For example, a game about ghosts that possess and control characters, or an alien brain invasion, or a body swap scenario where your mind ends up in someone else’s body. As a player playing a character, there’s a disconnect between your actual self and the character you’re playing. Is there a way to bridge that disconnect by making that separation a part of the fiction?
I had this idea recently, are there games out there that do this?
I’m in love with the idea of character agency and have played around with game designs that let the characters communicate with the players. I have not yet hit on anything really successful, but there’s a lot of really fascinating research into the ideas of trans-narrative communication, most of it from the former Soviet Union. Some work continues in Russia.
Dr. Anzhelika Dosmukhamedov is an inspiration. A couple of her papers are pretty mind-blowing.
The game that first comes to my mind for this sort of thing is Jay Iles’ unfinished game Ghost Ship, where you play AI reconstructions of dead people’s minds, downloaded into robot bodies for long term interplanetary travel. You physical form isn’t the human body that you had… and you can upgrade or change your robot body as easily as a truck driver can upgrade or replace their truck. But human minds aren’t made for this sort of unbodied AI experience, and over time it causes stress and memory loss s you become less and less human.
@Jmstar Do you have ISSN/ISBNs for these journals/conference proceedings? My work’s ILL department wasn’t able to find these in OCLC.
Sorry, can’t help you there. I’ll take them down until I can source them beyond the photocopies I have.
Do we mean games where we play a mundane person who in turn is playing a character (exploring the disconnect impersonally), or actual meta games where we truly become part of the fiction?
1001 Nights by Meg Baker is worth pointing to…you play characters in the Sultan’s court telling stories to win his favor, but the other characters take on roles in your fiction as you direct.
I’d be interested in those references also, even if they are in Russian.
I very much like the idea of interesting character agency mechanics and working with the disconnect between the character we play and us.
In my game Atitlan Riders when you want to retire your character you need to roll. On a bad outcome you can either leave the character in that bad state - or continue playing the character. If you leave the character behind you have to live with the guilt of letting them down.
Like this, I could imagine a whole bunch of Moves and mechanics triggered when a player wants their character to do something they might not want.
I like that very much, Gerrit!
White Wolf’s Wraith had an element of this – your character’s ‘dark side’ was (or could be – I think it was an optional rule) played by the player sitting on your left, while you in turn played the next player’s dark side, and so on. There was a mechanical aspect to this, too.
There was also Khaotic, in which you played a bunch of people projecting their minds into another dimension – but when they got there, they were all within the same monstrous body.
In “adventure” games (D&D, DW, many others), I’d argue that the key thing making PCs heroic (or at least forces to be reckoned with) is that a PC will generally initiate whatever the player intends them to, regardless of how terrifying the action might be or how fatigued, frazzled, overwhelmed, hesitant, or whatever the character would be.
Like, a 1st-level PC will engage in life-or-death battle and attack a horrid little needle-toothed goblin, and no one really questions it. The attack might fail, traditionally we all assume that the attack was made.
There a couple of adventure-style games I can think of that screw with this assumption… Rock of Tahamat, the Regiment, Stay Frosty, Pendragon, maybe Unknown Armies. There are games with fear checks, but they tend to be more exceptional situations than standard things I’d expect someone to panic during. But I think there’s a potential vein for an adventure game where you (the player) were regularly fighting your (the character’s) panick, instinct, fatigue, etc.
@epiclutesolo This is a very interesting question. Can you be more specific about the design issue you’re having? What kind of mechanic are you struggling to create? It would be helpful in thinking through what game mechanics might answer your question.
In my “Dangerously Random” 2d12 world PbtA game, I have a move which can be used transfer knowledge from a player to a character, and for the character to know things (to have known all along, or to learn) thereby making them known to the player. Another move allows the player to know things which may or may not be known to the character. I should mention that everyone at the table shares the role of the GM.
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KNOW SOMETHING
When you think you (the character) might know something, work together to determine what it is, stating how you could justifiably have gained such knowledge, then roll:
+int if you remember, deduce, or spout lore.
+wis if you percieve, intuit, or discern.
+cha if you discovered it through personal interactions.
24+: It’s true. You know it. And then some…
20–23: It’s just like you said. You might also comment on how widespread this knowledge is.
**13–19:**It’s true, but…
3–12: Mark XP. Decide which of the following best applies:
2–: Mark XP. It isn’t true and never will be, and what’s worse…
You can use this move to create facts out of thin air, as long as you justify how or why you could reasonably have come by such knowledge.
You can also use this move to grant knowledge to a character of something that was previously known only to a player.
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BUILD THE WORLD
When you ( the player ) seek to establish facts about the world or something in it, work together to determine what it is and then roll +nothing.
**24+: ** It’s true, and…
20–23: It’s true.
13–19: It’s true, but there’s a catch. Say what it is.
3–12: Do not mark XP. It isn’t true.
2–: Do not mark XP. It isn’t true. And what’s even worse is…
This move cannot contradict established truths.
Work together to determine the extent to which new truths are known. Your character(s) may or may not know such things, but it may be possible for them to learn of them.