Doubt

[Grek]

Well, the way I understood it was that everyone reacted normally up untill they left, and then all the evidence was retconned out of existance. So people still freak out if they don't try to blend in and the mall cops will still chase them untill they get out of the store, at which point they forget why theyr'e running.

[Blasted]

I think that this system could do with a fleshed out example adventure. I'm not sure many could effectively MC this, too many would just take the opportunity to be a douche.

I need to go rewatch Dark City now.

[virgil]

I'm tempted to call normal people Sleepers, because unlike the PCs, they have nothing to worry about; sleeping soundly with the bliss of ignorance. They are unaware of the monsters that bear a semblance to sleep deprivation, even.

Are the physical aspects for those in The Registry visible to Sleepers? I mean, can PCs break into their apartment and bring a Sleeper in with them? What do the neighbors say about them, or do they never get curious when a PC starts ranting about their nonexistant neighbor?

How about people who temporarily turn into 'monsters' when drunk or high? Not one person cursed with this, but a threat at drunken kegs and drug parties that someone will 'snap'. It'd be like a one-off Mr. Hyde, some kind of violent persona with magic stats, amnesia striking the victim once he comes down off the high. Even worse, this nasty persona (not the stats) will become retroactively permanent if they're seen by enough people who personally know them (and aren't on mind-altering substances). The world becomes an objectively worse place unless the PCs occasionally jump into parties and kidnap people.

Is there the chance for places to exist off the grid? Something similar to a Hollow Man, but in the form of a shop or even a chat room.

[name_here]

I presume that asking about members of the registry will lead to people saying, "Oh, yeah, the guy who lives in that house down the street. He stays inside all the time, can't remember what he looks like."

[Grek]

Here's two new "enemies" for consideration.

Unplaces:
You know that little antique shop on the corner that you don't remember ever having visited before last monday, but everyone swears up and down was "always there"? That's an unplace. They pop into existance and rewrite reality so that they were there before, constructed under completely mundane circumstances. Only the PCs can remember that they were not always there. Everyone else remembers them just like they really had always been there.

Unspeakables:
There are some things that people just don't talk about. Not because they are horrible (though, they are horrible) but because any attempt to discuss them with a person that hasn't already seen it comes out as a conversation about something completely mundane, like your dog or your favourite flavour of toaster strudel. These are called the unspeakables. Each one has a specific topic that they turn into when discussed, unique to it. Even muggles can see them and remember them, but only PCs can understand that they're trying to explain that their little brother got eaten by a monster and not about pastries without having seen the monster themselves.

[Ancient History]

I dunno. I would see an Unplace as more of a superspace - a general place designed for you to move through. Uniform, bland, immediately forgettable, like a mall or airport. So completely forgettable that you can pass by or through them without a second thought or a second look, your brain filling in all the little details...and they're everywhere, connecting everywhere.

[JonSetanta]

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.

Welcome to my social life.
Now I must go investigate said episode. That seems to be one I missed..

[souran]

Some Ideas for additional bad guys:

The Auditors of Reality: In older texts left by "Ta veren" or whatever you call the players these individuals were depected has floating hooded robes with faces hidden in blackness of their cowls. In modern times they adopt a more men-in-black persona although interactions with them reveals that they are obviously not human.

The auditors exist soley to undo the things the hero faction gets away with because of their powers. They set the universe back to right and enforce the laws that make the world go round.

The auditors, however, do not only dislike the players (although they seem them as the central threat to existance) they also view free will itself as anathema to the operation of the odered universe.

Auditors always speak with a collective voice. Auditors are destroyed any time they are create or are involved in a paradox or contradiction.

(Note these are inspired by the Similar group in Terry Prachette's Diskworld as well as the philip k. Dick story about the guy who sees the people who make the universe work)

The Faceless:

The faceless are or where technically people. However, they have given themsleves over to a power or creature known only as the voice of oblivion. A power that claims that it will unmake everything and consume all.

The Faceless no longer have the attributes that make people people. They have no soul or creativity or spark or humanity. Whatever it is they lack, being without it allows them to level on an edge of existance. They can never be picked out of a crowd, often when they act people looking straight at them will later claim to never seen them. People that interact with them forget after a few moments.

[I invision a fluff piece describing one doing something like assinating president kennedy by simply walking out to the motorcade and shotting him point blank but nobody sees him.]

When they die they decay rapidly turning to dust at the next sunrise no matter how far away that is. Normal humans simply forget about seeing their dead bodies to quickly to become concerned.

(I the power basis for these guys are the "grey men" from WOT. However, as there are numerious stories about people who become "less than" normal people and so become beneath the notice of "normal" people.



The Mirrorlanders:

Reflections hold deep power with the human psyche and not without good reason. Mirrors, glass and other reflective surfaces are often refered to as portals to the sould. However, they can become portals to something much more sinster.

The land beyond the mirrors is a perfect reflection of ours, only its inhabitants want OUT. The men from the mirror pass through broken mirrors or other shattered reflective surfaces. They seek their likeness and displace them, storing the original a prison that forces the original to become the reflection.

Killing a mirrorlander returns the orignal to our world, however they never remember being taken. Killing a mirrorlander before it displaces its orignal causes it to shatter into pieces of sand.

While a mirrorlander is out their original will have no reflection, and neither does the mirrorlander. However, should the original die for any reason the mirrorlander immediatly gains a reflection. This refelction can and often is just as malevolent as any mirrorlander, and has no love of "his" original.

A mirrorlander is a perfect reflection, so it has tells that are giveways such as always being the opposite handedness of the orignal.

(Mirror type dopplegangers. They are similar to the doppleganers from "The Broken")

Shadows:

Similar to the mirrorlanders, shadows can sometimes become detached from their proper owners.

Freed shadows range from mischevious to vile and deadly. Unlike the mirrorlanders, a shadow can exaggerate its former self becomming larger or smaller, stronger or whisplike as it desires. Shadows do not seem to contain any personality elements of their former "owners" and seek only to cause chaos.

A shadow can slip between dark spaces at will. Shadows can be "frozen out" with enough light however, when this occurs the shadow is only stuck in a kind of statis and returns to activity once the light is removed.

(This is actually inspired by peter pan.)


______________________________________________

One the question of the heroes I think that they need to be fairly in the know about their powers. They have to think that they are the only thing preventing these other things from infringing on the world. The fact that they cannot tell anybody else keeps them isolated in groups of other believers.

However, even in that scenario its possible to add the self doubt elements to make the game interesting.

[cthulhu]

What would the registry even be trying to do?

[JonSetanta]

What would the registry even be trying to do?

Survive. Who are you, the PCs, to stop their secret way of life?

[Grek]

@souran:
None of those seem to cause the existensial doubt that this game seems to be looking to make.

Auditors seem to me to be too direct a rip from Discworld, and the thing where they are destroyed by a contradiction is terrible for the game, as that means there are true contradictions. Faceless don't seem to be terribly different from Hollow Men except that they're former humans and apparently do something special when they die. The shadow people, while definately something to consider seeing as they're somthing that actual scitzophrenics see, really need to be fleshed out more if they're supposed to be a villan type. Mirrorlanders replace people, which is admittedly rather creepy, but there's not going to be any real compunction against killing them, since to the PCs they're not real people. What I would do instead is have whatever body snatching group gets in, if any, is leave it unknowable as to wether your friend has been replaced by a doppleganer or if the person you know and love is secretly a monster.

[8headeddragon]

This sounds a lot like Little Fears, a game that involves all of the above except with children as the protagonists and the magic linked to their innocence/faith.

[Username17]

I could definitely see some kind of group who are antagonists because they know about reality bing malleable and are actively covering it up. That could plausibly take the form of something like The Organization from Nowhere Man or a more obviously malign version of The Observers from Fringe. That seems like it would work pretty well, or at least it could.

But while the whole thing is supposed to revolve around player characters being isolated by their inability to get other people to believe them about the machinations of the villains, it is imperative to not do the entire MIB thing where no one believe you because the truth is "wacky". When it turns out the wiener dogs are actually robot suits for tiny men, and you can stun them and unscrew their heads to get at the cockpit - that pretty much ruins the mood. Also, it isn't like you couldn't provide compelling proof of that, it's just that it would be a very silly scene in which you did. So if there is a vast conspiracy of coverup artists, it has to be composed of actually very (apparently) banal pieces. They can send each other messages in typographical errors in newspapers or just plain use disposable cell phones to get orders down the chain and have a largely vaporous paper trail.

Anyway, most of the enemies don't need to have their motivations explained too carefully or completely. The Hollow Men are "looking for something" and they are clearly willing to kill people to get "it". But what it is exactly that is so important need not ever be disclosed. Meanwhile, The Registry happens to own the only apartment with a good view of a jewelry heist, or the apartment next to one that gets cleared out by Night Terrors. Their existence seems to be associated with a lot of weird and baleful events, but it would be kind of a letdown to actually know why they were doing it or even what exactly it was that they were doing.

Nowhere Man and Flash Forward got pretty stupid when they started revealing things. So did Lost. It's a lot easier to set up an interesting mystery than to write an interesting solution to one.

-Username17

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I was trying to think of ways to make symptoms common among schizophrenics appear malign. In lieu of the sensation of bugs crawling under the skin actually being due to insects, something like this adds a sense of the alien, as well as potential dupes/conspiracy members by way of the M. Research Foundation

Morgellons:

Generally considered by the medical community as a rallying banner for people who refuse to acknowledge their delusional parasitosis, this 'condition' has nevertheless garnered enough grass roots support that the CDC has allocated some resources to investigate claims of sufferers. Normally presenting as strange fibers appearing on or under the skin, accompanied with formication, the usual treatment is a low-dose antipsychotic. One of the most telling signs that this is not a previously unexplained condition is that most cases are self-diagnosed online, a veritable Petri dish for hypochondriasis.

Or perhaps the fibers propagate memetically.[/b]

[Zinegata]

This sounds a lot like Little Fears, a game that involves all of the above except with children as the protagonists and the magic linked to their innocence/faith.

http://www.littlefears.com/

Is this it?

It does look a lot like what Frank is saying, except the PCs are kids.

[Username17]

Thought: every magic system has completely arbitrary rules about what is easier or more difficult that are based on their own magic physics. In Shadowrun, it is is easier to magically compel something to shatter from the inside than it is to magically create a telekinetic force to break the same thing with. In nWoD Mage it is easier to make a gateway than it is to teleport. These don't have any game balance reason to work that way, but it's a natural consequence of the game's magic-physics engine that these things are arranged in that order.

What if the players didn't get that information? That is, you seriously had a substantial list of various theories about how the magic worked, that would in turn change what the difficulties were of doing different things in different situations. And the Players wouldn't know which system they were working with, or even necessarily be on the same system as other members of the team. So if one were to use a dicepool system for this, one payer might need 3 hits while another needed 4 for exactly the same action, simply because one of the characters was "rewriting patterns" while another character was "adjusting probabilities".

Tha would be a fair amount of work for MC, because he'd have to keep track of the internal logic of four or five different systems of reality manipulation in order to set difficulties for different players to do different things. But it would allow the players to know what was on their character sheet and roll their own dice and still not know if they could rely upon their powers in any particular situation.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

I like it.

However, out of all the RPG playing people I know, while most of them could learn fairly easily how to run most games, I think perhaps only 2 or 3 of them (out of say 30) could properly run a game like that.

Unless there was a big list of "universal" actions, and each action just had a rating in that action based on how that action was being accomplished or something, and you could have it all printed out on a chart for the GM to look at.

[RobbyPants]

The only sucky thing about this is if you ever rotate from being MC to being a player, then you know all these things that the players shouldn't. It'd probably ruin the experience in a lot of ways.

[spasheridan]

I'd like to see some sample heroes - how do you envision this working in a modern world?

Like, say, supernatural where all the hunters are also thieves? Do you clean up the loot from the monsters you slay?

Buffy, where you have a watcher who has some cash and a nice place for you to crash if you need it?

In Heroes there was always a conflict between your real job and your super hero job, but all the main characters were super rich anyways (Company man, Senator, Industrialist...)

If the PC's are ordinary joes with jobs at the grocery store AND they have to hunt supernatural evil on their days off, that's one story. If they're homeless drifters off the grid hunting supernatural evil then that's ANOTHER story... if they use their powers to survive (create cash! Level 0 spell) ... now motivation becomes a problem because I would probably wind up just creating cash and spending it on hookers and blow if I had that power.

[Lokathor]

The only sucky thing about this is if you ever rotate from being MC to being a player, then you know all these things that the players shouldn't. It'd probably ruin the experience in a lot of ways.

I think the idea is that players are aware that, depending on their mage type or whatever, different things are different difficulty levels for them, they just don't know what their mage type is. So you can rotate GMs just fine, you just can't rotate GMs within a specific campaign.

Unless you rotate GMs and the new GM makes his own determinations about who is what type. That would also work, and the seemingly random invalidation of all the knowledge that you thought you had about how your powers worked would also fit into the theme of the game as well.

[Username17]

The only sucky thing about this is if you ever rotate from being MC to being a player, then you know all these things that the players shouldn't. It'd probably ruin the experience in a lot of ways.

Good point. What if it rotated on a fairly regular basis? So when the new MC steps up, they deal out new secret reality logic paradigms to each player. You'd probably have to do that anyway just to keep people from becoming used to whatever system they had or to keep people from getting jealous of whoever's paradigm happened to fit best with the usual sorts of reality adjustments that the players at the table happened to favor.

I could even see that being an in-world thing. Where sometimes there'd be "reality quakes" or something, where stuff would change subtly and only the Doubters would remember what things were like before hand - but now all the PCs are aligned slightly differently with the new reality (which has now always existed), so their manipulations work slightly differently. Like Critical Shifts in Feng Shui.

Unless there was a big list of "universal" actions, and each action just had a rating in that action based on how that action was being accomplished or something, and you could have it all printed out on a chart for the GM to look at.

If this were being done, I would think that having a big chart of Reality Manipulation Difficulties by Paradigm on the back of the MC Screen would be a must. Hell, it would be a must anyway even if the number of paradigms available was one.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

If the reality shifts are happening anyway, you could also have them realign what the enemy groups are actually up to each time.

[virgil]

I'm afraid if you go too far with this that the players will start feeling put upon, like the entire game is a Steve where walking down the street becomes a "mother-may-I". I really hope that made sense, because I've been out of it recently.

[RobbyPants]

The only sucky thing about this is if you ever rotate from being MC to being a player, then you know all these things that the players shouldn't. It'd probably ruin the experience in a lot of ways.

Good point. What if it rotated on a fairly regular basis? So when the new MC steps up, they deal out new secret reality logic paradigms to each player.

That could probably work.

On a related note, if you're MC, running this game for a group of people who've never played it, how much do you tell them? Do you let them know they'll run into weird reality-bending monsters that make them seen schizophrenic, or do you let them find out through gameplay? Do you tell them that their spells might not even do anything, or is that just left up to their imaginations?

Depending on how much of this is a mystery depends on how well you can go from being MC to a player.

[Grek]

To expand on my previous idea where the primary way to Douse things is by consulting your hallucinations and assorted delusions, a simple way to do that would be to have X number of Dousing types [angels, shadow people, voices, morgellons, ghosts, aliens, goverment radio] and have reality shifts switch up which ones are helpful, are which are out to screw with you, which aren't actually real, and what each source knows about (if anything). Then we let characters take a number of Dousing types that they personaly receive/beleive in and then let them consult with only those and receive results appropriate to the disposition and knowledge of the types they have available.