Fractured Cosmos or Unified World?
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So I was wanting to get people's opinions on something.
Let's say you're running a multisplat game (as I'm planning on doing)
I've seen that historically, people want to keep things separate, as it leads to mages (typically) getting involved in everything and then solving plots with relative ease compared to other splats.
On one level, I can appreciate that, and on another level, it makes no sense to me. Aren't all the characters sharing a shared world? Why wouldn't they know what's going on if it's interesting enough or makes a big enough impact?
So, my questions to the MSBers is: How do you find a balance between one and another? What approach is best? How would you do it? Is there a way to achieve balance?
Would love people's thoughts on this. Thanks!
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It would be best to include in your CharGen a little slot: 'What sort of story are you looking for?' Then list like twelve general options, and one spot for custom answer. Some people see Mage as basically Desrin, or Constantine. Others think it's uh, whatever Cumberbatch played. Lord Fate? Supreme Wizard? I can't remember. Anyways. Mechanically they're mortal until they're not. Some peeps want to have Proxy Wars and be vampires, others wanna be monsters.
As for sharing the same world, I mean, sure. Yes. They all share the same space, except like in The Witcher, that space can change due to perspective, blood-type, day of the week, or just cosmic meddling.
I personally always refer back to the vampire books mentioning 'weird people' who are better just dead. Maybe they sparkle gold or something. Also mages referring to vampires in: 'lol, they're real and they will eat or enslave you, avoid them when possible.'
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Helps to define your terms a bit.
What do you mean by balance?
What do you want/what are you comfortable with as a gamerunner?
How much conflict resolution do you want to deal with intra- and inter-sphere?
I'm not putting together a WoD game but I am slowly putting together one that has multiple layers of shared experience (having to really think about people in the same scene experiencing the world around then in vastly different ways, and how you tie that together both in scene running and code. Totally separate scene/cut off from each other? Trying to do a mixed company scene? It can get complicated fast). It also has a lot of factions and themes that could very quickly turn into pvp.
My solution is to remove some archetypes/groups from play thar rely heavily on cracking down on the types of pcs that I want to center stories on (limiting spheres in wod terms). I also decided on number of pc caps, alt limits, and focusing on highly personalized storytelling (narrowing the scope and focus a lot more than is feasible for an open invite mush imo). So the balancing of storytelling and attention is very much on an individual level.
Trying to incorporate a different experience of reality between pcs in the same scene/combat has been the sticking point and while I think we have a good idea of how to solve it until we have a chance to test in active rp vs just regular testing it won't really be known.
But anyway. The decisions I'm making revolve around what I have time for, what I have mental energy for as a storyteller/game runner, and the ooc environment i want to encourage. I anticipate the scope and other things may broaden over time and interest of the players s but maybe not if the group is having fun where it is at. I do not have the capacity for high need outliers though, I know that for sure.
Everyone is different though. I feel that focusing on what I thought was realistic for me to have fun and enjoy things was a better basis for deliberate and honest game decisions than a more vague or aspirational approach; some people will be the opposite.
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Give the various splats something for them, and only them, to do. And try to enforce that delineation.
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@chibichibi By 'various splats', are you talking about different' 'spheres' (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling) being joined together, or different universes (Marvel/DC, Star Wars/Star Trek, etc.) being joined?
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@chibichibi Assuming WoD: enforce drawbacks. Paradox exists for a reason, afterall.
Assuming not-WoD... enforce drawbacks. Really, enforce drawbacks on everybody.
