MJ keeps saying that players don't know what they want. I'm wondering what his basis for that is. Let me give a few examples.
MJ "Honey, I'd like a steak for dinner"
Wife "You don't know what you want, I'm making tofu"
OR
MJ "Honey, I'd like some quiet time to relax"
Wife "You don't know what you want, I'm going to crank the stereo at full volume"
How long do you think you would have stayed married if your wife insisted that you didn't know what you wanted, and gave you the opposite of it every time? Maybe I'm just completely backwards from most gamers, but that's what it seems like to me.
Actually maybe that could work......It worked for Petrucchio in dealing with Kate in The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare.
More seriously,
I never send the player to exactly the world he requested (so while I'll be happy to run you in your next world, it won't be Music Wars). One of the reasons is similar to MJ's reason--the player thinks he is asking for X, but he is not going to get it, and he doesn't really want X anyways, he only thinks he does.
Eric
That doesn't make any sense. There's even a Bible verse similar to this. "If your child asks for bread, will you give him a stone? If he asks for water, will you give him a snake?" Something like that anyway. What's the point? If the player doesn't like the world, he won't want to play. If the player doesn't want to play, he's not going to buy the books. If he doesn't buy the books, well, the company goes kaput. At least that's what it seems to me.
It's not like wanting a steak. It's like the businessman who wants to take a week off and take the whole family to Disney World. Disney World, he has heard, is Good, Wholesome Fun for the Whole Family. What he really wants is a relaxing vacation where he gets to spend quality time with his wife and children and gets to be with them while they enjoy themselves. What he'll get is a busy, expensive, over-scheduled week of crowds and noise where what fun they do have leaves them exhausted. Perhaps he would have been happier with taking a trip to the mountains for a week, or renting a beach cottage?
It's not so much "you don't know what you want;" it's more like, "you don't know what you're asking for." You know what you want, and you ask for something that you think will give it to you; as a referee, I only know what you're asking for; I don't know what you hope to get out of it.
Yeah, but what I'm saying is you don't get what you're asking for. I was seriously thinking about suiciding out of my current world if the psionic bias was flatlined again. That makes it next to impossible for me to have any fun. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of landing in "The Land of the Benevolent Purple Dinosaur." Otherwise, I was fully prepared to shoot myself to get out of the world.
MJ told me that he believes time travel fans would make good gamers. Speaking as someone who had never played an RPG before, but was an avid time travel fan, I can say that I don't think their approach works very well. I am the time travel fan turned potential gamer. I would think my opinion on it would matter, since people like me are the reason for the Temporal Anomalies website. If I don't like their approach, what makes them think that other time travel gamers would like it? I guess the question is, Do you want new people to play the game or not?
My close friend David (whom none of you know) loves Star Trek; but he hates science fiction, and in fact the only Star Trek he likes is the original. His favorite Star Trek movie is Star Trek V, the one that was soundly panned by the critics and which got William Shatner his reputation for being a less-than-quality director.
Why?
David doesn't like the Star Trek setting; he doesn't like the Star Trek morality, its optimistic view of the future, its godless goodness, its American bravado, its Gunsmoke in Space feeling, its space opera genre. What he likes is the Kirk-Spock-McCoy interaction, that odd relationship between the threesome that plays out on the screen. That was the thing that Star Trek V did so well that, for him (and for me) made it shine: it showed us the interactions of these three characters.
So someone tells me he likes Star Trek. What is it that he likes? My vision of Star Trek is not going to be his vision of Star Trek, and I would wager that if I broke down the facets of the show for him the way I just did above, he probably would have no clue what he liked. But then, I'm not going to be able to capture the Kirk-Spock-McCoy interaction and make the player a critical part of events, because part of that interaction is that it is exclusive--others are all in support roles. The Star Trek setting is a bit vague; it would be difficult to determine how it is different, in itself, from Traveler, Star Frontiers, Blake's 7, Starship Destiny, Mary Piper, or even Red Dwarf, and yet it is evident that it is different from all of these. Some of those aspects of the Star Trek world make it difficult to create solid story situations.
Similarly, if you tell me you like Lord of the Rings, what is it that you like? Is it the detailed creation of fantasy races and settings? For some players, just wandering around Middle Earth meeting these races and sucking every bit of knowledge about them from the referee would be a fascinating game; for others, it would be completely dull. Is it the battle between good and evil? I can capture that same battle with Krull, or The Last Starfighter, or Legend. Is it the magic? I've got worlds with magic, not much different from what is there. Yet knowing that you like Lord of the Rings does not tell me what you like, only that something in this massive creation appeals to you.
It is even more complicated than that.
There are three fundamentally different ways in which role playing games are "fun", and some players find their fun in exactly one of those ways, while others have learned to enjoy more than one aspect. It is likely that you prefer gamist, or narrativist, or simulationist play over the other two--but not only do you not know what those words mean, if you understood them you still might not know which you actually prefer. (If you've not read http://ptgptb.org/0028/theory101-03.html Theory 101: Creative Agenda, you might want to do so, as it explains these concepts fairly well.) I have divined the preferences of some of my players, and more often than not I play to those preferences--one of the strengths of Multiverser is that it allows me to do that, to adjust the game to meet whatever the player finds fun and interesting. I'm not sure you could tell me even yet what it is that appeals to you; I'm still feeling my way through your responses. However, there are aspects of this present world that appeal to gamists, and if those are the aspects you enjoy I would look to put you in other worlds with similar aspects, such as Blake's 7, Post-Sympathetic Man, or The Most Dangerous Game--none of them fantasy worlds, but all of them having strong gamist appeal. There are also some narrativist interests in this world, and were you to go for those I would consider Post-Sympathetic Man, Legends of Alyria, or Farmland Alpha. We've also got simulationist interests here, which might suggest that you would like Sherwood Forest, The Industrial Complex, or Bah Ke'gehn.
Note that you're in a world of dragons and demons and magic, and that none of the worlds I just described are like that at all. What I'm looking for is, what kind of story would you like to create? That's a level at which most people don't examine their own play. Whether that story occurs in a spaceship or a post-apocalyptic earth or a fairytale city or a modern world is considerably less relevant than the deeper question of what kind of story it is. Do we have at travelogue, in which the character is fascinated by his own discoveries, an action adventure in which he overcomes great obstacles, or a morality play in which he faces serious questions about the meaning of existence?
There are hundreds of other variables that go into these things. Do you prefer puzzles, riddles, challenges to your cognitive capabilities, or would you rather have to reach solutions by interacting with characters detective-style, or should this all just come to a straightforward fight toe-to-toe with the obvious villain? What balance should be struck between giving you the opportunity to choose your direction and giving you a direction to follow? (One of the problems Donna had when we switched from Eric to me is that Eric leads his players where he wants them to go and I wait for them to choose their own path, so Donna felt a bit of a struggle for direction. Conversely, Graeme is brilliant at making his own path wherever he is, and he created more than half of all the adventures he has faced by his own decisions.)
So if you were to tell me that you love Star Wars, that would tell us very little. I could place you as Luke Skywalker, but then you'd know what was coming and you'd either have to play it out as if you didn't or change the story completely because you do. The one is dull, and the other at some point ceases to be the story you wanted. I could instead set you up as some ordinary guy somewhere in Imperial space and let you create your own stories in the Star Wars universe--but that's probably not what you want, either.
You don't know what you want, because you don't understand what it is about those stories that inspires you and catches your interest. I don't know the answer to that question, either, but I can start trying to learn it by watching how you react in the stories I offer you.
I hope this helps.
--M. J. Young
Very good answer. I'm going to have to reread that a couple times.
One of the things that fascinates me is the Hidden Similarities.
I'd say
1. Starship Destiny
2. Blake's 7
3. Firefly
4. Farscape
...Are all fundamentally the same set-up, just different characters, and very mildly different takes on them.
Elements:
1. The 'benevolent' but actually evil Federation.
2. The super-special ship medium sized ship.
3. The crew of talented misfits
4. The mission to modify/overthrow the evil Federation.
One person pointed out that Firefly is basically what the Federation in Star Trek would be in real life (at least some cynics view of such.)
It is to my mind one of the very interesting bits to try to recreate a story, but in unfamilar garb. MJ did this with Starship Destiny.
You can come up with an absolutely fascinating version of LoTR in a Cyberpunk Universe which fits extremely well from Sauron the evil AI to the inhuman once-human brain uploads of the Ringwraith to 'Fred' the Bagman who is an honest, but small-time courier of little things who gets given a Ring which has the command codes which will finally release from all restraint or utterly destroy the AI. And it has invisibility because by activating it the user is now invisible to cameras throughout the City. And there's more....
Moving on to LoTR in another setting.
1. The Noble West vs. the evil Other
2. The Desire for Dominance over others and the corruption inherent.
3. The purity of the natural world vs. the nastiness of manufacturing.
4. The biggest problem of the Great and Good is Treason caused by Cowardice and Greed.
5. The effects of corruption.
6. Various interesting cultures that are good, but vastly different.
Hmmmm....Post-Apocalyptic
The Shattered Mountains is the setting, but once in the Old Age it was called the Rockies. Nowadays, Men are diminished. Too much radiation, too little food. A man is a bent, twisted creature who's happy to reach forty. The Men of the West, the Ancient Cowboys used to stand straight and true, and they were as handsome as angels.
....Feel free to finish this up. You get the idea, and I need to go make food.
Eric
Well, one thing that still irks me is that I made it very clear in Pearl Harbor that I absolutely did not want another flatline psionics world. So what did you do? You put me in another flatline psionics world. Then you have the audacity to get upset with me when I complain about it. You knew right from the get-go that I did not want another flatline psionics world right away, but you put me in one as my next world.
Honestly, you can put me in a flatline body world. I can walk but can't run? What's the problem? I weigh almost 300 pounds and I've been a smoker for over 12 years. I don't run very much!!!!!! Besides, if psionics was high, I wouldn't have to run, because I could fly!!!!
That's what pissed me off!!!!!!!!!!!
I would make the best of it: learn some magic, perhaps some sword play, kill a dragon or two. You can't expect the referee, who is supposed to emulate the randomness of Scriff in his/her world choices, pick a world based completely on what you want. You may want X, but you need to visit a Y world at this point. Just have patience; being in a flat-lined world is not a restriction on one bias, instead view it as the opportunity to explore the other biases. In Men of Psience, I believe Tech was flat-lined. If I had tried to fire my revolver, it probably would've failed. So instead of building a chain gun or a teleporter, I explored the natural opportunities presented by the world.
Well, what I wanted to try to do is learn the @1 psionic skills, so I'll never be powerless. All I've got now that works is a TK pulse and mind reading. It just bugs me. I mean if I was a referee, I would not flatline anyone who hadn't been through quite a few worlds. Save that for the experienced players, not the newbies.
I am learning trapping, tanning, and blacksmithing. In my last world, I learned boxing. I wouldn't mind learning those in real life, so that's cool too. I just hope I stay in this world long enough to get those to the 2@ level.
As I said somewhere else, and only just now remembered. I'm reacting the way we often react to God when things don't go our way in our real lives. A lot of the time, we find out that things not going our way was the best thing that could have happened to us right then. At least I've had that happen more than once. Just let me whine. Think of it as an opportunity to dust off your hip-waders, for all the BS I'm spewing.
Instead, let's talk about some of your favorite psi skills you'd like to be learning.
Low level stuff...
Psientist liked to knock arrows off course with a TK pulse (or on course.)
I don't know if you can push the trigger of another person's gun....
One semi-common psi gift in stories is "Truth-sensing".
You could do some interesting things with boobytraps with a 5 pound TK pulse.
Lay a dart tagged with poison on a shelf, or if you think you're really good, go for a banked shot, and chip it. The objective is to stand far away and watch as an enemy force advances into a space you expect them too. Then TK pulse darts into them. Ordinarily, not much damage, but....poison.
Or, you could get hyperaccurate, and aim for an eye.
Of course, there's also a wide array of other simple boobytraps like a toolbox over a door jam. In order to make sure it falls on the head of the target, you tag it. Otherwise, its likely to miss. And that trap would take thirty seconds at most to set as you retreat through the house from a rampaging vampire.
I could see you retreating room by room from a vamp, and in each room, he's got some new horrible trap to evade.
You can roll skateboards under someone's feet.
Another traditional use of a pebble is to toss it so it makes noise which draws attention. you can go one better with TK pulse.
Eric
Yeah, I've used TK pulse to knock thrown weapons off course before.
Yeah, you could do some decent Home Alone style pranks with a TK pulse hahaha.
I've also used TK pulse to fire a gun.
If I were being chased by a vampire, I don't know what I would do. They always make the mistake of running up the stairs when they should be running out the front door. No, wait, I do know what I would do if I were being chased by a vampire. I'd throw a handful of feces at it. Where would I get a handful of feces? If I were being chased by a vampire, there would most certainly be a handful of feces to throw at it.
In all honesty, John, probably eight out of ten of the worlds I run are flatlined in psionics, and six out of ten flatlined in magic. I can only think of a single world I've done with a flatlined tech bias (actually, it has a negative tech bias), and I've not yet run one with a flatlined bod bias (in which you would be able to stand but not walk, movement would have to be by rolling, although you could "jump" the way a fish does).
It's partly because of the way I think of worlds. It's that aspect that it's really easy to come up with something workable that is a little different from Earth, and a lot harder to come up with worlds that are different from each other which are also that different from Earth. My fantasy magic worlds are either really similar to the basic fairytale magic (Dancing Princess, Orc Rising, even Quest for the Vorgo), or way out there (Bah Ke'gehn). I have even more trouble devising psionic worlds with much variety--and I have people in a couple of those already, which further limits my options.
Also, one thing I do not cotton is players telling me what world, or what kind of world, they want next. If you want me not to send you somewhere, the best way to keep from being sent there is to beg me to do it. It might backfire, but I'm pretty sure that my usual reaction to being asked for a particular kind of world is to do something completely different. I think that's because I don't want the player to have expectations about a world. I would never send E. R. Jones to Dune, because he reads the series just about every year and I read it once long ago and once even longer ago, and found the film versions lacking. If you ask me for a world, I figure that you know what you're expecting to do, and that puts me at a disadvantage. I'd rather send you to a world where you don't know what to do, because at least you're not going to blindside me too easily (unless, of course, you're Graeme, who always surprises me).
So figure that I didn't send you to a psi world because I thought this would be a good world and I didn't want to use up all my psi worlds too quickly.
Oh, and be glad I didn't choose the Haunted House. That's one that is just about unwinnable.
--M. J. Young
Like I said. Think of it as an opportunity to dust off your hip-waders for all the BS that comes out of my mouth.
Psyclone Station is a Psi world I created with psionic clones and rice farmers. I also created the 1930's Space Age world with Iron Fission Engines and Space Pirates for Jhiaxus (shades of E.E. 'Doc' Smith). I've been running one player through a world with limited psi (well two actually, Symbiont Academy, of course with Tom Day, and the other one has Minority Report like drug induced espers who can use precog and clairvoyance and have danger sense.)
And Graeme created that Psi-Fu and Animorph Psi world you went through which was a pretty cool idea to have psi-MA.
And I didn't read Wodium's psi world, but the tiny bit I heard about it was fascinating....Men of Pscience.
Lilith's World, of course.
And that world you first met Fluffy in which was stolen from Julian May's The Many Colored Land.
You've got a few more arrows in your quiver than you realize. (Although I think all of us game designer/gm's really prefer to use our own worlds. I know I do.)
But, I think we've discussed this before. It does seem inherently harder to create Psi worlds.
One idea I'd like someone else to tackle would be a spin on Poul Andersen's 'Operation Werewolf' where magic took th eplace of tech. Same world, same conflicts, but magic. Or in this case...join the U.S. Psionic Tracker Corp and chase pyrokinetic terrorists across the Middle East.
I'd also like to see something like what Katherine Kurtz did with her Deryni. Its always the question in her medieval world...are the Deryni mages or psi's or is there any difference? I'd be tempted to do a parrallel world...make it one in which failure is easy at abnormal skills to confuse the issue since thats the point. One world magic, one psi. In the mage world, trappings and attitude of psi...and vice versa. In the mage world, psi is flatlined, and vice versa. Character keeps trying to do magic, and it doesn't work and vice versa.
Correct me if I am wrong, but cannot the referee change the published psi bias at his/her discretion? Couldn't you put someone in a flatline world and say "Ya know, I think I'm going to make the bias 7@5, just for kicks." I really don't know if that is within the rules, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong. If the referee cannot do that, why not? Also, if 80% of the worlds are flatline, why have psionics at all? Just seems like a waste of time.
Dust off your hip-waders. The BS is getting thick, I know.
If 80% of the monsters you fight aren't werewolves, why carry silver bullets?
That's completely different. Silver bullets will kill a lot more than just a werewolf. I mean you could kill a man with a silver bullet. It would get kind of expensive, but you could do it.
Just forget it. I obviously need to learn a lot more about this game.
One of the reasons this is such an odd topic is that a multiverser referee has to cater to two sets of expectations; the expectations (or wants) of the verser and the expectations of the world. Because multiverser (arguably) focuses on narratism and simulationism over gamist aspects, it can be best viewed as a story. Therefore, unexpected or unrealistic plot twists are generally frowned upon. I don't mean like your twenty-year nemesis and evil ruler turns out to be your half-brother and only you two can save the world, I mean like unrealistic violations of the stereotype of the world.
If the setting is completely futuristic --based around technology and psionics say-- then the world wouldn't expect magic, just like John's fantasy world wouldn't expect psionics.
I think that at this point John, it is less learning about the game and more about going with the flow. If the referees are gods, then they are (for the most part) kind and benevolent gods. Their goal is to make the game fun, but that can't happen if the verser questions them at every turn.
I see your point. There is something though. They say that there are 2 kinds of people in the world. Those that change the world to suit themselves, and those that change themselves to suit the world. Progress is only ever made by the former group. I just have a lot to learn about this, that's all. Just keep your manure shovel handy, and all should be fine.
As my brother says, there are two kinds of people in the world--those who divide all the people in the world into two kinds and those who don't.
Graham is right about expectations, although it's not really wrong to go against expectations either. Graeme (note the spelling change) is currently in a futuristic world with sky-high technology and mid-level magic but no psionics at all; the concept develops by extension of the Roman Empire, in which they had the best technology of the age but also had very strong beliefs in religion and magic.
Yes, in theory I could change the biases of any world, within reason; but I would have to give serious consideration to what impact that has on this world. Consider this: a high bias means fundamentally that somewhere in this universe someone has skills at or near the top edge of that bias. In B Monster Movie World, that condition was satisfied by the notion that there are aliens out there in the universe who have those abilities. In your current universe, there are no aliens out there--there's a good chance that the stars really are fireflies who got stuck on that big black thing, or angels looking down on the earth below dancing in rhythm with the events to come.
That means that if I up the psi bias in this world, I'm going to have to give those potent psionic powers to the villains you might be facing; that further means that I have to put a lot of time and effort into the question, if they've had these skills for all this time, what have they done with them?
Scott is in a high psi alternate modern world, and he's being extremely cautious about it, because he knows that the psionically gifted in this world are either the police or those the police are seeking.
Thus bias is a mixed blessing. If the bias is high, you can do a lot and do it easily, but so can someone else who might not like what you're doing; if the bias is low, you can't do much, and it is very tough to do--but no one else can do those things, so they give you an unexpected edge.
Experienced versers test the bias very cautiously. They want to know what they can do, but they also want to know what others can do against them. The bias is what it is, and unless it's particularly constraining (such as the tech biases in Bah Ke'Gehn and The Playground) you are thankful when you know what it is, whatever it is.
--M. J. Young
I wouldn't be so upset about it if I at least knew some more @1 and @0 skills. I mean if I had a lot of the @1 and @0 skills, you would never hear another word from me about it. (This is why I asked you to bring The Architect back in, to teach them) I just hate being armed with just a TK pulse, against people that probably know magic out the Ying-Yang. Just keep your manure shovel handy, and all will be well.
Well, then track down someone who knows magic, and offer to trade knowledge with them.
Eric