The Forge Archives

Everyone,

In the past we've decided to go with a Core-and-Customisation method for our Game (which really needs a working title, btw. Suggestions?).

In this thread, I would like us to hammer out which parts are core - and which are options - and also to flesh out the most interesting setting.

Please take into account:

1. The Nature of the Archivist
2. The Nature of the Nemesis
3. The Thing that Must Be done
4. What Possession is
5. What the game's about

Basically, Something along this line:

1. Archivist is ALWAYS an incorporeal being, post-human of it's own volition, seeking out knowledge to avert the Nemesis. It can only act in the physical realm through posession of humans.

2. The Nemesis is something that threatens humanity.

3. The thing that must be done - probably to avert the Nemesis, but maybe more?

4. Posession is always symbiosis.

5. The game is about the specific hard choices you have to make in order to reach your goal: Duty vs. Individuality (both for the Archivist - work hard or ride the flesh, and for the Host - can you sacrifice the Host's Individuality to your Duty?).

Also, I think:

The most interesting setting is 100 year in the future (not thousands). Quantum breakthroughs in social studies, memes, psychohistory are combined with reaching 'transcended (Archivist)' states, for some. The Nemesis are the common frailties of the human race - can these new discoveries be used to turn humanity from the path of self-destruction?

(I know, that's not a space opera setting - I'm just shooting something out here).

Name of the Game
Hmm. Well, "The Forge Group Design RPG" is descriptive, but sucks. Other ideas (and I'm throwing in any wacky thought as well as a few I think are halfway decent):

"Archivist"
"Archivist: a game of duty and sacrifice"
"Guardians of History"
"The Great Library"
"Travel to New Places, Meet Interesting People, and Possess Them"
"The Great War"
"Candle in the Darkness"
"Morality -- Duty -- Sacrifice"
"Empty Soul"
"Flesh Riders"
"The Forever War"
"Burning Souls" [sorry, Luke!]
"Soul Fire"
"Soul Fuel"
"Behind the Eyes"
"Hard Choices"

Archivists
I think what Tobias said pretty much covers it for me as well. The only thing I'd like to add is that Archivists have access to at least one other plane of existence, where they can interact with the environment without taking hosts (the Great Library concept discussed earlier).

Nemesis
I see the Nemesis as something that may threaten humanity, but, more importantly, it threatens either the Archivists or their goals. I thought the danger to humanity might just be a side effect of the Nemesis' philosophy. I also think the Nemesis should be very similar to the Archivists, but with a darker twist.

Ascension
Hmm, maybe I'm on a different wavelength here, but I wasn't seeing ascension as having anything at all to do with technology. Nor did I imagine it happened all at once. I was thinking that someone who died a few hundred years ago could just as easily become an Archivist as one who dies a few hundred years in the future. Upon their ascension, they are pulled out of space and time into the Archivist's other dimension. Of course, since this other place exists outside of our space and time, all the Archivists that ever were or will be showed up there at the same time. Perhaps their appearance was even what created the dimension in the first place.

Quote from: Andrew MorrisName of the Game

"Archivist: a game of duty and sacrifice"
"Guardians of History"
"Travel to New Places, Meet Interesting People, and Possess Them"

These I like. As a fun one I also like

"Places to Go, People to Posess.."

"Join the Archivists, they said. See the World through all Time, they said.."
(too long, I know)

Quote
Archivists
I think what Tobias said pretty much covers it for me as well. The only thing I'd like to add is that Archivists have access to at least one other plane of existence, where they can interact with the environment without taking hosts (the Great Library concept discussed earlier).

Sounds good to me.

Quote
Nemesis
I see the Nemesis as something that may threaten humanity, but, more importantly, it threatens either the Archivists or their goals. I thought the danger to humanity might just be a side effect of the Nemesis' philosophy. I also think the Nemesis should be very similar to the Archivists, but with a darker twist.

Ascension
Hmm, maybe I'm on a different wavelength here, but I wasn't seeing ascension as having anything at all to do with technology. Nor did I imagine it happened all at once. I was thinking that someone who died a few hundred years ago could just as easily become an Archivist as one who dies a few hundred years in the future. Upon their ascension, they are pulled out of space and time into the Archivist's other dimension. Of course, since this other place exists outside of our space and time, all the Archivists that ever were or will be showed up there at the same time. Perhaps their appearance was even what created the dimension in the first place.

I guess we're coming from slightly different angles on this one. I'm coming from a pretty dedicated 'being an archivist involved a conscious effort' standpoint. While I have no problems with a spiritual transition that could work both in the stone-age as well as in a high-tech future, I'm not really all that thrilled with the 'I died and now I'm an archivist' thing - because it seems like just another version of a ghost all over again.

That purposeful step to archivistdom would imply there's either something intrinsically valuable about being one, or a big cause to become one - Nemesis being an obvious one, given that it's opposing something valuable anyway.

Yaaay, more threads!

Title: 'Guardians of History' is a good descriptive title. If the games all about time travel, I'm tempted to see 'Time' in the title somewhere. How about 'Interesting Times' as in the old saying 'may you live in interesting times.' Also (obliquely) captures the war theme.

Archivist Nature: What Tobias said pretty much sums up the physical nature. I'd still like to see some detail on their cultural nature (there may be more than one Archivist Culture: discuss...) but that can wait for now.

Nemesis Nature: I strongly believe that the Nemesis should be just lke the Archivists, but with a different attitude to History. The Archivists preserve known history, the Nemesis want to alter it. Also leaves room for 'shades of grey' - what if the Nemesis future really is brighter?

The Thing That Must Be Done: Preserve the timeline. If this changs too far, all of known Archivist society will Cease To Be.

Possession: Invoking pseudoscience here - it's the interaction between the Archivists energetic matrices and the neural substructure of the Host. I have no idea what that really means, but I think there should be some science basis (even if it's Star Trek science) - this helps us to explore what happens if the Host gets an electric shock, or takes drugs, or whatever. 'Symbiosis' is a good working definition for now, but I think this needs another new thread later down the line.

What the Game's about: Hard choices, yes, but these choices need to centre on the struggle between Archivist and Nemesis. What will you do in the name of Victory? Will you 'desert', and hide away in your Host? Are you sure you are on the right side?

Ascension: I think telepathy is the key here. I can't imagine the Archivists 'ascending' if they didn't have telepathic abilities already. Therefore there needs to have been a certain amount of genetic modification, or other change to human nature, before universal Ascent is possible. (Although I concede the possibility of very special individuals ascending before this time.)

Another thought: maybe not everyone Ascended - could explain some of those UFO sightings!

EDIT: Most of this is my stab at 'core' - I think we need to define this first, then add options later.

I really only feel like i need to adress Nemesis.

I see two interesting options...

The aforementioned (thanks Doug) "The Nemesis wants to change time.  We must stop them." is already a pretty cool thing.  This allows you to send the party of archivists back to save Hitler from execution by those crazy anti-Archivists who are messing with forces that no one completely understands.  This may force us to generate some arbitrary set of rules governing continuity in those cases where Archivists fail to prevent time stream tampering.

The second option is that the Nemesis is some single something.  A monolithic problem (some plague, an alien race, perhaps the first Archivist driven mad by ascension but also given incredible power...)  This is sort of what i had assumed would be happening since the word "Nemesis" is singular.  There is some thing that we must stop/prevent.

Thomas

As I mention in the Time Travel Party thread, I'd prefer Time Travel to be a tool to make cool scenes - and not the central issue of the game. Or, to be more precise - to not be the central CORE issue of the game.

If someone wants to play a game of galactic time cops, cool, I hope you enjoy it. My view on the Archivists is more in line with the 'research' - 'information gathering' - 'abstract' - 'human nature' themes in the game.

Note that they are not incompatible - player archivists could certainly be sent to investigate disturbances by a time-altering Nemesis while still having the researcher role - other factions in the Archivists society (arrgg... I sense splatbooks) could be the correctors.

I also feel I need to clarify something: It's not been decided yet whether Nemesis (singular, indeed) is the same as the Darkchivists. It may very well be, but the Nemesis may indeed be just some catastrophe, and the Darkchivists a faction.

Since this is the Core/Customisation discussion, I think we can all agree that there IS a Nemesis - a result, or event, antithesis to the goals of the Archivists. And there are the Darkchivists - those who have a different goal than the archivists. A Nemesis/Darkchivist alliance is logical, but they need not neccesarily be the same thing, right? I would like the possibilty of stopping the Nemesis without also having to eradicate all Darkchivists (or eradicating all Darkchivists - and discovering it doesn't stop the Nemesis).

In imitation of Islamic law, which has categories ranging from "forbidden" to "permitted but discouraged" to "encouraged" to "mandatory," I'd like to add a "recommended" level in between the hard Core and the purely Optional. Also, I'm going to reorder Tobias's core elements somewhat because I think everything follows from the answer to #5, Premise. So:


1) The Core

Premise (Tobias's #5)
Sacrifice. You can only save humanity by sacrificing individual human beings. So who's it going to be? Will you sacrifice your Hosts by pushing them to burn-out? Will you sacrifice yourself by fading out -- or by keeping going, century after century, until the job is done?

The Nature of Archivists (Tobias's #1)
... is inherently tragic. You have willingly sacrificed almost everything that made you human in order to save humanity. You are fighting to make sure other people have the very thing you can never have again.

Possession (Tobias's #4)
... is a moral balancing act, where the abstract general question of "what individual human do I sacrifice for humanity?" is made specific, concrete, and urgent. There should be no way to work towards the salvation of humanity without putting at risk either Host or Archivist or both.
This risk can be physical death or, more interestingly, spiritual death -- the loss of emotion, compassion, individuality, in short of humanity. A mishandled possession may leave the Host a corpse and the Archivist in oblivion; but it is far worse if the Host is left a "hollow man" without feeling while the Archivist loses its last vestiges of humanity.

The Nature of the Nemesis (Tobias's #2)
(a) For dramatic purposes, the Nemesis must be specific, concrete, and urgent. It can't just be some general tendency in history or human nature that causes various problems. It has to be a disaster. And while it may not happen for ten thousand years, avoiding it has to demand some kind of action now.
(b) For thematic purposes, the Nemesis must be a threat to humanity -- either physical extinction of humans as a species, or, more interestingly, spiritual extinction of human nature: emotion, compassion, individuality. Yes, I'm replicating my language from the previous section on purpose, because the Nemesis should replicate on the cosmic scale the threat of Possession gone awry on the individual scale.
OPTIONS: The Nemesis can be a disaster that wipes out humanity -- as long as that disaster is itself caused by humanity: pollution, war, nanotech experiments gone awry, manmade plagues, etc. (A natural disaster won't work: What's the moral significance of being hit by a big space rock?). Or the Nemesis can be a historical development that crushes some aspect of human nature: a repressive empire, for example, or a global hyper-consumerism that reduces people to shopping zombies. Or the Nemesis can be a metaphysical condition that attacks human nature directly, e.g. a spiritual plague that leaves its victims physically healthy but devoid of feeling or imagination.

The Quest (Tobias's #3)
The Nemesis has a cause. While the Nemesis itself is specific, the causes can be general, complex, and deeply rooted in human nature and history. The Quest is to unravel those tangles until an answer to preventing the Nemesis can be found.
OPTIONS: The exact nature of the information sought depends entirely on the Nemesis defined and the GM's personal plans.


2) Recommended elements

Dark Archivists -- The Burning Ones or Immolators
In any setting, there should be Archivists who abuse their powers -- who answer the quest "whom should I sacrifice" the wrong way, by callously burning out their Hosts. They are a necessary dramatic foil and moral mirror for the protagonists.
OPTIONS: But the Burners' level of power and organization, and their relationship to the Nemesis, should be left to each gaming group, with much kept secret by the GM for discovery during play.

The Great Library
This is a "place" to which Archivists in their disembodied form are native. Both good and evil Archivists reside here, and neither can interfere with each other in any way: They can communicate, but violence -- even getting in someone's way -- is impossible in a place without physical substance.
The Great Library consists of endless shelves of books containing all the knowledge all Archivists have ever accumulated. Open a book about a particular time and place, and you are transported there....
OPTIONS: The Library can be a metaphysical plane, a virtual reality, or the afterlife.


3) Option 1 -- my candidate

Taking a leaf from Doug Ruff's book, I'll do this as a blurb:

Quote
FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST
The Global War of the 21st century was over. The great plagues unleashed by nature and by terrorists had been cured. The last famine was in the past. The leaders of every country were elected. There was still violence, poverty, oppression; still death; still sorrow. But for the first time in human history, the vast majority of human beings lived free from hunger and from fear. It was not a perfect world. But it was getting there.
Humanity could look forward to a golden age -- and to the stars, for a means of faster-than-light travel had at last been invented. But only immaterial particles of less than zero mass, tachyons, could travel at above the speed of light; and as Einstein had predicted, to travel faster than light meant to travel backwards in time. A few brave or broken souls volunteered to abandon human existence and be converted into tachyon energy -- ghosts who sacrificed their bodies and much of their memory for the freedom to travel time and space.
Some of the tachyon ghosts were sent to distant worlds. But others were dispatched into humanity's past, to learn its lessons so its tragedies would never be repeated. Writing their memes into human minds using tachyon projectors, they observed history quietly through others' eyes and recorded what had truly happened. They were called, unassumingly, the Archivists.
But some Archivists wanted to do more than record the horrors of history. They wanted to erase them. Moved by arrogance and by compassion, they took over the bodies of their hosts and acted to change the past, pushing humanity hard and fast to skip over centuries of suffering and create a new, less painful history.
Then they returned to the 22nd century and saw what they had wrought. Their imperfect paradise was gone. In its place was a perfect prison.

THE EMPIRE OF NEMESIS
Global unity. Perpetual peace. Prosperity for everyone. With advertising piped 24 hours directly into everybody's brain and government-mandated chemicals to suppress any dangerous emotion or creativity. And behind it all, for those who dared to be human, the omnipresent secret police devoted to the cult of Nemesis -- the Greek goddess of retribution.
A few Archivists erased themselves in sorrow. A few, unwilling to admit their mistake, convinced themselves the new order was the paradise they had sought and worked to strengthen it. But most fought. The question was how. Where in history had things gone wrong? How many tragedies would have to be restored to the timeline before it healed? How many individual humans would have to be sacrificed to save humanity?
It is up to you. You are an Archivist. The past keeps changing. The future is lost to memory. But you must change the past and restore the future to save humanity itself.

HISTORY IS HISTORY. CHANGE THE PAST. SAVE THE FUTURE.

Posting this after after visiting the Time Travel Party thread, I want to bring some ideas over from my last post there...

Absolutely agree with Sydney over the basic Premise being 'Sacrifice'. But instead of sacrificing bodies, I think this is now more about sacrificing souls.

This is ecause I don't see the Archivist existence as being tragic. Archivists are attempting to preserce the future because they believe in it, I don't think they would do this if they considered themselves to be pitiful creatures.

(The Nemesis, however... I think they are motivated by tragic impulse.)

This makes more sense if you buy the concept of Archivists being liberated from birth/rebirth, and 'humans' as we know them ben trapped by it. This means that the Archivists are attempting to liberate the soul of every single human throughout history by ensuring that they reach their future destination as fellow-Archivists.

Against this goal, even one soul lost is a tragedy. And the real tragedy within the game is that, by fighting the war with the Nemesis, the Archivists are going to have to possess human bodies, thereby endangering the souls who are already occupying these bodies.

Now, the Nemesis must have some purpose of their own, and if they also exist outside of Time, then it is almost certainly about souls as well. For example, they may believe that Archivism (is that a valid word?) is a terrible condition, and that it's better to live in the world of the flesh (hmm, maybe they're Sensates.)

Alternatively, they may believe that there is a way to accelerate the transition, but this would cause souls to Ascend before they are spiritually ready (in the eyes of the Archivists.)

Either way, I think it's all about souls, and about the ethical difference between the Archivists and their opponents.

Oh, and if you take on the 'Schrodinger's War' theme, maybe some of the more astute Archivists can sense Sydney's 'Empire of Nemesis' starting to form. It's not actually there, but it is there in potential and that potential is getting stronger, and threatens to overwhelm the current 'true' Now.

Quote from: Doug RuffAbsolutely agree with Sydney over the basic Premise being 'Sacrifice'. But instead of sacrificing bodies, I think this is now more about sacrificing souls.

I'm with you 100% so far. Even if you don't believe in the soul as a metaphysical entity (which I do, and which this game essentially takes as given), the loss of the capacity to feel, imagine, create is more terrifying than bodily death.

Quote from: Doug RuffI don't see the Archivist existence as being tragic. Archivists are attempting to preserve the future because they believe in it, I don't think they would do this if they considered themselves to be pitiful creatures.

I'm with you 50%. I did overstate the "tragic" point, and I don't think it is all of what an Archivist is about -- otherwise yeah, it'd be pretty bleak (it'd be a White Wolf game...). But it can't be just about the coolness of it either. They gain a lot, they give up a lot.

[theological digression]

Interestingly, there's a long theological pedigree to the difference between my take and what appears to be Doug's. I'm coming from the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic view that starts with the line in Genesis, "And God saw what He had made, and behold, it was good": The body is good, the physical world is good, marriage even sensuality is good. Even in the afterlife, these religions actually talk about a physical resurrection (St. Paul's spiritual body), not just a wispy ghost.

Now, in Christianity, alongside the celebration of the physical, there's a strong Greek-influenced strain that rejects physicality, especially sex. Monks are an obvious example; but the extreme version is the Gnostic heresy (Manicheans in the Roman Empire era, Cathars in the Middle Ages -- these are the people the Albigensian Crusade was against). At its extreme, the Gnostic philosophy argued that (1) the physical world is an illusion created by an evil "demiurge" -- often identified with the God of the Old Testament; (2) the true God is trying to break through into our illusion to wake us up -- this is usually how Jesus is conceived by Gnostics; (3) only by rejecting the evil, physical world (e.g. abstaining from meat, sex, etc.) and discovering The Secret Knowledge (in Greek, gnosis) can we free the good, spiritual part of ourselves.

A lot of science fiction is Gnostic. The Matrix is kung fu cyber-gnosticism. Philip K. Dick explicitly cites Gnostic texts (especially in the book that he went crazy writing, Valis). Star Trek flirts with gnosticism every time they meet an omnipotent being formed of some kind of energy the scanners have never detected before. Arthur C. Clarke in Childhood's End and 2001 is implicitly Gnostic when he postulates the next level of evolution is about transcending the flesh to become a being of pure intellect.

I'm not Gnostic. I like having a physical body; I think physical bodies are a crucial part of being human; I even believe my God incarnated in a physical body, which ate, breathed, died, and came back to life complete with the physical scars on His head, hands, feet, and side from being killed (your theological mileage may vary...). I think that being a purely spiritual being (e.g. a ghost or angel), like being a purely physical being (e.g. an insect), is an impoverished existence compared to being both physical and spiritual (what C.S. Lewis jokingly calls, in The Screwtape Letters/i], an "amphibian").

[/theological digression]

What the hell does all this mean for this game?

It means we need to directly address the question, "is existence as pure thought -- as a spirit, as a computer program, as a being of energy -- superior to physical existence?" If pure spirit is superior, then becoming an Archivist is triumphant transcendance, and being a regular human is just kinda primitive. If pure spirit means giving something up, then being a regular human is a great good, while becoming an Archivist is both triumph and tragedy, both ascenscion and self-sacrifice.

Which, theology aside, makes for much more interesting stories.

Sydney,

If the game is about 'spirits', then maybe the theology isn't that much of a digression....

I hadn't actually considered Gnosticism when I posted last (I'm an aGnostic...), but I think you've made a very good point by comparing what I wrote with Gnostic beliefs.

Actually, I wasn't thinking about anything religious at all when I started the post, but by the end of it I was thinking quite a bit about Buddhism, and especially the idea of the 'Boddhisatva' who will not rest until every single soul achieves Nirvana.

Quote from: Sydney FreedbergIt means we need to directly address the question, "is existence as pure thought -- as a spirit, as a computer program, as a being of energy -- superior to physical existence?"

Or perhaps we need to let the game's players address that question. The players may even decide that the Archivists are the bad guys after all... is this a direction we should consider as part of the game design? Or as one of the Options (allowing the players to oppose the Archivists, by playing the Nemesis, or a different faction?

Quote from: Doug Ruff

Quote from: Sydney FreedbergIt means we need to directly address the question, "is existence as pure thought -- as a spirit, as a computer program, as a being of energy -- superior to physical existence?"

Or perhaps we need to let the game's players address that question.

Yes, yes, yes. Let me correct myself: The game needs to directly pose the question, "is existence as pure spirit better than physical existence?" It should be up to the players to answer that question -- or at least to wrestle with it.

P.S.: Gnosticism and strict Theravada Buddhism have a lot in common, from what I understand (thinking the material world is essentially an illusion, for starters, but also I think some Gnostics believed in reincarnation).

Quote from: Sydney FreedbergA few, unwilling to admit their mistake, convinced themselves the new order was the paradise they had sought and worked to strengthen it. But most fought. The question was how. Where in history had things gone wrong? How many tragedies would have to be restored to the timeline before it healed? How many individual humans would have to be sacrificed to save humanity?

I wanted to call attention to this...  In a future gone wrong due to temporal tampering, you are tasked with restoring the great tragedies of history.  Save Hitler's life, in fact you must be instrumental in his rise to power so that in the aftermath humanity can learn "Never again".  You must make sure that the rape of Nanking goes through, that pompei is not evacuated, that Stalin's orders result in the deaths of 20 million people.  This is the sacrifice.  You must fix history by returning it to the horrifying path it originally trod...

I think that it is interesting anyway.  Also, i am with Sydney that the loss of physicallity is a horrible sacrifice (taking the Western view, so to speak) which is why the allure of fading into a host is so tempting.  As in "why didn't i take the blue pill?" and then realizing that it is not too late.

EDIT: Crossposted with Sydney...  I think that having the answer to the question of which form of existance built into the game in such a way that the character's sacrifice is apperent is an advantage...  Then again, i can see Doug's point that if spiritual assension is the goal then sacrificing a soul irretrievable is an act of sacrifice, but it will tend not to be one of self-sacrifice, which i believe is a very powerful theme.

Thomas

Quote from: LordSmerf

Quote from: Sydney FreedbergHow many tragedies would have to be restored to the timeline before it healed?

I wanted to call attention to this...  In a future gone wrong due to temporal tampering, you are tasked with restoring the great tragedies of history....

Spot on. It's a real bitch. It's meant to be.

So over the weekend i remembered a point that i wanted to address, but i can not seem to find the specific post in which it is mentioned despite having skimmed over all of the threads again.  Anyway that point is: Archivist/Host Compatability.

Someone expressed that the Host an Archivist takes is always exactly what you need.  I believe that having to work around the frailties and disadvantages of a given Host for a given objective is very cool.

Example: You jump to 1935 to prevent the assassination of Adolf Hitler, your Host is a young Jewish factory worker.  He happens to be in roughly the right place at the right time and you happen to have a realitvely clear link to him.  Now, what do you do?

It is the very fact that your Host may not be perfectly (or even remotely) suited to the task at hand that forces the Archivist to intervene with his Powerz.  I really like this added element of difficulty in that it forces more choices: "Do i go ahead and tackle the assassin in front of Hitler knowing that after i jump away the Host will be picked up by the police and likely charged as an accomplice?"  Even more in line with the idea of sacrifice... do i sacrifice this Host in a purely mundane sense for my goal?

Thomas