Yudhishthira’s Dice

In my last post I’d asked why cool powers were needed for games. The question of “why adventure” is also in there, subtly. For more discussion of these matters please see the Forge posts about What is the function of Cool Powers and Why Adventure, as they have some nifty points in them.

In the post before that I had posited that CAs that require intensity and lots of the Story Now that we Forgeites all know and love may not always be the best way to get people into gaming and may not fit the desires of a lot of gamers. This grew out of the observations about Illusionism, and how many players do actually just like a nice game where they get to go along for the ride and be entertained.

So now to answer my own question and expand upon the premise:

Why kewl powerz? Why adventure? Why such shying away from Forge-style CAs?

Because all of these things make it easier to be entertained. They allow us to get easy handles, easy characterization, and to hide from the unfortunate consequences of our sociopathic fantasies. (I’m trying to be nice here, but fuck….)

As I posited in a previous post, a lot of people play RPGs to take it easy, to have simple fun, clear goals, and to be presented an entertainment that they can enjoy. The intensity of CA that most Forge theory circles around is quite probably anathema to many of these people. They don’t want to Step on Up all the time, or constantly be wrestling with hard moral choices in their games, or be creating a world and building shared imaginative constructs. They want to have fun, they want it to be easy, and they want a large part of it provided for them.

This isn’t just about people who game now, either. I have a feeling that while many non-RPGers may love a good game of intricate world building, moral dilemmas, or hard game-based challenges there are many people who would want a nice easy way to have fun with their friends without having to play Judge Jury and Executioner every time Brand whips out Dogs in the Vineyard. What puts many people who don’t play off isn’t that play isn’t intense enough, its that it is too intense, intense in the wrong way, full of geek crap, or just not for them.

So, I cannot accept the idea that games designed strongly to one CA or another will have any better chance getting people into gaming. Nar is not the pill we have been looking for, nor is gamism, nor sim. What we’re looking for is a frequency, not a type of wave. We want to be able to hit people where it is comfortable, where they want to have their fun. For some people that will mean the hard nar choices or the competition of gamism, but for many more I think it will mean ease. Something easy that they can get into without huge rules, geeky back constructs, and that lets them have their fun without having to analyze what it means about them, the world, or deep themes.

Which may mean that I won’t ever be writing a game that appeals to “the masses” as those are the things that I am interested in. I will, however, be honest about the fact that I am writing eternal niche games for eternal niche players, rather than trying to claim that my way is the way to solve other peoples fun or bring new people into the hobby anymore.

(Though I still think that non-challenging, non-self-check-inducing sexy play can be a good thing.)

There is much ado about the Forge diaspora, and at the mother Forge herself, about the subject of kewl powerz. I have already said a bit about my take on the subject here, here, and here.

However, I also had a bit to say about it on RPG.net awhile ago in defense of heroic heroes and superpowers, so I will now post that here so that it does not die in the pits of the searchless RPG.net. I said:

The super’s genre, as a whole, throws a light on the problems of individual responsibility by blowing the consequences and immediacy of choice into something epic and huge. Many of the heroes through the years have been statements, from the half-assed to the idealistic, about what the writers, readers, and culture around them thought about the individuals place in society and their responsibility to change the world around them.

Even among many of the best and brightest heroes of the Silver and Golden age there is a degree of problematization between the hero and the society they live in. One of the ironies of many super heroes is that they tend to fight in favor of an oh-so-fragile status-quo, but do so from outside the very society that they supposedly support. Spiderman is an Everyman, the Kid From New York Trying To Do Right – but in so doing he regularly avoids the police, disrupts civil emergency services because he thinks (rightly or not) that he can do it better, and uses excessive, if cartoonish, force to stop criminals he finds in his random wanderings of the streets.

It isn’t just the vigilantes; it’s the supers who act outside the law in other ways as well. Think about the problems to rights and due process posed by a Batman, the civil suits caused by the actions of a Superman, or the now cliché amount of civil damage caused by the brawls of any super heroic group.

The interesting thing is that there is often a tie between the social pressures of the time the comics are coming out of and the amount and types of non-standard or subversive force that is considered acceptable by the heroes. Comics coming out of the New York of Serpico, for example, very rarely have heroes working hand in hand with the cops – even when the hero is supposed to be a law abiding type. OTOH, comics post 9/11 often have supers working with the government as part of the system, and facing the problems of working within the system at the same time.

There is a tangible link between what levels of violence and heterodoxy writers and readers will accept in their heroes and how they perceive their ability to work within the system to positively alter the world they live in as well as how much catharsis they need around the frustrations of doing so. Spiderman wants to not break laws, but can’t find a place in the system that fits his abilities - he’s almost like an overly powered neighborhood watch. Batman gets into the grey area of following moral law and usually working with the upper levels of the justice system, while working outside the lower levels and actively violating the rights of citizens while making cops look bad. The Punisher, otoh, is all about getting catharsis from an era that was daily showing murderers getting off on technicalities.

The feminist hero example is almost cliché in that regard. If you believe that women’s roles in the world are close enough to acceptable to pass, and that any problems can be handled through legal and non-violent channels, then she is a villain. If you think the opposite (or are looking at Taliban Afghanistan or just read The Female Man) then she can still be a hero, or at least a protagonist who gives you some degree of catharsis.

So when building RPG campaigns based around supers, you really need to talk to the other players and work out what it is that you consider heroic. Good comics actually say something (however indirectly and clumsily) about the world they are coming out of, and if you want your games to have the same kick, you should try to give them some level of respect, and let everyone at the table figure out what they want to say and why.

To that I will now add:

In a narrativist agenda, kewl powerz can help you explore premise and do all that nifty stuff. However, they can only do it if you know why the powers matter in terms of the story and use them in those terms. What, exactly, does “With great power comes great responsiblity” mean to you? The responsibility to defend your neighborhood? To campaign for gay marriage? To kill George Bush? To take over the world so that it will be run correctly? While you can address such premises without powers, it’s much harder as the average person can’t shake the world the way the Authority does.

From a gamist agenda the kewl powerz are about the ability to rock the world and step on up and do it big style. However, if you are going to go about it that way you have to have powers that are specific, precise, and not all equal under all circumstances. If everything comes out the same in the end, then there is no ability to push it farther than others can and really get your game on. This can lead to powers giving social respect and player empowerment, those that can use the system bravely and assertivly get to push their character to the limit. Because many powers are inherently linked to specilizations (”fireblasts are good for this, but invisibility is good for that”) and tactical choices they can make a good basis for gamist play.

From a sim agenda, there are a lot of things that kewl powerz can be about. They can, as Chad Underkoffer has pointed out, externalize the internal (though that gets into the narrativist agenda to) and widen the scope of the ways in which a character can interact with their world. You cannot pick up a tank if you don’t have superstrength, and if no one has superstrength then no one can pick up a tank. So if you want tank picking up to happen in your game, you gots ta have da powerz. If you want to build a world that looks like the X-Men, you can’t do it without powers. If you want to have stories like your favorite fantasy/sci-fi/comic stories the powers are inherently important to what you like about the game.

The question I have to ask, however, is why is it that RPGs have historically only been interested in games where we can pick up tanks? Other than power fantasy, a using the tropes to hide (back we go to Geek Tropes Suck), what is it specifically that we find so compelling about the powerz that we always gots to have them? There are all the points I mentioned above, and they are valid. But why is it that they are so overwhelmingly in the majority? Those points are all well and great (I love me some supers), but why do even guys at the Forge seem to belive they are necessary for a game to work?

Note, this time I am not asking hypothetically. I am actually asking. While I think that all my geek tropes sucking points to apply, I also feel there may be more to it than that, and that I am being (surprise) unkind to my fellow gamers.

In the Illusionsim and Actual Play thread, La Ludisto said:

“On the Illusionist-Sim / Non-Illusionist-Sim front, I think it’s worthwhile to point out how a lot of games advise GMs to put together adventures: by creating NPCs and a threat/goal and way(s) to resolve the pre-established conflict. One of the primary reasons this advice was given was because then you’d be replicating adventure supplements, and therefore the game company could continue to print and sell these, as this was how an adventure was ’supposed’ to be constructed. All of that is pretty much Illusionism (assuming the GM wasn’t willing to just toss out stuff that was ’supposed’ to happen).

One of the challenges to non-Illusionist play, and this is more or less a topic for a different post, is how a game company (or even an indie designer) will continue producing content and continue to add value to that product / line / property. You can look at the Middle Earth Roleplaying game, which basically just kept detailing new lands (sounds like D&D and Exalted, but I’m not as familiar with those titles to spout off), but this gets ridiculous after a while (cf: Exalted).”

To which I will reply here, in a thread of its own.

You’re dead on about the methods for traditional adventures, though I think the reasons you give were only true of a limited number of publishers. Many had other reasons, and most just didn’t think about it that hard. To do a part stab at answering your question, there are a few things that come to mind.

1. Do non illusionist adventures. There have been some pretty decent tries at this in the past, mostly for HeroQuest (such as Well of Souls). The problem with these styles of published adventures is they aren’t usually suitable for a “generic group” and really only work if your group has some specific tags to work from. (This could have worked in something like Tribe 8, btw, if you assume all PCs are Fallen.)

2. Don’t publish long-term game lines. Some major publishers are already moving away from the “support a setting/game over years and decades with a gazillion books” model. They get out the core of the game, a limited (and often pre-announced) number of supplements, and then move on to another game/setting. This has the advantage of variety, avoiding setting and power creep, and keeping you from losing your shirt if one setting bombs.

3. Options books. Lots of books about “what if this” or “ways to do that” rather than “this is this” or “that is the way you do that.” So, in the Exalted example, less lame and limitedly useful setting books and more books that are in the line of “What if the Empress came back? A complete campaign in a box that will not affect the setting unless you play it” or “Blowing Up Creation, Brand Style” and so on.

4. Going gamist. If you have a gamist game where the players will always want new challenges, clever traps, and monsters to slay, you can fill endless numbers of books full of stats with little difficulty.

5. Really slow releases. Like Sorcerer. A-hem. Or, you can look towards White Wolf, who have started making fewer releases, putting them all out in hardback, and focusing on options (like 3, above, but not quite so separated) as a simple toning-down of the old model.

Anyone got other thoughts?

Up soon: My thoughts on Operation Foole, Breaking the Ice, and more on solo games And/Or More on Illusionism and why aggressive GMS style CAs based on hard-core play may not be the best way to get new people into the hobby.

Over on Ben’s blog he was talking about illusionist play, railroading, and functionality and I got uppity and started talking about the Illusionist games I’d run in the past, and how several of them had been functional and were still well remembered. This thread is a continuation of that one, so you should go there and read what Ben (and John Kim) had to say about the matter, so the rest of this makes sense.

In the comments on that thread I said:

“I have, in the history of my roleplay, run many illusionist games in which the players were fully happy and along for the ride. Rarely where they there because we’d talked about it and decided to go illusionist – this was well before I started doing namby-pamby crap like talking about game or admitting there were things I wanted out of game.

The last time I did such a thing was about 3 years ago now, and was an Exalted game with 3 players who were all used to illusionist play with GMs who were less nice than I was. I think there was a degree to which the less heavy-handed illusionism (less being tied to the rails and more all roads lead to Rome) acted as a release valve for them and let them enjoy the game, but I also think the game worked because I was very good at identifying what people wanted in the game and giving it to them.

The way I directed the game also worked very well into Exalted’s mechanism and modus-operandi. It was at all times a “save the world” game, with the first “world” being the village, then the country, then the continent, then the whole world. That was also the way that the game gave them little to no choice in what they did – when Yogshaggoth has eaten the moon and the gods are dying in the sky and the ancient prophecy tells you to go get the 4 seals, you pretty much go get the 4 seals. And with the way Exalted games tend to go so long as there are cool set-piece fights the players will often be happy. I even worked out a system in my head for how every session would go: opening narration and establishing shots, personal plot for character a, information dump, panorama and travel shot, set piece combat, personal plot for character b, information dump, panorama and travel shot, personal plot for character c, and final epic set-piece battle.

The players enjoyment of the game came from several places: the personal plots in which they had some degree of control over their choices (though notably none of them ever chose differently than I had assumed they would), the personal (to the player, not just character) nature of those scenes, the ability to go crazy with stunt narration, and really huge fight scenes in which the PCs got to go mono-y-mono with elder gods and such. They were there, as one of the players said, to be entertained and to find out what Brand had in store for them this time.

Interestingly enough, when I started moving towards narrativist games in which the players had real options and a real ability to make choices and establish whole parts of the setting for the specific reason of making the stories they really wanted to tell, the players were very underwhelmed at first. “It seems like a lot of work for no point” was a statement I heard more than once. Now, I’ll note that they’ve since come around, but even now I get people asking me if I’m ever going to run a game like the old days again, because they miss how easy and stress-free it was. (I tell them no, and they get disappointed.)

The game before that was a Tribe 8 game that was played very infrequently but in hyper-intense marathon sessions when it was played. In that game the players did know that all roads led to Rome, as we were playing the canon metaplot and everyone knew it. But because everyone was very hyper into the setting of the world and the development of the metaplot, and because I was able to throw personal scenes in which they did make real game altering choices into the mix with scenes that were bound and destined to turn out as they did, the players got into the game to the point at which crying was a normal part of the game. La Ludisto may have more to say on this, as he was a player in that game.

Anyway, the long and short of this is: I think many of us see Illusionism as being so dysfunctional because it is tied in with so many bad habits in which game becomes about abusive powermongering, and because it isn’t what we namby-pamby Forge-disaspora types want in our games. There are, however, people out there that like to entertain and people that like to be entertained, and people who want game to be an experience given to them (at least in part), rather than something they have to build. To many players they “earn and shape” the story with the quality of their acting, their immersion, or their tactical decisions in the set-piece combats where they really do have a choice, and do not need (in fact do not want) to have the responsibility for crafting world and theme and direction in their hands.

Much as it has been the source of much pain, there is a truth to be faced: many people get into storytelling games because they want to be told a story, not because they want to tell it.”

Then La Ludisto said:

“As far as Brand’s Tribe 8 game goes: Once you get some good players who understand story and character together with a good GM who understands story and character, and everybody involved trusts eachother and knows eachother well, it’s almost difficult for the GM not to use some aspects of illusionism.

We had a quartet of characters. We all had a pretty good idea of what each character was ‘about’. We explained this to Brand, who designed an adventure that would give us all an outlet to explore whatever that ‘about’ was. My guy was a often-overlooked non-combatant in a warrior society; Brand stuck him in front of Excalibur in the midst of a civil war. As a player I didn’t have much ‘choice’ in what my character was going to do — but playing out his actions was still enjoyable, and as I trusted Brand to go somewhere good, I didn’t mind that I was presented a ‘choice’ that was no choice at all.

I’ve employed the same tactics, and it’s really not even that complex. It does require, however, some understanding on the part of the GM and taking up a role as a provider, rather than a director. Your stance shifts from “This is what happens; what do you do?” to “Here is a situation primed for you to exploit for your purposes. Have at it.” You aren’t the arbiter of causality; you’re dispensing candy. Really, it’s a lot more enjoyable even from the GM’s side of the equation.”

I then said more crap, but the important part is this: I am posting this here because I am going to try to get people that have played with me in illusionist games (on MUs or TT) to come on here and talk about the actual play experiences with me as a GM, good AND BAD, to bring this theoretical discussion into the realm of actual play. What I’d like to know from them are answers to the following questions:

1. When we were playing the game, did you know that it was illusionist? That is to say, that I was giving you choices that often weren’t choices, and that the game was going to go where it was going to go anyway?

2. If not, why do you think you missed it? Was it because you were getting what you wanted? How? Because that’s the only way you’d ever played and just assumed it was how an RPG worked?

3. Did the ideas that La Lud brought up come into your mind? That is to say, that there weren’t a lot of choices you could make, but that the fun came from figuring out how your character would interact with it, feel about it, and how it would let you immerse and/or express your character?

4. For those of you who’ve played with me since going off the illusionist rails, what do you feel has changed in the games? For better or worse? Is it more work? Less? Do you get more of what you want in game, less, or the same?

5. And finally, the easy ones: What is it you want out of game and why? How you do you approach your gaming fun, and how do you think your actual play experiences with illusionism have either helped or hindered that?

So back to single-player and one-on-one games, but this time starting from social context. I am not going to try to talk about the subject in general right now, but rather to talk about some of the things that interest me in the subject, and what I would like to do with it starting at a social context level.

I will start with this: I want a game that people will be interested in playing. This is to say I want to make a game that people who have never RPed before, or did but quit, would be willing to have a go at, not be scared by (for reasons either of social context or technical content). If people who happen to be RPGers want to play the game then I am happy, but I do not want them to buy it because they play RPGs and it is an RPG that is hot and new – I want them to buy it only if they are interested in what it is as a game.

I will then go to this: As part of this I have no problem excluding large numbers of people who currently play RPGs because the game will not fit into their social context of what gaming is, or what acceptable topics in a game are. If I make a game to sell as a sex game to guys at Pride (1 million gay men all looking to spend money and have fun and try new things, just outside my front door….) I do not care if it alienates that homophobic contingent of RPGers. Or of non RPGers for that matter. So long as it is interesting to the people I want it to be interesting to, and is interesting to me to design, I don’t care about the rest of the “potential market.”

One of the problems with RPG marketing, historically, has been the idea that you want to sell mostly to people who already play, and to get as wide and diverse a range of those who already play (because there aren’t that many to start with) to play your game, even if it isn’t something they’d normally look at. It’s something of a catch 22, especially for the big publishers, because they almost have to sell that way, but in selling that way fuck themselves. They divide the market, alienate the fan base, and end up putting themselves into cycles of ever-repeating reprints of the material generic enough to sell to everyone. (Is it any accident that D&D is in its 3.5 edition, the WoD in its 4th, GURPS in its 4th, and so on? Yes, I know that’s all good screwdriver work, but it wasn’t usually done for the sake of the work, or not for the work alone.)

I’ve known a lot of advertising and communications guys, and they are all onto focused marketing, segments, and demographics. Basically this means that out in the real world trying to sell something to “everyone” using one marketing strategy is considered cave-man level primitive. You find people where they live, where they love, and where they hurt, and with laser like focus hone in on them. (You then generally go onto do multiple campaigns to laser in on multiple groups, but even if you just do one it’s generally considered better to hit the people you actually aim at than to take a shotgun and shoot in the dark to hope you hit something.) Now this might not be doable for major companies, but I think it is for indie/hobby publishers for a reason that Ben brought up: “I need to sell 50 copies of Polaris to break even. 50 copies! That’s just plain peanuts.”

If you know who you are going to sell to, have a plan, and make a game that is targeted to them, you should be able to sell those 50 copies. You should be able to double it. You just have to come up with a marketing and focus more advanced than “Guys at the Forge” or “People that play RPGs.”

So, to the above I add things I’ve said in previous posts: Gamers, as a whole, seem to be getting older. We’re getting fewer teenage recruits (or at least we are in every place I have gamed or heard about) and have groups of people who continue to have an interest in gaming long past what used to be the norm (lots of 40 year-olds still play, or still want to play). Thus we have players who live busy adult lives who often have problems finding groups, getting groups together regularly, and/or getting their SOs to give a damn about their weird ass hobby. We may have a group of these older players who are recognizing a discontent with their historic play styles, and they may be willing to try something new if approached about it correctly.

In addition to this we have the context that in the eyes of many, both in the hobby and out, RPGs are something done by dork losers with no social skills who would humiliate themselves and offend a girl if they were to hit on her. However, if something that was not labeled and marketed as “one of those geeky games” was focused on the right group of people they may be willing to give it a shot. Especially if it has benefits of allowing them to be creative with their SO, a good friend on a long trip, or similar things.

These things together mean that the game I’m looking towards would be easily playable by two people, either with one runner and one player, or (even better) as a head-to-head one-on-one game in which the creative power is equally distributed. It would also mean the play style would need to be significantly different than that which is found in the traditional RPG. Unlike some I do not think that most people (or much of anyone) would like RPGs if they’d just try them. I do, however, think that people would like something like what we do in an RPG if it was made over to fit them, rather than they having to be made over to fit it.

In addition to this I’m going to add this element in: people like sex. Gamers have all sorts of problems in their social context with it, but I’ve already established that I’m moving past gamers. I can try and help them fix themselves, or I can do what I’m interested in and what I hope others are too. And if you read the Why Hearing About Your Game Should Suck post you already know how I feel about that. So, I want to add libidinous elements – not even as a pick up game or a sex game, but as a game that can have some sexuality in it, as openly and honestly expressed as in an MTV “The Fabulous Life Of” show. (Which isn’t open or honest, but is about a light year ahead of most stuff in RPGs now.)

So the game context is, a game focused on adults who want to play with each other in a one on one basis, with probably short sessions that fit into a normal person’s life. A focus on easily identifiable main-stream interests and tropes, given structural support through the rules so that people who are not improv theatre junkies can feel comfortable. An inclusion of, if not focus on, sexuality in the game.

Some of the thoughts I’d had towards presentation were:

1. Appeal to fetishism. Make it attractive but not silly. Well presented, probably in a box, with the same kind of labeling and presentation (as far as is possible) as mainstreamed games. Make it something people will understand in their context, and something that is physically attractive and interesting. (My wife has suggested a box like the “Shakespeare in a Box” sets come in, with ribbons and nice pictures and neutral backgrounds might work.)

2. Make it Collectable in the sense of DVDs rather than comics: While I would have a central system that moves from game to game, I would sell each “genre supplement” as a self-contained game that focused on the genre at hand. There would be a spy one, a western, a romantic comedy, etc – all in nice boxes that look good together. This is probably not going to be that big a deal, but it could be surprising. How many people shell out the extra money for the Lord of the Rings boxed set where everything matches?

3. Hit Em on the Street: Find groups that would like what you’ve got. If it’s a good game for gay partners, go to Pride. If it’s a good game for people who love spy novels, talk to people in book clubs that do that. Get out of your comfort zone when promoting. If you only sell to people you’re comfortable with you’ll never sell something that isn’t the same as everyone else has.

Thoughts I’d had towards rules and structure were:

1. Collaborative character gen using a template like system. This is based on the partners playing together idea, and the fact that while we can assume partners may be sexually interested they do not always know how to communicate what they find sexy. OTOH, if you just make the character for your partner you may give them something they aren’t comfortable playing. What I’d like to do is present complete types fitting to the genre, with 10 blanks to fill in. Each person gets to fill in 5 on theirs and 5 on their partners, so that they can balance what they’d find sexy in the other person’s character with what they find safe/interesting in their own.

2. Simple Characters: Goes with the above, but as we’re not dealing with people who have the geek need to score and categorize every bit of trivial ability and information much of the simulationist based character-stating of RPGs can go right out the window. The emphasis of characters is on “what is this character’s sexiness and conflict (be that thematic or game-goal based)” rather than on “how many pounds can this character benchpress.”

3. As part of either of these, there may also be a random element or option to picking the words and conflicts – to give people an easy dodge. If you want to be the guy that is always getting tied down and worked by the female spy (think what Elektra King did to James Bond in The World is Not Enough) but can’t tell your partner that, you can always blame it on what you rolled. This would obviously require some working to get right, perhaps using vague and leading phrases let people chose what they want, Rorschach style.

4. Explanations and context in terms of things they know. Have you ever noticed how truly shitty the “what is roleplay” sections in most books are? Cops and Robbers? Improv Theatre? Dude, people are already putting the book down. Now I don’t have this worked out yet, but I know that the traditional modes will not fly here. Get it into the level of people who don’t RP, don’t want to play a kids game, and have never done theatre and keep it there.

5. Game structure that builds roleplay rather than forces immersion, method, or acting. Most people may even want to keep it all third person, as the stuff we do about “getting into character” is one of the things that most freaks the norms. I want more conflict resolution player decided pushes than “what your character would do” stuff. Getting the rules to work with the genre in a way that builds structure is important.

6. Easy play ideas: things like cards to draw when you get to a point in the plot where you don’t know what should happen next. Props, basically, to ease the strain of having to be creative while still allowing for individuality. Something like multiple suggestions for ways to go per card, that the player then works off of in order to build something of their own. (Or not, the individuality of play may not be the point at all.)

7. Five and Six together combine when you look at making a structure that fits the genre you’re selling. Look at all the spy movies you’ve ever seen and figure out what they have in common, for example, then use the system and cards (or whatever) together to guide the players through something like that. Even if it’s as simple as “One of the spies has a secret document on their person, figure out a way to get it” it still points and leads play.

8. A very clear section about how when the game isn’t working to move on and try again later. In group games with experienced RPers we all know that we’ll often play for a long time when we aren’t having fun in the hopes that we will someday have the fun we once had again. In a one-on-one game with people who aren’t freakishly dedicated that is death, and must be avoided. Something like a safe word (without the BDSM implications, unless that’s the genre you’re going for) should be instituted as a bail.

9. While the above all sounds very nifty and semi-nar (with a little habitual sim that I really have to get rid of) it would also probably be a good selling point if the game was actually a game, in which there was some competition and a question about who would win and how. Capes shows a direction this could go in, but only takes one step in that direction.

So, there I run out of steam, and the long post not with a bang but a whimper. I think I will need to let this stuff percolate in my brain for sometime, work out the kinks in the back of the shop, and come back to it later. So next up will probably be something like “WHY BEN IS ALWAYS WRONG” or a similar crowd pleaser.

I will be putting up a new post about solo games, social context, and all that soon. (Once I’m not writing like a maniac trying to make deadlines, I’m sure.)

Until then go read this post on Ben’s “This is My Blog” because he’s confronting all the issues I’m going to try to deal with over the next couple of posts.

He also beats me up pretty good, and I know you all want to see that.

While writing this article I realized I was going to have to split it into multiple parts: dealing with solo games and the ways they work differently than group games and dealing with ways to work through that, looking at no-GM head to head games, and dealing with how to mainstream RPGs, specifically solo RPGs. If I cross over in this post, I hope you can forgive me, I’m still working on sorting it out.

Anyway, at this point in my RPGing life I’ve logged a significant number of hours in solo-player RPGs, and I am going to focus on them in this game. GM-less head to head games such as the awesome Breaking the Ice and the very interesting Operation Foole will be in the next post (or the post after that, this is getting long).

These are some of the issues that I have noticed with playing solo games, how they differ from group games, the ways that traditional RPG structure fails to fully support and maximize the solo experience, and some ideas for ways to start fixing that. Some of what I say will be in the “yes, that’s fucking obvious” category. This is because I am trying to get as much possible out and said, so that real analysis and work can build up around it. When you’re making cake you get out all of your ingredients, even the obvious flour.

Competence Issues: When running a solo game with a traditional “PC adventure and struggle” setup, one must always be aware of the limitations of the single protagonist. In a typical group RPG there is often a wide variety of skills between the PCs. A lot of games even build heavily upon this by enforcing or encouraging niche protection: what one PC can do the others can’t, and so no one character can hope to do everything. You then toss lots of different challenges at them, allowing each character in turn to shine (or at least have a chance to). The problem with this is that when you play with a single character you don’t have that range of abilities, and so the “lots of different challenges” can become a death trap real quick.

There are several ways around this. Increasing PC competence so that they can be either a jack or master of all trades is a common suggestion. Downplaying challenges so that they are easier is another. Focusing the game specifically on the abilities the PC has is a third. Not making the game about adventure and meeting goal based challenges is the usual nar-based advice. And I’m going to add troupe character play to the list. (Feel free to chip in with any that I missed.)

The issue is that all of these changes come with baggage. First up, increasing PC competence often requires some changes to the character generation system of the game. When I ran 7th Sea in a solo game with my wife I quickly found that I had to alter not just the number of points given to make her character with, but the interaction of some of the mechanics in order to make a character that could deliver the play experience that she wanted. Elements of the game that work well for niche-protection play suddenly became a handicap and a burden, and had to be reworked or jettisoned. I was, obviously, able to do the work — but the whole “you can change it so its okay” isn’t good enough here. I don’t want to look at things you can make do with, I want to focus on ways to make things work well.

This type of character can work well for a lot of stories. Anything pulpy, for example, often works better with the single PC than the group, because most of the pulp heroes where one man shows and master of all trades bad asses on their own. Remember all the times that Conan relied upon his thief to sneak past the guards? No? Or when Batman had to get his tough friend to help him beat up some thugs because he was a brain who could invent but not fight? No? That’s because they didn’t. The problem, of course, is that you can’t just make a master of everything if you’re doing a game in which you don’t want pulp or superheroic PCs. The very real tension of the “little man using what he has to overcome the big challenge” can go out the window if what he has is everything.

Second, downplaying challenges, can be a horrid mistake in many circumstances. First off is the “missing the point” challenge type that a mere reduction of does not remove the fundamental problem with. In 99% of the group RPGs I have ever played, no matter how focus on politics and social interaction and whatever, there has been one member of the group who was at least competent with violence. Thus the old RPG standby of “two guys with guns coming through the door” will result in some boom boom, and one of the players can deal with it in the violent way. In a single player game, however, simply reducing it to one guy coming through the door may not be enough — if the one player has no violence ability then they have no violence ability. There is no one else to cover for them.

The other issue with downplaying challenges is that a lot of players can tell when they’re being soft-shoed, and they don’t like it. This is a particularly sim concern, I’m sure, but there you have it — they don’t like it when they’re coming in to face the biggest of big bads who is smart and tough and well connected and he only has one guard who is a fat middle-aged retired donught eating champion. Nothing kills the tension faster than challenges obvious scaled down to compensate for the fact that there is only one of you.

Which leads us to method number three: tailoring the challenges specifically to the character. This method actually has a lot of merit to it, and can make for very satisfying goal-based play as well as being a good method for focusing the themes in non-goal based play. A good GM can do a lot of work to make every adventure hit the character where they need to be hit, after all. The issue, of course, is how the game’s design makes this easier, better, and faster. More on that later. The problem with this style of play is that over the long term many people can get bored with constantly facing the same problems, and many GMs aren’t fully adept at coming up with new and interesting variations upon them. (24 season 4 was fun, but Jebus, how many times can we see the world threatened by nukes and Jack resisting torture?)

Moving away from goal based to thematic and character development play is another solid solution. Games like Sorcerer and Trollbabe can be quite good at solo gaming for just this reason – the focus is on the why of what characters do rather than on the what they can do. The issue here being that not everyone likes narrativist games, and even games like this can have some issues with their play structure when it comes to solo games. The relationship map, for example, needs to be tinkered with when everything is going to circle around one character rather than around a set of them. This requires a PC who either has more contacts, the ability to get into more shit and draw more people to them, or a slight but important restructuring of the assumptions of the relationship map to better focus it down onto the PC – making it combine with the “fit the challenge to the PC” above.

An idea I have been toying with in how to get around this in a different direction is to have troupe based play in which the player plays the whole troupe. Why limit it to a single character? (This can also work well if you want to add shifting GM duties into the mix, or no GM at all.) This can be anything from multiple full PCs played by one character, or shared with the GM, to a “followers and sidekicks” system like HeroQuest and Nobilis use, where there are multiple characters under the aegis of the protagonist character that get controlled by the player rather than the narrator. For players that like this it allows for all the nice parts of normal group gaming: mixed challenges, player controlled characters getting killed, different perspectives and abilities, and so on. The weakness that I foresee is the lack of single character focus of a full troupe game will put off those with immersivist tendencies, or could just be too many characters for one player to want to keep track of. Still, I think the HQ/Nobilis sub-PC system has much to recommend it. (And this is before we even get into the section where I talk about destroying traditional PC/GM relations.)

So lots of talking about why things don’t work, with occasional pointers at where they do. Well, now, how do we chose which of these things we want for our game? The answer is focus. Figure out what, exactly, you want to do and which of the tools is going to get you there. If you’re looking for a wide-ranging pulp game with lots of variety and adventure (a Conan, for example) then you need a system that focuses on super-competent characters with lots of different skills. If you’re looking for a game where the big challenges are about whether your six year old can get his uncle to stop abusing him, then you need a system that focuses heavily upon the emotional vulnerabilities and strengths of the protagonist – to the point at which traditional RPG things like strength and intelligence are completely absent.

Any of the above methods can probably work, but you have to be sure you know what you are doing with them and build them direct into your game’s system.

Flow, Focus and Intensity Issues: When I play solo-player games I often find that the players have trouble with the constant attention and (from their POV) increased pressure and need for speed. In most group RPGs, even those in which the party stays together all the time, the focus will shift from one player to another as they step up to deal with their issue, be it a scene in which they are the specialist or just their turn in combat. In solo games there is no such downtime for the player to be able to sit back and figure out their next move. (This is probably particularly bad in my games, as I’m very fast at figuring out my stuff after years and years of GMing.)

As a result of this solo games tend to move faster, as there is no hesitation between characters, no character to character banter, and no one outside the two of you to talk about things, provide advice, and so on. This can lead to increased stress and tension (both the good kind and the bad) and so the flow of the game needs to be considered. Mechanisms that either hard-code break points, stress relievers, and the like or else deliberately play upon the constant movement and action of the solo game should be encouraged. In either case, a focus on shorter sessions of games would probably be a good thing to encourage. Get the game to hit it and quit it, rather than focusing on the traditional goal of the 8 hour session. 8 hours of solo play can be exhausting, and 4 hours is usually more than enough to cover the amount of story and “cool happenings” that would take a group game multiple 8 hour sessions to play out.

It has also been my experience that short-run games work better with solo-games. Even the long term campaigns I’ve played solo tend to get broken up into chunks. Because of that I’d suggest building games that use techniques to have a “beginning, middle, end” structure for a good chunk of solo games. It doesn’t have to be as hard-coded as “My Life With Master” or the like, and should probably allow for the possibility of multiple sequential “novels” – but something that gives the game some check and consistency to its flow is probably a good idea.

NPC Issues: Which moves us into the issue of NPCs. While often a smaller issue, my experience has been that solo players do not have the interest or focus to deal with as many NPCs as can get comfortably handled in a group game. In many group games NPCs often end up being unofficially classed towards one of the characters, and they deal with and remind the others about them. In a solo game you can’t do this, everyone comes back to one player. Even if you’re playing a troupe game with lots of characters you still have the fact that it’s one player dealing with all those NPCs.

My experience with this is that it is best to have a smaller number of NPCs who reoccur and who are played with more intensity than the average NPC. They should be almost quasi-PCs run by the GM with lots of personality and motivation and ability to hit the PC or help the PC on multiple levels. To many faces becomes drowning, but a few well defined faces stick well into a persons mind.

I feel that I’m coming up short in this area though, so let me hear what you guys have done/thought about this one.

The Hearing About Your Game Should Suck Issues: Now, to round the article out, I’m going to talk about something nice rather than something that sucks. One of the biggest strengths of solo-player RPGs (and no GM head-to-head RPGs) is that there is only one person playing with you. Only one person you need to communicate with, vibe off of, and deal with the idiosyncrasies of. With only two of you, who are able to communicate and (maybe) trust each other there should be more room to explore things that might not be comfortable in a group game. This can be romance and sex and violence and racism and any number of things, but it should be there – push the envelope of what you do, because you’ll never have a “group” you can vibe with as easily as you can vibe with a single person.

Of course, I noticed that in the post I made before this no one even touched the whole “solo games can lead to fucking!” point. Let me just say that I think this is a horrible mistake. People have been RPing in bed since Eve died her hair black and pretended to be her “evil sister” Lilith (some sexual RP that fucked up generations, let me tell you) and the fact that there have been only shamed faced stuttering such as “The Book of Erotic Fantasy” pointing the RPG hobby in that direction is pathetic. I’m a damn Mormon and I’m telling you people – leaving the sex and sexual aspects out of RPGing (OOC and ICly) is a mistake.

I know this is a point that can make people uncomfortable, so I’m going to move off it now and hit a related point. Read this post by Ron Edwards about his solo game of Runequest Slayers. See how he talks about a lot of things that would push a lot of people would get squirming around in game? How even in the thread itself there are things he can’t talk about as openly with the folks on the thread as he could with Jake? Especially in the reply “Unfortunately, “would” is a problematic concept. It’s very likely that I’m choosing my answers in order to convey an image that I’d prefer you to hold about me, rather than anything resembling reality.”

That is the kind of thing that solo gaming should focus on and push. It doesn’t always have to be nar based soul searching either. It could be that you’re gaming with the only other person in the world who still likes Robert Jordan novels, or that you’re the only two you know who really love a good dungeon bash with hard core gamism up and down in a city full of namby-Nar players. Whatever it is, however, solo games should encourage people to push it as hard as they can with another human being, to get the things out of game that you can’t get with a group because there is to much concern, focus, and direction going outwards.

Okay, that’s all that my brain is spitting out now. Please, add more!

Next Up: Head to Head GM-less games, breaking the traditional structures and assumptions of play for solo games.

It has, from time to time, occurred to me that one of the big divides between what people see in movies and read in books and what they do around the gaming table is the group. Certainly there is a good amount of fiction and film that has groups of equal protagonists working equally to do equal things – but they seem to be in the minority. Much of literature and film focuses on the individual protagonist with his/her supporting characters. Even many “group” works are really about one person rather than the group, much less about each person in the group in their own individual glory.

So we get fantasy fans who read some Conan and some Elric and then bring along some Game of Thrones and maybe a little Lord of the Rings for fun. Then they run smack into the D&D party mentality, wherein you all get together and damn well stay together. Familiarity breeds contempt, and characters end up never getting protagonized because the game is never about them.

Then comes the newer movements in game structuring (which ironically aren’t that new at all, they’re just new to a lot of us who had to have the reintroduced from the hoary days of yesteryear or the extreme fringes of the hobby, where they’d been chased by peasants with pitchforks) telling us that we don’t have to have group or party games. We can split the group up and still have everyone at the table be interested in what is going on by tying them all to the same story – often through a relationship map or scene crossing or the like. It was a big thing for me when I figured this out, and it has changed the way I game considerably. Suddenly characters get to be protagonists again, and those Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings games get working real well.

But the Conan and the Elric still don’t. And the process by which I make the other games work is slightly more narrativly complex than most people I know are able to do without some good direction and work. So once we move beyond us and look to getting more people from a wider slice of life into gaming (not even mainstreaming, so much as de-ghettoing) we run into a problem: the structures that make games work like the books they read and the movies they watch are either difficult to get to or simply don’t work so well.

Now, I know for a fact there are ways around this and good design goals that can help do the heavy lifting for people. (Dogs in the Vineyard, of which I sing, has these awesome town creation rules, for example….) However, I think there is one fundamental assumption of gaming that I would like to see challenged more often: that it is done in groups of people. In the hoary old days and on the semi-fringes of the hobby there is another option: the solo player game (or the two players and no GM game).

At this point it is inevitable that someone will upjump and tell me that I can run a solo game with any current game system. And they will be right. But they will also be wrong. If I play a solo game using D&D, for example, I’ll have to carefully restructure a large number of the game’s assumptions about the typical adventure, as my single player will not have the capabilities of the assumed group with the mage, rogue, fighter, cleric combo. If I play it with Primetime Adventures, I’m probably going to fall right on my face. Dogs can work for it, though group contests could get ugly and a lot of the interpersonal push between Dogs would be lost. But even there it’s just a system that works for it okay, not a system that is designed to support it.

There are a few one-on-one designed games out there. Breaking the Ice springs quickly to mind. However, in general they are far less common than the traditional group game. This is a shame for those who want to de-ghetto RPGs for several reasons.

1. As I’ve blathered about above, it is easier for most people brought up on mainstream literature and films to conceive of narrative structures for a single protagonist than for a group. Thus making single protagonist games would make it easier for people to run the games. Note: not just play, but run.

2. One on one games can go places and do things that normal games cannot do (see Breaking the Ice). They give focus, they lend themselves well to shorter more intense games (focus is sharper, but energy gets lost faster when there isn’t a group to mitigate screen time between). They are easier to communicate about, being only two sides to the story, and thus easier for many people to experiment with.

3. They do not require a group. I don’t know if a lot of RPG designers really consider this carefully enough. Getting together a group of people to play a regular game can be a real fucking pain in the ass. OTOH, there isn’t a night of the week where most people can’t get together with one other person to do something fun. Increase the opportunities to play and decrease the pain of getting a group, getting their buy in, and getting them all together and you will increase the number of vaguely interested people who may be willing to give gaming a shot.

4. A lot of those folks who can get together every night are wives and husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends, girlfriends and girlfriends, and so on. There is a lot of potential there for roleplaying, in a cross over sense with what people often think of when they think of a couple role playing with just each other. I know a guy who owns a gamestore that said that the game he sold most to couples was the old James Bond game, when he’d tell them “one of you plays Bond, the other one of the femme fatals….”

All of those things together combine to make one on one RPGs with systems that support their structure of play rather than simply allowing a default to it, something I find worthy of checking out.

Next up: Musings about the structure of solo games based on my experiences and understanding of narrative structure

At one point I’d been toasting ideas about the Game Chef’s competition, and got onto the historical angle and started futzing. I never could tie in another element, and I was so freakishly over-busy with projects that pay me that evil money that I couldn’t focus on it. I did, however, come up with this short sketch of an idea that I may develop into something useful at some point.

STRIKE!

An RPG set around one of the wildcat strikes of the late 1800/early 1900s that emphasizes the hard choices made – safety vs power, family vs self, and so on. There is inherent conflict in any strike situation, and doubly so in those early strikes, so there is lots of rich thematic material to be mined. For the miners there is the issue of risking everything in order to get an incremental gain, for the owners the issues of money vs responsibility (especially in cases like the Pullman strike where the owners had shown themselves to have concern for their workers and to be somewhat socially progressive for people of their class and time). For the government there is the ever-present violence and repression against freedom and protecting the people, and for the community as a whole there is the whole host of issues around developing economies, clashing ideologies, and hegemonic domination.

PCs could be set up to be on opposite sides, one of them working for the union, one of them representing the wildcat strikers (this can be divided – one representing the locals, another representing the general cause of unions probably with socialist/communist/anarchist leanings), another representing the corporation, another the families of the community, another the government (and/or the army), a newspaper, and so forth. Then each would have to have a lot of mechanical pressure to not just “be nice and get along” – something to push and spur the conflict.

The Army guy knows that if he can push the situation to violence and the resolve it well, he can get a promotion to general – which will never happen if there isn’t a confrontation. It may well be his last chance to make the big leap.

The newspaper guy knows that no one wants to read stories of peace, they want the mud and blood and bomb throwing anarchists facing off against tight fisted corporate fat-cats. He has no interest in the truth, but a lot of interest in getting a story that will get him out of the basement and into the lead reporter seat.

What about a system where you get points for hitting goals, and at the end (if you’re alive) the number of points you have determines what you get? So if the army guy has lots of points he becomes a general with a job in Washington, if he gets middle he becomes a general but in a nasty place, if he gets low he gets nothing, if he gets really low he gets court-martialed and shot. The union guys can get things even if they don’t get it for themselves (being dead or in jail or having not made the company back down) – the points they get determine how their families are treated and how they push forward the cause of unions elsewhere.

Set up a circle of characters so that the sides get played out. Like if there are two then you have to have the wildcat and the corp. At three add the community, at four add the army, at five add the newspaper, at six add the anarchist, and so on. This could be more flexible, but should be set up so there is always conflict.

There should also be a “turn taking” mechanism that allows the players equal chances to gain points. That way everyone has a chance to either get points or block others from getting points. It should also encourage replay in the “what if the army wasn’t in this one” mode. For example, you should get two different games if you have the corp, the strikers and the community than if you have the corp, the strikers, and the army.

Articles:

The Pullman strike is probably one of the best models, as the issues of both sides can be clearly seen and defended. The massacres (such as Ludlow) are more weighted, and so can be used for fodder but probably not for the main conflict.

The Pullman Strike
The Homestead Strike
The Ludlow Massacre

I was looking at Shadowrun the other day, and at Guardian’s of Order’s new books Ex Machina (cyberpunk) and Dreaming Cities (urban fantasy) and thinking about what a fun game Shadowrun was, but how it could have been so much more. It could have been powerful, hit issues about the future of technology and humanity, religion and humanism, and many things besides. Obviously it didn’t want to be, but I decided I did want that game. A game that made magic and machine clash in the near future in a way that would let me explore issues of transhumanism and the cost to the human soul, religious faith and the cost to the human ego, and other things besides.

So I started writing. I came up with the following. It’s raw and unedited, but I think something of the spark that interested me in the idea can be seen there. It is less Cyberpunk meets D&D, and more Transhuman Space meets Mage the Ascension, all with something of a Sorcerer attitude.

I haven’t decided on a system yet.

The Age of Kali

“For three thousand years at least, a majority of people have considered that human beings were special, were magic. What the ability to manipulate genes should indicate to people is the very deep extent to which we are biological machines. The traditional view is that life is sacred… but not anymore. It is no longer possible to live by the idea that there is something special, unique, or sacred about living organisms. We are machines.“

- Dr. Robert Haynes, at the 16th International Congress of Genetics, 1988

“That Man is this whole universe, -
What was and what is yet to be,
The Lord of immortality….
This is the measure of his greatness“

- The Rg Veda, first composed ~2000 BC

“Unless we change direction, we are going to end up where we are headed.“

- Traditional Chinese Proverb

Dateline: India, 2050 CE.

With nearly 1.5 billion citizens, India is the largest nation on earth and holds nearly a quarter of the earth’s total population. It passed China in mid 2030, and has recently passed the total population of the entire European, South and North American continents combined. It is a country of contrasts. In the refurbished palaces of the princely dynasties of yester-year, 8 of the 10 richest people on earth live lives of perfect luxury and pleasure. But in the streets outside babies die in the streets, India’s infant mortality rate being more than double any other countries. 125 story glass and steel high-rises tower over the swarming temples of ancient gods. Corporate scientists take advantage of the world’s loosest laws about technological and biological experimentation while charismatic gurus gather cults that reject modern technology, refusing to even take penicillin to cure the diseases which still ravage the subcontinent. It is a land of the Kama Sutra and religions that revel in sexuality as the generative force of the world, and a land of the most draconian moral laws – where it is possible for a man to stone his wife to death for committing adultery.

It is said that in India the past is at war with the future, and the outcome of their struggle will be prophetic of the outcome of the struggle facing the whole human race. As William Barrett said, “Our modern adventure began with the seventeenth century, but the earlier age has not vanished like a marker on a line that we have passed; it is still present, with all its paradoxes and tensions, in the uncertainties and malaise of our modern consciousness.” These aspects of ourselves, the conscious of the modern age and the unconscious of the past ages, are coming to a head in the ancient cauldron of India.

At the beginning of the game life will be fairly normal. Technology will have advanced at a good rate, but it will not have overcome any major paradigm hurdles. Computers will be smaller and faster, medicine more potent and versatile, cars faster and running off of hydrogen and electricity: but everything will be much in the mode of modern technology but better. Corporate India will be huge, with massive numbers of technical and scientific jobs being centered in the country. While computer and information tech are as big as everyone expected, the biggest industry is biotechnology: an area that India has come to dominate due to extremely permissive laws with few to no restrictions on controversial areas like organ harvesting, free market trade in body parts, fetal stem-cell research, and cloning. Here you can buy a kidney legally, and there are 1 billion poor who are usually willing to do without one because the money will let them lift themselves out of the gutter.

At the same time India is as religious as ever. Bhakti (devotional worship) movements with charismatic leaders are gaining steam, putting a new slant on ancient Hindu beliefs. In the streets of the cities new religious movements are growing out of fusion music, the Vedas, and hip-hop consciousness. Mixing elements of Vedic Hinduism, Buddhist Tantra, and Sufi mysticism, this new movement claims to be able to give visions of the divine, its followers dancing, fucking, and dreaming themselves into ecstatic states where they believe they see beyond the mechanical world. Beside both of these movements there is also a growth in fundamentalist Islam, evangelical Christianity, and hard-core Jainism. The only thing these religions have in common is that they are almost universally opposed to the way the biotech corporations treat life and the sanctity of the human body.

The PCs will be somewhere in this vast and eclectic mix. My first thought for setting is New Delhi, a city which has seen its share of violent change: from Hindu to Arab to Persian to Mughal to British to Hindu and now to the future. It is a city of Djinn, of unlimited financial growth and possibility, and ancient grudges and prayers. The PCs take on rolls of those caught in the divided grip of India, powerfully conflicted between the forces of old vs. new, religion vs. secularism, technology vs. magic, and extremism vs. mediocrity. They are people who are caught between the past, present, and future in a way that puts their whole life and concept of self in jeopardy. The religious Muslim whose family is on the verge of starvation who is offered enough money to open a shop – if only he donates his kidney. The Brahmin scientist who is working on a way to clone human children without the need for a human womb, who has to face issues of her own infertility and her parents desire for grand children. The hip-hop urban DJ guru who uses cutting edge tech to pirate and remix corporate music, living as a parasite on their system while trying to bring it down. The genetically-selected Rajput army Lieutenant who has to deal with a history of violence and racial oppression while finding himself in love with a genetically impure untouchable. And so on.

Once play starts and the human elements of the PCs relationships and struggles have been well established, things will start to move faster. Technological breakthroughs will start coming faster and bigger. Semi-sentient AI will kick in, doubling the processing power available to scientists. Virtuality and direct-neural interface systems will combine with expert libraries to make information and expertise something that anyone with enough money can buy. Clean fusion technology and nano-machines will promise a world without scarcity, without hunger or fear or want, if only humanity can accept it. Things will go from “near future” to “transhuman” with shocking speed. Singularity will go from a theoretical blip on the horizon to a cliff taking up the whole horizon rushing towards the characters faces at a million miles per hour.

At the same time the religious side of things will accelerate as well. Mass movements will grow up out of the gurus and ulema circles. Millions will be in the streets, chanting prayers and screaming protests, and then inch by inch, things will start to happen. Magic will return with a subtle insinuation that will quickly grow into a world-shaking force. As clean fusion comes out of the labs, Shiva and the other gods come out of the human heart – glorious and terrible and ready to dance the end of the world. Magic and the gods will offer humanity salvation and joy, a world without hate, or fear, or damnation, if only they can accept it. Things will go from subtle to blatant, and as singularity rushes up so do ascension and the apocalypse. The Age of Kali is coming to an end, and the world must be returned to the cosmic egg.

And in the middle of all of this, the focus and the force, are the PCs. They will be pushed, they will be tested, they will have to decide, for themselves and symbolically (ritually even) for the whole world which path they will walk. They can chose either, they can try to chose both, or neither – but they must chose, and from their choice the karma of the whole world will be determined. The point will not be how the world ends, it will be what the players say about their characters and their beliefs about the world and the future.

Because of that the PCs should be pushed to the point where things become uncomfortable – where they raise real questions. Having a cyber-arm isn’t enough, that’s cliché, comfortable, old news.

What about the girl with fertility issues who becomes an assassin, ripping out her womb (which she will never use, she doesn’t want children) to replace it with a flesh-pocket that can release a swarm of nanite killers, a swarm of microscopic machines that can strip the flesh from a man in a second. She births death now, rather than life. Why not? It makes her better at her chosen job.

Or what about sexuality – if you can procreate without sex and have sex without procreation, why stay with safe genders? Why not make your clit bigger, your cock longer, why not have both? Dick chicks and cunt-boys, girls genetically fixed to make great jelly-donuts, things that would give the Z’bri of Tribe 8 nightmares. Why not make biological machines to service you? Suck slugs that excrete addictive pheromones while giving physical pleasure? Why not? It feels good and it doesn’t cost you anything.

Or in the once noble area of organ donation: when you find a way to keep “neomorts” as long term organ banks – taking a dying body, keeping it alive despite the brain being dead, and grafting multiple organs into it in order to grow genetically compatible parts. Imagine banks and banks of them, once people with families and lives, now repositories for genetic grafts, harvested like trees for their fruit. Why not? It will save lives.

Same deal on the religious front. Can your character deal with never having sex except for procreation, or having sex with people you do not like because your Guru command you to? When Shiva tells you to kill your mother because she must dance onto a different life, can you do it? If magic requires blind faith, can you really be blind? Is it safe to believe in what you are told to, even when doing so gives you power? Or will it just hurt you more in the long run? When you can see the future before it happens, what becomes of your human uncertainty? What about the guru who gains power by leaving the world, sitting alone in the mountains with the power to change the world, but no longer part of the world that he could change?

Take the things you believe about religion, science, rationality, and push them. Then put them in a human context and apply human pressure. Then turn it up to 11 while gods and AIs walk the world.

It should be one fuck of a game.