Doubt

[CatharzGodfoot]

I'm hoping that there's a way to tell the difference between the Villains, and say, hallucinations based on sleep deprivation or other things that disrupt brain function.

Because, if not, things could really suck for the PCs.

That almost seems like the whole point.

[Grek]

For those not in the know, John Dies At The End is available online here:

http://www.112chan.ro/lit/src/David_Won ... he_End.pdf

[Vebyast]

disclaimer: rambling post ahead. Raw brainstorming may be present.

Unmaking. If you push it too far, then the easiest way cover up all the crazy shit you've done is to just have you never exist.

Slightly off-topic, but I'm currently trying to figure out the gameplay for a real-time strategy game (computer) based on this and the ontological paradox. Basically, the only operation in the game is to create units is by asking for them from the future, and five minutes later, the only units available to send back are the units you asked for five minutes ago.



More on-topic, it could be extremely interesting to somehow hide some of the game's state from everybody, including the DM. For example, instead of the DM knowing exactly where those Night Terrors are, the only thing he has is a probability distribution describe their possible positions.


Additionally, a brainstormed suggestion on how to run Night Terrors: Schrodinger's Monster. Basically, the DM actually maintains two to thirty copies of each Night Terror (depending on how much computer support he has), with each superposition only taking actions that cannot be observed by the party. Whenever the party would discover one of these effects, that superposition is instead retroactively observed out of existence. The last superposition is the only one that collapses into a classical state and leaves any effect on the real world (that is, it's the "real" Night Terror). This is mechanically the same as just running the Night Terror as a normal monster, but it's a lot easier on the DM than improvising a devious, seemingly well-planned-out encounter.

If you want to take it one step further, take a leaf out of real quantum physics, and have the possible Night Terrors interact with one another. That would probably be a completely new class of monster in its own right.

[Manxome]

Unmaking. If you push it too far, then the easiest way cover up all the crazy shit you've done is to just have you never exist.

Dear lord, why? What does this idea possibly have to recommend itself?

Thematically, that's just back to making everyone be equally important; if your ability to alter reality is limited by the point at which reality will cease to tolerate it, then it definitionally is not limited by any sort of personal skill or ability. Plus, if it really does retroactively write you completely out of existence, then no one has any memories or records of this ever happening to anyone, so how does anyone know that it could? That might be acceptable in a novel (with an omniscient narrator), but in a game?

Mechanically, any rule where your score increases the closer to get to some limit and then suddenly and irreversibly goes negative when you put one toe over is a good rule for a game of chance, not a game of strategy. If optimal gameplay and utter ruin are side-by-side, then a player optimizing based on a heuristic (which is what players are expected to do in pretty much any nontrivial skill-based game) will win or lose largely on luck.

Additionally, if there's any calculable risk of complete and irreversible character death as a cost of using your power, then iterative probabilities will absolutely destroy you. Even if each player only risks it once per adventure, and you only fail on a natural 1 (on a d20), a four-person party probably loses someone within 3 adventures, and all those deaths will be a result of dumb luck rather than legitimate player mistakes. Do you really want that as the lower bound on your mortality rate?

Additionally, a brainstormed suggestion on how to run Night Terrors: Schrodinger's Monster. Basically, the DM actually maintains two to thirty copies of each Night Terror (depending on how much computer support he has), with each superposition only taking actions that cannot be observed by the party. Whenever the party would discover one of these effects, that superposition is instead retroactively observed out of existence. The last superposition is the only one that collapses into a classical state and leaves any effect on the real world (that is, it's the "real" Night Terror). This is mechanically the same as just running the Night Terror as a normal monster, but it's a lot easier on the DM than improvising a devious, seemingly well-planned-out encounter.

This is an interesting idea, and I certainly think that determining off-camera events retroactively has a place in gaming, but I think I see some problems.

First, if the players know about it, I suspect it dramatically changes player strategy, and probably not in an interesting way. If you know you've got to stomp on every superposition, then instead of trying to guess something about the monster's status or plans (which will apply to some but not all superpositions) or trying to lay a trap (which will catch some but not all superpositions), you create a laundry list of every single thing the monster could be doing and go through systematically, because you know that every item on that list is equally important and that it's necessary to check off every box.

Now yes, that technically only results if the DM uses "all" superpositions, instead of "several". But you're still moving optimal player behavior away from playing detective or cat-and-mouse and towards exhaustive search, and I doubt that's a good direction to move in.

Alternately, if the players don't know about it, it's kind of unfair: no matter how clever the players are, or how well they plan, their first guess and their first tactic always fail. Players receive no reward for playing well - in fact, it may even result in a worse story, because they eliminated the coolest and most interesting possibility and collapsed the superposition into a duller and less sensical alternative.

Also, it seems like there's a very significant risk that this stops simulating a good Xanatos Gambit and starts simulating Xanatos Roulette instead: where the monster didn't have an awesome plan, it had a stupid plan and an absurd string of luck that just happened to make it work. You want a mechanism that simulates the monster having foresight, not clairvoyance.

[Username17]

As for system in general, I am not entirely sure. Has to be something with a good melee system inherent, which at the very least means a tremendous overhaul to any of the functional or semi-functional modern systems out there. Players should be able to really feel the difference between having a golf club or a crowbar in their hands and just flailing with their fists.

That said, I really think that the Night Terrors should use similar terminology to the rest of the game. That is, the act of "observing" a Night Terror and making it disappear really is exactly the same as the act of "observing" the contents of a suitcase and making it impervious to future Dousing actions.

Anyway, I think it's time to start nailing down pseudo-science and magic-physics. It seems to me that while the basic personal experience of "make a declaration that could be true, hen check it and it is true" is pretty much identical there is a profound difference between guessing that a coin flip is going to come up heads and guessing that a car's glove compartment is going to contain a pocket knife. Both are totally plausible guesses, but the first is a guess about how events are going to unfold, and the second is really a guess about what events have already happened. That dichotomy of will working on the past and the future seems like it could be the basis for a great deal of in-game magic-physics. I rather like the idea of a character who could successfully guess what a coin was going to land on before it was flipped, but couldn't tell you what a coin flip result was after the fact (but under a hand, for example).

-Username17

[fectin]

What if you put the powers entirely behind a screen? Guarantee that at least one randomly chosen player will not have powers any given story arc, and everyone else gets some unknown finite number of uses (and include zero as a strong possibility).
There may be no downside to trying to cause misses, but you'd be awful leery of relying on it.

[violence in the media]

How do you envision character creation in this game? It seems, thematically, like something that players should only be partially in control over.

Also, how often should players be losing and drawing up new characters? What's the process for the characters to be drawn into this world that nobody in-world quite believes in?

[JigokuBosatsu]

Okay, I'm totally rolling up a character for this. Brother Tengu, a Zen monk, whose main powers are quietly staring at you until you go mad/enlightened, and Dogen's "Great Doubt". Definitely going to jack up the ol' Intimidate score. So we have a system, or no?

EDIT: Also just noticed that the abbreviation for John Dies At the End is JDATE.

[Sashi]

Unmaking. If you push it too far, then the easiest way cover up all the crazy shit you've done is to just have you never exist.

Dear lord, why? What does this idea possibly have to recommend itself?

Because there should be real incentive to stay "grounded" and believe you don't have powers, even when they're written on your character sheet. Even if two characters are equally good at deflecting bullets, the one who remains skeptical of his ability to deflect bullets should be better off than the one who thinks he's a superhero. This is a stated goal of the game: to have doubt about the reality of both the enemies you're facing off against and the powers you're using to do it.

Thematically, that's just back to making everyone be equally important; if your ability to alter reality is limited by the point at which reality will cease to tolerate it, then it definitionally is not limited by any sort of personal skill or ability.

That's arguable. Is a measurement of how "anchored" you are in reality and how much the universe would have to change to remove you from it a personal skill or ability? I think it is.

Plus, if it really does retroactively write you completely out of existence, then no one has any memories or records of this ever happening to anyone, so how does anyone know that it could? That might be acceptable in a novel (with an omniscient narrator), but in a game?

That's part of the whole "doubt" structure, isn't it? If a PC stops existing, then what do the PC's remember for last Tuesday, when he paid for everyone's meals at the diner? What does the diner remember?

Mechanically, any rule where your score increases the closer to get to some limit and then suddenly and irreversibly goes negative when you put one toe over is a good rule for a game of chance, not a game of strategy. If optimal gameplay and utter ruin are side-by-side, then a player optimizing based on a heuristic (which is what players are expected to do in pretty much any nontrivial skill-based game) will win or lose largely on luck.

Yeah, that is stupid, so why'd you propose it?

Additionally, if there's any calculable risk of complete and irreversible character death as a cost of using your power, then iterative probabilities will absolutely destroy you. Even if each player only risks it once per adventure, and you only fail on a natural 1 (on a d20), a four-person party probably loses someone within 3 adventures, and all those deaths will be a result of dumb luck rather than legitimate player mistakes. Do you really want that as the lower bound on your mortality rate?

Yes, crit fumble and botch rules disproportionately punish PC's because they're a part of every adventure. Why'd you propose it?

[RobbyPants]

I'm hoping that there's a way to tell the difference between the Villains, and say, hallucinations based on sleep deprivation or other things that disrupt brain function.

Because, if not, things could really suck for the PCs.

I think that's the entire point. That's where the name of the game comes from: Doubt.

As for system in general, I am not entirely sure. Has to be something with a good melee system inherent, which at the very least means a tremendous overhaul to any of the functional or semi-functional modern systems out there. Players should be able to really feel the difference between having a golf club or a crowbar in their hands and just flailing with their fists.

Some sort of reach system could do this. The d20 approach of you getting an AoO if you're armed and your opponent isn't is simple. Lethal and nonlethal damage could help. The base d20 system could if you didn't do much in leveling. If you keep the RNG tight enough, it could get the job done.

[TheFlatline]

Unmaking. If you push it too far, then the easiest way cover up all the crazy shit you've done is to just have you never exist.

That's still a quality of "consensual reality", which we're trying to avoid thematically. Not to mention that the crazier the shit you're trying to do/thinking of doing, the less likely it is to happen. Plausible coincidence and serendipity are the limits of magical ability in the game. Doing something crazy removes doubt from the character about their abilities.

[Manxome]

Because there should be real incentive to stay "grounded" and believe you don't have powers, even when they're written on your character sheet. Even if two characters are equally good at deflecting bullets, the one who remains skeptical of his ability to deflect bullets should be better off than the one who thinks he's a superhero. This is a stated goal of the game: to have doubt about the reality of both the enemies you're facing off against and the powers you're using to do it.

So how does your proposal do anything at all to further your stated goal? Someone who gratuitously uses his powers all the time is at a disadvantage, but assuming you're not an idiot, someone with greater knowledge of his powers is better able to keep track of how much he's used them and how much danger he's in for using them further - sounds like your proposed mechanic probably does the opposite of what you say you want.

That's arguable. Is a measurement of how "anchored" you are in reality and how much the universe would have to change to remove you from it a personal skill or ability? I think it is.

The amount the universe would have to change is based on how much you've affected the universe over the course of your life. If you want to have some sort of intrinsic mystical resistance to being overwritten, then you're saying that the main determinant of how hard it is for the universe to remove you is NOT how much it would have to change, which represents a change in your proposal.

Plus, if it really does retroactively write you completely out of existence, then no one has any memories or records of this ever happening to anyone, so how does anyone know that it could? That might be acceptable in a novel (with an omniscient narrator), but in a game?

That's part of the whole "doubt" structure, isn't it? If a PC stops existing, then what do the PC's remember for last Tuesday, when he paid for everyone's meals at the diner? What does the diner remember?

How does any of that constitute an answer? Or are you saying that you just came up with the general idea, and you expect someone else to figure out the necessary details to make it actually coherent, if any such arrangement is possible?

Or maybe you're saying that the PCs aren't supposed to be sure - or maybe not even have an inkling - that this mechanic exists at all? So they cannot rationally take any precautions against it, so every rational PC uses their powers as much as possible, so everyone gets written out of existence in fairly straight order?

Mechanically, any rule where your score increases the closer to get to some limit and then suddenly and irreversibly goes negative when you put one toe over is a good rule for a game of chance, not a game of strategy. If optimal gameplay and utter ruin are side-by-side, then a player optimizing based on a heuristic (which is what players are expected to do in pretty much any nontrivial skill-based game) will win or lose largely on luck.

Yeah, that is stupid, so why'd you propose it?

Additionally, if there's any calculable risk of complete and irreversible character death as a cost of using your power, then iterative probabilities will absolutely destroy you. Even if each player only risks it once per adventure, and you only fail on a natural 1 (on a d20), a four-person party probably loses someone within 3 adventures, and all those deaths will be a result of dumb luck rather than legitimate player mistakes. Do you really want that as the lower bound on your mortality rate?

Yes, crit fumble and botch rules disproportionately punish PC's because they're a part of every adventure. Why'd you propose it?

Because it's the least obviously stupid of the possibilities associated with your idea, which you never bothered to actually explain in detail.

If unmaking exists, either there's quantifiable rules for it, or it's based on DM whim, or it's purely thematic and has no effect on gameplay whatsoever.

If it's purely thematic, then it admits of no mechanical criticism, but it doesn't accomplish any mechanical goals, so you can't justify the stupid theme based on some hypothetical mechanical benefit like you're trying to do in the first paragraph of your last post.

If it's based on DM whim, then the DM has to occasionally arbitrarily write players out of existence, or it has no effect and the people who abuse their powers the most have the greatest advantage. So now there's no way to strategize around it, no standardization between games about how much you can do, and every single death is the result of the DM being capricious. So that's even worse.

If it's a quantifiable mechanic, either there's chance involved or there's not. If there's chance involved, then everything I said in my last post applies. If there's no chance involved, then there's no case in which a person would ever exceed the safe limit (for a 100% chance of nonexistence), so really the mechanic is just a mana/spell slots limit on the number of times you can use your power, and the thing where hypothetically you would be overwritten if you exceeded it is purely flavor text (see above).

So I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed that you were assuming the option that only looks stupid based on careful analysis, rather than one of the options that's obviously stupid on cursory overview.

[Username17]

A major source of doubt could take the form of actually irrelevant data. If a tremendous amount of the coincidences the players are bombarded with have no meaning at all, then the players will have to second guess themselves every time they ascribe meaning to anything. So one chronicle, every major number and several other numbers that come up even tangentially contain the number 23. But the thing is: a lot of other numbers will seem to have that in it too. Sometimes it's a marker of the Hollow Men's cleanup efforts, but sometimes it's just a fucking number.

At the point where one of the PCs wants to search the train on track 23 and another PC is arguing that it's probably a coincidence and that there is always going to be a train on track 23 - and the actual players don't know who is right, then you've won.

Getting players to doubt their own abilities is more difficult. An extreme answer would be to give the PCs list of potential powers, with the MC knowing that at least one of those powers was not real for each player. Then having the MC roll power activation behind a screen even for the powers that don't exist. Unfortunately, I think that would end up with players flipping coins a bunch of times and guessing in order to try to get a handle on what they could really do. Which is very much what the characters would do in their situation, but is the kind of creepy second guessing training sequence that probably would get in the way of anything but an origin story game.

-Username17

[Vebyast]

still in rant mode; composing this in a half-hour break from finals studying.

First, if the players know about it, I suspect it dramatically changes player strategy, and probably not in an interesting way. If you know you've got to stomp on every superposition, then instead of trying to guess something about the monster's status or plans (which will apply to some but not all superpositions) or trying to lay a trap (which will catch some but not all superpositions), you create a laundry list of every single thing the monster could be doing and go through systematically, because you know that every item on that list is equally important and that it's necessary to check off every box.

Now yes, that technically only results if the DM uses "all" superpositions, instead of "several". But you're still moving optimal player behavior away from playing detective or cat-and-mouse and towards exhaustive search, and I doubt that's a good direction to move in.

That's true. Looking back at what I was thinking, it does need a lot of work. For example, there needs to be some way for the players to use their Belief to directly influence the monster's quantum state. You're about to open up a hatch that the Schrodinger could have interacted with, you say, "I believe that the monster did interact with this hatch.", and the monster is suddenly nailed to a point in space-time.

Alternately, if the players don't know about it, it's kind of unfair: no matter how clever the players are, or how well they plan, their first guess and their first tactic always fail. Players receive no reward for playing well - in fact, it may even result in a worse story, because they eliminated the coolest and most interesting possibility and collapsed the superposition into a duller and less sensical alternative.

Agreed, and that's the largest problem with the idea. The only way I can think of to mitigate it is the above idea, which gives players some control over the Terror's quantum state through Belief.

the monster didn't have an awesome plan, it had a stupid plan and an absurd string of luck that just happened to make it work. You want a mechanism that simulates the monster having foresight, not clairvoyance.

On the other hand, isn't that part of the point? Were you fighting something that was actually dangerous, or did you just roll five ones in a row and get killed by something that normally wouldn't be able to even touch you? Clairvoyance is bad, true, but some retroactive manipulation could be very good.

---

Another thought: the end result of the basic quantum monster effect is the same as simply backing up time and deciding that the monster did something different. The "quantum" mechanic and the "really revisionist history" mechanic are more or less equivalent from the outside. The only difference is how the entity being modified observes the process from the inside. Two conclusions: one, this could work really well as a really cool PC power that will be mechanically balanced (because it's equivalent to established alter-history-by-believing-it powers); two, it works exactly as well as an established monster mechanic, though whether that mechanic is good or not is up for debate.

---

Getting players to doubt their own abilities is more difficult. An extreme answer would be to give the PCs list of potential powers, with the MC knowing that at least one of those powers was not real for each player. Then having the MC roll power activation behind a screen even for the powers that don't exist. Unfortunately, I think that would end up with players flipping coins a bunch of times and guessing in order to try to get a handle on what they could really do. Which is very much what the characters would do in their situation, but is the kind of creepy second guessing training sequence that probably would get in the way of anything but an origin story game.

Quick edit addition: the simplest way to do this is to also do the inverse operation, and to make characters' powers constantly mutable. PCs have a fixed number of abilities. Power growth is by replacing old abilities with newer abilities. If powers exist and don't exist probabilistically, the players can't distinguish nonexistence from simply rolling badly, the only thing left to do is prevent players from gathering sufficient data about themselves. Rotating powers in and out constantly is one way to do that.

---

Yet another addition, character concept: The Solipsist. If your powers works best on things you can disbelieve, then the safest solution is to disbelieve everything. The Solipsist walks around blindfolded, and believes that she is walking in the right direction. She believes that she will not run into any walls on her way to her destination. She believes that people looking for her will not find her, that people shooting at her will miss. And it works.

[virgil]

I'm not sure that it'd be worth trying too hard to get players to doubt their abilities because of the meta-game and all. I like the character doubt well enough.

I'd be nice to include concrete rules/acknowledgement on the inherent isolation that should come with heavy use of their abilities. Certain powers, if reliable enough, would be sufficient proof to friends and family that they're special.

[Red_Rob]

This kind of reminds me of the 90's show Strange Luck. The main character in that show had incredible luck, which he exploited by buying scratch cards as a reliable source of income.

Seems like players (and by extension characters in the game world) would pretty soon cotton on to things like this unless there were mechanical disadvantages to doing so.

[Orion]

I'd be nice to include concrete rules/acknowledgement on the inherent isolation that should come with heavy use of their abilities. Certain powers, if reliable enough, would be sufficient proof to friends and family that they're special.

Why is that a problem? Plenty of real life magicians have provided "suffient proof" to convince their friends and family they're special.

[virgil]

Themes for the game include psychological horror, loneliness, and of course Self Doubt.

Bolded for emphasis. It's hard to maintain that sense of isolation if you can easily and safely introduce Sleepers into your world.

[JigokuBosatsu]

This may be a clumsy mechanic, but perhaps there could be some floating score that is scene-dependent, based on how many times either the villains or heroes have fucked with reality this scene(or encounter or whatever). This score could have an influence on rolls, 'anchoring', etc.

[fectin]

If you felt extra vicious, you could make some crazy fixations actually work, but only sometimes. Like not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, or holding something blue. You could turn that really unpleasant by asking questions like "are you facing north?" before adjudicating whatever effect. You don't even have to do anything mechanically different to use this.

A finite reserve of power gets rid of the scene with a series of coin flips. I like the idea of a freeform points system more than a Vancian system, because even if the players know they have powers, there's a stronger incentive to conserve them and a lot less certainty about what effects you can pull off. Also, it seems a lot easier to handle.

Something like periodically roll 1d20-8 points per player secretly, too few and you're SOL. MC adjudicates a cost for any given use, maybe 2 pts for "that bullet misses me" or 6 pts for someone not dying in a 30 ft fall. If you dont have enough, it fizzles. Then you're only willing to spring for important stuff. Incentivize whatever behavior you want to see with additional rolls (eg observing a night terror gives another roll, though that can end up detrimental). That gives your players a reason to want to go after things too, but still keeps them from being able to reliably produce effects.

[Kaelik]

Frank, do you imagine that the various night monsters are, if left alone, more likely to attack the PCs or random non interacting people?

Do Night Terrors kill people who can manipulate reality? Or do they kill people who can't?

[Username17]

Frank, do you imagine that the various night monsters are, if left alone, more likely to attack the PCs or random non interacting people?

Do Night Terrors kill people who can manipulate reality? Or do they kill people who can't?

I figure each Night Terror would appear and then start killing people in some sort of pattern that was fairly individual, but which was targeted at Muggles to begin with. The thing is, they are pretty aware of what is going on, so the moment they saw reality interventions, they'd go after the threats.

Anyway, new villain group added: The Registry.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

Ah, memetic enemies. Awesome sauce.

[Grek]

There should be a difference between using your powers to know about things that they have no earthly way to know about and the ability to change events to benefit them and dodge bullets. There should be some overlap here, where either can be used to guess how coins will fall or what the other guy's poker hand will be, but only the former can be used to find out what will be in the box before you open it and only the latter can stop bullets.

It also seems to me that there should be a mechanical effect where dropping acid or being deprived of sleep or having a mental condition would make your powers stronger in some way, because it makes it seem even more plausable that you're hallucinating it or making it up. This would, of course, result in some characters playing mentally ill junkies that are too hopped up to eat or sleep and who are constantly doing what the voices are telling them, but that seems genre apropriate to me.

What is it that Hollow Men even want? They have excellent powers for villans, but as far as I can tell, they don't really have any motivation to do anything other than act like a fairly normal person who happens to steal for a living and is incredibly good at it. Are they all just huge bastards that enjoy murder? Likewise with the motivations of the other two villans types.

How intelligent is a Night Terror? Could one talk to you? Do they have the same chance manipulating powers as the PCs? Will there be any Night Terrors that are small enough to lock in a box and keep with you as a really fucked up pet/"ally"? If so, how would you could get ahold of such a thing?

[TheFlatline]

What is it that Hollow Men even want? They have excellent powers for villans, but as far as I can tell, they don't really have any motivation to do anything other than act like a fairly normal person who happens to steal for a living and is incredibly good at it. Are they all just huge bastards that enjoy murder? Likewise with the motivations of the other two villans types

Well, what would you do if there was no proof that you existed, and yet you existed. There'd be a lot of different motivations, but I could see the eventual neurosis forming and turning to destructive impulses because goddamnit you want someone to acknowledge you exist.

There was a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits about a society that branded you "invisible" for a year instead of jail time. The entire world ignored you for one entire year. After a while it turned out to be a pretty cruel sentence.