I was drafting a webpage/introduction for my game Storypunk (formerly the project called "Quixote & Coyote," discussed here and here) when I was suddenly inspired by multiple sources. My muses were:

-- Narcissist v0.5 by Aetherco, a time travel game about alternate history as righteous rebellion

-- Haroun & the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie, my favorite novel of all time, bar none.

-- Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, specifically, the opening lines:

Floyd wrote: So... so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell
Blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Jonathan,

It's very cool. I like everything...except this:

I was also hoping to let players take on the roles of literary characters or those from myth and legend. Obviously, playing Merlin stuck in Camelot would not have the same effect as playing Bob Jones who has to take out the garbage and pay his credit card bills.


Literary characters, in my mind, are storied out. Their themes are revealed. The Premise and conflict that disgorged them into significance to their human audience has been answered. Merlin in Camelot no longer has anything to say to a human audience. Merlin at The Alamo, maybe, but retrofitting new Premise and conflict onto "used" literary figures is an exceedingly difficult task, requiring a great deal of insight into how the character's original thematic answer to Premise might be reinvigorated with meaning through the resolution of a specific new conflict that casts entirely new meaning and understanding into it. My recommendation is to ditch the idea. Keep historical and fictional settings, and "underbelly"¹ the player protagonists within them.

Paul

¹ Clarification on this term is available upon request, but could probably be found easily through a search of older conversations.

Jonathan, it seems what you actually have here are two different ideas. The Q & C and your new take "Storypunk".

Personally I think both have potential, although I must say that Q & C tickled me the most as an interesting game. That would be partly because it ties into things that can make you start debating the whole concept from a buddhist viewpoint(!) There is a lot of narrativist themes available from Q & C.
On the other had, I was a little wondering how you'd make group adventures to come together in a Q & C game.

Storypunk on the other hand is more straightforward and seems to naturally flow from Torchbearer, something I can't ascribe to being an accident. May I suggest that you drifted towards Storypunk partly because of the underlying system.

The most important thing as I see it is for you to decide why you drifted towards SP. If it's only partly because of the system and SP represents the game you really wanted do in the first place, then that's fine, but if it's a drift because of the game system you should maybe think twice before you go SP instead of Q & C.

I think both have potential.

Hmm... I'm afraid Merlin was a bad choice of an example, here. I wasn't really intending for players to play famous characters or those whose exploits and personality they were very familar with. Instead, I was going to allow them to choose a character concept from literature, folklore, or myth, but not play a specific pre-existing character. For example, they might be able to play a gnarled old eccentric wizard, but they wouldn't be allowed to play Merlin or Gandalf.

It was also a bad example because I was going to argue that the vast majority of storydom is not limited to the traditional roleplaying genres of fantasy, sci fi, westerns, horror, pirates, etc. In fact, the vast majority of storydom comes from the primordial legends of early human history, hundreds of thousands of years before the present. Even if the characters choose to stick around "modern storydom," the vast majority of stories told, even today, are NOT fantastic adventures. You would instead be more likely to encounter characters from romance novels, thrillers, historical fiction, TV sitcoms, biographies, New Yorker articles, or just the daydreams of a thousand office workers or elementary school children.

Does that address your concerns, or are you still opposed to allowing PCs to come from stories outside "reality"?

Later.
Jonathan

Pale Fire wrote: I think both have potential.

Jonathan,

Does that address your concerns, or are you still opposed to allowing PCs to come from stories outside "reality"?

It absolutely addresses the concern. I have no problem with player characters modeled on archetypal figures from folklore and myth.

Carry on!

Paul

I didn't call the game Storypunk just because it sounds cool. The characters are basically hacking their way across storydom, finding new stories to be in and seeking out more information about the story they came from. You could get caught up in a great victorian romance, or battle space pirates, or witness the trials of Hercules, or wander Appalachia with Jack the Giant-Killer.

I think this is a cool concept; I also like the Q&C concept (hey, why wouldn't I? "Brazil" is one of my favorite movies.) I, too, hope you can keep both ideas...

Jonathan Walton wrote:

Pale Fire wrote: I think both have potential.

Agreed. But they're also too similar for me to do BOTH. That's why I either need a way to combine the ideas, or I need help in picking one over the other. I'm trying to do some pondering on my own, of course, but I was soliciting help just because both ideas seemed to have such potential.

Jonathan Walton wrote:
What About "Escaping the Real"?

One of the key themes of my original "Quixote & Coyote" concept involved the characters always being unable to escape the banality and horror of their crappy lives. As in kill puppies for satan, they were complete losers, but decided to ignore reality through fantasy, rather than by slaughtering cute animals for Lucifer. This new conceptualization seems to give that idea a kick in the teeth.

Does it? I'm not sure. Are the two ideas completely incompatible? I don't think so, but it's something I'll have to think about more. Could the characters get forced back into their Origin stories every now and then, forcing them to deal with a reality that is (at least to them) rather uninteresting compared to all the other stories they could be in? Would that work? Maybe. But, in this second reimagining, I was also hoping to let players take on the roles of literary characters or those from myth and legend. Obviously, playing Merlin stuck in Camelot would not have the same effect as playing Bob Jones who has to take out the garbage and pay his credit card bills.

What do people think? Am I shooting my old idea in the head? Is this idea "better" (i.e. more thought provoking and interesting)? Is it worth moving away from my old concept?

Some of the best movies for this idea are by Gilliam, but I HIGHLY suggest the Adeventures of Baron Munchausin over Brazil.

Brazil is a great movie and a good example for this game, but the dream sequences are very abrupt. From what I've read on the game, it is intended to slowly flow into the dream, which is why I would suggest Baron Munchausin. (Also by Gilliam)

That movie is quite surreal and is also a GREAT example of how several players can wind up in one intertwined dream.

There was also a short film about the old people in a retirement home thinking they were pirates and turning over couches and using canes as swords. Might be an Atom Film, not too sure.

And then there's that friggin' Robin Williams movie where he dies and starts living is his wifes painting or something. It did really bad in the box office, but I hope someone else knows the name of it. What Dreams May Come? I think thats it. That movie supposrts this idea too.

Johnathan

Hey, one last bit, as to which I prefer. I personally like the Q&C aspects of the game. Escaping the real seems the more intriguing aspects of it. Certainly, if you structured the game such that the players are normal characters that learn hints that their life is in fact "not real" could make a more interesting take on it.

You know, you could be sitting on the train and the guy across the way is reading some book and is subvocalizing, when you notice he is reading about what is currently happening to you. Perhaps you catch a glimpse of the back of the book as he leaves with a picture or some author.

I guess I like the idea of us being the scrawlings of some madman on his wall, or someone's fever dreams. One of the oldest creation/reality myth is that world is just someones dream, and will end when they awake.

Maybe this way the players could learn the secret runes (inked in red-- what can I say the editing element appeals to me) that will allow them to leave their story and enter another. The theme of what do you do when you find you aren't real, but yet you know you exist being another favorite.

As for the classic story realms, I can imagine these being domains of other older "storypunks" who have learned the runes and made their domain in this more stable, protected, realm. Perhaps there is the fear that your story will be lost, the last copy burnt. Imagine the fear of the Storypunks of a book-burning or some such. Or the fights that might occur between Storypunks over some hugely popular new realm. Imagine the fighting that might occur among story punks over same establishing a realm in Harry Potter, how many of these books have been printed and exist, etc.

Then you get into whether it has to exist as a written word. Thus all storypunks would have a creation myth, perhaps the oldest storypunks tracing their genesis all the way back to some monks manuscript, while newer ones exist on someones mac harddrive, etc. Or, eek, you came from some X-files fan fic, or something.


Anyway, I think the idea of characters becoming aware of their non-existence and learning the way into other stories is more interesting. Also, the idea of the "Classics" and other great works being realms fought over or coveted by other storypunks interesting. Being that normally storypunks trace their genesis to one of a kind manuscripts or such. I think that tenous grasp on existence would provide the perfect impetuous to seek out the other stories you mention, and provide a very interesting take on traveling between alternate worlds. (Think of how many storypunks would want to establish a realm in the bible, or the Koran, or some such, an interesting take on holy war.)

Anyway, just thought I would offer my vote towards what I consider the more interesting take. It seems to me the enter any bookworld that interests you pretty much what you can do with most any RPG. i.e. lets play a game like the 3 musketeers, etc, etc.

anyway, some ideas to consider

HTH

Rob Muadib

Gwen wrote: Sounds good, but where did the "punk" come from?

talysman wrote: why not make all the characters "crazy" people who consider themselves literary characters? not necessarily the dual reality from Q&C, but rather each new story the character enters has no other role for the story-hacker than "crazy person", until the hacker makes a role.

you could also assume that travelling from story to story is through a hierarchy of "containment"

RobMaudib wrote: Perhaps others destroying or erasing your "origin story" or the mss of it, or something pulling you back to the real world, or reducing your powers... And I think making the power somewhat fragile and subject to inference much more interesting.

Gwen wrote: There was also a short film about the old people in a retirement home thinking they were pirates and turning over couches and using canes as swords. Might be an Atom Film, not too sure.

Jonathan Walton wrote:

Gwen wrote: There was also a short film about the old people in a retirement home thinking they were pirates and turning over couches and using canes as swords. Might be an Atom Film, not too sure.

Are you sure you aren't thinking of the beginning of Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" where the old pirates attack another office building using the filing cabinets as cannons? It's called something like "The Voyage of the Crimson Permanent Assurance." Very fine example, indeed ;)

Jonathan -- interesting stuff here. There's lots of material being discussed, so I'll just try to stick with your core questions, which seems to be, "Is this idea better than my previous idea (the Quixote thing)?"

My answer is a resounding yes. Here's why, from my perspective.

While I like the first idea you posed (Q&C), I feel it's a bit limiting. You may have a clearer idea, but from where I'm sitting, I'm not sure what characters do. To me, going off on some Quixotic quest ... in downtown Cleveland is clever. But if the conflict is "while not paying his credit card bill" I'm just not as interested. (Now, if it's "while losing touch with his wife" I'm a bit more interested.)

But, the notion of "hacking" one's way through narratives -- literally -- is much more appealing to me. I just seems like there's much more to do -- each "story" or realm or whatever, has preconceived conflicts. By their own hacking (or the hacking of others, villains or otherwise), those conflicts might get thrown off. So, right there we've got the notion that a character has to deal with the conflict, or deal with the ramifications in that and subsequent "story worlds" if he doesn't.

And to put it even simpler, the title Storypunk just grabbed me. When I realized it was an evolution of Q&C, I thought AHA! Now this is a cool idea.

Also, it really reminds me of a game idea posed here (was it here on the Forge? My memory's failing me) wherein characters from literature had escaped into the "real" world, and the players were a kind of ghost-busting squad to set things right. Can anyone help my swiss cheese brain on that one?

I think talysman makes a great point here.
Storypunk's really bloomed into something amazing to see.
Incidentally, forgive my jumping from thought to thought... This is a stream-of-consciousness sort of reply.

Origin Stories:
Somehow, I don't find this idea very powerful. I do think it links well with Story Death: What if the characters ran around the web of stories, not just to keep themselves entertained, but because if they didn't keep them moving, the stories died? It would become a devastating humiliation to be inside a story when it kicked the bucket, but the idea requires a certain amount of story-death frequency; what happens when stories deeper down in your chain collapse? Do you lose the power that story granted you? Are the really skilled story-hackers, like Shaharizaad (it's an Arabic name from shahar, "city", and -izaad, a feminine name suffix; her sister Dunyazaad's name comes from dunya, meaning world), traditionally adept at something in particular, like embedding stories deeply, or linking them together with patterns of inference and implied causality that makes all the stories in the pattern behave like one?

Now this Story Preservation idea raises a question: What is to tell the hackers the expected longevity of a story? Does the environment they percieve change with the shifting of the story's power? Is this possible without damaging the features of environment that contribute to the mood of the particular story (Gothic grey half-light, Torchbearer's bright colours, the wine-dark sea of Greek myth, the endless night of a slasher movie)? How much does the story impinge on the hacker? How much of the hacker has to be defined? I imagine that only what the hacker has defined for himself is what is constant - Rapunzel's hair was long, but what colour was it? The Emperor had no clothes, but I guess everyone else did, or the story wouldn't be very clever...

What is a story?
Is every cheap slasher flick a distinct story, or are they all the same story, with points where they branch and rejoin like poorly spun yarn? What is to say that The Thousand Nights and a Night is a single story, rather than a frame that holds hundreds of stories together? What is a story like? From outside it, can you smell it, taste it, touch it? Is there a Sea of Stories? What does it feel like when you step from one story to another? (I'm envisioning something like Amber here - you step behind a tree, and on the other side it is night.)

I guess I've made it clear that at the moment I'm a lot more interested in Storypunk than Q&C... This isn't really the case. After all, what was Haroun, but a little boy who escaped into a story? There's no reason that story hackers can be totally disconnected from the Real World, unless this Realm of Stories is such that that is the case...
...Wait, story-time is timeless? You've created an apparent paradox with that; if stories can die as their real-world manifestations are forgotten, then the Story Realm depends on external time... ...maybe the timeframes are decoupled somehow? Back to Q&C, if you do choose to connect the realms somehow, you could have real-world 'escapees' in the Realm - maybe they're valuable to story hackers because, as real living people, they're capable of real living creativity? Are story hackers creatures of the Realm, or escapees themselves?

More good comments to respond to...

talysman wrote: I don't see what the problem is... combine them! drop everything from Q&C except that motivation to escape the mundane and put it into Storypunk, which needs a motivation to drive the game.

Matt Snyder wrote: Each "story" or realm or whatever, has preconceived conflicts. By their own hacking (or the hacking of others, villains or otherwise), those conflicts might get thrown off. So, right there we've got the notion that a character has to deal with the conflict, or deal with the ramifications in that and subsequent "story worlds" if he doesn't.

four willows weeping wrote: What if the characters ran around the web of stories, not just to keep themselves entertained, but because if they didn't keep them moving, the stories died? [snip] What happens when stories deeper down in your chain collapse?

EXAMPLE wrote: 0. You are studying for a Shakespeare final and enter King Lear.

1. Inside King Lear, the Fool tells you a story about another jester, Hop-Frog (an Edgar Allen Poe story). You enter it.

2. To escape watching the horrific ending of Hop-Frog, you tell your own tale of a beach in Hawaii. You enter it.

3. You dawdle too long on the Hawaiian beach, entranced by its warmth & beauty. The story (being merely of your own creation) looses its strength and crashes.

-2. You fall back into Hop-Frog, witness the King and his ministers being burned alive and stay until the story ends.

-1. Lear's Fool finishes his tale and he is hanged. Whatever role you have taken in the story is slaughtered.

0. Since your role has died, you are forced back into the reality of studying for your Shakespeare final, hopefully having learned something about Lear, but still missing the warmth of the beach.

Are the really skilled story-hackers, like Shaharizaad, traditionally adept at something in particular, like embedding stories deeply, or linking them together with patterns of inference and implied causality that makes all the stories in the pattern behave like one?

What is to tell the hackers the expected longevity of a story?

How much does the story impinge on the hacker? How much of the hacker has to be defined? I imagine that only what the hacker has defined for himself is what is constant - Rapunzel's hair was long, but what colour was it? The Emperor had no clothes, but I guess everyone else did, or the story wouldn't be very clever...

Is every cheap slasher flick a distinct story, or are they all the same story, with points where they branch and rejoin like poorly spun yarn? What is a story like? From outside it, can you smell it, taste it, touch it? Is there a Sea of Stories? What does it feel like when you step from one story to another?

Are story hackers creatures of the Realm, or escapees themselves?

Jonathan

Yep, it's me again with more random thoughts. I guess I am more fond o the Origin reality and stories as escape aspect. So, another idea I had, somewhat influenced by too many ST holodeck episodes, is that maybe powerful Storyhackers are able to take on the LEAD roles of stories. That is they have the power to take on the role of the Count Of Monte Cristo, or Sherlock Holmes, etc. Thus claiming a StoryRealm for themselves.

The advantage of this being that they have access to the entire story setting reality, and they have all the timespace not shown in the stories to do with as they please. I'm reminded of my favorite qoute from Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. "An exit from one stage is an entrance on another."

Which brings up another point, maybe story hackers can take the character beyond what has been shown, the known story as it were. This is a VERY popular theme in SF/Fantasy writing. What happens to the character after his known story is done? This idea would tie into the Taking over a story by becoming the lead role of it, much like shown in lots of ST holodeck episodes.

So I guess you need to really narrow your focus and settle upon the nature of the Storypunk reality. It would seem there are many many "parallel" ideas with regards to stories and existing in stories and such. Perhaps you should create a number of parallel games, perhaps like Aetherco did with Continuum/Narcissist.

Anyway, I guess I will have to hear what you decide upon as the focus of the game, as there are many many different things ideas going on in the thread currently. Like I said, too many beginnings, not enough endings.

It is certainly a very rich idea for an RPG.

I look forward to hear what you decide.

HTH

Rob

I'll respond to your suggestion in a minute Rob, but let me get out an idea that just hit me in the back of the head. I always want my games to do too much, and this may be an instance of that, but anyway...

Vikings & Parole Officers

So, what if I make Storypunk GM-less, as well as Fortune-less?

No, don't run away. Don't tear out your hair. It could work. Do you know about Robin Law's game Rune? In it, players basically take turns being a kind of Dungeon Master, in the old-school D&D sense. They spend points to construct obstacles and hazards for the group of Viking PCs. Then, the Vikings run through the obstacle, with the DMing player's character taking a support role. Then, the next player pulls out his obstacle, takes his turn as DM, and the Vikings splatter their way through that one.

Here's the kicker: DM's get bonus points if they succeed in thwarting the PCs. We're talking GM advancement rules, here. Revolutionary stuff, but in a very old-school hack-n-slash fashion.

So what does this have to do with Storypunk?

The core mechanic of Rune's GM-less turn-taking system is giving players an incentive to make life miserable for the other players, thus creating conflict that works. Both sides gain advantages from the conflict, so neither side complains too much.

So, what if, in Storypunk, the players take turns acting as "parole officers" for each other? Here's how this might work: the characters ride a train of stories until it crashes hard. They fall back through storydom and into their Origins/reality. Now, as per a predetermined, rotating order, each player is assigned to be the "parole officer" (new term needed) for another player's character.

EXAMPLE:

To simplify things, let's say me and Shreyas are playing a two player game. I serve as the PO for Shreyas' character, Daniel (a homeless man living on the streets of Boston), and he serves as the PO for my character, Kong Xun (one of the nameless peasants from "The Romance of Three Kingdoms"). My job, as Daniel's PO, is to give him hell. Likewise, Shreyas will do the same for Kong Xun.

Shreyas has Daniel awaken in an alleyway. I immediately declare that some punks have come by and decided to rough up Daniel for whatever he's got. When a police officer happens by, the punks run off (having already taken everything) and the unsympathetic officer tells Daniel to "go get a job." Basically, in this case, I'm acting as the GM for Shreyas, giving him crap to encourage him to want to leave his story as fast as he can. Why do I do this? Because the faster Shreyas can get Daniel out of his story, the sooner all the characters can get back into describing their adventures through storydom.

Once Daniel gets out, Shreyas becomes the PO for Kong Xun. Turns out a battle was fought in his rice fields, destroying the young plants completely and spoiling the harvest. Also, some warriors carried off the daughters of one of his cousins, who comes to Kong Xun asking for help. And the village tax collector is getting impatient and threatening to report him to the county head. Kong Xun better get the hell out of Dodge.

/EXAMPLE

A game with a larger group would be even more fun. It might be possible for the rest of the players to ALL serve as PO's for you, while you take your turn struggling in your Origin story. Or you might just take turns, with players breaking off in pairs to deal with the "downtime" between hacking runs through story.

Again, there would be rewards for both sides in this conflict. The characters would be struggling against the horrible story they want so badly to escape from, gaining something from defeating the forces and escaping, and the POs woud be rewarded if they make the characters want to leave ASAP, since the group portion of the game would resume more quickly.

This is a VERY rough system, since I just came up with the idea minutes ago. Does it sounds workable?

Later.
Jonathan

Remind me of the "Beasts" (I forget the actual term used)
in Robert Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast"- which was about fictional characters meeting traveling to other stories etc...all while being pushed by some kind of heartless maniacal author

If Jonathan doesn't mind ripping off the proto-Mondo 2000 (cyberpunk) magazine, he can call the game "Reality Hackers."

StoryPunk sounds absolutely incredible! I really think you've hit on a very nice concept here, it's accessible but still very different.

I'm not sure that I have anything contructive to say, only that I'd love you to keep working on and updating the game.

I'm working on writing my own game at the moment, but as soon as StoryPunk gets fully playable I will grab some friends, give it a playtest and write an Actual Play report.

Keep it up!

P.S. I think it works better with a GM. Vikings and Parole Officers might be a little bit competitive for my liking.

RobMuadib wrote: So, another idea I had, somewhat influenced by too many ST holodeck episodes, is that maybe powerful Storyhackers are able to take on the LEAD roles of stories. That is they have the power to take on the role of the Count Of Monte Cristo, or Sherlock Holmes, etc. Thus claiming a StoryRealm for themselves.

I may not be suggesting anything new here... maybe it is taking Q&C and tacking it onto Storypunk, but...

What if you just loosened the use of "story" as a term?

If the "real world" is another story, aren't there an infinite number of potential stories that vary only slightly from the real world? Why not allow characters to hack into them?

There could be two types of transitions between stories: the Mundane and the Fantastic. In a Mundane transition, it isn't necessarily apparent that the story has changed. The change might be to a new story different from the old one only in theme or the introduction of a new character or event vaguely appropriate to the old setting. A Fantastic transition would involve shifting to a story wholly incompatible with what it was before (which could include a change in setting or a new character or event that is completely incompatible with the former story).

Frex, a character is from a story much like our own and gets thrown in jail. Afraid that this story will end poorly for him, he could shift into a Prison Break story. This would be a Mundane shift. Alternately, he could access the prison library and shift into a Fairy Tale that he read in a book there. If the Fairy Tale became uncomfortable, then he could perform a Mundane shift from it to a more pleasant version of it...

Basically, the mundane shifts would function much like Q&C. The Fantastic shifts would be more difficult (and possibly dangerous) in some way. The twist is that the mundane shifts could occur relative to ANY story... not depending upon one story being Real.

~szilard

Interesting suggestion. That almost makes Storydom more like Shadow in Amber, where the travel of the Amberites allows for seamless shifting between the infinite possibilities embodied there. It would be obvious to them that some parts of the story had changed, but to the natives of the various stories, their influence would be inperceptable because they'd simply be moving between different stories. This would, most likely, make it harder to play on the idea of "polluting" or "damaging" stories, because the changes would only take place inside the travelers' perception.

As for your distiction between Mundane & Fantastic, it sounds vaguely similar to the distinction between Coincidental & Vulgar magick in Mage. It would be possible for a dark crime drama to shift into a heroic jailbreak story, but less likely for it to turn into a Biblical parable. I don't think the distiction is so much fantastical as having to do with suspension of disbelief. People start reading a story with certain expectations, and, if you decide to diverge wildly, you break those expectations, to the point that you might as well be beginning a seperate story. Not a bad issue to bring up. The only concern I have with that kind of thing is that it would seem to allow characters control over their Origin story, which gives them fewer reasons to want to escape that story and go wander about Storydom.

Hmm, definitely some good points to consider. I'm going to have so many options to play with when I try to finally nail this thing down :) I'm excited, but somewhat intimidated by the desire to incorperate ALL of these suggestions. Keep them coming, though!

Later.
Jonathan

Hmmm... hadn't thought of the Mage parallel (which is odd since I'm going to be playing it in a few hours).

What if it were Mage turned on its head, though? Instead of vulgar changes being the ones that backfire, the coincidental changes affect the story, but the story pushes back? (Vulgar changes wouldn't arouse such responses because they would involve new stories - not changes to old ones.)

Maybe it pushes the character out of the story - and into storydom? This could provide some motivation.

So... the time a character stays in any single story could be limited by the amount he monkeys with it. He might only be able to return to his home story for brief periods (or longer if he doesn't edit anything).

~szilard

What if we invert your suggestion yet again and say: instead of pushing you out of the story, making mundane changes draws you into the story, causing you to get caught up in the ongoing narrative. This means, the more your influence a particular story, the harder it is to break out of that story later on (and you have to break out of the story into order to make any BIG changes). So if you just want to hang on the periphery and hop from story to story, that's not too hard, but if you actually want to change the specifics and have interesting adventures (which is presumably why you've escaped from your Origin in the first place), you have to put some investment into the story itself.

This would be true in the character's Origin as well. The more effort they put into changing their lives, the more investment they'd have in it and the harder it would be to escape. This is almost the opposite of the "Chains" concept I was playing with earlier, but is somewhat similar in theme.

Later.
Jonathan

Jonathan Walton wrote:

RobMuadib wrote: So, another idea I had, somewhat influenced by too many ST holodeck episodes, is that maybe powerful Storyhackers are able to take on the LEAD roles of stories. That is they have the power to take on the role of the Count Of Monte Cristo, or Sherlock Holmes, etc. Thus claiming a StoryRealm for themselves.

So, I've been spending a serious amount of time considering Rob's suggestion, because his point, I think, is a very valid one. In truth, there's really two different ways of handling how characters manage to intrude into stories:

1. Characters enter a new story as themselves, and have to create new roles within the boundaries of the story.

2. Characters enter a new story by "possessing" existing characters, instantly becoming a part of the ongoing action.

Now, I could allow one specific type, or I could make them options.

talysman wrote: A character must enter a story first as themselves, then either make a major change to the story...

I would also say that option G for story malleability is the best one.