• StyleOfPlay

Top - Locks and Ownership - Secrets - P C Death - Tone - Retroactive Continuity

This page is for notes about the style of campaign that Unity is; they're not prescriptive, just guidelines, largely to make running a TroupeStyle game easy and enjoyable.

Locks and Ownership

If you have specific things you want to do with an NPC you create, put a note on the NonPlayerCharacters page that you own them. Similarly, before using an owned NPC in a non-trivial way, check with the owener. It goes without saying that if you want to run a plot that involves a PC, you should OK it with the appropriate player.

Both NonPlayerCharacters and AbstractConcepts can be locked; if you want to lock someone/something, make a note in the appropriate place. If you want to use something that's been locked by someone else, ask them first. They're completely within their rights to say no, but hopefully a compromise can be reached in many cases.

<<< Owning vs Lock a short essay... This started out as a couple of sentences.

• I think we have two distinct concepts. Owning means that the NPC or concept belongs to the player but is generally available. Basically the player acts as a safety valve/broker to ensure that reality doesn't get too bent. (As time goes one some inconsistencies will emerge. Feh.). Locks appear to be stronger: they say that this is part of my (probably) ongoing plot lines and I don't think another GM can use this. Of course there are positions in the middle, and, of course, revealing a lock can give away what the plot was going to be. For example before the SandersonGhost I had a strong lock on the Sanderson and Boucher families (in concept) but not on the Cohens. Now I think I have to keep the Cohens too, but they are still more peripheral. (I doubt I gave much away here, but if I did sorry. Certain items, such as the founders and the society are more contentious. Obviously we need certainty to a great extent (as Ben said elsewhere), but having an owner control these things is useful. We need to sort out the details. The founders I took ownership on partly so I could ensure that they were reasonably straightforward, but mostly 'cos I was enjoying making them. They are also distant from day to day expereince. Now we don't know what Alden wants to do to the club, but this is the most central item we've had someone want a lock on so far. I'd ask Alden to put himself in Simon's position and ask whether he be happy with someone else doing this? On the other hand having someone responsible for ensuring all the conflicting elements don't conflict too badly might be useful, on the third hand does Alden want to know all the plots that make use of the building? How strong is this lock as it is envisaged by Alden? Do people see what I am trying to say?

  This has now lost focus and become rambling. So I'll stop. If I remember my point I'll return later -- MikePitt

>>>

• <<< In "Now...", for club read club building. Damn words that can mean many things... MikePitt >>>

Secrets

<<< I have tended to argue against characters having secrets, however it occurs to me that there is no problem with having a secret shared with the owner of an NPC involved (or indeed between two characters). -- BenChalmers >>>

<<< Remember, though, that your PC will not be in your scenarios, so will not be around when the other characters discover the secret if it happens in a game you run. -- StevenKitson >>>

<<< With two characters that would be the case. Any such secret would also be overridden at the whim of a GM who didn't know about it (since there would be no 'lock' to prevent it being used by mistake. Clearly some things can actually be kept secret between players though (for example 2 players agreeing to work together towards some goal different from the goal the group are working for - in this situation noone other than the players involved ever need to know until it is too late (or until they need to involve an NPC, at which point a GM lock might be required)) -- BenChalmers >>>

<<< I'll suggest the guidlines below. I think that, within these guidelines, characters can have none-public bits of their background, to be revealed at some latter date. If you want it to be revealed in a scenario in which you're playing, you'd have to sort it out with the appropriate GM - this may well happen naturally when they check if their ideas conflict with yours. -- RobHague >>>

<<< What about GMs revealing bits of the characters' past that even the player didn't know about ('your parents were actually killed by cultists!' etc)? Obviously checking with the player first would ruin the surprise, so is that just forbidden? -- StevenKitson >>>

<<< This depends... just because a player hasn't detailed his parents shouldn't give a GM the right to declare them to have been killed by cultists ten years ago. If a GM gets a player to agree that a) his parents died in myterious circumstances and b) he has a lock on said parents, then everything works within the style of play we have already described. I think it is generally reasonable to assume a player has a lock on his background, otherwise. -- BenChalmers >>>

<<< 'Can I have a "lock" on your character's parents?' is going to arouse a bit of suspicion though. And having a 'lock' on your own character's background basically means never being surprised by it.

For my part, I'm happy for my character to discover anything plausible about himself that he (and I) didn't know. I actually quite like discovering things about my character's background that I didn't know, it keeps things fresh. The reason I gibber about clones is not the discovery but the then having to play two characters at once. --StevenKitson >>>

<<< Put comments in your character background indicating which bits people are free to abuse? Assume that the character's background is locked otherwise? -- AldenSpiess >>>

<<< People will still need to get locks over things that they can abuse (otherwise you might screw up a plan someone else has been working on). I'm afraid I don't see the problem - what is wrong with knowing that a GM may or maynot bring up the issue of parents in one of their future games? But in any case, I suggest that , to begin with, we uncover plots unrelated to our characters and that we approach the issue of deep background discoveries later on) -- BenChalmers >>>

Big secrets are problematic in a TroupeStyle game. However, "minor" secrets may be possible within limitations. Obviously, the details of a scenario are secret until, at least, after it's run. What else? A rule of thumb that seems to have a consensus is that, if a secret conflicts with public information, you need to retrofit the secret to the public facts. However, everyone should take reasonable steps to minimise this (e.g., JackProctor has some connection with British military intelligence during the war, so it would be polite to check with RobHague before doing anything involving them, but equally, if we were in Morroco, and got fleeced by a local, Rob couldn't turn round and say "I lived here for five years as a deep-cover agent, so I wouldn't fall for that").

As a starting point for discussion, I'll propose that in-character secrets:

• should not involve the Mythos, at all

• should not change any game stats ("Actually, now that you mention it, I know Hungarian from my time in the military..." won't cut it, unless Hungarian is already on your character sheet.)
• should, ideally, not impinge on general play as anything more than background flavour

P C Death

To preserve the CallOfCthulhu atmosphere, PC death should be a distinct possibility. However, it shouldn't be routine - this is a campaign, after all. An approach that seems fair is that PCs should only die as a result of their own (or, in extreme cases, other PC's) actions; so, it wouldn't be fair for a PC standing in the middle of the street to be killed by an emerging Cthonian they knew nothing about, but someone running towards a Dark Young, waving a revolver and shouting "Die, Scum!", is fair game. Of course, this only applies to things that would take a character out of the game, specifically death and complete SAN loss. Serious injury and similar levels of peril may be considered an occupational hazard for members of TheUnitySociety. Comments?

<<< I suggest character death occurs when the rules say it should. That said GMs should be nice and not have cthonians appearing in the street unannounced - players should get a chance to run away (but may not be offered a second chance, once they have committed themselves). Complete San loss I consider to be a different matter - anyone with sufficiently low san that this is a possibility should be checked into a sanitorium, not out in the streets. Anyone who can't raise their san high enough due to cthulhu mythos skill deserves everything they get. -- BenChalmers >>>

<<< Sounds fair, although I'd lean on the side of generosity when the dice give some leeway. -- RobHague >>>

<<< Do I hear BenChalmers and RobHague advocating the use of dice? Has the world gone mad??? -- AldenSpiess >>>

<<< For the sake of this CoC campaign being organised as a troupe style game, I see no alternative other than to run it as a fair, follow-the-rules, simulationist roleplaying game. Trust me, I have looked for alternatives, there arn't any. -- BenChalmers >>>

<<< How about bubbles? -- RobHague >>>

Tone

<<<There has been some discussion as regards the tone of the game - supernatural detective story, cyclopean horror, twenties pastiche, or whatever. While Unity can (and has) accommodate a range of styles, we should probably establish boundaries within which to work. So far, we've had a good mix of the Mythos (e.g., TheCasket, UnearthlyGoode, ShadowTheatre), mundane fakes (e.g., The SandersonGhost, TheGoldenYears), and things where we don't (yet) have enough information to really decide (e.g., TheBookStopsHere). We've not had much in the way of the "traditional" supernatural (ghosts, vampires, whatever) - would these fit in? What do people think? -- RobHague >>>

<<< How about the following: -- SimonBooth >>>

Subject matter for a game can be drawn from any of

• mundane problems (e.g. TheGoldenYears)

• the "supernatural" - Werewolves, Vampires etc. (e.g. HowlsInTheNight)

• the "classic" mythos - Cthulhu et al. (e.g. ThinkOfTheChildren)

• new mythos (e.g. ShadowTheatre, HereBeDragons)

or any other source in keeping with the 20s horror theme. Games don't have to make it clear to the players what's going on but to keep the interest of ThePlayers the possibility that future plots will explain things (at the cost of sanity, of course) should usually be kept open. Always check the AbstractConcepts page before plotting a game, so as not to tread on other GMs toes.

Games should not spoil the setting for other GMs. This means that they should not cause disasters which would cause Unity to be abandoned by its inhabitants or 122 to be abandoned by the society members.

Retroactive Continuity

In an ideal world, we would never revise things that have already happened, either in-game or on the Wiki. However, the world is not ideal, and hence it is occasionally necessary to fudge^HH^HH^Hfinesse things a little. In these circumstances, the following guidelines should be considered:

• Retconning should be very, very rare

• It should not be done if anyone ojects; i.e., before taking this step, everyone should either approve or abstain.

• All changes should be recorded on the RetCon page.

<<< Any comments? -- RobHague >>>

<<< Grrr Retcon changing meaning. Other than that, no. -- SimonBooth >>>

<<< I always thought that RetCon included changing things - that seems to fit with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retcon as well. What's the problem? -- RobHague >>>

<<< It does (at least from current usage). I just would rather it didn't. But that's not a problem - no-one said I had to like words. -- SimonBooth >>>