World building, Nazis, and alternate realities

[HDub]

Hello hello!

I got some fantastic suggestions from people during the December journal time, and I'd love to start implementing them in the game. One of my goals for this year is to give players more ownership of their surroundings and more freedom to do what it is that you want to do. 

Part of mage is having the power to rewrite reality and play with these ideas. With that said, I think the first phase of getting things underway is to open up an idea:

What do you guys think about having a little more control over Denver itself? 

I mean that we have an entire city with a history and locations and people inside of it, but it's largely a blank slate. Wouldn't it be great to have book shops and coffee houses and hookers on street corners that everyone knows but doesn't talk about? This is where y'all come in. 

How do you feel about doing a little world building? Either by creating locations for people to visit, writing up NPCs for the city itself, or playing in some oneshots that take place in Denver's past (or even Denver's future) with those NPCs that we have floating around. Denver has an in character history, but the history means nothing if players don't feel invested in it. So, I want to give you the opportunity to invest, get creative, and try not to explode the world. 

... unless exploding the world sounds fun to you, and in which case: let's blow some shit up.

[Quither]

2 Cents and a Quarter:

Honestly, I find specific locations tailored by players to be somewhat problematic. Similar to NPCs, it can feel a bit jarring to have others impact/interact with various locations and spots that have been designed to be interacted with in particular ways or methods (see every half-way house/boarding house/collective property IC for most WoD games over the last number of years). The idea of a history is grand and building location and areas around that history would be wonderful but to really get the best buck and allow folks to explore the history and dynamic of a setting, I believe requires Events:

A circumstance or multiple circumstances in which things happened to the location and it's peoples that had a reaching but varied effect. Characters are free to respond and interact with those events on personal, public or even communal level with varying layers of conflict, interaction and cooperation coming to the forefront. Events allow a storyteller to react as well, pushing antagonists to look at the Event(s) in question and form their own responses to them.

- A powerful spirit cocoons itself in the middle of downtown, resilient and resistant to Weaver calcifying attempts while causing disruptive interactions with Technology throughout a broad swathe of the area and on both sides of the Gauntlet.

- A set of ancient wonders have activated after a century long dormancy, having weird calender specific effects trigger inside the city all while counting down toward something.

- An anarchistic group of orphans operating off the grid stage time-delay 'wake the sleeper' flash demonstrations throughout the city at any given moment.


It's important to note: Events are something to be stopped or adjusted without major effort and consequence. They are situation that Characters get a chance to react to and interact with the Fallout from those Events, seeing how it adjusts and pushes at their lives and alters the way things progress inside the game.


An explosion is the same principle. Someone decides to attempt to produce a mass teleportation device somewhere in the city that goes horribly wrong, causing a huge explosion that levels a section and has untold consequences to the gauntlet, quint pools, Character Avatars, Wild Talents etc. etc.

The options for how to interact are endless, but the Events themselves are incapable of change unless through collective, powerful alteration by the community. The River overflows, you don't try to divert the River without the resources to do it. You adjust your life to compensate.

[HDub]

I think that's an interesting concept! I think that would also help to make things feel a little more realistic? We often have the vision that the city goes from one major event that gets wrapped up neatly and flows into an other major event. Events seem to serve as a way to show that the world moves on and around and is bigger than Denver, if I am to understand correctly?

But it does sound like an event is very similar to a storyline in that regard, save for the fact that there doesn't seem to be a grand finale and tidy (ha) resolution.

[Quither]

A Storyline and an Event tend to differ in how they are interacted with. Take 'Lord of the Rings' for instance:

An Event in LotR was Sauron being banished back in the day, when Isildor cut the ring off and banished him and all the races came together to defeat his armies and blah blah blah. No one really had any say in the matter, that is just part of history and the landscape. Sauron rose to power and nearly conquered the free world/reality. That happened. It just happened. You'll get over it.

A Storyline is all the different segments and sections that led Frodo and Gandalf and Legolas/Aragorn/Gimli/Etc. on their sometimes separate/sometimes together quests to get to the point where they could face down Sauron's armies again before he had a chance to fully ressurect. The Player Characters involved, were epic and badass and impressive enough to stop the previous Event from ever coming about again.


In this context, before the time and age of our current character base, you have a collection of Events that transpired and have had long lasting effects on the landscape, atmosphere, timeline and city itself. These Events unlike the site History are continously happening to this day.

The Avatar Storm was an Event, because it was felt and continues to be felt to this day, regardless of whether it's over or not. Antihelios' appearance was an Event because it's effects continue to be felt and drive major circumstances that people can't hope to fix inside of a single Storyline/if at all.

TLR, Events are the basis for entire Campaigns in Table Top games. They create things to react to outside of the standard 'the Sabbat are up to something' or 'The Masters are Trying to get rid of Daylights savings time again'. There isn't some big bad or big good or big something to try and kill/save. It just happens and everyone (PCs, NPCs, Tribes/Clans/Traditions/Nations) is trying to cope/deal with them.

[HDub]

*takes idea*

*surreptitiously takes idea*

*shoves aforementioned idea into an oversized purse and walks away with it*

I love it, sir. And I think it's a good explanation and something that I really hadn't thought of before.