Considering Spiritual Games

This Division – Spiritual Games revolve around polar concepts – a decision between two notional ideals.  When a spiritual game is played the Players choose the spiritual ideal that each wants to exemplify the Thesis – the Referee chooses another- not necessarily opposite – but situationally relevant ideal – the Antithesis.  Then each player ascribes a value – between 2 & 19 to their Thesis.  Thereafter during the encounter, the players must roll under their number in order to succeed, spiritually using their Thesis.  Meanwhile rolls over that number indicate that the Referee’s Antithesis is the succeeding factor.  If the number is rolled on the nose then chaotic things occur & there is a mingling of the ideals leading to a Synthesis – which brings the encounter to its conclusion. 

While the options for spiritual ideals are innumerable – the suggested poles are based upon the alignment system present throughout the game.  Situations may arise in which the suggested ideals aren’t the right fit, though, so any alterations to these divisions should be expected. 

       AUDACITY Daring, verve, cleverness & boldness            8             

       CREATION Invention, artistry, whimsy & vision 2            

       DEVOTION      Intensity, certainty, focus & faith      7            

       EMPATHY Kindness, compassion & civility                    1            

       HOSTILITY      Contempt, nerve, wrath & brutality  5           

       WHIMSY  Dreams, hopes, fantasy & mysticism 4     

       MASTERY Skill, talent, innate & learned                        3            

       NOBILITY Sincerity, courage & propriety                       6           

       POSSESSIONS   Material, gain & acquisitions             0           

       REALITY  Pragmatism, sense & caution                         9           

These provide some default options for players & referees to use during spiritual encounters.  If you are playing in a game where players tally their deeds or associate one or more of these virtues for some purpose – such as In The Ruins – the referee may indicate that the player’s number for each of these is equal to the number they have achieved in that virtue. 

An example of a spiritual encounter: 

The valiant knight Farsipal seeks a divine vision through prayerful meditation upon the ideal of Purity.  The Referee deigns to propose Insolence as the opposing ideal.  Farsipal gives his number as 8.  As he encounters mythopoetic concepts within his meditation he rolls to interact with them.  At the outset he is tested by the vision of his own dying mother, afflicted by plague commanding him to ‘curse god and die’.   Farsipal rolls & gets a 4.  He renounces this vision & adheres to purity & lifts the disease from his mother, beatifying her in her final moments, giving peace.  The redemption of his mother on her deathbed changes Farsipal’s number – it becomes 6-8. 

Thereafter Farsipal crosses a river of broken glass in aid of this he encounters the steel boatman – an armored steer that navigates the flow.  Farsipal attempts to lure the boatman to his side of the river.  Rolling again he gets a 12.  He is overcome by insolence and defiantly crosses the river insensible to the billion cuts he endures along the way.  These cuts become infested with the dross of the river & Farsipal’s number changes – it becomes 6-10. 

At the final segment of his vision-journey Farsipal comes to the court of the King Unbidden who grips his shoulders & leers in his face – the vile adversary tries to tempt Farsipal with illicit pleasures.  Farsipal rolls to confront this adversary & gets an 8.  He now has Insolent-Purity.  This gives him the wherewithal to overcome the wicked king unbidden through overwhelming force of personal agency.  Farsipal leaves the meditation having gained a greater sense of self & of his internal power.  The encounter is ended. 

Had Farsipal rolled an 8 on his first test – he would have gained no Purity nor any Defiance – but would have overcome the encounter & gained the experience.  However, because he gained both Purity & Insolence he comes through the experience, not unchanged – but with both ideals more firmly established within his character. 

Had he failed to have any purity – never rolling below his number, he would emerge from the experience far more Impudent but no less pure.

Pattern for Spiritual Games  –

&       The Encounter is initiated & declared as a spiritual encounter.

&       Players each declare the ideal with which they will encounter the divine

&       The Referee declares the ideal that they must struggle with

&       The Referee narrates the scene & prompts players for their actions

&       The Players take turns rolling their dice to determine how they narrate their own actions. 

&       As the spread of numbers increases based upon going over or under the number the players achieve Synthesis – as they do so they drop out of the encounter. 

&       When all players have achieved Synthesis the encounter ends & the referee disburses the consequences. 

Adjudicating Spiritual Games – A Guide for the Referee –

As with other encounters a spiritual encounter has no truly fixed outcome & as with other encounters a clear objective is in place when it is declared.  For this reason you’ll want to place your spiritual encounters into your stories where they’ll have some relevance to the plot or the schemes of the players – vague goals aren’t a great fit for spiritual encounters – but questions meant to disassemble the vagueness within the story do make for good encounters.  Examples –

&       What do we do next? 

&       Who is the real enemy in this situation?

&       Why is this *specific thing* happening? 

If the players want to engage with the divine it should be for a specific goal. 

&       Help to expel a diabolical presence

&       Vanquish or drive out a ghost

&       Gain a vital insight into the mind of god

The Rewards for this type of encounter are thus defined by the objectives of the players – since they know what they’re seeking they determine what success in the encounter looks like.

These types of encounter shouldn’t be merely narrative advancement though.  There are consequences – both good & bad for the player when they engage in these sorts of games.  The consequences largely derive from the events of the game rather than the final outcome – since the game continues until Synthesis occurs, this sort of game will always end with players getting something.  But what they get is colored by the Synthesis of Thesis & Antithesis. 

If Players have it all their way – rolling under their number & sticking to their Thesis – they are rewarded by having that Thesis reinforced – grant a boon based upon the thesis that triggers when the ideal comes up in other encounters. 

If Players are unlucky & the Antithesis is dominant in the game – then this should affect them.  If they champion goodness against evil & evil holds sway – then they should be tainted, overwhelmed by darkness & thwarted.  Let them suffer disillusion. 

If the Synthesis is easily arrived at – the players are consequently comfortable with the Thesis & Antithesis – they will see these as complimentary rather than adversarial. 

In all these cases the players agency is a bit under stress – since you’re putting thoughts into their character’s heads – since this isn’t always agreeable to players it should be stressed at the outset of a spiritual game that the consequences are often a change in perspective & personality. 

Specific Rewards -

Here are a few specific gifts that may be granted to a character based upon their interaction with the game: 

&       A new prayer or religious spell

&       An enhanced ability in specific circumstances i.e.: a blessing

&       Important or valuable information

&       Liberation from a curse or condition

&       Status within an organization i.e.: an anointing

&       Pacification of an adversary

&       Warding or sanctification of an area

&       Desecration or decommissioning of an area

&       Charming an object or infusing a relic with holy power

&       Access to prior lives or incarnations

&       A boon or wish from an immortal being

&       The ability to access other dimensions i.e.: transcendence

&       The rescue of a soul i.e.: resurrection

Player Acquired Modifications to this Game -

&       Firmly Held – your belief in a specific ideal allows you to use it in any spiritual game.  You need no other devotion.  7

&       Unwavering – You declare a range of numbers rather than a single number when you begin.  You declare one ideal for which this holds true when gaining the ability.  6

&       Open-Minded – You are amenable to the persuasion of the antithesis & can add a number to your rolls allowing you to explore Synthesis more easily.  1

&       Deep-Thinker – You may gain more than one reward & achieve Synthesis more than once in such a game – allowing you to continue beyond the ordinary ending.  3

&       Unquestioning – You can deduct a number from your roll when you play this game, helping you to cleave more closely to your spiritual core.  2

&       Holy-Place – You can reduce the size of the die when playing a spiritual game in a sanctified location.  9

&       Diabolical Presence – The die size increases when the encounter occurs in a place of strong antithetical power, but you can ignore this.  8

&       Relic of Virtues – You may sacrifice a possession to allow a reroll of the dice.  0

&       Witch-Hunter – If you roll your Thesis number or lower you can manifest the Antithesis & fight them physically. 5

&       Deep Lore – You always gain added information or a prayer when you gain Synthesis.  4

Ripped From the Headlines!

Ysod - the mise en scène

If I didn't tell stories I probably wouldn't do this thing.  This game about telling stories with friends - I assume that it's got, at its heart, an interest in storytelling generally.  So I like to tell stories.  When I was young & feckless I didn't - not as much - since I tried to live it up & do things that were story-worthy.  Now, I'm aged & sensible so I tell stories about the bygone time of my reckless youth to my kid, saying They Were the Best of Times & Also They Sucked A Lot Too. 

When you tell tales, especially as time goes by - so fast now - You end up seeking out context - what was going on in at the time.  "Well, that summer I lived on couches & sometimes the sidewalk - It was a hot summer in a college town & I was a ridiculous mess for most of it.  I remember, I couldn't stop listening to that first Liz Phair record & everyone was sad when Jerry Garcia died." 

"Next year things got more sensible but also more boring, for me.  The houses all broke up, people were moving around & I couldn't tell you what I was going to do with myself.  I remember that that there was a cult of Star  Trek fans that killed themselves because of this comet that appeared in the sky for a good part of the year.  I ended up finding a girlfriend after dating a lot & then going back to college & doing better that time."

Nostalgia for the middle 1990's aside-  there's a context to your experiences that sets them in a place & time.  A lot of the time, in the moment, in the game, it happens that the players aren't living with any context - there's a dragon menacing the town & it needs slaying.  There's a Cult of vampires in the woods scaring the village.  And those are stories, probably cool ones - but there's just a dash of verisimilitude that would make these stories a little bit more punchy - a little more interesting to be a part of. 

As I work through my scheme of building a world through imitation of a mythic conception of reality - I've come to regard this verisimilitude as having a truly essential role.  Building up place, setting the scene - I relate these to the Kabbalistic Ysod - the foundation.

Soon...  Soon.

Naturally - I assume that real-life has no purpose nor any guiding principles or intention - and so to replicate that at the table, I've started building some random charts. 

Currently - we are playing In The Ruins - the next-best-thing, a variant of GotN linked deeply to its own setting.  Soon, playtesting will be complete, but as it continues I'm working up my own line of gazetteers.  The old D&D ones were my favorite supplements, so I'm happy I can make my own. 

For verisimilitude & random chance to prevail I've been putting together some tables, to reflect life in Sword of the West (that prince of cities) & I started out with headlines.  What's afoot in the city?  What's the news they're all talking about out in the streets? 

Depicted Here:  My lack of interest in sports...

 

Skills - from A to Z starting.... Now.

Some Thoughts about the Skill of Alchemy. 

The science of the black land hangs within the Hobby as a kind of pinata - it's overhead, swinging - it tantalizes us all with bright colors, exciting possibilities.  But everyone who takes a crack at it is blindfolded & swinging wildly while unseen forces pull & push - drag it away.  Eventually someone smacks it open - old Alchemy, and everyone hopes that it was full of the candy that they specifically like. 

Which sounds pretty stupid, actually, when you put it like that.  What I'm getting at, I think, is that a lot of the defined elements of This-Thing-We-Do-Together are rules & they're tried, true & played out practically.  A lot of rules show up & offer different variants of the same sorts of things & those same sorts of things tend to be Fighting, Magic, Skills, Race, Class & Gear - not every game has all of these, but games that don't have one of them are bound to try & explain why at some point.  If they don't have coherent systems of Chemistry & Physics?  Doesn't seem to matter. 

My intuition is that Alchemy, if it's going to be part of your game, really has to ask itself - What It Is.  Is it a precursor to Chemistry?  To Physics?  Is it a mystical tradition based upon the esoteric goal of achieving spiritual perfection?  Is it a magical discipline?  A craft?  Is it merely mixing ingredients randomly in pursuit of some buff or debuff?  I think it can be any of those things - but also, only one of those things.  That is - if it's a talent for mixing up potions, it's probably not also a search for enlightenment.  If it's a science - it probably isn't also an esoteric lodge-based tradition of mysticism.  Now - depending on which of those things you think Alchemy is in your game - then it's got to work by some type of rules.  Because Rules are at the bottom of This-Thing-We-Do-Together. 

Now I've experimented with a lot of different idiomatic variants of alchemy in my games.  I've played with specific potions that may be fabricated in specific situations.  I've toyed with alchemy as an esoteric tradition akin to the Rosy Cross.  At some point I stumbled upon a formulation that I have found myself clinging to so often that I may as well adopt it as my canonical device - the polar elements & the Wave-Form cosmos.  What it is is stated by Geometer Brenner fairly abstractly: 

The Waveform Cosmos – From the Geometer Brenner Water-over-Wind's address to the Essentialists of the Lodge of Six Colors – YK 2036

 We know or at least say and believe the Six Forces.  But the question remains – if everything is composed of forces how does anything have substance?  It was by the incomparable work of Marcus Fire-over-Light (7^th Century YK) that first grasped the unity of opposites – but not until the great work of Hugo Stone-under-Dark (12^th century YK) and his students Johan and Mercar Light-above-Light that the forces were shown to be only forces and thus lacking substance – since all the forces may operate in Void – the definitive absence of matter.  Often we are asked-  and often for the wrong reasons – What is Substance?  There are those of course who have attempted to subvert our mathematics to say that Nothing at all exists.  But this is a misconception.  Energy – that is Forces (not Energie – the force) all are transmitted in waves.  Hold a string and make it move regularly – it gains heights and nadirs-  the forces are just so.  The apogee of Energie for instance is perfect heat, the nadir is perfect cold.  We speculate as to absolute values – that is – a theoretical absolute perfect apogee and nadir – but in fact these are unreachable – the High and Low Infinities as described by Ramen Water-above-Wind (11^th century YK).  The forces that we experience are near the middle of the waves' Lengths and that was how it came to be understood that the forces are given substance.  How does the wave progress in direction?  If energy is a wave originating in an unreachable original infinity – and travels in a direction – it must reach a point – even if it never reaches its final destination – that place being another infinity.  Nevertheless there is 'Place'.  Hugo Stone-under-Dark saw that and understood what we call the Media – the pseudo-material through which the waves travel.  But later still Hugo's students showed that the Media is likewise composed of Forces!  The heights and Depths of the forces are all sequential – meaning they travel through a media – but that media is themselves.  Here the understanding of the Wave metaphor takes on another image.  A wave is a portion of a line – but as the circle is a section of a sphere- the waves are sections of a hemispheric solid – the media is the varieties of overlapping forces transmitted through this shape.  That is upon the innumerable waves of the Force of Air that we breathe-  which are shallow ponderous waves – we are 19 steps from the median.  But it has been discovered in this generation of Geometers that everything we experience is in fact on the 19^th step from the median – whether it is a positive point or a negative!
 Materially there is a correspondence – we exist at what I have described as the "Period" upon all waves and so it seems that in the instantaneous "Moment" of wave-correspondence there is a material expression of a force.  The seconds of time that we experience are the various "moments" of each wave simultaneously existing upon the 19^th "period"!  So time is in fact absolute.
 It has been shown by the tireless work of many Geometers that there are an infinity of other corresponding Periods which cause different Moments of simultaneity upon all the waves.  It is expected that each of the Periods is another entire existence which are by their varied construction unrecognizable to our own.  I won't speak for the Essentialists but I know that they have contended that that among these existences there must be the capacity for transit of portions of forces – which is held to be the source of the Essential Spirits.  Because it is known that the Essential Spirits exist an explanation is required for their existence – nevertheless the Essentiallists and Geometers have not agreed upon this point.

 

That's a quote from a novel of mine.  Brenner speaks here in an intentionally obscure & hard to follow form - it's meant to make it all seem much more complex & technical & specialized.  But - I'll make it clearer - state it more clearly

  

• There are 6 Elements in this system & each has a positive & negative polarity.   
• The high & low points of these poles exist on a wave-pattern.  
• The waves of each of the 6 is part of a larger wave.
• The larger wave is the universe.

So an example is this wave - the Illumans wave which encompasses both Dark & Light - which are in this construction - poles of a single element.  

Now, imagine all the elements are similar waves.  And each of them is woven into a single thread that is the sum of all waves they move through some unintelligible media but along curves set by the Universal Wave.

Okay - now there are many waves making up one wave.  This one wave comprises the entire universe and all possible universes.  The material universe that we know & love - exists only at very specific points along this curve  The distance between these points is the planar-frequency - the interval at which this specific universe exists.  Further up the wave or further down - that's a frequency that corresponds to an entirely different universe.  

Now, the essential waves that make up the universal wave are in some type of resonance so that things exist in a recognizable pattern (e.g.: Fire is hot & bright) & continues to be so on every tick along that planar frequency.  The planar frequency is nice as well because it gives a rationale behind the appearance of sequential time.  

We also have an infinite variety of universes up & down the wave that are very, very close to one another - so close that a universe may seem to be completely identical.  But also far enough away that some basic forces are completely out of sync (E.g.: Fire is not but not bright).  So there are varieties up & down the planes - potentially including ones where the universe is dominated completely by one pole of an element or another - say a universe of pure heat without cold.  

This pattern & structure really checks off the boxes for me in terms of worldbuilding & game-design because:  

• It creates some framework where there are predictable results.
• It has a high degree of randomness
• It allows for higher & lower dimensions with different experiences of time
• It includes the physical material that all things are comprised of
• It has mysterious & inexplicable elements - i.e.: what medium does the wave pass through?

I think that I like this cosmology so much & that it's versatile enough that I can build any amount of settings using it - and it's a big enough idea that needs so much more explanation that I can formulate any number of further ideas from out of it.  So - it's a kind of constant in my worldbuilding.  Maybe all my worlds are just different frequency universes on this same wave - that's fine.  I can work with this as a model & adopt it as my own personal canon.  Done.

So what's this mean for Alchemy?

I love this even as I plan how to remove it forever...

I could, I suppose just invent millions of possible combinations of things & then extrapolate results.  That's possible, sure - Fish + Toothpaste = Dire-Venom or some-such.  I don't really hate this as a thing that people do in a game.  But I think that I want alchemy to be more...  

Pure.  I'm not sure at what point fish+toothpaste=the Chymical Wedding but I don't care to find out either.  I'm Invested in a system that has functional boundaries but also modular components, that has prescribed & expected results - but also a realm of random possibilities.  So for pure, you've got to get to the pure, unvarnished, hidden atomic truth.  

For that - the elements.  I'm sticking with my 6 - because I like them & because they symmetrically apply to the 6 statistics that everyone knows so well.  This matching is helpful - for game design - because it builds in types of effects based on the elements in question.  So here's my pure 6/12 elements that do the lifting for the system to come:

Heat ß  Energie à Cold

Light ß Illumans à Dark

Water ß Floe à Air

Mineral ß Chthon à Metal

Chaos ß Protean à Void

Flesh ß  Viscera à Wood

Naturally, I'm putting it all into fantasy-Latin-Greek-Esperanto - but I could stand to wash it all in the thesaurian bath a few more times.  I'm content with the items - more than I am with the names, the names can be different for different groups etc...  Sticking with the core here-  I have 6 axes & 12 poles to describe effects both.  This is the place I start from when I start to think about Ruling-Up alchemy as a skill.

You've been training for this your whole life.

My first character was a thief & I was a player before I ever ran a game.  I had my friend's copy of the red box & I was looking over the classes-  Elf was cool - Dwarf & Fighter were not.  Boring.  The Magic-User was kind of interesting but when I realized that half the book was spell-descriptions they were right out-  too much work - too much study.  Ditto the cleric, and its weird freighting with religious overtones.  The Thief though -Thieves had skills.  No other characters had skills.  I locked in on that & was a committed player of thieves until well after they lost their way and got turned into rogues.

Growing up in a household founded & run by professionals, there wasn't a lot of visible skill on display.  My old pop, he could hash out a business deal with the best of them, but I didn't see that as a skill exactly.  At the time I just thought he was magical.  Now, I think it's more of a social game - business - with a fair quantity of bloodlust & killer instinct.  Not a skill - by the standards of my youthful thinking.  A skill was something you'd do with your hands - something you could master & become great at.  Something that couldn't be taken away from you.  That last part spoke to me, confusingly - because I didn't really get the weighty meaning of it then.  But it's true.  You lose your house & car & job in the same week (happened to me, twice actually) and then what are you?  Free?  but hopeless - destitute - but then-  if you've got skills?  You've got a way forward - no-no they can't take that away from me...

But back then - I still had the middle-class fantasy of a gifted & skilled working-man, valorised & romantical - someone who could make a thing from parts, or from nothing.  Skills.  I wanted them, and failing at having any way to get them - well, I played a Thief.  Because she - Darkness - had skills.  I played that character for a bunch of years - we played through the red & the blue & the black boxes.  Almost went to gold.  It got weird there though & college was coming on so-  no more, for a while.  But I liked being the skills character.  In other games it came up often.  Shadowrun had its priority system.  I liked that too - the Skill-Monkey is what we called it, unaware of any provenance for the term.  By then I'd come around & realized that being able to fix computers & fashion a pithy sentence or decipher a few scripts constituted pretty valid skills.  Useful ones too.  The thing is - you can be good at these things & there's always someone better.  You can be the best, maybe, for a single day in your life, the best at a thing for only a moment & not even realize it - because skill is a strange beast.  The coincidence of specific requirements, specific tools & specific know-how is a peculiar confluence - it comes oftener than you'd think - but also, for virtually any task requiring specialized ability - it doesn't matter if you're the best, or even if you're exceptional - it just matters that you know something about it.  You can fix things, pick a lock, decipher a scroll, hell - scale a wall.  If you've got the right equipment, some time to spare & a will to keep on trying.  Something that I didn't get as a kid but that as an adult I am kind of overcome by.  That anyone can do anything.

Which is a tough nut to crack in game design.

This is going to be a long post, I can tell.

When I started out with the Game of the North I was well caught up in nostalgia & landed on the old skills from the old-old game.  Scale-Walls, Pick-Pockets, Open-Locks, Hide-in-Shadows, Hear-Noise, Move-Quietly, Find-Traps - the hyphenated darlings.  They make a lot of sense, in a certain context.  Basement fights against chthonic underdwellers will tend to have a lot of these specific elements.  I work with those because they're handy - they're focused & specific.  The OSR theme is to have anything else - any broader activity defined by narration or statistical checks.  That is sensible.  That is...  Right.  It's right to do it that way.  But then.

Then there are the really demanding skills.  You go to the doctor & you don't imagine that the doctor is making INT checks to diagnose you - no  -there's a whole raft of training & expertise.  Not just anyone can diagnose you - you need tools.  Among those tools is extensive training.  So I've been thinking of it like that.  With the right tools anyone can do anything.  With medical training anyone can diagnose you.  With the right statistics, anyone can tell you're sick of course - they can observe you're not well.  But they need specialist training, among other tools, to get things done.

So I'm coming around on skills - a more even-handed vision of what they mean in a game.  I started out thinking - this is what can't be taken from you but which I can't imagine being able to do.  I went toward - this is something anyone can do - if they've got the right toolbox.  Now I've come to this - Skills are the toolbox that can't be lost, and they're used to perform tasks no one can perform without them.

So I'm looking at changing the lists.  Broadening the scope & narrowing it all the same.  Can't anyone hear a noise?  Can just anyone hide in a shadow?  What about...  What about really specific abilities that not just anyone can do?  I've got it down to about 26 items I think that are worth considering.

Alchemy                 Forage Instrument Languages Numeracy Scale Walls Trickery
Building Gift         Investigate Medicine         Open Doors Siege Vocals
Composition         Hear Noise Joke                 Move Quietly    Pick Pockets Sorcery
Detect Traps         Hide in Shadow Judge Alignment Navigate Poisoning Theurgy

I know  - 26!  So arbitrary - and how dumb of you not to figure out a way to assign each a letter of the alphabet!  Well, I still might, there's time you know & thesauruses.

This jumble of words, seemingly, and really actually unrelated words all in a salad - I think that situation conveys the kind of complexity that really every game designer has to work with.  The core attributes - if you go with the classic 6 or work out some variety of more or fewer - they cover a lot of ground - they set the standards for most of what a person can do.  A stupid person can't think well, a weak person isn't going to be breaking down doors.  But there's got to be nuance.  There's got be shades of ability.  A strong person is strong & a smart person is smart - a quick person is quick but what kind of physiological attribute does someone have that makes them good at picking pockets?  Are they forgettable, charismatic?  light-fingered & agile - but also really confident, perceptive - where is the wallet?  There's so much to it - it seems like opportunities are being missed if we bind that all up into a single aspect of a person's physiology.  So we're compelled - by skills because they're a synergy of multiple raw abilities tempered by experience, training & focused using tools.

Okay  -that's well.  What are they for?

Here you're into the meta-game thinking - which is where your Referee will tell you not to go, but where you have to kind of live if you're doing game design.  So a session breaks out with players.  There's a bunch of elements to what happens at the table - but there are essential expectations.  There's the social realm - let's talk it up!  Let's meet the NPCs and go to their party.  There's the Fighting encounters - let's kill these vampires who were posing as NPCs throwing a party!  And there's exploration.

This has been described often & well by skilled designers & commentators - exploration - social - combat is almost an idiom for This-Thing-We-Do-Together.  Now.  I don't exactly agree with that.  I think there's more games than just those - but I think - we should think of Skills as being, in their most basic form - the Tools of Exploration.

So let's regard them as such and not think of them as something arbitrary, some kind of excuse for expanding our character sheets, or for digging deep into the thesaurus.  Let's look at the skills as explicitly - tools of exploration.

You can pick-pockets - explore the contents of someone's wallet.  You can scale-walls - find out what's hidden up high (tall person-spoiler:  Nobody cleans the top of their fridge).  You can practice Theurgy - explore the relationships between gods & mortals,  You can Judge Alignments - explore what evil lurks in people's hearts.  You can Practice Numeracy - Learn the riddles of the base 12 system that the ancients used.  So let's regard every skill as a milieu for exploration.  This basis allows you to design a system with well - 26 frontiers.  More or less.

I write these posts to help me design mini-games.  In variants of the Game of the North that are currently in development I use these sub-games.  There are quite a few & I imagine that I'll end up putting out a book of games you can play while playing the game at some point in the future.

But here, I'm a bit stymied - each of the skills are an avenue of exploration.  So they each merit their own discussion.  Maybe their own sub-game.  So I'm going to start focusing on each of them, just as I focus on the types of game within the game & maybe end up writing down some useful thoughts concerning world-building & cosmology.  Who can say?

But!  As it is, the skills-game must at some point Exist.  I think of this game-within-the-game as The Caper.  When it's pulled off - maybe it's pulled off only narratively -



Everyone taking turns speaking out their moves & correcting for failures, fixing mistakes & moving forward.  In the end - a game like this - a caper, which I conceive as being the Best & Purest game of skills - well, the PCs are exploring - they're finding the edges & the limits of the settings & the NPCs - they're figuring out where the points of exploitation lie.  In this way you can, if you wish, imagine an institution.  Think of it as a body - a coherent object in space - and this object has dimensions - let's say that it has up to 26 layers - and each of these must be peeled away in the right sequence - and then, only then is it opened to the players - but when it opens - it succumbs completely - they've subdued all the angles.  So my thinking now falls into this pattern - the Skills-Game, the skills game of my dreams - is the planning phase - the exploration phase during which the PCs unfurl the institution's defenses & figure out how to get inside.  So that's the format that I'll work with, I think, as I put fingers to keys trying to make more.

Don't start me talking. I can talk all night.

And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.

And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding.So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils.And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.

When The Face can beat the encounter by just talking at the monsters - that's compelling stuff.  It's not what you want for every encounter though - and before you think about it too much just put it in the perspective of the other people at the table.  It's easy to fall into a conversation between the Referee & some star-player.  It's easy to leave everyone out of it all & just let the PC eat up scenery.  It's quite a bit harder & quite a bit rarer in the literary canon to see a group of people involved in a social discussion (or at least in one that actually progresses matters).  

But This Thing We Do - is something that We Do Together.  It just won't do for the better part of the party to sit on their hands while the single face character talks their way out of an encounter.  Well, not all the time anyway.  When We Do This Thing Together it has the virtue of allowing everyone to have the spotlight sometimes, to shine out best & greatest among their peers at the table.  Everyone gets their moment.  But not every moment is one for the spotlight.  Sometimes the whole group needs to have a say, have something to do in a scene, even if the scene is just a conversation.

Locus & Platea are theatrical concepts that fit nicely here - an idea of people being at the center of the discussion while others act out their own roles at the edge of that focus.  At the table the concept tends to prevail, in the systems of initiative where people take turns consciously, and in the typical flow of interactive narration, where someone is always the focus of the Referee's attention.  You see this dynamic over and  over again & while I think it's useful to consider, it's also something I think worth avoiding when possible.  Everyone should be cued to know their time & turn.  Everyone should have a voice in a scene, if they can.    

Again, I'm coming up short on scenes in which the ensemble speaks in turn to get across a point or to make a specific bargain.  The best iterations you might commonly encounter are variants of Good Cop / Bad Cop - where two people on the same side try to persuade a third who is not.  So what about a scene where there are between 5-9 cops are they all different shades of good or bad?  Well...

So sometimes people can be part of the scene & be a presence without saying anything.  In the case of Good & Bad cop there's naturally the entire apparatus of the criminal justice system that is effectively a character, judges & lawyers & jailers are all in the minds of the person being interrogated as are their opposite numbers in the criminal underworld.  So - these can exist in the scene and still not speak.  How much more persuasive is the bad cop if there are heavily armed men standing at his back?  Or a torturer or executioner?  These don't need to say anything to make the bad cop's speech more terrifying - but they do have a presence.  

So let's take Jesus as the face - defeating the diabolical forces of perdition through bargaining.  This has a backdrop but let's consider it as an encounter typical of a fantasy game.  The PCs are traversing the wild roads of the frontier and they're warned away by the presence of monsters.  This is a party of 13 or so & it's no doubt difficult for the Ref to adjudicate it all.  When they decide to continue despite warnings the Face/Leader takes charge of the ensuing encounter.  Here,  making a bold demand that the devils acquiesce to.  

But the exchange isn't just between Jesus & the Devils.  There's JHVH - who's presence is on the minds of everyone in the encounter.  But as well there's Jesus' gang of 12 guys.  So we can imagine, if we are players - that this encounter is occurring with the unstated statistical advantage of having 12 guys on hand who may or may not be up to the challenge of beating up a pair of possessed guys.  But, if you're a demon - hey why take the chance?  It's easy to think of this encounter falling out a whole other way - in which Matthew relates the story of Jesus & his disciples kicking a pair of lunatics into submission...

Which is to say: "We could make this encounter go as easy or as hard as you want it to go.  You can just go over there and be in those pigs, or you can test your luck against 13 guys."  During which time of course all 13 guys are making Strength checks to flex on the demons.  That's one way of making the conversation an ensemble conversation.  

Se we can, if we want, build a mechanic around a scene where players can choose to make it a social interaction - one where they're effectively turning the tables on the Referee to talk their way out of danger or past an obstacle.  There's, again, too few examples of this outside of The Hobby for me to really grab on to any given example.  But there are counter examples - a whole counter-game in fact.  What about a combative conversation between many and one?  What about the villain trying to talk their way out of being captured?

This is difficult, to say the least.  One thing that's inevitable at the table is a bit of mega-game sensibility.  Players, no matter how good they are, hate to be told what their characters believe.  No matter how they love to use the dice to test their own believably - no amount of failed saving throws will let a player really believe that their character believes something they don't want them to.  Or - to put it more succinctly you can't rely on tricking Characters - you have to trick Players.  This line of thinking is more of an aside though - more of strategy for Running the Game than it is a system that can be used in Designing the Game.  So I'll leave it be & consider it another time.  

Really though - this whole direction lends itself beautifully to asides & discursions.  Thinking now about the example of Jesus vs. the Devils & you know - I don't know of many religionists, let alone any players playing a religionist (clerics & paladins oh my) who go into a fight with the dark forces of perdition with anything like the confidence that Jesus has.  That's a fairly intimidating display right out of the gate - just immediate certainty that Yahweh's got your back.  

So thinking of that - this construction:  There are devils who are threatening you and you threaten them back & they ask for something & you negotiate.  It's a zero sum game - someone wins & someone loses.  Zero Sum Game is the essence here - you wouldn't roll dice or make the interaction into a game if it didn't already require that there be a winner and a loser.  So let's take that as the basic framework - fundamental to our structuring of the game.  

Assumptions made so far:
1  - There's an interaction where we want to resolve matters as a conversation.  This is a Social Encounter.
2 - Someone will win the encounter & someone will lose.  
3 - Everyone who's playing needs to be able to participate.

So here I think it's worth looking at negotiating postures.  What are the tools you can bring to a negotiation.  I'm thinking, broad strokes, about the kinds of demeanor you can use & what are the end-game goals of this discussion?

Off the top of my head I'm seeing a few broad-strokes options.  Bargaining - that is pleading & requesting & offering.  



Then there's Coercion - that's straight up intimidation, arm-twisting insistence. 

After that straight up Lying - Deception.

And at last there's flattery, seduction maybe.

Are there more ways to talk to people?  Probably.  I'm going with these four using a bit of essentialism here - saying that you can have a demeanor that asks for something in 4 distinct ways.  By force, by conniving, by seduction & by obsequiousness.  So there.  Let's settle on these together shall we?  Say that they're the 4 temperaments - Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric & Melancholic.  It'll be an exercise for the reader to settle on which is which.

So given these approaches - we're down to working out what the PCs can do in a scene.  I'm thinking that the Players can have their characters approach one or another of these methods as a preference.  One of the Doormen always lies, one always flatters, one always commands & one always begs.  It's a harder logic puzzle, for sure, but it's...

Well it's an environment.  In the end the game is that - a place where there are systems that can work to create story.  I'm interested in a story where the players harangue the hobgoblin with pleading & lies & bluster into giving up their wicked ways.  At least once in a while.

So as an environment for a quasi-staged conversation I think these bases are good.  They each suggest an action.  Recall the basis of the game-within-the-game -
1 - Induction
2 - Sequence
3 - Objective
4 - Options

This foundation is holding up so far, so I'm sticking with it.  I'm not sure, but I think I can bear a few more social methodologies - or maybe fewer.  It's getting to be a matter requiring rules testing more than rules speculation.