The frame for a sandbox

[cas]

I have an idea for a game that I think might be interesting, but I am not sure how to proceed with it. So naturally I thought of you guys. I was wondering what <if anything at all> you lot would do with the topic.

The idea is that player characters would exist either only, or at least partially in a spiritual form, and that the conflict would take place inside the collective dreams of humanity. I was thinking they could battle against spirits of apathy, or willfull ignorance, or any other such things that might be eroding or feeding on the dreams of our species. The characters, or other spiritual entities in this world would be manifestations of there own passions. The interesting bit <IMHO> would be that in order to harm such a being you would have to strip it of the passions that maintain it. The strength, depth, and scope of an entities passions would detirmine its relative level of power and control over its environment..

What do ya think, is it enough to base a game on

[ChapinoMuse]

!. I'm not usre, but it sounds lie changelings.

2. if that how you gonna do it, the UPS would abe a good sheet to use, since it has a special section for passions.

[Patrick Chipman]

It sounds like a fairly solid basis for a game, although putting the mechanics together might be tricky. Obviously, you're going to want something that evokes an "anything is possible" mentality, which means that the interpretation rules and core resolution mechanic will probably need to be biased towards success. The ephemeral nature of dreams suggests something relatively freeform, so you might want to take a custom version of SAGA, a pure descriptive system, or something else that is truly (not supposedly) "rules-light" out for a spin.

Working the passions might require an approach similar to that of Salvation, in that any situation in which a passion is related is automatically "won" by the holder of the passion. If two entities with similar passions face off in a situation where they'd both "trump," as it were, the one with more passion wins. Passions could even be set against each other, and "realm modifiers" could be put into play to reflect that bringing Happiness to bear against a Despair entity in an Apathy realm is fairly difficult. ;)

And onto Chapino...

!. I'm not usre, but it sounds lie changelings.

Not really, no. Changeling is about preserving (or destroying) supernatural belief in the modern world.

2. if that how you gonna do it, the UPS would abe a good sheet to use, since it has a special section for passions.

That's a bit like saying "d20 would be a good system to use, because it can resolve tasks." I'm sure anyone developing a game is more than capable of developing their own character sheet. ;)

Seriously, generic character sheets are of little to no use to the populace. What would be more helpful would be if you came up with a Universal Personality Mechanic, in which personalities could be deconstructed in a way that D&D players could use as a replacement for alignment.

[leviathan]

*applauds* I totally dig the idea... but *sigh* This sounds like one of the ideas that was floating around in my head, but way more developed. :P But I guess a lot of people have that idea of, "What if everyone's dreams were real?" at one time or another. I guess it's all a matter of what you do with it.

In a dream world, I would assume that things could manifest just by willing them. So I would say that there should be some sort of mechanic or concept in the game that allowed one to manifest things with their passions to aide them in succeeding in whatever task they might be up against. Whether that task be purging the dreams of humanity of whatever memetic plague will bring it's downfall next... or something equally difficult. I don't know.. I'm just tossing random ideas out there. (:

I think this idea has great potential for a game. Run with it. (;

Oh and BTW, what do character sheets have to do with anything, Chapino? (;

~Lev~

[cas]

hrm.... have played changeling and thats not realy what I had in mind, this battle would literaly take place in a patchwork dreamscape. Characters could be motivated to wage war on such concepts as dispare, decay, hatred, obsession, and the like. They might do so because of the adverse translations of these concepts into the dreamscape in wich they are compelled to exist, or they may have more humanitarian motives.

I agree also that a rules lite system is in order, and that success should be biased toward the characters in most situations. What I would like to do is use the set of passions a character has to difine the limits and provide a scope for what they can do. Then I would let them muck around and do whatever they wish within those boundries. I think I might be able to acomplish that if I could quantify passions, or sets of passions in terms of depth, bredth, and scope. Also I am haveing difficulty in comeing up with any sizable list of passions, and without that there would not be much diversity between characters.

[Andrew Martin]

cas wrote:
> I am having difficulty in coming up with any sizable list of passions...

Check out Pendragon by Chaosium. It's got a large list of passions and personality descriptors.

[cas]

hrm... the versian of pendragon I recall seeing only realy had two passions, love and hate. The personality traits might still be usefull though.