Emphyrio Q6. Gaming
Did you come away from reading Emphyrio with ideas you can incorporate in your games? If so, what inspired you and how would you use it?
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I've always found Vance's cultural constructions to be inspiring, and as someone who likes to use such elements in my game worlds to call attention to the absurd in our world, I really appreciate Vance's efforts to do the same.
I do like this plot element of the childhood friend who gets pulled in a different direction from the main character, but they keep running into one another and their differences are highlighted. Its a bildungsroman, right? It kept reminding me of Herman Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, anyway.
I guess the "can I steal a spaceship to get away" subplot might be good for a session or so, but on the other hand it seemed absurdly easy - a couple of hapless untrained guys seemed to overcome the token resistance in short order...
Apologies for being mostly absent. Have a couple of things to say, but quite busy this weekend. Should post this evening or Monday. BC
I thought its setting could easily be used in most any game, but I'm not sure that I know players who would remain committed enough to their characters to make it worthwhile. I think it would quickly devolve into what the novel devolved into - this is boring, so let's just put an end to it.
That sounds harsh, but I am trying to put together a game right now where the point is that the PCs will have to fit in, or they will be cooked. The challenge is to make the victory condition depend upon remaining within society, in this case because there is no getting rid of peoples: They will always be there, can think and remember, and have their own goals, so you can't just beat them so they disappear. The first challenge is getting them to understand they need to "win" in a way that doesn't provoke a unwanted reaction. Any suggestions for game systems that would be particularly good for this?
I could mention one, but it's one of mine, and I won't, so perhaps Empire of the Petal Throne?
Has anyone here played ept?
But you could use almost any setting for this if you don’t mind using a shipwreck scenario - crew crash lands on a strange planet (Jorune, Tekumel, Ringworld, Planet of the Apes), or shipwrecks on a strange island (Mythras Monster Island) or enters the hollow earth (Hollow Earth Expedition, Burroughs Pellucidar) or their balloon crashes on a remote plateau (The Lost World, or the Plateau of Leng) or somehow enters Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, or has a time travel mishap (The Doomsday Book, Timeframe, The Time Machine) or a dimension-hopping mishap could take them literally anywhere.
Sorry I mostly mentioned a bunch of out of print games or fiction settings to illustrate.
Thanks @Apocryphal. I have already looked at most of these rulesets. I guess I wasn't clear in my question. I'm looking for a rules-system that will include rules to shape NPC and minions / anonymous groups that recognises that the society is far more powerful than the PCs, and also recognises and includes the goals that are important to them when calculating their response, and that isn't utterly tied to what I would call the setting. A hybrid mid-fantasy and swords and planets thing.
The players are getting to a level I would call "individually competent" at battle, and what I want to do is transport them to a new society where they can't just hack and slash their way through to their goals. New characters might be fine, don't care really if they need to rework them - would be the same character in new system. Hacking and slashing will of course ensue, but the idea is that they need to "clear" it with greater authorities. I am thinking to start adding new "stats" that measure social positioning, but don't want to get bogged down in paperwork.
I personally have mostly used percentile systems (RM house-ruled), but I want to try something new. Long ago you suggested BRP, and it has a lot of examples of setting appropriate house-rules e.g. CoC, so I thought it might be easy to bolt setting specific stuff onto.
A specific example I would like to import some of the stuff from Pendragon about passions and honour into NPCs, while making it transparent to the PCs how these affect the NPC's decisions. I see these as continuums along multiple axes, that PCs can change, slowly. Will point out to the PCs that the NPCs also know what is going on, and will act accordingly.
Anyway, long and boring. Hope this makes it clearer what I was talking about.
In Emphyrio there would be a subsystem about comfort on a regulationary / irrgulationary axis that would influence how PCs are viewed, that I thought would be interesting to play in or with.
I did years ago - my impression was that the rules and the intention thereof was that The State was supposed to be utterly unmovable and so you either lived strictly by the social mores and conventions, or you made sure you weren't caught, with swift and terminal punishments if you failed in this.
However, since we were all teenagers playing this we didn't do that as strictly as we should have done, since we all reckoned that we knew better than The State (or the game designers, for that matter). So our version of Tekumel was quite watered down compared to the grandiosity of its original concept.
That was what I had remembered. Thank you, Richard!
Yeah, that's not really what I'm looking for. I want a system to let me establish groups within a society and keep track of how they see the players individually, and the party as a group. The first part is not so hard with charisma / presence, but the second one, I just want a way to track that through time. News travels faster than the party, but I'm finding it hard to understand how to track this when the party is no longer unknown.
I guess you could also do an internet search for games with a reputation system. I don’t think I have any in my collection, unless it’s the Tekumel game, but I wonder if The Dying Earth game might, for example.
As I recall from Tekumel, although social reputation was crucial, it wasn't encoded in the rules but left to the GM to implement as they saw fit. This typically meant that in the first instance you had to get some recognition from your temple, and/or the city leaders of wherever you were.
In the original concept, there was no real chance of being noticed by the Emperor in any timeline, simply various levels of religious or secular flunkies. But because it wasn't actually in the rules at that time, it was purely up to the GM how seriously this was taken, and I'm sure lots of games really did have PCs interacting with officials at levels way above what they "should" have done, or being given more tasks that ought to have required substantially more reputation that they had actually gained.
Thanks everyone.This discussion is proving quite helpful. @Apocryphal: I will take a look at that later today. @RichardAbbott Thanks for the explanations about ept. I'm looking through some things right now.
The ways that multiple clans, meaning social groups that individuals belong with, sometimes co-operate, sometimes conflict in ways that don't suit their members is exactly what I am looking to track. I'm not looking for "rules" for social reputation, or how to have the players face a monolithic state.
What I'm having trouble figuring out how to map and track a way for NPCs and people to have multiple (sometimes incoherent) loyalties and enmities, and how to track the ways that information and disinformation (gossip about events) propagate, so that I can find it easily when preparing a session or challenge. It's entirely GM facing, and is way for me to provide the PCs with something to figure out, and to connect "adventures" into a campaign. Also want a coherent way to track how changes will propagate out to other loyalties / enmities.
So far everything I've looked at has been too focused on individuals. I want to run a large town / city, and I need a way to keep track of how people do things they don't deeply want to do because there is a social obligation, and how these produce drama etc. by conflicting with other obligations. So a nice NPC can oppose the party for good reasons, and an enemy can suddenly seem to help. If the PCs just accept everything they will find they have created enmities that they will not appreciate later.
Not explaining well, but anyway. Basically want a dynamic society. Most systems don't have any conception of what I would call social time. At the moment I am confused rather than perplexed.
Here is an idea: All people of the city have three organizations to which they belong. CLAN - A group of closely related families and retainers; GUILD - people one works with, who do the same job or related jobs; and CLUB - A social organization built around shared interests. The adventuring party all belongs to the same CLAN, GUILD, or CLUB. In addition are two other groups that everyone belonged to: TEMPLE - which is religious in nature; and GOVERNMENT, which is political. There is one GOVERNMENT in a given city, and one TEMPLE, but several GUILDS, CLANS, and CLUBS. You would need to create the organizations, giving them varying resources, and thus varying clout. Instead of naming resources, you could give them a resource number and roll against it situationally, lowering it as resources were used, raising it as they periodically refreshed. Tracking the interests of the GUILDS, CLANS and CLUBS would thus be much easier and give everyone divided loyalties. You should also set a change number. If the resource number is lowered to this point, the organizations change interests, The GOVERNMENT and TEMPLE should have very high resource numbers.
You are very welcome!
Actually the Resource Number is the only bit not part of the game I mentioned. I came up with the resource number for you. That game has more detailed resources, but the resource number abstracts all that, so it's easier to track.
It's StarCluster 4 - Wavefront Empire, which has a very different social structure, which is why I thought of EPT. People cannot bring standard current social values into the game, which forces them to change their ways of thinking. As you can imagine, nobody likes it!
EPT is another thing that seems like it might be a good resource, but it seems to be overrun with controversy. Makes it hard to sort wheat from chaff.
Thanks again. BC
Good luck with it! It sounds fascinating, so keep us informed!