Mayfair's game "Underground" has an interesting aspect I was considering using for OMNI.  Each country, City, State, etc. has a set of parameters such as "Take home pay", "Safety", "Goverment Corruption" etc.  I was thinking that this would mesh well with OMNI to simulate the "Collective Consciousness" of the particular area.  Does anyone have any ideas related to this?  Are there any other games out there that have the same type of world stat that the characters can change during play?

Howdy.

I can't tell exactly what you're going for based upon the other thread on OMNI.  There are a few games out there with something similar.  Here's a few specific ones, if you want to check them out:

In Exalted 2nd Edition, there are rules for treating a group of people of any size as a single unit for purposes of social conflict, as well as a separate set of rules for working with the assets and resources of states over long periods of time.  In the world-building section of D&D 3.5 DMG there are also ways of defining community size and authority.

But I'm looking forward to checking out the Dresden Files RPG.  So far as I understand from playtester comments via podcast, it uses Aspects for just about any trait a city or area could have.  They work just like character Aspects in Spirit of the Century.  SotC encouraged using them for terrain effects, but DFRPG tries to encapsulate the theme of an entire campaign in a metro area (so far as I understand).

By "Collective Consciousness", are you referring to just a trait that simulates the general level of EGO that NPCs have in a given area?  Or are you going for something with more detail, like defining how the Collective Consciousness expresses itself in different places?  Are the players going to be able to affect these traits at all?

Or to ask that last question more broadly:  What do the characters do?  Answering this question (part of the Big 3, IIRC) should inform more precisely what traits they'll actually need to interact with, and how you'd like them defined for purposes of mechanics.

-Jason

Cadwallon, by Rackham, has a similar idea...areas are given an attitude that describes the feeling of the location. These attitudes match the attributes of the characters, so an area that has a lot of fights in it will naturally attract fighty-type characters and have a fight dominated attitude. Similar for social areas, magical areas etc.

Similarly, the collective belief of people in an area will make certain types of magic easier or harder to cast. A whole heap of people regularly praying to the forces of light will make dark invocations hard to cast in that area.

I tried to do something similar with the Eighth Sea, having different ports across the world flavoured by the types of actions that might be easier or harder, then applying a bunch of props that are typically associated with that area. Haiti might have Voodoo as a prop, which is then easier for a player to incorporate into a game. Alexandria on the coast of Egypt might have sand, or ancient scrolls of knowledge.

These can be changed during play by making other ideas more prominent in the storyline, or simply changing the world (which isn't too hard in a game about time-travelling pirates).

V

Thank you for your ideas and suggestions!  I like the idea about characters being drawn to particular areas.  I definitely want all places to have an ego level.  How this would interfere with the characters needs to be determined, but as far as being drawn to same ego locations, that is definite.  This fits in with the subject of ley lines which fits in with secret societies and conspiracies, the occult etc.  All my favorite subjects.  Just need to get these things fleshed out.

By "Collective Consciousness", are you referring to just a trait that simulates the general level of EGO that NPCs have in a given area?  Or are you going for something with more detail, like defining how the Collective Consciousness expresses itself in different places?

Or to ask that last question more broadly:  What do the characters do?  Answering this question (part of the Big 3, IIRC) should inform more precisely what traits they'll actually need to interact with, and how you'd like them defined for purposes of mechanics.

whoknowswhynot wrote:
The reason is that I intend the system to be simple so as to not take away from gameplay and allow for the narrator, GM, DM, whatever, to fill in the blanks and make the story believable.

By world changing, I mean peaceful resistance, making choices out of love and not fear etc.

There are rules for determining the ego level based on the level of and number of "traits" listed.  The same could be true for locations such as ancient battleground, or torture chamber, or even a church (though debatable +/-...).  Any suggestions?

How about this as a notion...

From the character perspective in the game, characters reduce their EGO to become closer to the universal One-ness.

Why not apply the same notion to locations?

For every degree of environmental EGO, a negative defining fact about the place comes into being.

Instead of giving a place "safety" as a beneficial aspect. Give other places "Unsafe" as a negative aspect.

Places where there are 10 things wrong are not likely to be pleasant locations. But they have their own sense of individuality.

In this way the more enlightened a place is, the less wrong things there are.

Players can then perform quests, complete missions or generally react to the environment. The actions the players take might remove a specific negative aspect from a location (or their actions might add a new negative aspect if they fail, or succumb to their own hubris).

If you wanted to push this to the next degree, then you could have places like Shangri-La and El Dorado; locations which might have become so perfect that the whole place has transcended our realm. Like the boddhisatvas, they lure adventurers to greater things, and inspire the world with their tranquility. Conversely, you get the 1000 Hells of Chinese dogma, or the circles of Dante's Inferno when the EGO of a realm pushes beyond the normal levels found in the mortal plane.

Just an idea...

V 

(Disclaimer: everything statement in this post should be preceded by IMHO.  It's advice intended to help you think about what you want about this game, even if I've sometimes worded it as unarguable truth.)

Sometimes details can make things simple.

Maybe the church's bishop has used divisive rhetoric counter to the ideals of peace and love.  That church might be different from one with a forgiving, universally accepting priest.  Or maybe it depends more on the congregation.

And like you said, you don't always have to be drowning in heavy decisions involving the salvation or fall of society.  But if that is what your game is about, situations should be built around them.  The inter-character relationships and normal day-to-day struggles should build up to it, and remind them of it.  

If you wanted to push this to the next degree, then you could have places like Shangri-La and El Dorado; locations which might have become so perfect that the whole place has transcended our realm. Like the boddhisatvas, they lure adventurers to greater things, and inspire the world with their tranquility. Conversely, you get the 1000 Hells of Chinese dogma, or the circles of Dante's Inferno when the EGO of a realm pushes beyond the normal levels found in the mortal plane.

Just an idea...