembers it fondly.  On the way they stopped every 100 miles and he and his dad took a wiz by the side of the road.  But it would be a mistake for him to think that the only way he could ever enjoy a vacation again in his life is if he wizzes by the side of the road.  Further, despite that likely being one of the more memorable aspects of the trip that always gets brought up and laughed about...it would be a mistake to conclude that those episodes were what made the trip fun.

You may want to consider the possibility that your memories of Telvas are the same way.  It may have been the greatest campaign of your life and you still remember it fondly, but it would be a mistake to think that that's the only sort of campaign you could ever enjoy.  All of that meticulous planning and tracking may be the most memorable aspect of the campaign and the thing that evokes the most comments and admiration; but it would be a mistake to conclude that that specifically was the primary reason you found the campaign fun.

Point being that there's more than one way to skin a cat...don't assume you need your current game to skin it the same way...or even that it needs to be a cat.

2) The key to a good campaign setting is one that engages the players.  If the players are engaged, its good.  if not, not so much.  Building a deep preexisting detailed setting that is not deformed by the characters (an interesting turn of phrase, that) is one tool that can lead to engaged players.  To the extent it does, good.  But it is neither guarenteed to do so, nor is it the only way to do so.  I would argue that its not even the most reliable way of doing so.

In my experience a much more reliable means of getting players to engage with the setting is to give them an ownership interest in it.  We are most likely to be interested in things that we help create, and we are most likely to create things that we find interesting.  Consider how popular writing fan fic or doing mods for computer games is.  In fact, PC game companies today design games especially to be mod-able by the players because 1) they know that players who have a sense of ownership in the game will keep the game alive for years with very little additional expense, and 2) legions of creative players can invent more, better, and cooler stuff than any designers could on their own.

Similarly, in an RPG, players who have a sense of ownership in a campaign will tend to be much more engaged for a longer period of time, and generally the combined creative powers of the other players at the table will create more, better, and cooler stuff than any GM (or setting book author) could on their own.

You may decide you're not interested in pursuing such an approach for your current project.  But I highly recommend you don't rule it out just based on preexisting assumptions or a limited past experience (no matter how profound).  Experiment around playing some games that operate on a different paradigm and see what you think.

Ralph

Ralph-

I hear ya on the Holy Grail realism tip.  To be honest, I'm actually a story-first guy at heart... plus, I'm brainstorming a near-future fascist political satire game whose agenda will likely be pure Gamism. 

A lot of the motivation to do Lendrhald the way A. and I are doing it derives from having played with a lot of rules lawyers, physics nerds, and guys who are in many ways a pain to run for; and empathizing with them.  Every time a player tried to do something smart that didn't work, or something nonsensical that did work, we thought, "but, but that's stupid!"  Thus was born the Holy Grail ideal of a game in which that need never be said.

I've never played a game that succeeded in that, and most of the ones I've heard of that try sound lower on the flavor spectrum than A. and I like our fantasy.  So, we've concluded that having a 100% sensible game with a distinct feel to it is a worthy endeavor, regardless of how difficult being 100% sensible makes the design process.

Valamir wrote:
2) The key to a good campaign setting is one that engages the players.  If the players are engaged, its good.  if not, not so much.  Building a deep preexisting detailed setting that is not deformed by the characters (an interesting turn of phrase, that) is one tool that can lead to engaged players.  To the extent it does, good.  But it is neither guarenteed to do so, nor is it the only way to do so.  I would argue that its not even the most reliable way of doing so.

Valamir wrote:
In my experience a much more reliable means of getting players to engage with the setting is to give them an ownership interest in it.

Valamir wrote:
generally the combined creative powers of the other players at the table will create more, better, and cooler stuff than any GM (or setting book author) could on their own.

Valamir wrote:
Experiment around playing some games that operate on a different paradigm and see what you think.

Sydney wrote:
you and anyone else running a game in Lendrhald is going to have to do what E. probably did quite often for the first, oh, ten years of running Telvas: Make stuff up

Sydney wrote:
The traditional solution to this problem is to never, ever, ever admit to the players that the setting is being fabricated for their enjoyment. But this means your entire social interaction is based on lying

Sydney wrote:
The trick is to shift your attention from getting the setting itself defined in every detail -- since, as a practical matter, you can't -- and instead focus on the process by which new setting is generated.

Sydney wrote:
the example that got me thinking was from Vincent Baker's website, www.lumpley.com, specifically http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=73

Sydney wrote:
Now, looping back to my last post, and that "Expediency Point" example: Yes, those hypothetical players are entirely aware that their GM just made up this stuff on the spot -- that the little girl, or the faerie rhyme, or the herd of deer did not exist in the game world until they became potentially useful for the story. At the same time, the players also entirely aware that all of these things are being generated according to certain rules and a consistent logic

Sydney wrote:
GM: Two Expediency buys you... lemme see. [consults rules and notes]... Okay, as you're walking along through the forest, weak from hunger, you see a clearing up ahead, and a little cottage, with a pretty little peasant girl gathering berries. She smiles at you...
SECOND PLAYER: No! Last peasant girl who gave us free food ended up with her father getting possessed by a demon and eating her eyeballs.

example wrote:
GM: You finish eating, and the adorable peasant girl smiles at you.  (Pause.)  Do you head out?
FIRST PLAYER: Let's wait here.
SECOND PLAYER: Yeah, I want to see what happens to her.
THIRD PLAYER: I check the windows.
GM: She looks very confused.  "Do you wish to stay?" she asks.
FIRST PLAYER: "No, we have to be on our way."  How long should we wait around?
SECOND PLAYER: Maybe the inevitable won't happen 'til we're out of sight.
FIRST PLAYER: Shit.  I don't want to leave her.
THIRD PLAYER: Well, think about it, in-game our characters have no reason to think she's in danger...
FIRST PLAYER: We might have a bad feeling after previous experiences...
THIRD PLAYER: *skeptical look*
FIRST PLAYER: Okay, fine.
GM: You exit the little house and return to the trail.  You walk a ways, everything is still.  Then, just as you're rounding a bend, you hear-
SECOND PLAYER: A scream.  *sigh*

Sydney wrote:
The bottomline reason I like players getting to know what the mechanics are, and getting to see the numbers (or lists, or Tarot cards, or whatever you're using), is that your game's rules aren't merely the physics of your imaginary world: they represent the moral cause and effect as well . . . it's a statement the players should see so they can begin to feel the reality, not just of the details, but of the logic underlying those details.

Dave, do you, personally, live in a universe that is "100% sensible" and "operates solely according to physics"? Because I sure don't. Ever heard of the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska -- the hundred-million-dollar product of the extraordinary power of Alaska's Senator Stevens on the Appropriations Committee, connecting a tiny island with almost no population to the mainland? How about the Roman Empire's refusal to work out any kind of succession system, even after repeated civil wars over who'd get to be Emperor? The expenditure of massive resources by societies throughout history on building functionally non-productive structures like temples, up to the point of self-imposed ecological collapse on Easter Island after building so many giant heads out of stone? Physics doesn't explain these things: Psychology and politics do, and they're way more complex and paradoxical... although even physics isn't "100% sensible": Light is a particle and a wave; if you learn the position of an electron, you can't know its velocity; time slows down the faster you go; etc.

Let me reemphasize something crucial:

Your job, as the game designer, is not simply to write rules that replicate physical phenomena in a plausible way. What's more important is the moral cause and effect. The ancient Greeks believed in hubris: It's admirable to strive for success, but the most successful inevitably overstep themselves and bring about their own destruction. Medieval Christians and Muslims believed that those who submitted to the will of God would be blessed with success, and those who were cursed with failure must have earned it by evil deeds or thoughts. 19th century Englishmen believed that the most virtuous would succeed by dint of their superior rationality and self-discipline, and that the lower orders of society were condemned to their state by their own sloth and brutishness. Modern Americans tend to be believe that everyone should be happy and successful, and if you're not, you need to figure out who's to blame (government? liberals? big business?), because it can't possibly be you, and it certainly can't be just some random damage from an unfeeling universe.

Your players absolutely believe in some kind of moral cause-and-effect, even if they don't consciously realize it; you do too; I know I do (even though I realize my ideas are often irrational -- I've had about five years of therapy....). So if your written rules stick purely to physics, then it'll be up to the GM to enforce all the higher-order cause-and-effect. But you can write rules that create a universe like that human beings believe they live in (and, heck, maybe we really do), where actions have moral consequences.

So maybe everybody knows in Lendrhald that "only the good die young," or that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," or that "if anything good happens, it won't last," or "if someone helps you out of the goodness of their heart, you can bet they're too nice to last long." These aren't "superstitition": these are cultural attitudes based on observation of how their world really works.

I like having moral cause and effect exist within the world (for all the reasons you so eloquently stated), but not as transparent game mechanics.  It's something that's very complex, like psychology.  I think attempting to simplify in this case produces results that will feel contrived to the players.  That was basically the point of my example about leaving the little girl's house.

A world in which everyone thinks "if anything good happens, it won't last" is very different from one in which this theory is actually provable by simple experiment and observation.

In the Middle Ages, a lot of people spent part of the time acting like they were afraid of going to Hell (going to Church, giving the Church as much money as they could) and the rest of the time acting like it was life on earth that mattered ("This is my chair, if you take it I'll kill you!")  If Hell had been provable ("Danny just died, let's see whether he floats upward in a column of white light or is swallowed by a fiery pit!"), society would have turned into something unrecognizable from the context of actual history (everyone paralyzed by fear of doing something Evil, hoping to die before being subjected to any more temptations).

To me, it seems like a tall order to ask players to:
a) separate out-of-game knowledge ("the world definitely works this way") from in-game knowledge ("the world appears to possibly work this way"), and
b) refuse to perform in-game investigations that would expand their in-game knowledge ("let's keep track of good things vs. bad things, to be better prepared for the next bad thing"), and
c) collaborate with the GM's attempt to make things creepy ("uh oh, what's gonna happen?!") instead of getting bored because the creepiness-attempts feel contrived ("we leave the house; when do we hear her scream?")

Actually, now I have an idea: if there's a significant random element to the "if anything good happens, it won't last" mechanism that keeps it from being testable, we may avoid trouble:

- Instead of the GM assigning a "5 points of Bad" event as soon as the players spend 5 points of Expediency, maybe the GM could make 5 rolls on the Metaphysical Fallout table, which is filled with highly variable results. 

- Or, there could be a "5 points of Bad" event lurking out there for the players, but die rolls at regular intervals would determine when it strikes (I'd want these roll results to be secret, though).

Spending Expediency Points would still be correlated with some form of eventual badness, but characters would have plenty of sensible ways to respond to this (rationalization, denial, paranoia) given its hazy nature.  Kind of like Hell in the Middle Ages!  (I hope.  Haven't thought this through yet...)

So this would be a reward system in which the existence of the system is transparent ("The GM's rolling on the Fallout table!"), but the moment-to-moment workings of it are not  ("What'd he roll?  Damn he has a good poker face...").  The incentives on player behavior would be less, but the tone of the game would still be conveyed.

I see what you're getting at, but I just don't spend much time worrying about "in-character" vs. "out-of-character" knowledge anymore: the players are both the authors and the audience of the story, and I've always found people pretty capable of distinguishing those two roles where they need to be distinguished. I've heard it argued that the best way to ensure a character doesn't discover a secret is to tell the player that there's a secret and that their character shouldn't know it yet: Players are marvellously inventive at torturing their own alter egos.

Likewise, I don't worry much about surprising the players: it's fun, but it's the cherry on top, not the ice cream. Anyway, how many horror stories really rely on surprising the audience? Yeah, sure, the monster may go "boo!" at an unexpected moment, but everyone in the audience knows something bad's gonna happen, even while the characters blunder along obviously. In fact, that's the real source of tension most of the time: "No! Don't go in there!"

So, as far as your three concerns:

David wrote:
To me, it seems like a tall order to ask players to:
a) separate out-of-game knowledge ("the world definitely works this way") from in-game knowledge ("the world appears to possibly work this way"), and
b) refuse to perform in-game investigations that would expand their in-game knowledge ("let's keep track of good things vs. bad things, to be better prepared for the next bad thing"), and
c) collaborate with the GM's attempt to make things creepy ("uh oh, what's gonna happen?!") instead of getting bored because the creepiness-attempts feel contrived ("we leave the house; when do we hear her scream?")

Sydney-

I'm enjoying this discussion, and have plenty more to say on the topics you addressed.  I think we're getting too general for this thread, though.  I'll PM you with some thoughts, and maybe we can port some version of this into an Actual Play thread.

-Dave

I think it's best if this thread return to some of the specific brainstorms-in-progress, re:
- processes and elements for generating new content ("rules", "seed crystals", "principles" etc. and what makes them work), including story events the GM can use to encourage (or force) encounters with the creepy bits in the setting
- character creation elements that encourage encounters with the creepy bits in the setting
- not-testable-in-game mechanics for conveying themes (very complex? heavily randomized?)
- other ways to use system to convey the feel I'm going for, given the constraints I'm currently imposing (cannot make it sensible or advantageous for characters to think or act in ways that are too bizarre for players to empathize with)

Lendrhald's primary creative agenda is Simulationist, for anyone that helps.

I popped in here from a different thread. I was talking about trying to get player contributions in setting development, and I'd still like to argue for it.

To give a little perspective, I also have some strong Simulationist tendencies. I was 'alpha Storyguide' of an Ars Magica saga that ran for a long period, and as I saw it, my role there basically had two pieces: rules maven, and world consistency tyrant. Under my enlightened rule <ahem>, we had 7 years with 6 or 7 different GMs running stories at different times, with only a couple hiccups that had to be retconned out. So I very much sympathize with the concern that, if one lets players add freely to the setting, it will wreak havoc with a carefully constructed world consistency. (N.B., I suspect many here won't share that concern. That idea is noted, but for purposes of this post, at least, I'm going to treat it as valid.)

Turning to Lendrhald, my impression is one that much of the inviting bits of creepiness about the setting is that, frankly, the PCs are in the middle of a largely unknown world, and that there will be chunks of that world that may never get understood by the characters, or quite likely the players. I'm not going to go into detail again (see my post in the other thread), but I strongly believe that if you try to decide these facts and hide them from the players, you're doomed to failure. So I think you would be well-served by mechanics that let players/GMs add truly unknown mysteries to the world -- mysteries that, at time of creation, really are not understood by anyone. And yet at the same time we want the game to reflect a Simulationist's core value of world consistency.

So, let us attempt to reward the behavior that we want to see in players. We want to see them adding strange things to the world, things which are creepy and unexplained; yet we want these things tied into existing facts. We want the things that are added to usually play into the characters' story. I think this is not at all impossible. Far from a final system, but let me attempt to do so:

Create some form of metagame currency, let me call it Coins. Whenever a player wants to add something to the world, there is a base price to do so: 5 Coins. That's a lot, so players shouldn't just add things very often; usually they will try to take advantage of the discount. For every previously established aspect of the world that this addition ties into, there is a reduction in cost by 1 Coin; this discount can be taken back by tying the mystery to other things after it is established. So let me take my example of an underground bunker in the desert, created as a convenience to escape flying abominations. That costs 5 Coins, and the player can't afford it; so he adds that the door is marked with a glyph that the players saw in the ruined city on the other side of the continent (1), and that inside the bunker they find the reeking bodies of 4 Orcs (2). The player pays 3 Coins, and a sheet is drawn up for the mystery of the bunker. If the players never come back to it, the 3 Coins are lost and the mystery endures. But, instead, 2 sessions later the GM has the players find a rotting map with the location of the bunker clearly marked. Now the GM takes a Coin and is entitled to spend it ... on something I haven't figured out yet -- I don't want to use it in the Buffy style of 'make life hell points' because of the Simulationism, though maybe something similar can be worked out. I also have to think about how players acquire Coins (aside from linking to existing things); maybe they get paid whenever the GM uses something paid-off that they created. Hmm.

Now I see a lot of flaws in this, so as I say, not a final system (I made it up in the last 20 minutes), but maybe it can point a way towards how you might try to tie together metagame systems with a Simulationist philosophy.

It would be valuable to me too to see if Davids question can be answered, rather than if he can be persuaded to a different style of play.

Threlicus wrote:
much of the inviting bits of creepiness about the setting is that, frankly, the PCs are in the middle of a largely unknown world

Threlicus wrote:
Now I see a lot of flaws in this, so as I say, not a final system (I made it up in the last 20 minutes), but maybe it can point a way towards how you might try to tie together metagame systems with a Simulationist philosophy.

David wrote:
- I am definitely open to some form of allowing GMs to generate new setting content.
- I want to exercise pretty rigorous standards of consistency with world plot, physics, logic and culture for any new setting generated.
- Metagame incentives that naturally tend to influence how the characters think and act give me the willies.

David wrote:
It really is a cool idea, but rather than upholding my Simulationist goals (e.g. "the world makes sense"), your example seems to uphold Narrativist goals (e.g. "the world elements have good story potential").  Coming up with something because it's convenient or cool and then trying to shoehorn it into interrelatedness with developed world elements is the easiest way to break a consistent world.  ("Uh, so, wait, if the only food that Orcs can eat for more than a week grows only in humid climates, why did they have a dwelling in a desert spot nine days travel away from the nearest jungle?")

Threlicus wrote:
My goal right now is to try to convince you that not all metagame systems need necessarily influence how characters think and act.

David wrote:
I don't think that these are insurmountable issues, though I'm not going to be able to work them out on a message board.

Threlicus wrote:
. . . you will have some work to do to try to construct such a system; but I think it should be possible, except maybe for the most diehard of immersionist players.

Threlicus wrote:
Add a system which rewards and encourages the kinds of contributions lining up with your Simulationist ideals, because it will be a way for you and the players at the game table to help a player who doesn't Get It to Get It, and you've got a lot of potential (and a game I would definitely be interested in playing, either as a player OR a GM.)

Threlicus wrote:
I think you hear "players can add to the world" and immediately think "Oh my God, what if the player doesn't Get It?" . . . a player cognizant of the setting's tone . . . is perfectly capable of adding good, consistent stuff to the setting -- always granting that it is not necessarily the *same* good stuff that the GM, or you the game author, might have added.

Threlicus wrote:
Furthermore, I'd like to argue that such a system is likely to, in actual practice, lead to *more* creepy unknown rather than less.

Threlicus wrote:
What I am seeing, though, is that there are a lot of people here thinking along these lines, and you are dismissing the idea almost out of hand. That's why I have responded to you.

Threlicus wrote:
maybe go write my own game inspired by the thoughts Lendrhald has provoked in me.