Mechanics of mystery and uncertainty

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OgreBattle
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Mechanics of mystery and uncertainty

Post by OgreBattle »

So how does one go about making a game feel dreamy and mysterious? I don't specifically mean a murder mystery, but more "trapped in a nightmare realm", "diving into a dream", "our spaceship flew into a big nope hole"

Funky imagery is one thing but I want to get down what kind of mechanics do a good job of making the players feel uncertainty and funky
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Ancient History
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Post by Ancient History »

Players are human beings, human beings look for patterns. When they're confronted with an unknown environment, their initial reactions are generally panic (try everything), observe (try nothing), or experiment (try something, see what happens). In a normal setting, these actions generally all have 1:1 correspondences of cause and effect - press the button, something happens or it doesn't. You can subvert those expectations by setting up nonlinear/nonrational consequences for certain actions.

For example, a dungeon might take place in a topology mapped as a complex space, so that a player can exit a room by one door and at the same time enter the same room from a different door (and probably see themselves coming or going). That's a simple mindfuck as they start to wrap their head around a situation that's not "normal."
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Post by TheFlatline »

Ancient History wrote:Players are human beings, human beings look for patterns. When they're confronted with an unknown environment, their initial reactions are generally panic (try everything), observe (try nothing), or experiment (try something, see what happens). In a normal setting, these actions generally all have 1:1 correspondences of cause and effect - press the button, something happens or it doesn't. You can subvert those expectations by setting up nonlinear/nonrational consequences for certain actions.

For example, a dungeon might take place in a topology mapped as a complex space, so that a player can exit a room by one door and at the same time enter the same room from a different door (and probably see themselves coming or going). That's a simple mindfuck as they start to wrap their head around a situation that's not "normal."
Oh yeah when I ran Cthulhu games I used a lot of non-euclidean geometry and multidimentional concepts. Things like the hypercube- a cube within a cube, all corners connected but no lines crossing. Walls that may or may not be there depending on if you look at them, lines that run to each other yet never meet, parallel lines that manage to cross, etc etc...

If you're going dreamscape, part of dreams is that they have an internal logic to them that doesn't make sense if you use rational thought.

The fucking around with the 1:1 correlation of cause and effect though could discourage players from taking any agency, or at least any agency that results in fun. You need to encourage the players/characters to make decisions based not on real world conjecture, but on dream logic. If you can fit into the logic of the moment, you can have agency in the dream. This means that it's incredibly easy to take tangential spinoffs within the dreamscape, and as long as this isn't questioned, it should work. I'd approach it like the Looney Tunes approach to Gravity: You can keep running on thin air as long as you don't look down.
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Post by hogarth »

TheFlatline wrote:The fucking around with the 1:1 correlation of cause and effect though could discourage players from taking any agency, or at least any agency that results in fun.
Yes, this is my first reaction to the idea of being "trapped in a nightmare realm".
TheFlatline wrote:You need to encourage the players/characters to make decisions based not on real world conjecture, but on dream logic. If you can fit into the logic of the moment, you can have agency in the dream. This means that it's incredibly easy to take tangential spinoffs within the dreamscape, and as long as this isn't questioned, it should work.
This can work sometimes, but I'm usually kind of skeptical about that kind of thing. If I'm choosing to play D&D, it's generally because I like playing D&D, not "solve the Encyclopedia Brown-style puzzle the GM came up with".
Last edited by hogarth on Sun Jun 04, 2017 10:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Ancient History »

You can also start out small and move up. Like the first time you use a spell, it works almost exactly as you expect it - but the more spells you cast, the farther they drift from expected operating parameters. They never not work, but it helps to show that the rules are different and/or changing
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Re: Mechanics of mystery and uncertainty

Post by hyzmarca »

OgreBattle wrote:So how does one go about making a game feel dreamy and mysterious? I don't specifically mean a murder mystery, but more "trapped in a nightmare realm", "diving into a dream", "our spaceship flew into a big nope hole"

Funky imagery is one thing but I want to get down what kind of mechanics do a good job of making the players feel uncertainty and funky
It depends on how dreamy you want. You could pull out Jungian Archetypes for your NPCs.

Or if you want to go full surreal, I enjoy falling thousands of feet through the eye of a giant woman and landing in the courtyard of the King of Bunnies as he prepares for war with the Feline Armada.
Then there the normal non-magical swords that only causes flower damage. There is no such damage type, you say? Well there is now. When you injure someone with them, they do not bleed. Instead, flowers fall out of their wounds.

And, of course, Stanly the Beholder Mage, who only knows one spell (Bolt of Horripilation. 1st level Wiz, makes your hairs stand on end and has no other effect).

And the Great and Terrible Garumplump. Which is so great and terrible that it is completely indescribable. So you, as DM, won't describe it. No one can tell you what a Garumplump looks like, but you'll know it when you see it.

And Uoormum the Seductress, who is cloaked in a permanent non-dispellable and non-resistible mental illusion that makes her appear to be a young and sexy version of the viewer's mother or significant mother figure.

Also, swapped enivroments are great, too. Perpetually sunny and green caverns and dungeons, and a dark lightless wasteland above ground. Cold fire. Hot ice. The volcano of freezing lava. Skyquakes. Earthnados. Sandning bolts. Cloud Glaciers.

Mechanically, a lot of wierd weather is just flipping around damage types. The fluff description is the important part.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Mon Jun 05, 2017 12:41 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by TheFlatline »

hogarth wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:You need to encourage the players/characters to make decisions based not on real world conjecture, but on dream logic. If you can fit into the logic of the moment, you can have agency in the dream. This means that it's incredibly easy to take tangential spinoffs within the dreamscape, and as long as this isn't questioned, it should work.
This can work sometimes, but I'm usually kind of skeptical about that kind of thing. If I'm choosing to play D&D, it's generally because I like playing D&D, not "solve the Encyclopedia Brown-style puzzle the GM came up with".
I wasn't really suggesting making it a puzzle per se. Moreso you're venturing into *really* MTP zones and allowing players to come up with weird shit to overcome mundane problems that due to dream logic can't be overcome.

So if you're locked in a room and you want out, duh let's turn the water on and let the water pressure bust the door open. There wasn't a faucet there until this moment because you weren't going to use the faucet until you decided to.

So basically all those RPGs where the players get to free-form the scene and stuff in it? Run with that. Only it has to be tangential dream logic to make sense.

The MC has to run with this. Certain symbolism is probably needed and certain events probably need to happen but beyond that, let the players do the weirdest shit they can think of to move forward. It's one of those situations where you don't have to say no to anything as long as it's interesting. You don't even need to be linear and coherent.
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