[Just so you know, I envision the title being pronounced "Kee-oh-tay & Kai-oat," just to keep it from being too silly]

This game concept is inspired both by Willows' Torchbearer concepts and the things Pale Fire's trying to do with his recent Ygg developments. Basically, they're trying to do similar things, creating a way for humans to do mythic over-the-top things without resorting to the zany wuxia of Exalted or the everything-is-a-miracle mechanics of Nobilis. Other important inspirational sources include Daniel Quinn's writings (most notably Ishmael, The Story of B, and Beyond Civilization), which deal with systems thinking and humanity being trapped in the myths that we've created for ourselves.

The title comes from two important characters and the concepts they represent. First, Don Quixote's delusions of being in an adventure much more interesting than actual reality is a key element. We will definitely be tilting at windmills. The second, Coyote, in the myths of the Native American peoples, was a trickster and storyteller, intermixing straight-up lies with more subtle fantasies. Exploring the distinction between lies and story is the second main component here.

As for Daniel Quinn, one of his main points is that humanity needs to find "a new story to be in," that is, a new mythology about how humans relate to the world. His point is that our current myths are not all that helpful or fulfilling, and it is by creating new myths that our society (and the lives of the individuals within it) can really be changed.

So those are the concepts. Here's how it might work:

PLAYER: Okay, I'm going to put on my coat and leave the apartment, heading downstairs and outside.

GM: Sure. You stumble downstairs into the freshness of a chilly winter morning. There's some traffic congested on the street in front of your building and-

PLAYER (interrupting): That's not a street. It's a river.

GM: Really? That's what I thought I said. Oh well. The river in front of your building is clogged with the vast number of boats trying to force their way upstream.

PLAYER: I draw my sword and leap onto the prow of one of the boats. Screaming with rage, I take a swing at the captain.

[some conflict resolution]

GM: You cut a thin gash across the captain's cheek. He screams at you, "F--k, man! What the hell you do that for?! Crazy mutherf--ker!"

PLAYER: "You thought you could escape me, Baron Von Dark! But thanks to Fate you have once again been delivered into my hands. Prepare to die!"

GM: Von Dark turns to his chief retainer, who hands him a gold-handled rapier. He smiles wickedly, "I hope you are prepared as well, my dear enemy, for if I fall today... I will not be the only one!"

[conflict continues]

Jonathan -

However, when a certain random-but-regularly-occuring event took place (say, a player rolled a "1" or met other conditions), the players would be forced back into the real world and have to decide what was REALLY happening underneath all their fantasies.

Interestingly, I've long said that the entire movie of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is best explained by EXACTLY the type of thing you describe above...

szilard wrote: Would the player who was thrust back into reality decide this for him or her self? It might be interesting to limit the players ability to take the Author Stance to their fantasies.

I suppose it would depend upon the tone you are going for here. I was envisioning something like Gilliam's The Fisher King in which there were almost certainly reasons for the characters to avoid a grim reality that they couldn't shape.

Valamir wrote: Interestingly, I've long said that the entire movie of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is best explained by EXACTLY the type of thing you describe above...

Jonathan Walton wrote:

In fact, your response brought up another rather interesting question: what happens if individual players (and not the entire group) was forced back into reality for a while?

I guess I was assuming (though I didn't say this) that the whole group would move in and out of their fantasies together, so that no one would really know, for instance, how they managed to get to the top of the skyscraper or get out of that mental institution, because they would have all experienced the same fantasy. Still that wouldn't be the only way to do it.

Still, having individual characters trapped in "normality" and watching the other players to zany and rididulous things somewhat ruins the atmosphere of magic and mystery, at least a little bit. Is there another way to solve this problem, besides forcing the characters to share a group fantasy that waxes and wanes?

Hey Jonathan!

Also read Jack Vance's "Eyes of the Overworld," if you haven't, although it's on the "having individual characters trapped in 'normality' and watching the other players do zany and rididulous things" side.

-Vincent

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, though not explicitly about a shared delusion, certainly seems to have some of the feel you describe here.

"Hey! Look at that girl being chased by rats! Haha!"
"You fool, she's their entourage, not their snack bar. Respect the rat speaker."

Jonathan,

First off, very nice presentation in your post opening this thread. The "where I'm coming from" text plus the pseudo example of play is a quite powerful combination for initiating design conversation.

...what happens if individual players (and not the entire group) was forced back into reality for a while?

One solution would be that scenes involving multiple player characters are always consensual fantasy, and that any mechanics that thrust a character out of the fantasy also necessarily separate the character from the group. It seems to me that some of the thematic power of stories with protagonists who are sometimes lost in fantasy realities comes from scenes where they are the isolated emissaries of the fantasy reality in the real world. The Fisher King is a very good example of this.

Something else you might consider, is the Brazil effect, in which the imagery of the fantasy reality, and the ability of the character to be significant in the fantasy reality, is a reflection of the character's struggles in the real world. Translated: failures in the real world translate to weakness and confusion in the fantasy reality. The real world crushes your spirit. But if you somehow can transcend that damage as it manifests itself in the fantasy world, your power in the real world is almost mystical-seeming in its ability to affect others.

Would leaving the background of the story open ended weaken what I was trying to do?

In my opinion, it would be a huge mistake to invent an in-game pseudo-rationale. I think you already have a better answer to this question. It's the text in your opening post about the significance of new myths, prior to the example of play. You don't need to create suspension of disbelief for the game buyer by giving them a fictionalized rationale. You only need reveal to the buyer your notions of how the game (and your eventual mechanics for it) might deliver meaningful thematic narrative, just like you did in the opening of your first post.

Paul

You guys rock. Let me tackle your comments in order...

szilard wrote: Well, if the fantasy is a group fantasy, one individual falling out of it might reasonably disrupt it for the rest to some greater or lesser degree. If it was only a partial disruption, you could have the others try to pull the particular individual back into the fantasy. If it was a full disruption, then you don't really have to worry about it.

If an individual falls out of the fantasy and is horrified by his actions and, thus, tries to shun the fantasy, it might become increasingly difficult to reenter the fantasy.

lumpley wrote: Also read Jack Vance's "Eyes of the Overworld," if you haven't

four willows weeping wrote: Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, though not explicitly about a shared delusion, certainly seems to have some of the feel you describe here.

Paul Czege wrote: One solution would be that scenes involving multiple player characters are always consensual fantasy, and that any mechanics that thrust a character out of the fantasy also necessarily separate the character from the group.

Translated: failures in the real world translate to weakness and confusion in the fantasy reality. The real world crushes your spirit. But if you somehow can transcend that damage as it manifests itself in the fantasy world, your power in the real world is almost mystical-seeming in its ability to affect others.

You don't need to create suspension of disbelief for the game buyer by giving them a fictionalized rationale. You only need reveal to the buyer your notions of how the game (and your eventual mechanics for it) might deliver meaningful thematic narrative, just like you did in the opening of your first post.

Jonathan,

Life in the normal world. Boring. Seemingly random. You win some, you lose some...

That seems like a very workable progression to me. Although my preference for the starting point isn't so much a boring normal world, but a somewhat more hostile one. Beautiful things are destroyed. Comfort is encroached upon: "Bothered by unsightly ducts?" Decency and meaningful human interaction are compromised by procedures and policy. Wondrousness is absent.

By trying to build a new fantasy with the restraints of reality, they would be using the system to change the system.

Exactly right. But it's important to note that it's a very grass roots, one-on-one notion of change, not at all on any kind of larger scale.

Honestly, I think it's a terrific genre to be working in. There are so many films, that potential players should be able to grasp the conventions easily. Joe Versus the Volcano is one: "These lights give me a headache. If they don't give you a headache, you must be dead!" The normal world makes you dead. The genre is about struggling to be "alive" and what it's like to be alive in a world of the "dead."

Paul

Paul Czege wrote: "Bothered by unsightly ducts?"

Honestly, I think it's a terrific genre to be working in. There are so many films, that potential players should be able to grasp the conventions easily.

First off, I really like this kind of idea. The one thing that came to my mind in reading the premise was the MTV cartoon of the Maxx. It was an animation of a comic book of the same name. Essentially this guy gets trapped between the real world and a fantasy Outback, and has some wierd mental trips about the whole thing.

There is a great scene where he is sitting on a little mountain in the Outback and "wakes back" into reality perched on a postbox. Just the kind of thing you described. His antagonist is really the only character that knows of both worlds as being seperate but complete.

The other thought for inspiration is actually the comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes. A little different in that Calvin lives in both his own world and the reality simultaneously. Note that Hobbes is alive to him but a stuffed toy to everyone else.

I like the idea that certain rolls (bad ones or just randomly) cause reality to set in. You would need some way to allow characters to 'get back' into the fantasy. And decide what, if anything had changed. Like, if they are climbing a mountain and wake up to find themselves on the side of a building. If they went up the elevator and 'reentered' fantasy would they have made it to the top of the mountian. If that is the case, do you want players to be able to do that. If not, and I would say not, you might need some mechanics or guidelines to deal with that.

Just thoughts.

Andy

Jonathan Walton wrote:
Expanding on this a little bit, and working backwards, you could begin to see how the characters might go about building fantasies:

1) Life in the normal world. Boring. Seemingly random. You win some, you lose some. That's the way things are.

2) Something happens that makes you believe there's something more to it. Perhaps you succeed surprisingly well at something trivial. Perhaps you see something that inspires your imagination. Whatever.

3) You extrapolate from what you've experienced. You begin to believe that you will always succeed at that trivial action, because you are a master of it. You think you actually can do kung fu like those people in "The Matrix."

4) If you try and fail, reality smacks you back down, preventing your fantasy from coming to fruition and burying you in normality. However, if you try and SUCCEED, you have now entered into a fantasy and can proceed from there.

How does that work as an outline?

talysman wrote: what if you were to make the real world "realistic" and keep the fantasy world "rules-light"?

while stuck in the real world, players would roll for each task. tasks would be completed incrementally. this would help simulate the day-to-day drudgery.

then, when one of the players is able to slip into fantasy, everything becomes easier. if they're rolling dice at all, it's to resolve entire conflicts or to see how much they can bend the fantasy to their liking. great distances could be crossed, battles won.

I love this is idea.

Any thought that the fantasy world represents the growth and development of the characters? The conflicts in the two worlds would mirror each other in a lot of ways. If the players, as children, are being terrorised by local bullies, they might move into a fantasy world with villains who must be overcome, and they eventually do this with bravery. Then, returning to 'reality', they can defeat the bullies with a lot of 'bravery' stat boosts. Almost every 'reality with fantasy elements' film uses this technique to some extent.

If both stories were plotted out, very loosely, with matchng scenes, then I don't think the problem of switching between worlds would be a problem. A scene's conclusion would be obvious, and the GM would jump in and describe the sudden appearance elsewhere.

Any thoughts?

Jeremy

Ah. Another day, another slew of great advice. I love the Forge.

Torrent wrote: The one thing that came to my mind in reading the premise was the MTV cartoon of the Maxx.

I like the idea that certain rolls (bad ones or just randomly) cause reality to set in. You would need some way to allow characters to 'get back' into the fantasy. And decide what, if anything had changed.

talysman wrote: what if you were to make the real world "realistic" and keep the fantasy world "rules-light"?

four weeping willows wrote: I worry that this idea would lead to a painfully complex design, but in concept - the Real World provides us with complications for which Fantasy cares not - is excellent.

Maybe instead of a layered mechanic, one could represent the difficulty of Reality in another way - maybe every conflict in Reality has some base level of difficulty, while the Story has a sliding scale of 'resistance' to the characters based on the stability of the shared fantasy. As the Story falls apart, it starts becoming more and more antagonistic to the characters, and finally it shatters, as maintaining the Fantasy in the face of this unsatisfying, maybe even painful, Story becomes too difficult.

nipfipgip...dip wrote: If the players, as children, are being terrorised by local bullies, they might move into a fantasy world with villains who must be overcome, and they eventually do this with bravery. Then, returning to 'reality', they can defeat the bullies with a lot of 'bravery' stat boosts.

Sounds sorta Fisher King. Cool.

Best,

Blake

Jonathan Walton wrote:

talysman wrote: what if you were to make the real world "realistic" and keep the fantasy world "rules-light"?

Whoa, cool idea alert! But I'll go you one better...

What if, within their own fantasy, the characters can determine what rules they want to follow? If we're already passing Author Stance around, there's no reason we also couldn't pass "Game Designer Stance" with it.

So say, in the real world, we've come up with a simple-but-uninteresting game mechanic: for every action, you roll 1dF (a Fudge die). On a minus, you fail horribly. On a blank, something boringly "normal" happens. Only on a plus do you actually have any success. However, after a plus you roll another die. A negative cancels out the success, a blank makes your success only mediocre (and still somewhat depressing), and a plus continues the chain (and you get to roll another die). This is used for every action, so you'll be rolling dice all the time in the real world.

So, almost 90% of the time, you're going to end up with depressing results. Even if your first die succeeds, you second die will probably fail.

However, you'd build fantasies by building strings of pluses. Maybe, to escape the basic drudgery of the real world, you'd need 3-4 successes in a row. Perhaps initially, you'd need 5, but as you got better at this fantasy stuff, the number would go down. So you'd be constaly rolling on little tiny things, hoping to eck out enough success in the real world to escape it's boundaries.

However, once in the fantasy, things are different. You could decide what you wanted to roll for. You'd probably only need rolls to dramatically increase the level of fantasy or to change existing components. If you wanted to move from London Below (slightly fantastic) to Camelot (very fantastic, at least, when you're coming from the modern world), you'd need to roll. If you character, who knows nothing about martial arts, wanted to suddenly break out some kung fu, that would take a roll. However, once the bar had been raised, you could do anything you wanted within those limits.

Also, once in the fantasy, blanks become slightly-positive outcomes and only minuses would damage the fantasy (and you'd have to roll a bunch of them, over a period of time, to destroy the fantasy completely). You could also decide how many dice you wanted to roll. Lots of Fudge dice tend to cancel each other out (forming a bell curve), so you'd have a much stronger chance of gaining success.

How's that for a basic system? I just came up with it, so it's definitely open to tweaking and completely different suggestions.

four weeping willows wrote: I worry that this idea would lead to a painfully complex design, but in concept - the Real World provides us with complications for which Fantasy cares not - is excellent.

Right now it doesn't look that complex, but I guess I wasn't really aiming for a "realistic" depiction of the real world. If we want to emphasize the point that the real world sucks, I think we can do that with a pretty simple mechanic and just repeat it all the time (to imitate the drugery and petty failure that reality excells at).

talysman wrote: in fact, maybe the first opposed roll after dropping out of fantasy gets extra opposing dice based on how long the fantasy lasted?

Maybe I just don't get the rationale behind it, but it seems like requiring good rolls to get into fantasy and bending reality against good rolls goes against the theme of the game. I would think that the downtrodden and unhappy ones would be more likely to go into fantasy than those that are happy in reality.

I guess this comes from my interpretation that it is more of the Quixote and Maxx like thing, where although the fantasy is 'real' it is based upon the mind of those in it. Where Reality could really care less whether you live there or not. Maybe that even gets into a theme or premise for the whole game, somehow give the players a reason to want to remain in reality, but bias the system toward having them in fantasy and making things easier there. That gets back to the Changleing link, where fantasy is great and banality is bad, but too much fantasy leads to bedlam. So the players have to balance between reality and fanasy.

Example: Calvin pops into fantasy usually when he is doing somethign he hates, homework, school, dinner... whatever. And only gets slammed back usually when he hits a really hopeless situation in the fantasy. So that, atleast in my mind, would say that a string of failures on either side would cause you to jump. Just that the system in reality is more 'realistic' and prone to failures.

I still really like this concept.

Andy

Torrent wrote: Maybe I just don't get the rationale behind it, but it seems like requiring good rolls to get into fantasy and bending reality against good rolls goes against the theme of the game. I would think that the downtrodden and unhappy ones would be more likely to go into fantasy than those that are happy in reality.

Torrent wrote: I would think that the downtrodden and unhappy ones would be more likely to go into fantasy than those that are happy in reality.

talysman wrote: more likely to want to go into fantasy, but maybe not more able.

the conflict is really between the characters' fantasy and the characters' disgust with their real lives; thus, it's not really Reality that punishes the characters, but the characters themselves.

the real world is the obstacle, it keeps dragging the characters back... character improvement in the game would allow the characters to stay longer and longer in the fantasy.

In talking some with Willows and helping tweak the Torchbearer System, I think I've come to realize that those rules (with some slight modification) would lay a truly interesting foundation for what I'm trying to do with Q&C. It sorta makes sense too, since Torchbearer was one of my original inspirations.

I'm going to start a new thread and see if I can sketch out how that might work.

Check it out here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=38895#38895

Hope to see you on the new thread.

Later.
Jonathan