Survey

I just had an idea of a survey for people to take prior to playing this game, to help determine what would be good worlds for them. I don't know enough about the worlds to do much with it, but perhaps Eric could work on it. Perhaps it could go something like:

Do you believe in magic?
Do you believe in psychic phenomena?
Do you believe in UFOs/Bigfoot/The Loch Ness Monster?
What is your favorite genre of movie?

Things like that, and from that, you could determine what kinds of worlds would be good for players to play. Any other thoughts?

Yes.

I'm sure that the first thing I would do would be to put them into worlds that really challenged all their beliefs.

I'm not sure that the survey would achieve the results you want.

--M. J. Young

And exactly what would be the point of your logic there? You must not want people to enjoy playing this with you.

I would rather personally be dropped into a world that is 'perfect'; one where Christianity is the absolute singular religion and where everyone is happy than into a would based off my beliefs; a completely analytical, empirically based world.

I think MJ is trying to open their minds to the infinite possibility of Multiverser. I didn't belief in Magic or ESP or aliens or anything like that, and my first world was Naga world. Going into an exact replica of earth with minor altercations would be boring. Going to a post-apocalyptic world based around two factions -one magic and one science/ESP- that would be interesting.

Well, I really enjoyed my first world, the next one wasn't so great, and the one I'm in now isn't shaping up so well either. Maybe I'm just radically different than most gamers. The thing though is that this is supposed to be flexible enough to accommodate any player's tastes. So far, I've had one full success, one total failure, and a third which isn't doing so well so far. Instead of throwing me into the world to find out I do not believe in magic and will refuse to learn it, why not ask me that beforehand, and avoid the middleman completely? Sometimes I wonder if this is designed so the referees have fun, and not the players.

John, I don't think it matters if you learn magic or not, or even, if you'll permit me some latitude, what kind of magic you learn. You've read Verse Three, Chapter One, and know that for Lauren Hastings, learning magic started as a matter of trusting her faith against the powers of darkness. Maybe you don't want to do that; I can't tell you how to play your character. Maybe you want to trust your Ruger, Remington, and Mossberg (and those might just be good choices against whatever evil lies ahead). That's cool--it might play out like Army of Darkness, where you're using your "boom stick" against supernatural enemies quite effectively.

What I'm doing, really, is keeping the pot stirring--keeping the worlds different enough that they are different worlds.

You say how much you liked the first world, but really it seems you like it in retrospect. Everyone remembers how much you complained about it when you were there. I think there's a lot to like in every world (well, maybe not The Web, but I don't think I'd send anyone there who wasn't already pretty solidly experienced as a verser). This is a fantasy adventure world. The next one will not be a fantasy adventure world. That is all I know right now, because I'm running you in this one. There are a lot of possibilities.

The point of sending you to a world that goes against your expectations is to shake up those expectations, to introduce you to a wider conception of the multiverse.

Reflection time.

What is now decades ago, I was the referee (Dungeon Master) for a Dungeons & Dragons game, and I had characters in Metamorphosis Alpha (something of a post-apocalyptic space fantasy, lost space colony ship kind of thing), Gamma World (post-apocalyptic earth), Star Frontiers (space opera in another galaxy), Traveler (space opera in this galaxy), and I really wanted to try Boot Hill (western), Top Secret (espionage), and maybe Gangbusters (prohibition era cops and robbers). I also looked at one of the many incarnations of Dr. Who, but thought it would be impossible to make that work.

Then Ed brought Multiverser to me, around 1990. It solved all these problems: the one game continued, but it was a game in which you got to play in all those kinds of worlds, all those kinds of settings and stories. I could be in a horror story for a while, and then be in a fantasy adventure, and then a space opera, and then a post-apocalyptic, a western, an espionage, a cops-and-robbers, a time travel tale, and anything else imaginable and some things unimaginable.

That's one of the things that really excited me about this game--the diversity of universes in which players would find themselves.

I try to generate that diversity in the games I run. It means that you're going to see a lot of different kinds of worlds, as much as I can deliver it.

/Reflection time.

Test the worlds and do what you want within them. No one is twisting your arm. Sit back and let it run forward, and eventually something will happen to send you to another world. I think you're in one of my favorite worlds, but if you decide in the end you didn't like it, well, we learned something else.

Besides, most players don't really know what they would like, they only know what they think they would like. That's not the same thing.

--M. J. Young

Mr. Young, that was far more polite and kind than I was expecting. I had a thought whilst reading it. I am reacting the way we react to God when things in our lives aren't going the way they should. Sometimes we find out that those were the best thing for us at the time, but we didn't know it. I've had quite a few times like that. This could be the best thing that ever happens to me. On the other hand, you are not God. So, maybe not. As patient and kind as you have been about it, I'm going to go with the "Maybe it is the best thing that can happen to me" for right now.

mistake, sorry.

Also, yes, I do want to put my faith in God, and use it as a weapon. The thing is, that's not magic!!!! I don't care what the rules say it is, it's not magic!! Simon the Sorcerer thought that the power of the Holy Spirit was magic, and tried to buy it from the Apostles. That's not magic!!!!! There should be a "Faith" column on the player sheet. Faith in whatever you have faith in.

By the multiverser of definition, holy intervention is most definitely magic. It is gaining power from an outside source, whether that be a god (holy), an unknown outside force (arcane) and unholy magics, the definition I forget.

But by your last comment I am confused. Are you saying there should be Tech, Magic, Psionic, and Faith? Or just that you should ask another question, "What faith are you?" Because the former seems unbalanced, and the second seems superfluous.

Like I said, I don't give a hoot what the rules say it is. Faith in God is not magic!!! If it was, then every true Christian would have 1@1 holy magic right off the bat.

I'm not sure what I was saying about faith. I don't really remember. All I do remember is that faith in God is not magic, and no one is going to tell me it is.

I mean how do you put a skill level on a person's faith in God? By Multiverser definition, you have to be good enough to be paid to do it, to be a 2@ level. That would mean that no one except a pastor could get to the 2@ level. What's the 3@ level? The Pope? How do you put a level on a person's faith in God? I'd like to think that I have 3@10 faith in God, but that's been proven false many, many times.

Graeme, what you're looking for is not quite what you're expecting. The primary division is between "holy" magic, which is granted by a supernatural being, and "arcane" magic, which is directly controlled by the practitioner. "Holy" magic is then divided into alliance, neutral, and anarch, according to the position of the one granting it relative to the Creator.

John, all religious persons do have a skill in holy magic--they have a skill called Religion M1@0, and it bonuses their ability to perform other holy magic skills. It might not be on your sheet, because you did not list yourself a "professional" believer when we created your character and you've not attempted to pray or call on God (of which I am aware) since your character started play. As soon as you do that, I'll be asking you about your "religion".

Whether faith is "magic" is, I think, a semantic question--that is, it depends entirely on how you define "magic". My definition of "magic" is "power from outside the natural world". That distinguishes it from the psionic power that comes from within ourselves, the technological power that comes from the laws of physics and chemistry, and the physical power that comes from our biology (which one could argue is one of the others, but for the game it works much better to identify it as separate). It also means that if God does it, it is by this definition magic--and that hurricanes and earthquakes are not, in that sense, "acts of God".

Your character does not have to agree with this definition; he can believe that calling on God for help is not "magic", but something very different from "magic", and that can work for him.

My problem, as a game designer, is that I need a mechanic for "calling on God". Bear with me here.

I think you and I would agree (whatever anyone else on this board thinks) that God can and does heal people in response to prayer; I think we would also agree (again, without wishing an argument on the subject) that He does not always do so. There are uncounted prayers that God answers, and uncounted prayers that He seems not to answer, or at least, not in the terms we wished or expected.

Thus, quite apart from whether or not it should be called "magic", I face the problem of how to determine what happens. On the one hand, it would be entirely unrealistic (and terribly not fun) if every time you prayed something it happened immediately and exactly as stated; on the other hand, it would also be unfair and unrealistic for prayers never to be answered. Thus the answer provided by Multiverser (and some other but not all role playing games) is to let the dice decide, based on probabilities. Those probabilities are in turn based on your faith--as represented by your Religion skill--plus the numbers used to determine your chance of performing magic, because whatever else you want to argue, both are about introducing supernatural power into the natural world and directing it. A scale of difficulty is included, based on bias, so that it's easier to pray for simple blessings than to call lightning or fire from heaven, and that same bias system makes some things impossible in some worlds--consider it God's limitation on Himself in that world, that He has created lines He will not cross.

You don't have to believe that faith and magic are related to play the game; you just have to accept that in the mechanics, they are related.

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

Put in that context, that it is just a question of semantics, I can live with calling it magic. If it is just a question of semantics, then your answer makes sense. As you said though, I do not want to start a debate either, so I'll let the rest of it drop there.

For the record, I still say that faith in God is not magic, but for semantic purposes, and for the purposes of the game mechanic, I'll let it slide.

Once again, MJ, you have the patience of Job. Good thing too, for me anyway.

I ask every player what their favorite five books and movies are.

This is to give me an idea of what interests them.

There are primary and secondary aims in running Multiverser. I won't say that the Primary Penultimate Aim is 'have the player have fun', but I will say that it is more primary than 'expose the player to a wider conception of the Multiverse'.

Now, occasionally, 'expose the player...' is part of helping the player to have fun, or its spadework for that effort.

Also, when I do this, I frequently get as an answer "Lord of the Rings". I almost never send the player to LoTR. But, now I know they like fantasy, and quests, and epic....

Look at the other ones listed, and see if I can discern a pattern.

I might end up sending them to Dragonhunt (mine), Orc Rising (MJ's) is a good choice, Isles of Lakraine (mine), or Aquatica (mine)....all these are extremely different places, but they all share something with LoTR.

But, MJ's comment is of value to me because it reminds me of a technique I rarely use. In point of fact, I'd be curious to see what MJ would do with the person who believed in the Loch Ness Monster. Just how would you challenge this viewpoint?

Eric

I was confused about Steve as well. It seemed that he came into the Multiverse, and he could do all these feats like Sun Walking, because he really believed he could. I do understand that there are people that claim these feats are possible (and others who believe they have done it themselves) but it seemed odd that MJ did not challenge him on it. Of course it was the polite thing to do and I probably wouldn't have tried to call him out either, but it still seemed odd.

Of course, I could be missing a piece of the puzzle.

Even if you think that the real Steve really can't do those things, it's quite possible that the unreal Steve who got infected with scriff and became a verser actually could do those things even before he became a verser.

Were I running him in a live game, I might ask him to demonstrate the skill before I put it on his sheet (or I might just roll a skill learning check the first time he tries to do it in another universe), but I think simply taking the player at his word is an equally valid approach.

To Eric: I'm not sure what I'd do with someone who "believed in" the Loch Ness Monster.

Let's first establish that "believed in" in this case means the softer sense, "believes that such a creature exists." There's really not much point in addressing that, though, because there will be worlds in which that creature exists, worlds in which it is a grand conspiratorial hoax, worlds in which it is a collection of unrelated hoaxes, worlds in which there has never really been any evidence of such a creature, and worlds in which no one has ever heard of such a thing. It might be fun to let him find Nessie; it might be fun to drop him in a world in which someone is using a myth to become wealthy or powerful in some way.

If you mean "believed in" in the sense of "trusted as a friend and/or protector", well, I've never encountered anyone who thought of Nessie as a God, but I would probably allow that there was such a deity and ask for a few details of the religion before putting it to paper.

Graeme & Scott: I've had players make claims of psychic or supernatural ability before. I've never really thought there was much point in arguing whether they have actually done what they believe they have done, at least in quick character creation.

I did have a long discussion once with someone who claimed that he had calmed the wind. In the course of our discussion we established that he had done it, but that he could not do it always--rather, it worked when he felt that he had the power to do it. From this I challenged him to consider whether he was tapping into a power that enabled him to calm the wind, or whether he was being manipulated by that power into believing he was in control, when actually what was happening is he was being told he could calm the wind moments before it was about to become calm itself. That proved a much more effective approach, I think, than simply telling him he was crazy and did not have the power to calm the wind.

On the forum, and in convention games, I tend to accept such statements with less discussion, because discussion takes time we don't have. Further, as Scott observes, if in fact he cannot do it, it is still evident that he believes he can do it, and he's going to attempt to do it in the first situation in which it will be useful. That means I'm either going to have to let him have the skill up front or go through the skill learning trouble when he attempts to do it. It's usually better to let him have it up front.

Besides, it makes for more interesting options in the beginning of play, if one of the player characters brings unusual skills to the scenario. I've had people meet in that first gather and share knowledge of martial arts, body building technique, weapon skills, and more. In NagaWorld it is possible to build up a decent psionic skill base in a fairly short time, if you, er, put your mind to it and make the right connections. I've no problem with introducing a magician to the mix and seeing whether he is willing to share his secrets or not. It tells me something about him right there, and that's something worth knowing.

--M. J. Young