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Vitruviansquid
2015-07-02, 01:19 AM
So this is kind of the reverse of a world design in that I mostly figured out what I want the setting to be and what kind of plot to run in it, but I'm unsure how best to put it on the table.

In our world, as people grow, they usually choose some arts or studies to take interest in, and if they really get into it, they can gain mastery in it once their skill and knowledge encompasses all that we know about the art or study. Above mastery, some exceptional individuals are even considered to have pushed their skill or knowledge so far that they re-define their field, achieving a state beyond even mastery, which we might call "genius." The main premise of this setting is that there is a step beyond even this state, where the person in question gains transcendental understanding of the universe through their craft or study, and gains magical power.

In other words, magic comes from a person's genius, which is considered in this setting to lie somewhere between passion, practice, and natural talent. For example, an extremely skilled chef might gain such transcendental understanding of cooking that he can use chef magic - summoning ethereal blades, shooting blasts of fire or jets of boiling water, healing themselves and allies by nourishment. An extremely knowledgeable lawyer might be able to impose her own laws on the universe by speaking magic oratory while an extremely skilled farmer could command plants to grow.

Magic in the setting can get so powerful that there is simply no way for a person without magic to compete against a person who does have magic. This not limited to how a mundane goldsmith will never make anything in gold that is as aesthetically appealing, valuable, creative, or good as a person who is able to wield goldsmithing magic. It extends to the fact that a mundane person will probably never be able to beat a magic-using clockmaker in a foot race, because that clockmaker can speed up time for himself, a mundane person will never be able to beat a chef in a battle because that chef can chop them up with ethereal knives, and so on. Basically, achieving magic in a narrow field gives people powers to apply outside their field.

Now, in the distant past of this setting, the world was in the "Golden Age of Magic" where the crazy weird effects of magic were commonplace. This was the result of people gaining magical understanding of different things all over the place and having no regulation. It was an exciting time and full of wonders, but "exciting" is not always equivalent to "good." You could be minding your own business and count on being subject to all sorts of freakish accidents of magic users misusing their powers. Magic users could also turn their powers against mundane people and not have to answer to anyone. A magic using blacksmith might decide to use their powers to force mundanes around them to mine for iron so the blacksmith could have a large supply to hone his craft, for instance. But it was also a time of anarchy, as whatever tyranny a magic user imposed on a community would dissolve when that magic user died or left or got bored or was taken out by another magic user.

However, the Golden Age of Magic ended when one magic user emerged who was so powerful that she was able to take over the world, and then imposed conditions to make sure no other magic users would arise, starting the modern age (which will be remembered by future people as the Age of Tyranny). This person was the immortal Ever-Empress, whose source of magic was a transcendental understanding of rulership (how she achieved that is still up for retcon, but I've taken a liking to simply making it mysterious) and who is unable to die unless her state dies. Upon taking over the world, she implemented the following decrees that would forever stop more magic users from emerging.

1. All infants are taken and educated by the state. The state's education is subtly designed to find out all students' aptitudes. The Educators in charge of evaluating students are under the belief that they are trying to figure out students' aptitudes so that students will later be assigned to the jobs that they are most fit for.
2. After education, the state assigns people to professions that they are only fairly good at, always taking care to not assign people to professions that they are best at.
3. Creative expression is heavily stifled by the creation of strict conventions in each format. Now, what makes a art good lies exclusively in its ability to stick to those conventions, which were of course designed to keep artists from exploring their art too freely. For example, a good painting is a painting that is extremely symmetrical, uses exactly five colors, and contains a background that is a landscape.
4. Products that were once made by independent artisans are now, as much as possible, completely made in standard forms in factory settings where most people are employed in mind-numbing labor.
5. There were textbooks made of every category of knowledge. Those textbooks were then declared to be the sum total of achievable knowledge in that category and given religious significance, so people can never challenge them or experiment outside of them.
6. The government had armed soldiers (which are kind of a newfangled thing, because in the Golden Age, no kind of soldier could defeat magic users) to impose its will on anyone who dissents.

This made life so that mundane people no longer had to worry about magic or magic users suddenly up-ending their lives. On top of that, everyone was at peace, because there was nobody left to oppose the strength of the world government. But nobody is happy. Everybody is born and dies knowing there are limits they can never surpass. Their jobs suck, art sucks, recreation is severely limited, thought is severely limited, and so on.

Now, my plan for this setting is that all games in it take place during a rebellion that was started by a magic user who managed to emerge after centuries of the Ever-Empress coming to power. Maybe someone has a habit they do in their off-time that eventually turned them into a magic user. Maybe someone slipped through the system and lived apart from the world government and developed magical powers. Maybe something happened to make the restrictions improperly enforced. In any case, one person emerges as a magic user and comes to understand how magic works. That person (who may be a player character) then spread the secret of magic to others, starting a rebellion based on a few new mages (which the player characters are part of) who are almost as new to the concept of magic as they are to the use of it. The Ever-Empress responds initially with armies of mundane goons, and then eventually somehow (to be determined) mints state magic users to shut down the rebellion (add nefarious controls and contingencies as necessary).

What do you think of this setting? Anything to add? Anything to resolve? Any ideas on how you'd run a game in it?

What system might be good for running this? If no such system exist, what kind of mechanics would you want to see with this game?

Yukitsu
2015-07-02, 03:07 AM
For some reason, all I can think of is an anime about bread called Yakitate which basically seems to run on that game setting's world logic. The characters seem to make bread that can overwrite reality in one way or another.

Anyway, that said, I would personally make it about a single isolated country rather than the entire world. It's pretty much unreliable that that single empress could have taken out all of the other people who were absolutely obsessed with their respective fields since at some point in history, she'd have drawn enough aggro that other people would have taken her out. This way if characters take a long and potentially dangerous journey to travel across borders, they could realize that in other places, things work differently, or that magic is something that they could potentially learn. I think the Empress should by this point have suppressed even the very notion that anyone could attain magic, so realizing that people have the potential for it should be something that could possibly be observed among other nations.

I'd make the nation one of pure ego. Someone as powerful as this Empress honestly has no need of an Empire. Statues erected in her honor everywhere and a tremendous and beautiful palace located in her capital that once per year, every single soul in her nation has to take a pilgrimage to so that they can gaze upon her splendor. The reason I would say she should be like this is because she is so powerful that she hasn't got any real reason to rule, so saying she does so out of vanity and arrogance, and then exemplifying those traits could be interesting.

I would define in my notes what it was that the Empress did before taking everything over and then subtly put in hints that it is a field that she favours. Perhaps in that one field that she's still passionate about, she slips up and lets a few geniuses through arrogantly assuming they could never match her in it. Maybe while everything else is mass made in a factory style by people who just want to go home, the country is known far and wide for its bread for example.

Depending on whether or not you take these elements, the world seems vague enough at this point that you could run any variety of adventure. The world could have a simple group of bounty hunters that maybe become too good at their job and start getting hunted down by other bounty hunters (ones that are even better, and who have bounties on themselves as well). You could make it about people who were in the field that the empress herself was in which she contemptuously declares will never contain a genius that can match her. The team would get into skill challenges or what have you to prove her wrong and upend the entire system. You could make it about them finding a stranger from a distant land, travelling there and then returning to foment a rebellion. Without knowing what sort of story you want to tell in that world, it's hard to tell what system it should use.

The campaign I would run would use something like the shadowrun system and focus on a group of very talented and passionate bounty hunters that are secretly employed by the Empress to hunt down potential magic users. However, as they get better and better at their job or really become passionate about bounty hunting, you get flagged by the Empress herself who sends other bounty hunters to eliminate you before you can become a threat. Secretly, she has all of the bounty hunters trying to kill one another in something almost like a battle royale situation assuming that all of the bounty hunters will end up getting killed, but ones that start climbing too far and getting a bit too strong she kills herself.

Kriton
2015-07-02, 08:06 AM
What system might be good for running this? If no such system exist, what kind of mechanics would you want to see with this game?

Unknown Armies seems to be fitting.

TheThan
2015-07-02, 12:35 PM
This reminds me of the Age of discovery books by Michael A Stackpole. Which worked just like this.


6. The government had armed soldiers (which are kind of a newfangled thing, because in the Golden Age, no kind of soldier could defeat magic users) to impose its will on anyone who dissents.


You might want to reword this, because according to how it reads, nobody is capable of being a powerful warrior or swordsman, and gain magical powers through his skill as a warrior or skill as a swordsmanship.

It goes against the concept, if someone can start summoning ethereal knives because he’s a skilled chef, or make plants grow like an engaging roots spell because he's that good of a farmer; then it stands to reason that someone could be such a skilled swordsman that they can now use magic through their swordsmanship.

That’s the sort of character I would want to play in this setting.

You might want to change this into ” the government has built an army, which is kind of a new thing, as the area previously had no real need of it. This army is there to control the population and put down dissents”, or something similar.

I would use mutants and masterminds, using the game's powers rules to represent the magical abilities that characters are obviously going to start developing over time. I would also implement some sort of milestone system; when they reach a new milestone, they gain a new power, unlocking a new mystery in their chosen field of study.

I also agree with the above, the evil queen lady should be reduced down to a single nation, and her personality and power should be based upon her charisma and ego.

Maglubiyet
2015-07-02, 01:09 PM
Reminds me a bit of Mage: the Ascension as far as how they come to master their craft.

I'd have the newly-enlightened mage be some mid-level government functionary who reached sublime mastery of the bureaucratic process. His ability to fill out the proper paperwork allows him to hide in plain sight.

Honest Tiefling
2015-07-02, 01:13 PM
Depending on how powerful magic is, she could have found a way to blow up the other countries. She could constantly send them back to the stone age to prevent them from getting many mages (who wants to be the mage of digging in the dirt for tubers?) and to demonstrate to her people that it's better if she rules.

magellan
2015-07-02, 01:16 PM
Anyway, that said, I would personally make it about a single isolated country rather than the entire world. It's pretty much unreliable that that single empress could have taken out all of the other people who were absolutely obsessed with their respective fields since at some point in history, she'd have drawn enough aggro that other people would have taken her out.




I also agree with the above, the evil queen lady should be reduced down to a single nation, and her personality and power should be based upon her charisma and ego.

I disagree.
If this lady has essentially achieved godhood in statesmanship and government how could there be another nation around? And if it was around at some point, how could it have withstood? Aggro? What are you going to do? Found a nation and build an army? She's better at that!

One thing that might be an idea though: Nations to some degree are a way of defining an "Us" vs "All those other guys". Maybe she needs an "other" to define an "us". She could allow an "evil empire" to exist, the PCs could come to the conclusion since their empire is the evil one, the other one might be good, flee to the evil empire only to slowly realize that it's actually subtly under the controll of the enternal empress.

Yukitsu
2015-07-02, 01:24 PM
Because prior to the current status quo, she wasn't unique and she's insecure enough about her personal power that she had to ban magic. That indicates that she is threatened by other powerful mages.

If she were out and about conquering everything, eventually I am going to become savvy to this and assemble the Avengers other wizards that kind of like being wizardy, and if she comes up against essentially every other wizard out there, she'll lose.

As a more meta reason, single nation worlds are often less dynamic and interesting when compared to several locations and rulers.

magellan
2015-07-02, 02:07 PM
Because prior to the current status quo, she wasn't unique and she's insecure enough about her personal power that she had to ban magic. That indicates that she is threatened by other powerful mages.

If she were out and about conquering everything, eventually I am going to become savvy to this and assemble the Avengers other wizards that kind of like being wizardy, and if she comes up against essentially every other wizard out there, she'll lose.

As a more meta reason, single nation worlds are often less dynamic and interesting when compared to several locations and rulers.

If there once where other gods of government, they obviously were worse at it than she is.
What better way to prevent the rise of another government-mage than to make sure there are no other governments?

And maybe she just prevents the rise of mages not because they are dangerous, but because they make lousy subjects. (Or just because it made a lousy world for the muggles)

Yukitsu
2015-07-02, 02:16 PM
If there once where other gods of government, they obviously were worse at it than she is.
What better way to prevent the rise of another government-mage than to make sure there are no other governments?

And maybe she just prevents the rise of mages not because they are dangerous, but because they make lousy subjects. (Or just because it made a lousy world for the muggles)

That's all pretty directly contrary to the setting the OP posited though. The age where everyone could use magic was the golden age, people were more driven, passionate and the products that they made were superior. The mundane could still strive for that state and could reap the rewards of these driven individuals. It was bad, albeit this state seems arguably worse. The Empress and her policies show that she lacks nation managing competencies and her talent wasn't in governance, it was undefined. Essentially by guaranteeing that you have an unmotivated work force, you're hampering your nation, its growth, its ability to prosper and its ability to wage war against anything else.

The other governors since it was a golden age were superior at government, what they were inferior at was fighting. However, as she spreads her conquest and influence over the world, some people are going to take notice and some of them will start buckling down and focusing on fighting or finding a strategy that would defeat her. As she goes further and further afield, her influence at home diminishes and she has to go back to quell uprisings giving time for other battered nations to find new heroes. Going too far dramatically increases the risk that she loses one day or fails to control anything at all. Especially if she is too paranoid to entrust conquering and rulership to a few close allies or friends who are also extremely powerful.

magellan
2015-07-02, 03:04 PM
But it was also a time of anarchy, as whatever tyranny a magic user imposed on a community would dissolve when that magic user died or left or got bored or was taken out by another magic user.


This is how the OP described "the golden age"
I took that to mean that she was the first rulership-mage. and made sure that there would be no others.

Yukitsu
2015-07-02, 03:24 PM
This is how the OP described "the golden age"
I took that to mean that she was the first rulership-mage. and made sure that there would be no others.

That passage notes that other mages were tyrants right in it. She was a large scale unifier, but there were mage led states before her. It comments that her rulership abilities are what powers her magic but that that's up for retcon. I would retcon it since her policies are more than a little clumsy.

Vitruviansquid
2015-07-02, 05:25 PM
First of all, thanks to everyone for the responses.

On changing the setting to one nation: I think it is important to the setting that the Ever Empress is represented as a monolithic power that seems impossible to challenge, much less defeat, and the state that she has created should be evidence for the insane magnitude of her power. The introduction of other equally powerful polities would make the game transform from one about rebellion into one about international politics or escape, which isn't exactly what I was going for. However, the idea that there is some strange other might fit in. Maybe the setting would do better with the Ever Empress as the empress of a continent or a large island, like Britain or Japan. Natural barriers prevent people from traveling away from it, but they might hear wild tall tales about how differently things work in the rest of the world.

On who is the Ever Empress, and why she created a dystopia: Although I envisioned this character to be megalomaniacal, I don't want to turn her into a cartoon villain that is purely evil and egocentric and nothing else. The Empress's job, as far as she was concerned, is to create a state that will survive and expand and remain hers. Part of the reason she wanted to get rid of all other mages was because living in the Golden Age of Magic was a lot like living in a country with no gun control laws that was also in the zone of every possible natural disaster. In short, it was unstable. In the Ever Empress's view, it was obviously more attractive to get rid of these instabilities at the source than to deal with each as they come up. The other part is that she wants to ensure the stability of her regime by ensuring nobody arises to challenge her power. It's not that she can't go personally take out most mages who arise, it's that she understands that if it took thousands of years for a mage powerful enough to conquer the island/continent/world to emerge, it might *only* be some tens of thousands of years before an even stronger mage appears who could challenge her dominance. But she's playing the long game. She wants to be in power forever, and have her state continue on forever. In any case, if what you feel is that the setting is unrealistic because the state that the mage of statecraft established is somehow bad, I would prefer to hear your suggestions about how to change it so that her state is good rather than throw that baby out with the bathwater.

On re-wording weapons to allow the possibility of a soldier-mage emerging: Eh, alright. Makes sense to me.

On But-Isn't-The-Ever-Empress's-State-Really-Bad? and Doesn't-She-Actually-Not-Need-An-Empire?: No. The need for the Ever Empress to rule a state is as primal and important as the need for self-expression, the need to find love, the need to live and procreate. Her state doesn't exist for any purpose, it *is* the purpose. Thus, the empire does not need to prosper, it merely needs to survive. The empire does not need to resist outside invasion, there are no outsiders. The empire does not need happiness, it has obedience through coercion. But isn't the empire horrifyingly fascist? Yes, and why not? Just as a masterful writer could write something uplifting as well as something terrifying, the Ever Empress could have chosen to create a state of benevolence or democracy or a state of horrifying fascism.

On systems: Why shadowrun? I haven't read it all the way through, but I was aware it was very much tied to its cyberpunk setting. I'm not familiar with Unknown Armies, but cursory examination says it's at its core a horror game. Can you tell me a little more about it, and why it'd match this setting? I think Mutants and Masterminds might be a pretty good bet, that's a good suggestion.

Yukitsu
2015-07-02, 05:51 PM
I recommended shadowrun because I can't remember the name of the medieval equivalent to that rule set. :smalltongue: Shadowrun works well for a mix of skills, difficult progression, magic that you can scale up or down as much as you want and it focuses on small groups of assassins or thieves. I'd only use shadowrun as the rules basis if the team were a bunch of bounty hunters, the combat rules simply work well for a sort of tactical focus on combat and makes mundane characters augmented with only small amounts of magic more interesting than playing mostly mundane D&D. Since it's a level free system, adding in magic and scaling it up retroactively is also a lot smoother than it is in D20 systems.

For better governance, her goal, in my view, is essentially mutually exclusive to good governance. Yes she can accomplish stability of a sort (I'd argue she actually can't.) but she is failing at doing anything that we could normally use to measure a state's success. Their ability to defend themselves without her is weaker. Their productive output is worse. The quality of life for many has dropped or is decreasing. Rather than fostering the strengths of the nation, she pushes it deliberately into weakness. A truly effective statesman wouldn't need to supress society, as a theoretically perfect statesman would be so well beloved by the people that the people would not challenge their rule. That nation, in some alternate universe would be by far more powerful. Say the same world is instead ruled by an Empress who gained her power through a passion for teaching and nurturing. By bringing out and uplifting everyone and ruling as a wise ruler. That world would have better production, far more war waging capabilities, higher quality of life and arguably more stability.

The main reason I think even her primary goal, that of stability is beyond the measure she has chosen is that people will rebel no matter how strong she is if her rule is poorly managed, and especially if the army that she uses isn't competent. Violently quashing uprisings leaving people hopeless, unmotivated and broken isn't going to create a region of stability, it's going to be a region of discontent, poverty and violence.

This can make a good world to cast a game in, but I think it should be clear that she isn't particularly skilled at governance since the goal of good governance is not simply for the state to exist. That, if anything, is the bare minimum goal that only the most inept rulers fail to accomplish.

You could go a Brave New World kind of direction and just put everyone on something like Soma tablets, but then you're no longer running a campaign world.

Vitruviansquid
2015-07-02, 07:59 PM
I recommended shadowrun because I can't remember the name of the medieval equivalent to that rule set. :smalltongue: Shadowrun works well for a mix of skills, difficult progression, magic that you can scale up or down as much as you want and it focuses on small groups of assassins or thieves. I'd only use shadowrun as the rules basis if the team were a bunch of bounty hunters, the combat rules simply work well for a sort of tactical focus on combat and makes mundane characters augmented with only small amounts of magic more interesting than playing mostly mundane D&D. Since it's a level free system, adding in magic and scaling it up retroactively is also a lot smoother than it is in D20 systems.

For better governance, her goal, in my view, is essentially mutually exclusive to good governance. Yes she can accomplish stability of a sort (I'd argue she actually can't.) but she is failing at doing anything that we could normally use to measure a state's success. Their ability to defend themselves without her is weaker. Their productive output is worse. The quality of life for many has dropped or is decreasing. Rather than fostering the strengths of the nation, she pushes it deliberately into weakness. A truly effective statesman wouldn't need to supress society, as a theoretically perfect statesman would be so well beloved by the people that the people would not challenge their rule. That nation, in some alternate universe would be by far more powerful. Say the same world is instead ruled by an Empress who gained her power through a passion for teaching and nurturing. By bringing out and uplifting everyone and ruling as a wise ruler. That world would have better production, far more war waging capabilities, higher quality of life and arguably more stability.

The main reason I think even her primary goal, that of stability is beyond the measure she has chosen is that people will rebel no matter how strong she is if her rule is poorly managed, and especially if the army that she uses isn't competent. Violently quashing uprisings leaving people hopeless, unmotivated and broken isn't going to create a region of stability, it's going to be a region of discontent, poverty and violence.

This can make a good world to cast a game in, but I think it should be clear that she isn't particularly skilled at governance since the goal of good governance is not simply for the state to exist. That, if anything, is the bare minimum goal that only the most inept rulers fail to accomplish.

You could go a Brave New World kind of direction and just put everyone on something like Soma tablets, but then you're no longer running a campaign world.

I think what you have in mind as an effective state is based on a modern, western understanding of what a state should be that measures competence in terms of GDP, military power, freedoms, quality of life, and so on. But the world that the Ever-Empress comes from is more like Qin dynasty China, the Pax Romana, Sengoku Jidai, Louis XIV. Basically, times when the overriding priorities for a ruler are to get everybody to stop killing each other, put the competing factions in line, and achieve unity.

ZamielVanWeber
2015-07-02, 08:52 PM
Unknown Armies seems to be fitting.

I'm gonna back this one up, partly because Unknown Armies ranks as my all time favorite system and one of my favorite settings. The magic system there may be a bit too subtle for your tastes though.

Yukitsu
2015-07-02, 09:23 PM
I think what you have in mind as an effective state is based on a modern, western understanding of what a state should be that measures competence in terms of GDP, military power, freedoms, quality of life, and so on. But the world that the Ever-Empress comes from is more like Qin dynasty China, the Pax Romana, Sengoku Jidai, Louis XIV. Basically, times when the overriding priorities for a ruler are to get everybody to stop killing each other, put the competing factions in line, and achieve unity.

I think if that's sort of the direction you want to go, then go for it, but I think her policies will foment constant revolts and rebellions. On that note though, we do look back and determine the quality of old empires using the lense of things like production, military power and quality of life because typically states which were successful were more productive, could give their citizens more food and goods as a result, and could field larger armies as a result. It's not measured in GDP per se, but agricultural output, trade and things like smithing are all indicative of a larger, more advanced and more successful state. Qin China, the Roman Empire, the French and to a certain extent Tokugawa Japan all had higher than average agricultural and industrial outputs, more people were benefitting from those products and their armies during the height of their power were significant.

Making her over "perfect" as you're positing however threatens to make it a very uninteresting world to inhabit for the players, especially if she's actually doing what she's trying to do. If everyone else around her is low level, she controls everything, and everyone is too afraid of her to revolt thus threatening that stability she is striving for, there isn't a lot for a player to actively engage in. There needs to be some sort of progression for our plucky heroes to work their way up before the final showdown, but in this case there's essentially either unmotivated guards who aren't allowed to advance significantly or an Empress who seems to have beaten every other mage in the entire world single handed. It also doesn't bode well since whatever method she uses to repress people seems to be flawless if she can use it all across the entire world.

vvvvvvvvv

Personally I'm still going to argue it's a dystopia, not a utopia.

TheThan
2015-07-02, 11:19 PM
Yeah the world you’re painting a picture of has no conflict, and it’s hard to adventure in a world without conflict (heck it’s hard to tell interesting stories without some form of conflict).

How about instead of a dystopia ruled by a mad sorceress queen. You instead make it a Utopia rulled by a mad sorceress queen.

And like any classic Utopia, only the upper echelons of society (those already with magic) get to live in the lap of luxury. Everyone else gets to slave away and make that utopia possible.

Vitruviansquid
2015-07-03, 12:52 AM
Well, here is how I imagine the campaign would go:

Arc 1 (Escape): The PCs and the first rebel mage escape from the government's control and establish a hidden rebel base somehow. This arc acts as one continuous, 2-3 session long journey out of a city or settlement.

Arc 2 (Survival): The PCs are tasked with finding allies to join their rebellion. This includes identifying and approaching/kidnapping people with magical potential and attempting to cause their magical powers to appear. PCs will also engage in activities like sabotage and spreading propaganda to destabilize government controls. In this arc, the empire will escalate its efforts to stop the PCs by creating its own mages, and the PCs will stumble upon a MacGuffin to finally end the reign of the Ever Empress. This arc is expected to be the longest, and last 5-however many sessions, and allow me the time to show the players how the empire works by

Arc 3 (Endgame): Upon getting their hands on the MacGuffin, the PCs will return to their base to find it attacked and the first rebel mage killed or missing. This puts the PCs in charge of the rebellion, and they are now responsible for planning the final attack into the Ever Empress's palace to use the MacGuffin and end her empire. This is also the time for a third act twist, like "The Ever Empress was dead all along, but her death was hidden and people blindly carried out her decrees," "the abuse of magic had consequences nobody but the Ever Empress ever foresaw, and should actually have been banned this whole time" or "The empire is actually like a thousand times worse than you ever thought." At its conclusion, the players will become the leaders in the next age, and decide what kind of world it is.

Arc 4 (Expansion): Should the we not all be sick of the setting and system by now, further arcs could be introduced including invasion from outside, new social upheavals, and so on.

Yukitsu
2015-07-03, 01:17 AM
But if it's just as simple as hiding somewhere to avoid her persecution, there's no way for her to have actually conquered the world. People hiding is like, the number 1 reason that some nations are hard to take over.

As well, I don't suspect this Empress would ever establish more mages to fight a group of rebels of this sort if that's the thing that she is most paranoid about, and if she hasn't needed them to maintain control in all of the previous attempts at rebelling against her, she would likely deal with this small group personally. The problem with the way she runs this state is that it has set a precedent that she doesn't trust anyone else to do things, she seems to rely on herself to do them all. If she weren't so dramatically paranoid about those policies though and ran a series of mages as her most trusted friends, confidents, lieutenants and agents from the very start, I could see this sort of thing working.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen plenty of plots that are just like this, it's just I view them as being filled with plot holes and contrivances that personally bother me but which other people are 100% OK with. Depending on your group you could easily run this, but for me, the plot wouldn't make a tremendous amount of sense.

Vitruviansquid
2015-07-03, 02:10 AM
I am honestly not seeing that any plotholes or inconsistencies if you don't have a weird fixation that everyone in the campaign world must be a stooge.

You want to start a rebellion instead of just hiding out in the hills because the government is quite ****ty, and so people want to overthrow it.

You need to do something other than just hide in the hills for the rest of your life because people will come after you.

The Empress's mages, as stated before, are supposed to have, as stated in the original post "nefarious controls and contingencies as necessary."

I mean, if you honestly cannot understand that fascism is a thing that arises sometimes, that in anarchic circumstances people have wanted fascism only to find out later that it is horrifying, and that people would then want to extinguish that fascist regime... then I hate to say it, but I don't think you understand the logic of human nature that this setting runs on.

Yukitsu
2015-07-03, 02:21 AM
I mean, if you honestly cannot understand that fascism is a thing that arises sometimes, that in anarchic circumstances people have wanted fascism only to find out later that it is horrifying, and that people would then want to extinguish that fascist regime... then I hate to say it, but I don't think you understand the logic of human nature that this setting runs on.

It does but it's peculiar that you're calling it a stable government, or that you view it as a sort of competent leadership style. My only complaint is that it shouldn't be viewed as a well run government since it should have all of the problems that were typical of fascist governments, especially if there are significant minorities within their boundaries. Having it run that way, absolutely fine. Real life and plenty of settings have had that kind of dictator. Calling them a genius in statesmanship and having their nation, especially if they conquered the entire world and all of its ethnicitys, stable, that is more troubling than anything else really but also rather strains my beliefs a bit. If you don't see anything incoherent about that and your players agree, then run it as is. Personally I'd simply make her strong point something else and just concede that she's not particularly skilled at running a government.

Vitruviansquid
2015-07-03, 03:19 AM
It does but it's peculiar that you're calling it a stable government, or that you view it as a sort of competent leadership style. My only complaint is that it shouldn't be viewed as a well run government since it should have all of the problems that were typical of fascist governments, especially if there are significant minorities within their boundaries.

Alright, so your stability problem. We are talking about a fascist state created the most transcendentally capable fascist of all time. There is 99.9999% perfect coercion with 99.9999% perfect surveillance, 99.9999% perfect integration. There is a monopoly on force and a monopoly on education. There are no outside powers to intervene. When your goal is to get people to stop killing each other, get unified, and obey you and you are not concerned with making people happy, that's "competent."

You have confused "competency at ruling" with "a style of ruling that I would like to live under." When I use the word "rule" or "statecraft," what I am talking about is the mere act of getting people to unify and do what you want them to do. No more no less. This is the kind of rule or statecraft of Qin Shi Huang, Genghis Khan, Otto Von Bismarck, Louis XIV, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It is not kind and fuzzy, but it does establish government, sometimes where none had existed before, it and gets people to do what you want. If it is impossible for you to reconcile the idea that "rulership" or "statecraft" can mean something other than establishing a western democracy, think of the Ever Empress as being transcendentally understanding of "tyranny" or "politicking" or whatnot.


Having it run that way, absolutely fine. Real life and plenty of settings have had that kind of dictator. Calling them a genius in statesmanship and having their nation, especially if they conquered the entire world and all of its ethnicitys, stable, that is more troubling than anything else really but also rather strains my beliefs a bit.

If you cannot believe that states with dictators could be stable, or if you cannot believe that it required a lot of knowledge and skill to be good at dictatoring, read some history. If you cannot believe that sometimes, people actually want things that are not compatible with the values of western democracies, you got your history and your current events to disabuse you of the notion.


If you don't see anything incoherent about that and your players agree, then run it as is. Personally I'd simply make her strong point something else and just concede that she's not particularly skilled at running a government.

Come on. Give me a break with the condescension.

Artemicion
2015-07-03, 06:44 AM
That might sound a little weird, but I would recommend watching the Lego movie for another take on a similar conflict, it might provide some inspiration - and it's surprisingly good.

Kriton
2015-07-03, 07:14 AM
I'm not familiar with Unknown Armies, but cursory examination says it's at its core a horror game. Can you tell me a little more about it, and why it'd match this setting?

Sure.

Unknown Armies is a game about the occult underground, the players are a group of occultists(or even clueless mundanes, that try to enter said underground), that form a Cabal which interacts with other Cabals, global scale conspiracies, or even cosmic powers.

Attaining magic(k) power in the game is achieved in two ways:

Having a very strong obsession and staying true to it, to the point of madness.(you could re-fluff obsession as talent)
Embodying an archetype faithfully.(you could re-fluff archetype as profession)


The horrific part of the game mechanics, is probably the system's sanity mechanic, that you can eschew if you don't think it fits the tone of your narrative. Though to tell you the truth, I use it in most games I run in any system(because I really like it), and I very rarely manage to pull off a horrific session(it mostly turns out as dark comedy, which is totally my fault).

Yukitsu
2015-07-03, 02:09 PM
Alright, so your stability problem. We are talking about a fascist state created the most transcendentally capable fascist of all time. There is 99.9999% perfect coercion with 99.9999% perfect surveillance, 99.9999% perfect integration. There is a monopoly on force and a monopoly on education. There are no outside powers to intervene. When your goal is to get people to stop killing each other, get unified, and obey you and you are not concerned with making people happy, that's "competent."

You have confused "competency at ruling" with "a style of ruling that I would like to live under." When I use the word "rule" or "statecraft," what I am talking about is the mere act of getting people to unify and do what you want them to do. No more no less. This is the kind of rule or statecraft of Qin Shi Huang, Genghis Khan, Otto Von Bismarck, Louis XIV, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It is not kind and fuzzy, but it does establish government, sometimes where none had existed before, it and gets people to do what you want. If it is impossible for you to reconcile the idea that "rulership" or "statecraft" can mean something other than establishing a western democracy, think of the Ever Empress as being transcendentally understanding of "tyranny" or "politicking" or whatnot.


It's probably safe to focus a little bit on the Qin here, as they seem to be the primary inspiration for this state. I mean, Genghis Khan and to a lesser extent, Louis the XIV were relatively liberal rulers and both of them did focus on strong economies in their own way. Toyotomi wasn't the really oppressive and stable one, that was Tokugawa, but his reign was punctuated by explosive economic growth causing a massive wealth divide between ironically poor nobles and rich peasants which did cause localized rebellions. But the Qin really were a totalitarian police state obsessed with controlling every aspect of people's lives and to one degree or another, they were successful at doing that.

The Qin dynasty is an interesting one, in that dynasty there was really only one Emperor, after he died he was replaced by a puppet which immediately fell to rebels. The thing is, this society was hyper controlling, did have a strong military, did have a strong economy but it was one where people chronically wanted to either kill the Emperor, or rebel, and as soon as the dynasty left an opening for them, the Qin did fall into instability. It's not me talking "modern western democracy" that makes me declare the Qin dynasty weak though, it was contemporaries that existed during the Qin dynasty and even prior to the Qin dynasty that wrote about how bad they were at actually running things. As far as maintaining a stable state, the Qin were an absolute failure, oppression was so bad through their reign that the people under it couldn't have done anything but rebel.

But let's just argue that this version, Qin Shi Huang got that immortality that he wanted and his vigor and rulership helped to keep the rebels down and we can call his rule effective. The reason I'd rather this either leaned along either one of those other, less controlling dictators or used a less effective version of Qin Shi Huang is because now what are the players supposed to be doing? It seems rather unbelievable that this guy's perfect security network failed to catch that one mage and the entire party, that this Empress couldn't simply personally hunt down the small cluster of rebels and kill them immediately, and with perfect integration it's even unbelievable that rebellion would be a desirable goal. It limits the setting and story far too much by giving them 99.9999% efficacy since it gives the party roughly a 0.00001% chance of succeeding barring some deus ex machina. If you do go down the Qin Shi Huang route, you're going to not want them to be as strong or effective since that leaves no realistic things that the group could do. Trying to leave the city? The citizens are too terrified of this treachery and both report it and try to stop them. A guy is starting to become a mage? He's reported by one of the people he has to stay close to and is executed. People hear of rumours of an artifact that could kill the Empress? You bet she'll reward people who tell her of it so she can destroy it. There's no were really to go here either as the entire world is under this system.

In sum, you can make the rulership 100% stable and the leader omnipotent, but it kills any campaign, or you can run the leader as faulty and have to reform your ideas of the state somewhat, but end up with possibilities for a game.

Or you can just massive deus ex machina it, but I think a lot of people view that sort of thing as bad writing.

Vitruviansquid
2015-07-03, 07:38 PM
Unfortunately, as it is now too old to be in theaters and not old enough to be on Netflix, I don't have any plans to watch the Lego Movie. :(


Sure.

Unknown Armies is a game about the occult underground, the players are a group of occultists(or even clueless mundanes, that try to enter said underground), that form a Cabal which interacts with other Cabals, global scale conspiracies, or even cosmic powers.

Attaining magic(k) power in the game is achieved in two ways:

Having a very strong obsession and staying true to it, to the point of madness.(you could re-fluff obsession as talent)
Embodying an archetype faithfully.(you could re-fluff archetype as profession)


The horrific part of the game mechanics, is probably the system's sanity mechanic, that you can eschew if you don't think it fits the tone of your narrative. Though to tell you the truth, I use it in most games I run in any system(because I really like it), and I very rarely manage to pull off a horrific session(it mostly turns out as dark comedy, which is totally my fault).

The more I read this system, the more I like it. I imagined the setting to be more heroic and less gritty than this system, but that could easily be changed. Even the horror elements of the system could be retained by making the empire more sinister in so many ways.

TheThan
2015-07-03, 08:02 PM
bunch of stuff on the Qui dynasty

Ok this gives me a lot more to work with. So let’s get going:

1) I would make sure the evil sorceress queen is not invincible and doesn’t quite have total and complete control. She’s striving for that but doesn’t quite have it. She makes sure to put up an air of invincibility but she isn’t. Rebellions pop up all the time, but are crushed all the time; maybe some of these rebellions are serious, maybe some aren’t. The point is that her kingdom isn’t as stable as she would like.

2) I would make it illegal for anyone to use magic unless they are licensed by the state. Getting a magic license is impossible for anyone except for the evil queen’s personal cronies (and puts a death mark on your head). Loyal commanders, lower tier rulers, assassins, inquisitors etc. This gives the players boss enemies to fight along with the regular military and allows you to have fun with whatever system you decide upon using (I’m still vouching for Mutants and masterminds).

3) Make sure she has an effective secret police force in place to monitor the population, root out rebellions and provide that information to the military. They might not target every disgruntled citizen, but those that get too noisy disappear mysteriously. Rumors abound about the secret police but none of them can be confirmed (come up with a creepy name for them; “secret police” is boring and a little too to the point).

4) I would also build a specialized team of magician neutralizers; and elite taskforce if you will. These guys are warriors trained to take out fledgling mages; they could even have a few mages amongst them for dealing with formidable enemies (fight magic with magic). This makes a great confrontation for players in a boss fight situation. Particularly mid campaign when they start growing in power and start making bigger splashes.

5) Make sure the population in general is terrified of her. They’ve been convinced that their evil queen is invincible, immortal, all knowing and all seeing. After all, they see these little rebellions pop up and die seemingly overnight. She also have a military and magicians under her control to force the population to submit

6) I would also drop the whole “people live a life of toil and drudgery” and instead make it more normal; but the population is terrified, have no rights, pay unfair and heavy taxes and are bullied by the people in charge. Make sure to show that this world is one of oppression, but people still have freedom of choice. I feel that removing freedom of choice like you suggest takes a tremendous amount away from the draw of an RPG and makes it much harder for players to interact with the world. After all wouldn’t they get turned in immediately if everyone was forced to be a stooge for the evil queen because of her godlike power? I wouldn’t enjoy a setting like that.

Vitruviansquid
2015-07-04, 05:21 PM
Ok this gives me a lot more to work with. So let’s get going:

1) I would make sure the evil sorceress queen is not invincible and doesn’t quite have total and complete control. She’s striving for that but doesn’t quite have it. She makes sure to put up an air of invincibility but she isn’t. Rebellions pop up all the time, but are crushed all the time; maybe some of these rebellions are serious, maybe some aren’t. The point is that her kingdom isn’t as stable as she would like.

This is basically close to my intention. The Ever Empress make fighting against her empire so difficult that it has no actually threatening rebellion for ten thousand years, but the campaign takes place after that ten thousandth year, where the planets align and there is a threatening rebellion. I'm not sure I can justify there being rebellion all the time, though. As a citizen, why would you think to rebel if you can't figure out a way to win? And as a state, why would you allow people to think they can win a rebellion if in fact they can't? I think it makes more sense for one person to stumble upon a super weapon (magic), and then figure out that a rebellion might just work with that super weapon, and then rebel.


2) I would make it illegal for anyone to use magic unless they are licensed by the state. Getting a magic license is impossible for anyone except for the evil queen’s personal cronies (and puts a death mark on your head). Loyal commanders, lower tier rulers, assassins, inquisitors etc. This gives the players boss enemies to fight along with the regular military and allows you to have fun with whatever system you decide upon using (I’m still vouching for Mutants and masterminds).

This could work, but I also want the players to have a segment of the campaign where they can be the only ones in the game with access to magic. Give them that feeling of power and specialness for a session or two before taking it away. Maybe the empire could have non-magical weapons that are extremely menacing, like powerful beasts or elaborate, but technologically primitive weaponry.

As for how the state's mages work, I was originally thinking of making them all mind-controlled or lobotomized or mages that are linked to a hive mind with the Empress controlling them like puppets. But it would also make sense that there are some very very few people that the Empress allows to have magical powers and free will - they might start appearing in the endgame and represent an even more powerful kind of boss than the mind controlled mages.


3) Make sure she has an effective secret police force in place to monitor the population, root out rebellions and provide that information to the military. They might not target every disgruntled citizen, but those that get too noisy disappear mysteriously. Rumors abound about the secret police but none of them can be confirmed (come up with a creepy name for them; “secret police” is boring and a little too to the point).


This should certainly exist. What I imagine, though, is they're less about controlling public sentiment and more about controlling state secrets. For example, bureaucrats who get too close to the education system and start figuring out that people aren't put in jobs they are most apt for might be disappeared. Anyone who starts to question why the word "heresy" is applied to technology might be disappeared.


4) I would also build a specialized team of magician neutralizers; and elite taskforce if you will. These guys are warriors trained to take out fledgling mages; they could even have a few mages amongst them for dealing with formidable enemies (fight magic with magic). This makes a great confrontation for players in a boss fight situation. Particularly mid campaign when they start growing in power and start making bigger splashes.

I think this point could deserve a lot more exploration. I'll think about it awhile (and ask others in the thread to do the same) and then see what ideas we can generate on this.


5) Make sure the population in general is terrified of her. They’ve been convinced that their evil queen is invincible, immortal, all knowing and all seeing. After all, they see these little rebellions pop up and die seemingly overnight. She also have a military and magicians under her control to force the population to submit

I think it takes some understanding of other types of government for citizens to think as you have described. After generations - eras, even - of the same government being in power, and the same controls being applied, my imagination is that people will have learned to live with it. From what I've read about life under currently existing totalitarian states, they really change the way people think and behave.

So yes, there would be terror of the Empress - in the sense that if you went around saying stuff like "I don't think the Ever Empress is really as powerful as they say" or "I don't think the Ever Empress is what's best for us" everyone will tell you to cut it out before the authority takes you out. But people's relationship to a dictator after generations of being state-controlled education and being beaten down by 1984-esque force should be more complicated than that. I think there would be some mixture of terror with adoration, a perverse loyalty, and even worship. In fact, I think it would work like the ancient Greeks' relationship to Zeus.


6) I would also drop the whole “people live a life of toil and drudgery” and instead make it more normal; but the population is terrified, have no rights, pay unfair and heavy taxes and are bullied by the people in charge. Make sure to show that this world is one of oppression, but people still have freedom of choice. I feel that removing freedom of choice like you suggest takes a tremendous amount away from the draw of an RPG and makes it much harder for players to interact with the world. After all wouldn’t they get turned in immediately if everyone was forced to be a stooge for the evil queen because of her godlike power? I wouldn’t enjoy a setting like that.

I don't think that this is necessary. The campaign begins, as it were, the exact moment that freedom of choice is introduced back to a group of people with the rediscovery of magic and the establishment of a rebellion. Everything that puts the setting in a stasis changes for the PC's when they suddenly find out that magic is real, and not just in made-up crazy stories about a mythological past.