Doubt

[Username17]

Doubt is a proposed game system and setting in which the player characters can subtly control reality and are tasked with protecting humanity from monsters and villains that can protect themselves from discovery. Themes for the game include psychological horror, loneliness, and of course Self Doubt. Which is where the name of the game comes from.

Characters have various mystical powers that alter reality itself, but these powers are subtle and limited enough that the player characters themselves can never actually see incontrovertible proof that their powers actually exist. And once they've been used, reality is rewritten and no one else remembers it having ever been any other way. So some of the characters may well go through the whole story without ever actually believing that they have anything but a run of weird luck while they are out solving the mystery.

Meanwhile, while the PCs have magic powers that are limited to doing things that they personally have good reason to doubt the reality of, the villains operate in ways that make it impossible for the PCs to provide hard evidence to other people - making the mysteries definitionally exclude "going to the cops" as a valid tactic. So the PCs have experiences that make them doubt their own sanity when they use their abilities, and if they tell anyone else about the things they are fighting, other people will doubt their sanity too.

Villains

Every Villain in Doubt is protected from hard evidence bing presented of their existence to society at large. These protections do not extend to the player characters, because the PCs interact with reality differently and "remember" the world "before" overwrites. So the PCs pretty much have to fight their battles alone.

Hollow Men

The Hollow Men pretty much present like Mr. Book from Dark City. They don't have any hair, and abhor light and color. They usually wear glasses to hide the fact that they don't have eyebrows. Their big trick is that reality overwrites itself to hide evidence that they have ever been anywhere or done anything. If they walk across a field, the foot prints will vanish. If they murder someone, records of that person having ever existed will be expunged. Since only the PCs remember the victims or can recall having seen Hollow Men do anything, fighting them falls to the PCs alone.

Night Terrors

Night Terrors die and vanish from reality if they are seen by any living person. They have the ability to mess with electrical items, meaning that lights go out in advance of their arrival. They murder people in their sleep, but they leave no traces and can't be photographed. So the PCs have to deal with them alone because no one else believes they exist. They don't really "look" like anything, because if you manage to see one you only see a brief flash of something horrible before it is wiped from existence.

Metatron

The Metatron have no physical form. They can appear as absolutely anything or anyone, but cannot touch anything or leave any physical trace (thus, they also do not appear in photographs and their words cannot be recorded). They are essentially hallucinations of whoever is near them. It is theorized that there may be some limited number of them such as seven or even just one. The commit wickedness only by convincing real people in the real world to go do horrible things - at which point those people appear to be simply delusional to the rest of society. They are perhaps best exemplified by the First Evil from Buffy. The PCs can feel places the Metatron have been, but no one else can.

The Registry

The Registry is a series of data points, documents, bank accounts, records, and legal briefs. They are a complete paper trail of birth certificates, employment histories, school records, and bill payments. And that's all they are. None of the people in The Registry exist. It's not that they are different people hiding under those aliases, there just literally aren't any people at all. Their rooms are empty, no one actually sits in their desks or goes to their classes. But papers get turned in, they get grades, they buy and sell things, and members of The Registry vote and even die. It's hard, maybe even impossible to say how far back The Registry goes or what it wants. After all, what are you going to do? Check the old records?

Magic and Combat

The PCs are petty much expected to run around with swords stabbing people. Reality alteration can only affect things that have plausible deniability. So bullets, or any other attack that moves too fast to see, can rather easily be deflected. Very basic reality manipulation can make bullets miss from any distance, while doing anything about a baseball bat to the face is very difficult (it takes more concentrated effects like having the bat crack mid-swing or something, and even then it won't completely stop the strike).

The Player Character Types

PCs are defined by the weird paranoia-inducing stuff that is happening to them that forces them to accept that something is wrong with the world or their own mind or both. The types are not nailed down, but there will ultimately be 6-9 of them. Each one has a different paranoid experience. Possible examples include:

The Ignored
These characters do not appear to register as existing to machines. Automatic doors don't open for them, elevators don't go to floors when they press the button, and so on. When they pick up a phone, whether it was ringing or not, they hear a conversation between two other people who cannot apparently hear what they say.

The Wanted
These characters have been accused of something horrible. Maybe they apparently killed their wife or conducted a terrorist attack. Everyone "knows" that they did it and they are now a wanted fugitive. Like in "The Fugitive".

-Username17

[Ice9]

Schrödinger's magic system, eh? Sounds pretty cool, actually.
So for instance, stealing a stranger's suitcase/luggage/bag and not looking inside until you need something specific, so it could potentially contain that thing?

Question - while making bullets miss has plausible deniability, so does making a blindly-aimed automatic burst hit. If both the target and shooter have reality alteration, who wins? Actually, this could apply to a lot of "contested" alterations - making a train arrive just in time vs not arriving yet, for example.

[Ghostwheel]

Sounds pretty interesting. What mechanics would you use for a setting like this? Would you use an already-created system and make the mechanics do what you want, or create one from scratch? Etc?

[Caedrus]

Very nice setting concept. What kind of system do you have in mind, though?

[Midnight_v]

Horrors:

So... what you have to post a watch whenever you sleep? They die whenever you see them? It seems, somewhat convaluted what kind of interaction with them can be expected.

So for instance, stealing a stranger's suitcase/luggage/bag and not looking inside until you need something specific, so it could potentially contain that thing?
This is actually brilliant. Good use of the magic. Especially if someone else gives it to you with something vague and fairy like... "I've put it in there, you'll know when to use it."

Hmm... this sounds like... mage iirc. Maybe thats just how it was pitched to be back in '98 ...

[Kaelik]

Well midnight, I believe that's the whole point.

To be Mage, but actually work.

A reason not to blow yourself up in town square (because you can't, and you'll be written out of existence, and no one will believe it was magic) and you fight the magic stuff from beyond spacetime that is confusing and bad and humanity needs protection from.

If Frank is ever going to run a game taking place over the internet instead of in California/Czech Republic, I'm game.

[ubernoob]

If Frank is ever going to run a game taking place over the internet instead of in California/Czech Republic, I'm game.

I would definitely be interested in this as well.

[CatharzGodfoot]

This game sounds freaking awesome. It would also make a great series of novels, TV series, etc. Just don't introduce it to a schizophrenic.

[Maxus]

Tommy Oblivion: Existential Detective.

Edit: He's a character from the Nightside series by Simon Green. Tommy has a power to alter reality as long as there's a chance it could have happened another way. An extreme example is that they were cornered and he got himself and the hero brought to were they actually wanted to go before they started because chased. "I believe there is a chance, however small, that we never ran into pursuit in the first place and reached the Time Tower safely."

*WHAM*

"Nice trick, Tommy."

"Not something I'd want to do every day."

He also talked a couple of guardian statue golems into getting back up on their pedastals.

"Turn back now, or we shall give you entry to Hell!" (or some such)

"I'll handle this...Hey, are you guys stone all the way through? Then how can you flex your muscles like that? Really, you're stone. You have no muscles to pull with and no bones to pull against. You're a solid piece. Stone just don't behave like that. Also, I can see the back of your mouth is solid from here. How the hell do you even speak? No throat, no vocal cords... What you ought to do is get back up on your spots and hold still and hope no one notices."

[Dean]

So I actually have already done a ton of work on a TREMENDOUSLY similar project. So here's some things:

Declare that the world operates on a consensus reality system. The fact the billions of people think things are some way means that they are. So basically anybody could do magic if everyone thought we all could but we don't so we can't. So the force that opposes the party doing things can just be called "Consensus". It's the sort of invisible wave that covers everything up all the time. It's also the thing that makes their reality alteration hard to do (it's what you're pushing against) and the reason it doesn't really matter even if you get powerful enough to make a full blown vulgar magic display in the middle of Time's Square because tommorrow it will be basically forgotten about and the day after no one on earth will remember. This leads to SOME cool NPC's (like the crazy guy in Dark City) who do have some vague memory of the fact that things used to be different.

In my games I call the reality altering class "Weavers". And the important thing I think when making this system would be to make the system that governs Weaver magic should be focused on its RESULT and not its process. When a weaver casts a spell with reality alteration it is up to them to describe how it happens and the DM to accept or deny it. So a Weaver spell should have "Push" as its descriptor if it moves someone 10 feet in a given direction and makes them fall prone. So the "Spell" describes only the result, the Weaver player is then required to describe "A fire escape ladder falling and hitting them on the chest". Or a spell that deals 5d6 damage can be described alternately as a "Car screeches attempting to apply its brakes and hits the enemy" or "A chunk of masonry from a building above seperates from a building and crashes on the enemy". If they cannot find any descriptor they like then they should be able to do the magic ANYWAY as basically just some Vulgar force push but that should eat up some sort of limited resource or just be harder to cast or something.

I have fucking pages and pages and pages on this shit. I'll stop now but if you want a partner in actually making this it is something I have considered a lot. I think it's my finest fleshed out product.

[TheFlatline]

I really do dig this concept. Especially if you can't specify what you want to have happen with a lot of detail. For example, with the above briefcase, The best you could hope for is to pull something to help you defend yourself out of the case. Maybe you'll pull a sap, maybe you'll pull a pistol, maybe you'll pull nothing.

In fact, I'd consider a rule where the more vague the willworking was, the easier it works, because it's more plausible. In combat, "I don't want to die!" is pretty vague. You have lots of options. "I want the bullet to miss!" is less vague, so is more difficult. "I want the bad guy to trip and impale himself on his own sword" is very specific, and thus far more difficult.

I could also see some real mindjob games. Such as... "I'm going to assume that the guy I'm shooting at is going to be defending himself (I think) and my bullets will miss. Still, I could hit him with the ricochet..." At that point, if you *do* hit him with the ricochet, are you responsible only for the ricochet, or have you altered the entire chain of events and just shot a normal person?

And I just got the Horrors reference. "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

[Username17]

After having thought about it more, I think "Night Terrors" is a better name for those particular monsters than "Horrors". It's more evocative and less Earthdawnish.

So... what you have to post a watch whenever you sleep? They die whenever you see them? It seems, somewhat convaluted what kind of interaction with them can be expected?

The Night Terrors are relatively easy to defeat. They make your electronics fail, but mankind has had the power to light the darkness without electricity for a long time. The point is that you have to track them down. It's a complete locked room mystery where when you finally find the villain... it's just over. That's the last scene. The credits roll. You hear the monster growling in the darkness, feel the floorboards bow under it's titanic weight, and then you toss the glow stick and... that's it. That's the end of the monster. No body. No evidence it was ever there. It's all hunt, no cleanup.

Declare that the world operates on a consensus reality system.

Absolutely not. Consensus reality is a meme that needs to die. It's one thing to have an argument about physics, and another thing to have an argument about game rules. But to have an argument about public opinion about physics? Fuck that. Fuck it hard. If reality were a democracy, everything would be powered by divine will, evil would be punished, and chicken soup would cure AIDS. What happens instead is that heavy things and light things fall at the same rate and homeopathic remedies are just water.

For reality alteration to be a thing in the game, you have to have a pretty solid idea of what the fuck reality is to begin with. And that means that the idea of it being fluid and subject to a show of hands at a moment's notice is right the fuck out.

So basically anybody could do magic if everyone thought we all could but we don't so we can't.

Also no. While it is uplifting and progressive and democratic and shit to think that everyone has the same potential, it's horribly corrosive to the genre. The entire point is that the PCs are on their own and aren't sure if they are crazy or not. If you let them recruit just anybody by proselytizing then there'd be no reason for them to feel isolated. They could just chat people up in coffee shops or even give full blown classes in this shit and get a fully functional army going in no time.

Basically this is not a hippie trippie Mage pastiche. It's a disturbing foray into radical skepticism, schizophrenia, and paranoia. You aren't trying to revolutionize the world or turn into a car like an Utena character, you're just trying to keep people from being eaten by monsters that no one else believes in and you aren't entirely sure you believe in either. Using powers that you don't know if you can rely upon, because you aren't entirely convinced that you really have them.

Question - while making bullets miss has plausible deniability, so does making a blindly-aimed automatic burst hit. If both the target and shooter have reality alteration, who wins? Actually, this could apply to a lot of "contested" alterations - making a train arrive just in time vs not arriving yet, for example.

The goal is to incentivize people to fight with things that aren't guns. Because guns are less dramatic. So I think that a doubter who was closer to the event would dominate it. Which means that no matter how good you are at having bullets randomly happen to hit someone out of a crowd, if that person is even a bullshit mage, their power still gets the final word and the bullet misses.

Of course, this still only matters if it is plausible that the bullet could miss. Having a bullet miss when the gun is held to your head is still not going to happen.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

Of course, this still only matters if it is plausible that the bullet could miss. Having a bullet miss when the gun is held to your head is still not going to happen.

One could rewrite reality to one wherein the gun jammed.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Of course, this still only matters if it is plausible that the bullet could miss. Having a bullet miss when the gun is held to your head is still not going to happen.

One could rewrite reality to one wherein the gun jammed.

You could, but the guy with a gun is just as close to it as you are. Jamming guns, therefore, is probably more of a tactic against police than against Kenny when he has a gun to your head.

[Kaelik]

Of course, this still only matters if it is plausible that the bullet could miss. Having a bullet miss when the gun is held to your head is still not going to happen.

One could rewrite reality to one wherein the gun jammed.

Which would be just like rewriting reality to have the bat break. And be where you are both touching, and who knows who wins, opposed test.

[TheFlatline]

Of course, this still only matters if it is plausible that the bullet could miss. Having a bullet miss when the gun is held to your head is still not going to happen.

However, a misfire is still completely plausible. Though it'd take the stones of a madman to put that much stock into something that might not actually exist.

My only question is... in Mage they have the Domino concept, where the more coincidences that happen in a row, the more disbelief accumulates. How would you deal with this and still maintain an element of self-doubt?

In the real world someone starts bitching that the system is rigged when you roll say 4 or 5 dice and they all come up the same number.

[Kaelik]

Of course, this still only matters if it is plausible that the bullet could miss. Having a bullet miss when the gun is held to your head is still not going to happen.

However, a misfire is still completely plausible. Though it'd take the stones of a madman to put that much stock into something that might not actually exist.

My only question is... in Mage they have the Domino concept, where the more coincidences that happen in a row, the more disbelief accumulates. How would you deal with this and still maintain an element of self-doubt?

In the real world someone starts bitching that the system is rigged when you roll say 4 or 5 dice and they all come up the same number.

I assume one character in every party at least is always going to be a Frank or a me, and be like "Fuck you liars, it's more likely that six guns in a row misfired than that I actually have super powers."

And be all rampant materialist, thus forcing everyone to actually recognize that it's actually not that rare.

I mean, my favorite example comes from some guys book:

If I walked into my backyard and found a big metal ship and some small green men who said they were aliens, first I'd check to make sure someone else saw them, then I'd check to see that my dog barks at them, then I'd have them prove that the thing is a spacecraft by flying me through space, then I'd check to make sure they were really windows and not viewscreens by pulling one off, then I would get off the ship and call my doctor to tell him I was having one hell of a hallucination.

[TheFlatline]

That's well and fine, but here in the Gaming Den we don't leave game design up to "well the players will probably work that out".

I'm perfectly willing to roleplay it, but from an in-character standpoint, after hundreds, or thousands of perfect coincidences over years, doubt will be eliminated in a character's mind.

There needs to be an error factor or something. Which is why I liked the idea that the more vague the intent is, the more likely it is to occur. The more plausible the coincidence, the more "common" it is, the more often it happens.

[Kaelik]

That's well and fine, but here in the Gaming Den we don't leave game design up to "well the players will probably work that out".

I'm perfectly willing to roleplay it, but from an in-character standpoint, after hundreds, or thousands of perfect coincidences over years, doubt will be eliminated in a character's mind.

There needs to be an error factor or something. Which is why I liked the idea that the more vague the intent is, the more likely it is to occur. The more plausible the coincidence, the more "common" it is, the more often it happens.

Of course there are going to be mechanics that determine success rates. That goes without saying. I'm just saying that improbable coincidences are still more likely than absurdities, so it actually doesn't make sense for all doubt to be removed.

[Akula]

The more you actually believe you have super powers, the more insane you are. Could be a mechanic where the more you relied on reality being mutable, the more your own psychosis fucks with you.

[cthulhu]

it's going to be very difficult to get people to roleplay that they don't think they have super powers when they have them written down on their character sheet.

I'd make that aspect of the fluff detachable - just the inability to prove it is real will be isolationist enough.

[Dr_Noface]

You guys ever read "John Dies at the End"? You could probably mine it for ideas, its a quick read. Its like a goofier version of this game.

[Sashi]

The more you actually believe you have super powers, the more insane you are. Could be a mechanic where the more you relied on reality being mutable, the more your own psychosis fucks with you.

Two ideas:

Attack/Defense balance, where being a very powerful telepath also makes you vulnerable to the insidious whisperings of Metatron and stuff like that.

Unmaking. If you push it too far, then the easiest way cover up all the crazy shit you've done is to just have you never exist.

[Sashi]

You guys ever read "John Dies at the End"? You could probably mine it for ideas, its a quick read. Its like a goofier version of this game.

I'm about 2/3 through The Lathe of Heaven, which treads the same ground, but much less zany.

[Judging__Eagle]

I'm hoping that there's a way to tell the difference between the Villains, and say, hallucinations based on sleep deprivation or other things that disrupt brain function.

Because, if not, things could really suck for the PCs.