The Balance
Balance plays a part in so many games. It might be the balance between characters to ensure that one player's opportunities in the story don't overshadow those of other players. It might be the balance between game elements and story elements. It might be the balance of maintaining interest in the narrative compared to the drive to continually improve the character.
At the moment, the balance I'm considering is far more vague, and potentially controversial, but it's one of the core elements of the game, so it's one of the elements that I have to make sure is right.
Familiar is intended to be a game about people who see the injustice in the world, who feel the desire to change things for the better, and who are capable of manipulating reality to achieve their goals. It's a game about people who care about the world around them, but who have been marginalised by society in a way that limit their ability to do anthing about it. In this setting, the familiars restore a new form of agency to the characters, where dominant society has taken most options away. When the laws of society, the law of nature, and the laws of physics restrain the characters and prevent them from making change in the world, the familiars open up new options for making change.
For decades, generations of gaming systems have played a dance around the concept of "realism" in their tools for resolving combat. The dance steps between trying to make weapons as dangerous as they are in the real world, trying to balance them against one another for the purposes of the narrative, maintaining balance so that they are fair... but fair to whom?? Are the countless hours that have been spent by numerous companies in their attempt to make "realistic" justified? Fashions change, and the next cycle of games might look for stripped back game systems that seek to aid the story first and foremost... some of the "new hotness" games might even claim to be transparent, and step out of the way when needed. But it all basically ends up coming down to the idea that different people like different games.
But how does all this link to my Familiar ideas?
How do social systems in roleplaying games compare?
Many games handwave all the social stuff...sometimes with throwaway lines about combat being derived from physical events and therefore being more "real" and subject to mechanical rulings, while social interactions are more vague and can only be resolved by discussion at the table. If I remember correctly, this debate stretches back to the earliest days of Arneson and Gygax, to those earliest Braunsteins.
The trouble here is that the social elements are the key. The mystics in the game derive power from their connections to the people around them and the subcultures to whom they belong. These connections are at least as important as the weapons they wield, and the equipment they possess. Here's where it all gets a bit messy, because even though it all makes sense in my head, I've spent months trying to get the ideas into coherent words that can be communicated to others.
Here's where we currently stand, it heavily draws on the theories of intersectionalism...
Everyone experiences injustice in the world differently, everyone has issues that they want to see overcome.
Whenever anyone identifies with a group, they see problems in those who associate with the enemies of the group. They will see their own struggles as more important than those of other people, if only because everyone sees themselves as the hero of their own tale. Intersectionalism works on the idea that everyone will face multiple forms of oppression and privlege in their lives, in many cases a person will find that certain parts of their lives will see advantage, while other parts of their live will see disadvantage. People will ignore the elements of their lives where things have been easy, because they have not had to dwell on these moments...but when encountering the forces that make their lives harder, the moments have been more difficult to overcome, efforts have been greater, and failure has been more likely. Straight, white feminists find it harder to see the systematic oppressions applied due to colour of skin or orientation of sexuality, possibly dismissing the struggles that don't form a daily part of their lives (even falling into the role of TERFs).
Another part of the problem is that everyone wants to improve the world, the difference is that some want to change the world for the greater good, others want to change the world for a specific group, and there are those who want to change the world for themselves. It is easy to ally with someone who wants to make chnges that will benefit either your community or yourself, but as soon as they want to make changes that make no difference to those important to you, or want to make changes that might make life more difficult for your people, the alliance becomes more difficult to maintain.
In previous attempts at this system I went for what I considered "realism" here, using ideas that different people might have varying degrees of advantage or disadvantage in their lives due to the fluctuating social circumstnces they find themselves in. There was a system where varying positives and negatives would apply to the specific situation, cancelling one another out, but in the end it turned into a system where more time was spent calculating fragments, rather than allowing the feel of the holistic whole to guide the story.
Another previous attempt focused on a single element of a scene, and how that one element gave advantage or disdvantage. In a scene focused on white supremacy, the darker skin the stronger the associated disadvantage... but atomising the mechanisms of play this way also seemed to detract from the flow of the game, while simultaneously detracting from the intersectionalism toward which it aspires.
This is one of the reasons why I've shifted from a system where social situations and institutional structures apply penalties, to a system where observing the effects provides power. It's easier to see the chain of cause and effect by noting how influences have impacted the outcome, rather than measuring numerous possible inputs into a situation (many of which might have negligible visible impact). When someone sees a problem in the world, they'll have a tendency to ignore it unless they are being impacted by the problem, or share something in common with the person being victimised.
This also means that anyone may be victimised, if they're in the wrong situation. It also means that there is no definitive way of stating what is right and what is wrong in the world. This needs to be sorted out by each group who ends up playing the game. The best that I can do as a designer (without looking too heaavy handed and completely self-sabotaging the message) is to present a variety of scenes in the rule books to explain how it works, with a few sidebars to explain where the rules are coming from.
In certain scenes where an individual is supported by structures of privlege and advantage, they may earn a bonus die based on their degree of association with the current structure providing the advantage. I'm not really happy with this, because other parts of the system have been moving away from this, and it feels like a mechanical solution to a natural problem.
At the moment, the balance I'm considering is far more vague, and potentially controversial, but it's one of the core elements of the game, so it's one of the elements that I have to make sure is right.
Familiar is intended to be a game about people who see the injustice in the world, who feel the desire to change things for the better, and who are capable of manipulating reality to achieve their goals. It's a game about people who care about the world around them, but who have been marginalised by society in a way that limit their ability to do anthing about it. In this setting, the familiars restore a new form of agency to the characters, where dominant society has taken most options away. When the laws of society, the law of nature, and the laws of physics restrain the characters and prevent them from making change in the world, the familiars open up new options for making change.
For decades, generations of gaming systems have played a dance around the concept of "realism" in their tools for resolving combat. The dance steps between trying to make weapons as dangerous as they are in the real world, trying to balance them against one another for the purposes of the narrative, maintaining balance so that they are fair... but fair to whom?? Are the countless hours that have been spent by numerous companies in their attempt to make "realistic" justified? Fashions change, and the next cycle of games might look for stripped back game systems that seek to aid the story first and foremost... some of the "new hotness" games might even claim to be transparent, and step out of the way when needed. But it all basically ends up coming down to the idea that different people like different games.
But how does all this link to my Familiar ideas?
How do social systems in roleplaying games compare?
Many games handwave all the social stuff...sometimes with throwaway lines about combat being derived from physical events and therefore being more "real" and subject to mechanical rulings, while social interactions are more vague and can only be resolved by discussion at the table. If I remember correctly, this debate stretches back to the earliest days of Arneson and Gygax, to those earliest Braunsteins.
The trouble here is that the social elements are the key. The mystics in the game derive power from their connections to the people around them and the subcultures to whom they belong. These connections are at least as important as the weapons they wield, and the equipment they possess. Here's where it all gets a bit messy, because even though it all makes sense in my head, I've spent months trying to get the ideas into coherent words that can be communicated to others.
Here's where we currently stand, it heavily draws on the theories of intersectionalism...
Everyone experiences injustice in the world differently, everyone has issues that they want to see overcome.
- Feminists see problems deriving from the patriarchy
- Those in poor lower classes (who are savvy enough or educated enough) see problems deriving from the wealthy upper classes
- Religious adherents see problems deriving from every other religion, along with agnostics and atheists
- Individuals claiming membership of the LGBTQI+ communities see problems deriving from the straight/cis citizens of the world
- Native first nations people of the world see problems deriving from the colonial powers
- Smaller subcultures see problems deriving from the culture of the mainstream
- Progressives want to make changes in the world, seeing the problems reinforced by the conservative status quo
- Conservatives see problems with the changes that progreesives seek to inflict on the world
Whenever anyone identifies with a group, they see problems in those who associate with the enemies of the group. They will see their own struggles as more important than those of other people, if only because everyone sees themselves as the hero of their own tale. Intersectionalism works on the idea that everyone will face multiple forms of oppression and privlege in their lives, in many cases a person will find that certain parts of their lives will see advantage, while other parts of their live will see disadvantage. People will ignore the elements of their lives where things have been easy, because they have not had to dwell on these moments...but when encountering the forces that make their lives harder, the moments have been more difficult to overcome, efforts have been greater, and failure has been more likely. Straight, white feminists find it harder to see the systematic oppressions applied due to colour of skin or orientation of sexuality, possibly dismissing the struggles that don't form a daily part of their lives (even falling into the role of TERFs).
Another part of the problem is that everyone wants to improve the world, the difference is that some want to change the world for the greater good, others want to change the world for a specific group, and there are those who want to change the world for themselves. It is easy to ally with someone who wants to make chnges that will benefit either your community or yourself, but as soon as they want to make changes that make no difference to those important to you, or want to make changes that might make life more difficult for your people, the alliance becomes more difficult to maintain.
In previous attempts at this system I went for what I considered "realism" here, using ideas that different people might have varying degrees of advantage or disadvantage in their lives due to the fluctuating social circumstnces they find themselves in. There was a system where varying positives and negatives would apply to the specific situation, cancelling one another out, but in the end it turned into a system where more time was spent calculating fragments, rather than allowing the feel of the holistic whole to guide the story.
Another previous attempt focused on a single element of a scene, and how that one element gave advantage or disdvantage. In a scene focused on white supremacy, the darker skin the stronger the associated disadvantage... but atomising the mechanisms of play this way also seemed to detract from the flow of the game, while simultaneously detracting from the intersectionalism toward which it aspires.
This is one of the reasons why I've shifted from a system where social situations and institutional structures apply penalties, to a system where observing the effects provides power. It's easier to see the chain of cause and effect by noting how influences have impacted the outcome, rather than measuring numerous possible inputs into a situation (many of which might have negligible visible impact). When someone sees a problem in the world, they'll have a tendency to ignore it unless they are being impacted by the problem, or share something in common with the person being victimised.
This also means that anyone may be victimised, if they're in the wrong situation. It also means that there is no definitive way of stating what is right and what is wrong in the world. This needs to be sorted out by each group who ends up playing the game. The best that I can do as a designer (without looking too heaavy handed and completely self-sabotaging the message) is to present a variety of scenes in the rule books to explain how it works, with a few sidebars to explain where the rules are coming from.
In certain scenes where an individual is supported by structures of privlege and advantage, they may earn a bonus die based on their degree of association with the current structure providing the advantage. I'm not really happy with this, because other parts of the system have been moving away from this, and it feels like a mechanical solution to a natural problem.
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