Hi Guys,

Taking a cue off of greyorm's great reply in the Unified Truth/Religions thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=47779#47779), I went back to examine MJ's first post to remember what was at stake.

Reading it, I found this:

If the Greeks believe that Apollo drives the sun across the sky in a chariot and the Egyptians that a dung beetle rolls it across the sky, why does it matter which is true? It ultimately matters because I'm going to wind up with some idiot player who figures out how to go on a quest to see which is true

Excellent post, Chris. You had said what I was trying to say and more way back on the first page, and more eloquently. It does sound like a right brain/left brain difference at work here. I didn't back up my point very well, though. I merely pointed out that GM's desire to appease the "idiot player" really doesn't make sense.

The arguement being, IIUC "I have an 'Idiot Player' who will try to find out how the sun is moved across the sky so I must know how it is for certain so I can tell him." (or her, to be fair)
And my response was "Why? How is he planning to find out? Building a medieval rocket ship? He's more likely to kill himself than reach the sun." That kind of thing. It seemed like worrying about things that really do not have to be worried about.

I really wasn't thinking GNS but I can see your point here for certain. It's like going to see a magician. You can either simply watch the magician perform his tricks or you can spend the time trying to figure out how he did each trick. Either way is fine, but if you shout out how he performed each trick, then the people who wanted to simply watch and be amazed will be unhappy. This is like the GNS dysfunction here.

EDIT:

The Yankee in the fantasy world is above the world's logic. He understand the GM and the NPCs have a certain way of looking at things. He simply brings his own logic to the table -- the logic of the enlightenment -- and is more than willing to push and prod until the world breaks.

As to "treating religion and myth seriously," I don't see this as a GNS issue at all. On the one hand, you can certainly align game universes the way Chris suggested, but I can easily see a Narrativist game in which the Premise issue had to do with the characters' encounter with divinity and finding the "reality" behind it, and furthermore grappling with the existential implications of that reality. In addition, I think a Sim game could very well explore a world in which religion is a matter of faith, as for example an Ars Magica campaign in which a major issue was the faith of the characters. In the latter case, you'd still have an exploration in-character focus, which as I understand it fits with a Sim model, but the "real truth" behind God would not be accessible to the characters.

I do think, however, that the division within this debate does indeed come down to "what if I have idiot players who want to break the religion and myth of the universe," vs. "what if I want to build seriously with some notion of religion or myth as a focus." And you're right: these are not compatible. If you try to build a campaign universe in which religion is similar to real-world structures, for example, and you have idiot players who want to break that, you have a total mismatch of GM goals and player goals.

O.K., this is good stuff; and I think that Reverend D.'s post on the other thread was excellent (I almost posted just to thank him for it, but decided to look at the split threads instead).

I'm going to say, though, that although it addresses the problem as stated, it doesn't necessarily get to the problem as intended. That is, we came from yet another religion in gaming thread where one of the questions raised was "why do you ever need to know what the truth of the matter is?", and I started this thread to say "I might need to know for this reason." I think Rev. D. has given some worthy insights to that particular problem; but I'm not certain he's dispelled the root problem entirely.

But perhaps I should take that to a new thread, too.

--M. J. Young

Hi guys,

Thanks for the posts. MJ, I especially appreciate your clarification on the reasons behind your first thread.

But I'm still interested if anyone has any ideas, thoughts, opinions on this idea of using RPGs to enter into alien modes of thinking.

We're living in a time where we relate almost all tales to our own point of view. Either stories from the past (or real life incidents), fall short of our expectations of how people "should" behave, or they are used as Models of Behavior for what he know is "good" (a al William Bennet).

But I've always thought of literature as a chance to see the world from unexpected angels -- especially when one chooses ancient or foriegn sources.

My main point in this thread is that there's a tradition in most RPGs (games and play) to take cosmological issues and, no matter how fancy the original dressing, iron them out so everything sort of makes sense to us today from our point of view.

Again, I think one of the real values of Pendragon was an attempt to move the PCs and GM into the world of Mallory rather than the more normal approach of moving the game world to the players. (This is a type of Sim play I seldom see addressed on the boards -- Sim of POV, which may be what this thread is actually about -- don't know yet.)

******

Clehrich,

Good points. As I said, it was GNS as I understood it. My main concern still stands though : the existentialist model you offer is still a contemporary point of view on the matter. Job and Ulysses simple dealt with the heavenly forces, no matter how terrifying and strange they found them to be. These are the models I'm assuming.

Take care,
Christopher

Greetings Christopher,

Grab your hat, it's a long one.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: While it's fine to ask religion to respond to a Mr. Wizard player (aka, the "idiot player"), does it really have to? Almost this entire thread has been based on pleasing the needs of this player in the context of building a game setting that takes the mythic qualities of religion seriously.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: I offer that the two are not compatible at all. One only need look at the mish-mash of Greek myths to know that this stuff isn't about being clear and precise and repeatable for peer review. There's no need to treck to Egypt. It's right there in any singular faith as well.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: The ancient myths assume characters that know the world's faith and mythology, buy into it, are baffled by it, struggle with the gods and their place in the cosmos -- but don't test it with anything of the logic one will find in a fourth grade science class. Anything from Homer to the Bible makes this clear.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: The essence of this post is this: If the group is going to treat religion and mythological logic seriously, are they going to really play it straight (inconsistencies and all, as is befitting of all faiths and interactions of faiths), or are they going to stand outside of it and judge it?

...

Leaving aside the desire to build religions like genetically engineered cultures on a petri dish, what about this issues: The responsibility to play with a different view and logic when playing in a different world?

Christopher Kubasik wrote:
Okay. So if I'm not mistaken, this thread is in process to figure out what to do with idiotic players. Right? I don't mean this dismissively. Really, the devil's advocate folks are taking positions to test the "I've got the idiot player in my group, how do I make religion work" issue.

But I'm still interested if anyone has any ideas, thoughts, opinions on this idea of using RPGs to enter into alien modes of thinking.

My main point in this thread is that there's a tradition in most RPGs (games and play) to take cosmological issues and, no matter how fancy the original dressing, iron them out so everything sort of makes sense to us today from our point of view.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: But I'm still interested if anyone has any ideas, thoughts, opinions on this idea of using RPGs to enter into alien modes of thinking.

We're living in a time where we relate almost all tales to our own point of view....

My main point in this thread is that there's a tradition in most [insert any form of expression] to take cosmological issues and, no matter how fancy the original dressing, iron them out so everything sort of makes sense to us today from our point of view.

It might perhaps require a post-Enlightenment world view to wish to test mythical ideas, but it does not require such a world view to attempt to make use of them. And in any game system in which an outcome is resolved, maintaining a distinction between using and testing can be mighty difficult.

Here are two player-characters. One wants to enter Hades and attempt to bring back a dead person because he wants to affirm or disprove that Hades (or perhaps life after death) exists. The other wants to enter Hades to rescue his lost love from death's clutches. The first is being a Mr. Wizard; the second is acting completely within his character's belief system and mindset, and in fact is emulating several of the heroes of that very mythology. One is "testing," the other is "applying," the knowledge imparted by myth. Thus, one is apparently an idiot playing dysfunctionally and the other is fully invested in an appropriate alternate world view. But they both present the GM with the exact same problem: what do they find?

There are, of course, many effective and appropriate ways to resolve this. But ultimately, as Fang said on one of the precursor threads, they all boil down to two possibilities: either the myth is objectively valid, or it is not. For example, the participants might decide that the character can experience the myth (e.g. climb down into a cave and experience events congruent with the mythological expectations, including meeting the loved one) but because the story of the underworld is myth, there can be no objective proof produced, so it must in the end be impossible to rescue the loved one. Not only is this railroading (at least, if it's a GM making that decision), but the decision itself reflects a decidedly post-Enlightenment world view. As does any resolution, however clever, that deliberately protects the ambiguity of the outcome (e.g. the character is told, in the underworld, that he has won the loved one back but that no one else in the world of the living will ever be able to see her or perceive her in any way). The mythos itself doesn't proclaim its own ambiguity, it plainly states what the underworld is like, and that if you're strong enough you can go down there and grab Cerebus and carry him in the light of day to the city gates for all to see.

There's nothing unusual, in any age including the present day, about people believing in myths, nor in their interpreting ambiguous experiences as confirming their prior beliefs, nor in people holding simultaneous and contradictory beliefs. The situation most demanding of a "different view and logic" is the case in which the mythology is objectively real in a way that can be experienced and explored.

- Walt

Good morning everyone,

After reading the flurry of new posts on our braided thread topic I dropped off to sleep thinking, "I don't know yet how to define what I'm after." This morning I woke up with it pretty clear in my mind. So, this:

Jack in the Beanstalk. A boy, a foolish boy, trades his cow for some "magic" beans, mom tosses them out the window, beans turn into a giant beanstalk, boy climbs beanstalk, and, after some impulsive and criminal behavior, comes back rich.

Now, the common RPG style of play, when confronted with this initial situation, might start asking questions along MJ's line of thinking (ie, "How much do I need to know ahead of time?") In other words:

"Are there more magic beans?"

"Is there an 'ecology' of giants up in the sky?"

The players, using player thinking along the same lines, might start asking, "Could we track down a lot more magic beans?" "Could be grow a bunch of beanstalks, hire a mercenary army and assault the giant's castle?" "If there's a retaliation, could we make a pact with a nearby king for shared defense and promise a share of the wealth?" and so on.

Now, all that sounds fun, actually, but it's not Jack and the Beanstalk!.

Leaving aside GNS for a moment, let's call the Fairy Tale version of the story a Naïve style of play, and the other(the one common to most RPG sessions), a Sophisticated style of play.

Okay. That's what I'm talking about right there. Can players and GMs by Naïve in their play? Is it desired? How to facilitate it?

What I'm talking about is going back to an older style of storytelling, a style that one can barely conjure today in almost any medium.

Many people credit Thomas Moore's Utopia as the first SF story. I can see why now. Whereas before fantastical tales and place bumped along willy-nilly, Moore introduced a self-consistent and rationalized reason for exactly why his imaginary island was the way it was. It was, using the terms here, Sophisticated. Using the terms I'm using here, SF is Fantasy made Sophisticated.

Interestingly, Fantasy (as a publishing genre), is fantastical fiction made sophisticated. RPGs have followed this lead as well. (Witness the "Ecology of the..." series in Dragon Magazine.) There's been this desire to give all Fantasy worlds a cohesive, scientific logic. That's were we get the magic potion shops ("Of course there'd be capitalism in Fantasy worlds. It's makes sense!") But tales of the Naïve type simply don't take this approach. The tale is the thing. It works on an almost dream logic that one finds in Myths and Fairy Tales.

In RPGs, I'd credit Stafford's Pendragon for opening this difference up to me. In the first grey box on the first page of the 3rd edition, he's very explicit about the tension in Mallory's world between the nuts and bolts reality of the trained soldier's view of the world in terms of expenses for tack and horse and such, and the dreamlike logic of magic and religion of the adventures and quests. By setting up this opposition, he made it clear that a style of play outside the normal RPG Sophisticated play could exist. I was immediately drawn to this Naïve style of play and wanted more of it.

I haven't yet had the pleasure of playing Hero Wars, but I presume that a game where a sword can become a vital historical artifact "just cause" works along this dreamlike, naïve logic.

And now, to bring it back to MJ's "How much does the GM need to know?" question, I'll bring in James V. West's, the Questing Beast.

West creates in the game's rules the Accord. This is what the GM needs to know, and the players. It's a very Naïve world background, and encouraged Naïve play. It focuses on characters, places and things, and leaves the magic and reality of circumstances to come to be defined as they come.

The idea is that this is the starting point. The logic of the tale created "grows" from this agreement. Everything doesn't have to be set up ahead of time. In contrast to the Sophisticated RPG experience, one really won't have any sense of what's behind a door until it's opened.

"There's a sick cow. The fool trades them for beans. What do the beans do? Don't know yet."

That's naïve play. The Questing Beast is about that style of play. The GM doesn't know much about the world's logic. Not much more than what they start with, and it gets defined as they go.

We live in a time of very sophisticated storytelling. I'd offer Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, and David Cronenberg as really the rare exceptions in a world that demands everything makes sense in a story from all angles at all times. The fact that I like Naïve storytelling is the only reason I miss the fact there was more of it. (And notice how these films of these directors often feel too tight or annoying when they clash into the needs of Sophistication. One can't help thinking, "That makes no sense," whereas other passages that make no sense never bother us.)

So, to MJ: The GM needs as much data before play as the style of play requires. But given the fact that most people know Sophisticated play and assume it as the norm, that's usually a lot.

What I'm trying to do here is work toward re-introducing Naïve play.

Any takers?

Take care,
Christopher

Wow,

Since I went to bed, so much grumpiness... and anger. Well, I'll try to clean it up as quickly as possible.

Kester,

I think we've somehow got off to wrong start right from the bat. The first quote you've got from me completely redefined my concern about taking religion seriously and made it seem as if... Well, as if you're saying something different than I was saying. Which you didn't.

In other words, MJ's imaginary idiot player is the one who wants the game world to take religion "literaly", while the rest of the group wants to take it seriously... Which isn't the same thing at all. So you're right. Trying to please a player who needs the religions taken literally in the context trying to deal with mythology seriously will create problems. Which is what the sentence said.

After that... I don't know. You seemed to have a bone to pick and just started picking. You seem to be trying to defend Greek ghost from me for saying the tales are inconsistent. And here I am thinking all the time I love those dead Greeks!

For example: Are Mars and Venus married? Some tales say yes, some say no. I am insulting these anceint cultures for pointing this out? I don't think so. I am suggesting that the difinition of these gods and these stories were clearly not set down in stone enough (not "literal" enough) that different writers could use them to different ends in different relationships. That's all.

I really don't think I'm disagreeing with you on most of these points. I think you've just jumped to contrary conculsions about my statements... But at some point I'll just be jumping to conclusions about what made you misread what I wrote, so I'll stop now.

Gareth,

If you want to claim the mantle of idiot player, that's fine, but I certainly didn't give it to you. I simply, and literally, pulled the phrase from MJ's post. I didn't have you in mind, nor do I think such players are idiots. Again: MJ. MJ's Post. Sorry if you were offended.

Fang,

Like Kester's post, I feel as if you've challenged me with an arguement that I don't feel is particularly contrary to my point of view. You use "alien" to me the most extreme thing in the world imaginable. I'd simply say, "Ken Lay. Lancelot." Is Lay familiar with Chivialry as a concept he's allowed to really imagine and feel out. Not some dictionary definition he read somewhere, or something he knows about but dismisses as naive? My guess is, at least of years late, it was an alien concept to him. Underandable and felt are two different things, and I was suggesting it might be fun to move our hearts and imaginations into areas of feeling and imagination we don't normally get to tap.

Walter,

I think (hope?) my last post will offer you a response to your post. My point being that in the naive tale, objectivity is resolved in the telling.

Take care all,
Christopher

Not surprisingly, I agree with contra (in that I expect an objectively real mythology to be objectively real) and walt (in that once you cross that bridge to the "real" mythology there's no going back--consistency is an issue for any game unless at the outset declared to be an inconsistent world).

I'm not sure I see the problem (well, I think I do and I'll address that in a second--but I don't see the *stated* problem): you concieve of a world. You postulate a mythology that in some way distinguishes itself from our world or otherwise "exists" in it.

At that point you have to address the issue that *something* is going on. You tell the characters that the sun-goddess drags the sun across the sky on her prisoner's ankle chain chased by the moon-god's smaller one ... well, is it the case or not? If you decide not-to-decide, I see that as a cop-out. Your decision can be: the physical objects are representations of the chase going on in the meta-plane of existence--a telescope will *not* show the goddess and the god (only the physical objects that are reflections of the "higher" truth)--but a proper offering will indeed stop the moon or the sun.

In that case the player's quest for a modern-real-world physics explanation is going to end wihtout answers. You don't have to explain how "as above, so below--but maybe not THAT clearly" but you've decided something--and that something will let you answer questions you hadn't though to ask (the spiritual world has an "edge"--so in the real world, which is, maybe, a sphere, you can only get to the edge with the right ship--a special ship whose physical-reality is a reflection of a ship in the meta-realm capable of sailing towards the spiritual edge in the over-world).

And if you don't want them asking that question--don't want an Enlightenment mind set? Set it up in the character/world defintion. Read Warhammer 40K--all the tech you can shake a stick and and a dark-ages mentality that prevents them from really studying it. Read GURPS II's Mad Lands (the horriffic mythology based on Winnie the Pooh puts the players in the mindset of primitive tribesmen). I expect contra'd have no problem with any of that--and, IMO, it's an obvious 'fix.'

I think the problem isn't so much a GNS issue: the player who refuses to egnage anything the GM has given them in a hell-bent quest for the edge of the map is a strawman. A "idiot player" (someone who has his character make exploration decisions when dealing with a fictional universe) is not where the problem lies. IMO, the problem lies one person closer to home.

-Marco
[and for the record, I only advise against playing with idiot players as a tautology--not in any way that would have relevance to this thread. As I sometimes happen to post here, who exactly is the 'we' on The Forge?]

Edited to add: After reading the later posts (this one was derailed for several hours) I see Christopher's point about Naive play styles. A good post that explained to me what he was getting at. It is a clear answer for me: if you set up at the outset that you're doing that, cool--if you don't it's a major mistake.

Ron says consistency is crucial across all standard GNS modes of play--the Naive one has the option of tossing that. That puts it into the mode I addressed when I said that consistency was crucial unless disposed of before play. A game that does this is Little Fears (IMO).

-Marco

I would also offer M Night Shyalmalan's Signs in the Naïve style at least in one part. This is a spoiler so you may wish to skip this post if you haven't seen the movie. I have turned the text white to make it hard to read if you don't want to. All you have to do is highlight the text and it will be legible.

Many people have complained about how the aliens should have had some kind of wetsuit or something to protect them from the obviously dangerous water covering our planet. The thing is, I could explain it with the context of the movie's premise, but the fact that some people need the explanation is the difference between Naïve and Sophisticated, isn't it? I mean, the aliens came down and when they confronted the alien in their living room, the boy was saved because he had asthma and did not breath in the alien's poison gas and the alien was killed because the little girl was always leaving half-finished glasses of water everywhere. Then someone stops and goes Why didn't the alien have some kind of protection from the water if it was so dangerous? In this case, it's what has "ruined" the movie for this person. I have heard many, many people complain about this point and only this point with the movie and the only thing it illustrates is the difference between the Sophisticated and the Naïve mindset. Had the alien been wearing some kind of spacesuit to protect itself it would have completely changed the ending of the movie as well as robbed us of the metaphysical reveal, the "wow," the "aha!" about why the little girl had that weird quirk about her water.

I am not sure if I had more to offer except to illustrate Naïve/Sophisticated using this movie. Although I will note that the more Naïve viewers enjoyed the movie without having some kind of nitpicky detail ruining the entire experience for them. That and there appears to be a bit of self-importance surrounding Sophisticated, as if filmmakers must abide by this Sophisticated mind-set and not doing so is a failure. I'm not sure about that, though.

Hi Marco,

For the record, I think we've moved past the idiot player thing, right? (I understand you wrote that before you're edit.) Anyone reading, actually *reading* the first post of this thread will notice that I quickly equated MJ's "idiot player" with my view of the Mr. Wizard player, and read, right there next to it my claim that we've all done that at one time or another. So I proposed no We or They. Okay? Right there, due north, in the post, in black letters on white background.

Okay, onto more fun things:

Let me clarify: Naive doesn't mean "inconsistent". It is consistent within itself. There are beans. They are magical. Oh. They make a giant beanstalk. Oh, there's giant in a castle in the sky.

Each step builds on the previous point of imagination. But the naive view isn't consistent with what we expect all the world to usually be like, modelling all sorts of contemporary assumptions on the tale.

In some stories, the goddess of love will be married to the god of war. That's an interesting point of view, and says something about the universe the characters live in, their place in it.

In another tale, the goddess of love is married to the craftsman of the gods, the lame demigod who makes beautiful items for the gods. That's a whole 'nother bit of poetry to feel and consider.

There is not objective truth to whether love is married to war or a lame maker of beauty. But once defined, that's part of the tale.

My point is, it seems to be that to really be open to the implications of these two different marriages should feed the RPG's story in an interesting way. "Hmmmm. Love is married to war? What's that mean? What's the implication of that to my character? How does he see the world living in that kind of a world?" It's just using the imagination actively, and discovering what you, the player, find out about what you feel or think as a result.

Take care,
Christopher

Greetings Christopher,

Greath weather we're having, isn't it?

Christopher Kubasik wrote: You seemed to have a bone to pick and just started picking. You seem to be trying to defend Greek ghost from me for saying the tales are inconsistent. And here I am thinking all the time I love those dead Greeks!

For example: Are Mars and Venus married? Some tales say yes, some say no. I am insulting these anceint cultures for pointing this out? I don't think so. I am suggesting that the difinition of these gods and these stories were clearly not set down in stone enough (not "literal" enough) that different writers could use them to different ends in different relationships. That's all.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: I really don't think I'm disagreeing with you on most of these points. I think you've just jumped to contrary conculsions about my statements... But at some point I'll just be jumping to conclusions about what made you misread what I wrote, so I'll stop now.

Okay,

So here's how I ended the first post of this thread:

"Leaving aside the desire to build religions like genetically engineered cultures on a petri dish, what about this issues: The responsibility to play with a different view and logic when playing in a different world?"

That's what the thread is about. Any takers?

Take care,
Christopher

Greetings Christopher,

Christopher Kubasik wrote: Okay,

So here's how I ended the first post of this thread:

"Leaving aside the desire to build religions like genetically engineered cultures on a petri dish, what about this issues: The responsibility to play with a different view and logic when playing in a different world?"

That's what the thread is about. Any takers?

Actually, Kester, I already covered my response to the "familiar enough" issue in my answer to Walt.

You're spending many words making statements that could be summed up much more quicky, usually skimming over what the discussion actually is at hand so you can trot out the fact you have. This seems to give you some pleasure.

By the way, upthread you stated clearly you didn't understand one of my paragraphs in one of my posts. You than stated that though you didn't understand the paragraph, it didn't "sound" friendly.

Then, instead of asking me to clarify, you proceded to quote from a greek classic in response to a paragraph you had already claimed before all the world not to understand.

Here's some bad news: taking the time to quote literature in the context of a conversation you've already acknowledged you can't actually reply to because you've already said you don't know *what* you're replying to will *lose* you credibility, not gain it.

Slow down, my friend, slow down.

***

I thank all who have participated. As always, I gain a lot from the conversations on the Forge.

Take care,
Christopher

For what it's worth (I think this responds to both Kester and Christopher's last posts/points)-

If we'd set up a game world in which some form of cannibalism would be seen as "normal" and acceptable (say, consuming those you know who happen to die as a form of respect), I'd fully expect everyone involved in the game to run with that. I'd also expect an above-average amount of prep work in terms making sure that everyone was OK with it, and a certain amount of during-game OOC comments about how wierd it is.

Same with religous views/logic, at least in most play groups I've been in over the last stretch.

Gordon

the Sophisticated and the Naive mindset.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: Actually, Kester, I already covered my response to the "familiar enough" issue in my answer to Walt.

You're spending many words making statements that could be summed up much more quicky, usually skimming over what the discussion actually is at hand so you can trot out the fact you have. This seems to give you some pleasure.

If one wishes to encourage players to experience a game through characters that endorse a particular set of values and beliefs, then one should, within the game, endorse those values and beliefs.

If that means granting people status for partaking of the flesh of their enemies [or taking it from those who consume the flesh of their kin] then so be it. If it means something else, as long as something happens as a result of acting [and refusing to partake is almost certainly an action too].

If one wishes to place a certain measure of responsibility upon someone then my suggestion is to pair with it some right or another, or, indeed, the reverse.

In a cannabilistic society people may have the right to eat the flesh of others, but have a correspondent responsibility, to with, protecting the flesh of their loved ones from being similarly consumed. I'm sure that we can all smell the roleplaying opportunities from that particular set of carcasses.

Or, the other way around, people may have the responsibility for eating the flesh of others. The hows and whys of this strange practise are not for us to ponder, save to say that I can think of a few regarding idolatory, avoiding participation in necromantic rituals, and punishment for transgressions and that is before I have had a second cup of coffee or my fourth cup of tea. The correspondent right, of course, is that one may determine who is allowed to eat ones corpse when it seems as if death is about to call.

Before we even start to enter the complexities of system, of gains or penalties at a mechanical level for supping others, of complexities between tribes and differences of interpretation of dictums or prophecies or whatever else, there are stories here that can be told about families, and friends.

Of course, we're only playing with one building block here. An alien mindset isn't the kind of thing that we can reach at one remove. So we add more, and ensure that there are rights and responsibilities around those, and then we start looking for friction. Where there is conflict, there is opportunity, no?

- drew

I would disagree with the idea that it cannot be too unfamaliar. I bet, players can identify with any human in plausible surroundings. To my mind, there would be no point building a game which featured such a spectacualr attention-getter as cannibalism and then shuffle it off into the background; surely, that would be part of the point of playing, to expose yourself to this concept, to quite literally think the unthinkable becuase you have a structured and comfortable environment in which to do so.

Therefore: from the design point of view, I would say that such a game should mechanically reflect some of the structure of the perceived universe, and should contain significant volume text dedicated to this cannibalism both in character and out of character, so that everyone has a framework from which to approach the situation. It should be a strong feature, openly discussed.

Much has flowed from my use, in another thread, of the phrase "Idiot Player". The context there was that I would need the answer to some particular problem (I think the matter of how the sun really crossed the sky) because some "Idiot Player" would find a way to find out.

The phrase was not intended as more than a facetious statement of frustration. I did not mean that this player was trying to be difficult, or acting inappropriately, or getting out of character, or bringing the wrong mindset to the game. What I meant was that it is frustrating sometimes for the referee to be confronted by the fact that players very reasonably become incredibly interested in some part of the world to which little or no attention has been given.

I've got a Multiverser world published in The First Book of World in which the player character finds himself in the cargo hold of a cargo spaceship on a regular route. The usual course of events is that he's taken as a stowaway, invents some plausible explanation for his presence, and take a job with the crew to work off his passage, which turns into an ongoing career in this dangerous and constantly changing world. I've run it for probably twenty different players by now, and I'm running it for one of them right now on our forum game. The one port that is in a sense the anchor of the trade route, a place called Emerald, is valuable because of a mineral abundant there. It's also populated by some sort of primitive primate/humanoid (very australopithicine) tool-using carnivore that attacks miners, shippers, even space ships docked on the ground. This makes it unlikely that anyone would want to stay there, as it's a pretty rough place. Suddenly on this running of the game, the player character involved takes an interest in this place. He wants to know the geography, geology, climatology, history of the planet, any anthropological or biological studies done on the creatures, habitablility, problems with settlement--a laundry list of data which logically must exist but which I quite frankly don't have and never needed. O.K., that's not a particular problem. I know a few things about the world that are easily extrapolated into the points that matter, and I can invent the rest. The point is that you can never be certain which direction a player is going to suddenly take the game, and it can be rather frustrating for the referee to have to fill in the information in those areas he never expected would matter.

So my so-called "Idiot Player" is not an idiot or a problem. He's just the guy who at this moment is frustrating me because I've got all this material set up over here and he's suddenly become fascinated by that little snippet of nothing so he's looking over there.

It reminds me of my first year as a dungeon master, when I created a log bridge over a fast-moving current, worked out the probability of safely crossing it and the consequences for falling off, accounting for dexterity, armor, class, strength, and more; and when my players got to it, they decided they were not going to risk crossing my slippery log bridge, and found another way across. Every once in a while you have to pull a page out of your notes and just burn it, because it was wasted effort; every once in a while you have to grab a sheet of paper and invent an entirely new country on the fly because the players decided to go see what was at the other end of the road. You have to roll with the punches. You'll still see my sardonic smile when that happens, at least once in a while.

--M. J. Young

greyorm wrote:

the Sophisticated and the Naive mindset.

This distinction, or the terms, bother me, ...

To a degree, I thnk the 'Mr. Wizard' approach is accurate. (We'll ignore the problem of peole why try to apply modern knowlege they shouldn't have. Like a fantasy characther trying to combine saltpeter and sulfer. That is disfunctional.)

There were people who tested the world, ect. This is the origin of scientific tradition. The result of this was that myths only survived about features of the world that were not testable. IIRC only about 3 people visited Hades and came back.

To answer Christophers question:
There are two answers:
1)A world can enforce it's viewpoint, in game, or world mechanics. So an attempt to test a myth, should fail, or produce a answer that does not contradict anything.
I believe Feng Shui (sp?) gives bonuses to cinimatic actions and penalties to repetative 'safe' actions. Thus, if a world encourages the viewpoint it wants, people will buy into it.

With reference to the current furore around the 'Naive' and 'Sophisticated' styles of play, is anyone reminded of the whole 'Immersion' debate?

The central conceit of each appeared to me, an outside observer, to revolve around the role of the player with regard to their interpretation of what their character encounters.

The 'Naive' player takes it on faith, to coin a phrase, that the world being presented to his character is internally consistent.

The 'Sophisticated' player takes it on faith that the world being presented by the GM [note key perceptual distinction] is internally consistent.

This then starts to seem a bit like a 'Social Contract' issue. As has been pointed out, Pendragon got round this by saying that magic was a GM's prerogative. D&D seems to get round it by saying that magic does this 'because', and that still seems to be enough for lots and lots of people.

What confuses the issue, I think, is the preponderance of religions that people have enough basic knowledge of to see contradictions between them. I'll point out that, historically, such contradictions usually resulted in conflict, and that, in and of itself, seems reason enough to continue to play with it. That said, if we were having the same argument about non-Euclidean mathematics or non-i calculi I'm not sure if we'd see the same difficulties.

Another possible obfuscation revolves around the accuracy of the mythologies in question. Are they believed to be true? Or simply relevant as fables? Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to interpret the function of the religions within the societies that you are attempting to represent. Thus those who have a constricting religion that forbids might face mechanics that punish, while those that have a loose code of moral instruction that encourages might enjoy bonuses in certain situations.

Of course, you might find yourself with play balance issues in those circumstances, but, frankly, life sucks, and then you get a boat ride.

To reiterate, if you want to enforce or encourage a mode of play, no matter what you want to call it, use the system and the social contract to pull or push players down the path you want them to tread.

Of course, to do that, you have to figure out what you want them to do.

If, as you've said, it's to make players responsible for operating within an alien viewpoint, then you should do your best to ensure that operating within that alien viewpoint gets results.

- drew