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Record Keeping [Mar. 11th, 2007|01:10 pm]

foreign_devilry
Before we forget, we just talked about the four players keeping track of different things over the course of the game. Suggestions we had were:

The Dream People keep a bestiary of nightmares, all the monsters that spring from the minds of the heroes and plague the world.

The Door People keep charts of which paths lead where, a sacred gazetteer of the physical and spiritual geography of the world.

The Fate People we didn't talk about. It seems to make sense that they might track the sun and the motions of the heavenly bodies, marking the movement of days, seasons, and the passing of time.

The Dead keep track of life, like the Norns, measuring the threads of existence so they can tell who's living and who's a ghost lingering behind unnaturally.
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Four Nations Wiki [Dec. 3rd, 2006|09:32 pm]

foreign_devilry
This is mainly for our spectators. At my request, Thomas has set up the Four Nations Wiki and Shreyas has already subdivided it into pretty categories and posted most of his own work (in the Dream category). I imagine that, in the future, most of our work on this project will be posted there.
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Ainu Names & Nameish Words [Dec. 3rd, 2006|02:55 pm]

unrequitedthai
This is just for my reference...

According to Harukor, Ainu parents give their children a pet name which they use publicly. Around puberty, children are given an adult name, which is kept mostly secret, but given to close friends and family members. It seems like children without adult names don't generally know the secret names of their family members.

Secret names are also used at sacred rituals.

Nameish words:
Pananpe and Penanpe - folkloric figures
Konkani, Shirokani - gold, silver
Hakketek - giant scallop
Ponyanpe - folkloric hero

Nicknames:

Males
Resak
Akihi
Petennouk
Unayanke
Shiratekka
Apniainu
Shitekka
Shinriki
Menkakush
Itakshir
Pasekur
Shitona
Munkeke
Shiromainu

Females
Opere
Hotene
Ipokash
Umakashte
Umoshmatek
Toitoi
Etunrachich
Horpecha
Monashir
Unkatuye
Huisak
Katkemat

Adult Names:
Harukor - having food
Turushno - covered with grime
Isonash - great hunter
Resunotek - skilled at child-rearing
Keutoranke
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Black Stone City [Nov. 6th, 2006|02:36 pm]

unrequitedthai
Not good yet; it has the form but doesn't feel right.

In the endless night when the world was new, Hungry Darkness said to Celestial Baker, "What dinner have you for me tonight?"

Celestial Baker replied, "I do not know."

"Then bring me the white bird that flies round the world."

Celestial Baker bowed and went to capture the bird. Having done so, he looked for a plate to roast it on. He looked in his pantry; the plates there were too small. He asked Hell Charioteer to lend him a wagon wheel, but the white bird burnt it away with its heat. He tried to boil it in the ocean, but it boiled all the waters away.

Finally, scouring the earth, he found a great iron disc, strewn with salt crystals and bundles of herbs. "Someone has done half my cooking for me," he said.

He put the white bird on the tray and baked it in the Celestial Oven. The bird would not cook, however! The herbs turned dry and the salt turned dark in the smoke. The bird's radiance increased and increased, and finally, the iron disc melted into an iron stream, and, carrying the herbs and salt crystals with it, it flowed back into the world.

Celestial Baker opened the oven door at last, and the white bird flew out of it in a great blast of smoke and heat. It flew away, and Celestial Baker meanwhile went to inform Hungry Darkness that he would be going hungry tonight.

In the endless night when the world was new, a king without a kingdom came to the shores of an iron lake, and saw a black stone palace floating in the centre...
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The Dead and the Yi [Nov. 5th, 2006|02:27 pm]

foreign_devilry
From The Age of Wild Ghosts by Erik Mueggler (U Michigan):

    Long ago, the living [tso] could see the dead [ne], and the dead could see the living. Living and dead both attended the market: one that side of the street the dead sold their things; on this side the living sold theirs; and the dead took the same form as the living. At that time, they used copper money, not paper. The dead used paper to stamp out coins that looked just like the copper coins of the living, and with this money they bought things from the living. But the living were not to be trifled with. They put the coins in a pan of water: the real coins made of copper sank, and the paper coins made by the dead floated. They returned the false money to the dead, and gradually the dead could no longer buy from the living; they could buy only from other dead. If your father died, you could go to the market the next day and see him. But it was not permitted for living and dead to speak to each other. The dead were punished if they spoke to the living -- their officials taxed and fined them -- and the living were afriad to speak to the dead. So living and dead could only look at each other. Then, as now, the dead sometimes harmed [ko, literally "bit"] the living, but the living could beat the dead in return, so the dead had no power over them. Disgusted with this situation, the dead petitioned for a bamboo sieve to be set up between themselves and the living. The living could see the dead only vaguely, but the dead [being closer to the sieve's holes] could see the living clearly. The living did not like this, for the sieve was too thick to beat the dead through. The living were stupid: some say they asked for a paper screen to be placed on their side of the street; they could beat the dead through the paper, but they could not see them at all.


So the main difference between Yi practices and the Four Nations is that, among the Four Nations, the sieves were never erected. But the living and the dead are still not permitted to talk to each other, the dead still occasionally bite the living, and the living are still able to beat the dead.
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Internal Memos (2) [Oct. 24th, 2006|07:41 pm]

foreign_devilry
So, I was thinking about the way that Journey to the West (sorry, I cannot find an electronic text, but compare wp's entries for Xuanzang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanzang) and (linked from previous) Xuanzang-as-a-fictional-character) works; the epic takes a real historical person and series of events and makes it into a lurid mythical account.

This is awesome. I think you can see the application, and I have some thoughts about the form... it's pretty clear that what the fiction is doing is taking the story and exulting it with preexisting mythical tropes (which is dude awesome).

So, I think the dream peoples' method of telling stories as dramas or dreams supports and induces this... they may even retell their more interesting dreams in the form of stories, and they have a good chance of surviving and turning into folklore.

So it'd be interesting if it's possible to simply skip the base state and jump right into 'exulted by mythical tropes'... I'm not sure how to induce this yet, but it's there in my head.

Shreyas

-----

I, too, have been thinking some about 4N. Unfortunately it's not been the cool colorful stuff that everyone else has been thinking. No, my thoughts are pretty mundane, but they seem important to me...

My concern at the moment is this: are the 4 Nations races or cultures? Which is just a fancy way of saying: must you be _born_ a Dreamer or Door and thus use dreaming and door magic? Must you be dead to learn the magic of the dead? (These are actually separate but related questions.)

The problem is that I don't know what answer I prefer. My egalitarian side says 'Screw birth, it's all culture. You can learn any of the magics if you have the time/resources/whatever.' But the story-telling structure we seem to be aiming to emulate seems to be pretty well focused on the rare and unduplicatable greatness of the few. None can compare to the heroes because no one is fated to have their power. No matter how hard you work you won't be as great.

So, thoughts?

Thomas

-----

Personally, I try to avoid thinking in racialist terms, because the idea of "race," at least as we understand it, is largely a modern invention, a result of the study of genetics and breeding and what not.

The dream people are dream people because their ancestors were dream people, because their parents were dream people, and because they were raised as dream people. With this kind of pedigree, what else could they be?

If a mature dream person went to live among the door people, they would still be a dream person, even if they lived for 40 years among the door people and died there, even if they dressed and lived exactly as the door people do. That doesn't make them any more a door person, it just makes them less of a dream person, since people from their homeland would not instantly recognize them as a fellow dream person.

However, if the baby of two dream people was kidnapped or sold or adopted into a house owned by door people, was raised as a door person, and etc. They would most likely be considered a door person. If they discovered their true parentage later in life, they might journey to the lands of the dream people, but the people there would not recognize them. If they could prove they were the offspring of dream people, the dream people would be unsure about how to view them. Some would welcome them in, but the newcomer would still not know the ways of the dream people and would still act like a door person. So some people would continue to view them as a door person.

I would rather not view the cultural gifts of the Four Nations to be "magic." Think of them as a kind of cultural heritage, like calligraphy or painting or theatre traditions or storytelling or a religious tradition. Anyone can learn how to do it with the proper training and such training should begin when they are very young if they expect to be any good. Lots of people can do it on a fuctional level, but only a few really excell to become masters. There are some self-taught laymen who are quite good, but most of the true greats learned from other masters.

Basically, I want the Four Nations to work like real cultures work in the real world. No special innate magic powers. No X-Men. No Exalts. No chosen few with special powers. There is certainly a cultural elite, who are not necessarily the same as the political elite, but are clearly tied into them through patronage and the like.

Anyway, that's my perspective on the whole thing.

Jonathan

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I think we talked a little about this, and what we tossed around was, like, culture lubricates magic, basically. Because you live in Njaaluwe-in-Dreams, you're surrounded by rich dream images and lots of people can teach you sleeping arts, whereas if you tend to hang around Heart of the Sun, you have to handle the many languages of fate, and that means that you tend to develop pattern-analysis skills.

I do like the idea of a compromise position where it is not uncommon for people to have intensely unbalanced talents, almost always in favor of their birth. I believe in a world where all the cultures have mixed races in them, but each culture also has a racial core - you don't have to have misty green-grey eyes and wavy hair to be part of the dream kingdom, but certainly the hereditary lords have always been like that, and of course the night theatres take great care to keep their blood pure.

(I suspect that this comes out of my experience of India, and, like, the tendency of creators to create in their own image.)

> On the Heroes

Hm.

I don't think that you can/should talk about heroes in an egalitarian manner. If you say, "Any random dude could have done this, but as it happened it was Lord Sunmoontree..." it's got a lot less force and energy than, "Many men tried and died because they were not equal to the task, and then Lord Sunmoontree said, 'I am the only one who remains; I will do it because I must'." (I didn't deliberately cast that in storybook language against the casual language of the first but I think it works as an illustration of, how DO you cast the first in storybook language anyway?)

Greatness is inherent to few anyway. Let us revel in it.

But at the same time, we were not originally intending to tell hero myths, which is an interesting conflict. I think it could be understood as 'putting the humanity in our heroes', because presumably all the tellers know of the grandeur of the hunting of the sun or other precipitatory event, and they are biographing the heroes of that thing. Nonetheless, I don't think there is a worthwhile story that looks at the deficiencies of the many, instead of attending to the excellency of the few. It's a question of focus, and if you focus on the backdrop then obviously you will miss all the action.

Shreyas
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Internal Memos (1) [Oct. 24th, 2006|07:24 pm]

foreign_devilry
What if the thing that binds all the heroes together is their participation in The Hunting of the Sun, either as hunters or as those trying to protect the great bird from those who would shoot it down? That could be the Troy-equivilent for the people of the Four Nations, like the hunting of the White Stag (Narnia) or the hunt of the Caledonian Boar. But also something with relevance in East Asian myth, with Hou Yi's shooting of the nine suns.

I kinda wish it could be something equally mythic and nutzo, but less violent, just to break with the roleplaying tradition. But I'm hard-pressed to come up with something with the same gut-wrenching power as the Hunt of the Sun.

I also wonder if we need an odd number of heroes. Like 2-3 for each nation (giving us 8 or 12) and then one who is not a member of any nation and "neither of the living nor the dead." I have no idea what such a hero would look like, but there are some cool options players could choose from. They could be a dream, for instance, or a being from the City on the Moon. That would also let us refer to the heroes as the "Eight Plus One" or "Twelve Plus One" which is kinda awesome.

Just some ideas.
Jonathan

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There is an Aztec myth of the god Nanahuatzin, who perpetually dies in fire so that the sun should continue to shine.

That's what I thought of when you said, 'less violent'; maybe slaying the sun is a kind of mythic necessity which enables the world to continue, rather than a hand upraised in rebellion against the natural order.

Shreyas

-----

That could work. I was also thinking that, if the sun has been slain, maybe you're supposed to play the game at night, with the lights off, using candles or lamplight or a very dim electric lamp. That might enhance the ritual feel and get us accused of being a cult.

Another random thought: there are no animals in the Four Nations, only escaped dreams that have gained independence and interbred. So maybe you have wild and domesticated creatures, but they are all highly individualized. Perhaps there are clear species, based on thematic associations (like Pokemon!), but the offspring of a given union may not necessarily look anything like their parent dreams. This could let Shreyas get his monster hunter thing on with the dream people.

Also, I just found this amazing book of Yi ethnography called "The Age of Wild Ghosts," so I think The Dead are going to be modelled on the Yi. Perhaps the language and general cultural trappings (dress, some myths, design style, etc.) of each nation could be modeled on a different lesser known Asian people? Like a sub-national people, an ethnic group (historial or modern) without a nation-state of their own. I can think of dozens of cool possibilities off the top of my head, just within China, and I'm sure South and Southeast Asia have a ton as well, not to mention the Pacific Islands.

I can definitely see the Fate people having a linguistic situation like the Papuan languages, where you have 800 semi-related languages and speakers just wade through the patterns that connect them together.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papuan_languages

Jonathan

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> On Dream Animals

This is cool. I am not sure like how on-board everyone would be with it, but I am happy with basically any iteration of "dream animals exist", ranging from "some animals are dream animals and are therefore sort of odd" to the more extreme version you descrive above.

> On Cultures

This is cool.

It will also allow me to play anthropologist and be like, "What would this culture look like after five thousand years of being the most populous people in the world", which is sweet.

Ainu for me.

(We should definitely like talk about these different cultures you can think of at great length when opportunity allows.)

Shreyas

-----

I like the hunting of the sun idea a lot. Maybe it could be part of a a long ritual cycle that takes up a week or longer, including a bit at the end where the sun gets revived somehow.

I'm not sure I like the idea of ALL animals being escaped dreams. I guess it's because it makes the dreamers kind of way more important than everyone else in terms of creating the ecosystem of the world. And the idea of a world that started out entirely humans kinda weirds me out. :)

> On Cultures

That does sound pretty cool, although I'm not sure how much research I'll be able to do. Is there a Wikipedia category for "obscure Asian cultures"? :)

Selene

-----

Well, Shreyas wanted my opinions on this as well, so here are a bunch:

BIG MOMMA LINKS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethnic_groups_in_Asia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Indigenous_peoples_of_Asia

MORE SPECIFIC LINKS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_aborigines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_peoples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoyedic_peoples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_peoples

Jonathan
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The Wily Maiden [Oct. 24th, 2006|08:32 pm]

foreign_devilry
This is a the Four Nations version of the Scheherazade story, a.k.a. "The Crafty Girl Who Fools The King." I figure everyone has these kinds of stories, because they are awesome.

How the Slave Nadiya Became Queen in Life and Death

King Ryatat was traveling through the island villages, observing the workings of the Pattern. He spent the night in the company of the slave Nadiya, with whom he was most impressed.

In the morning, Nadiya said "Take me with you and I promise to serve you day & night, up until the very moment of your death."

And so it was.

Nadiya served the King for many years, day and night, but in due time she was struck by a wild fever and seemed on the edge of death.

The King came to her and knelt by her bed, thanking Nadiya for her many years of selfless service.

But Nadiya said "My promise is not yet fulfilled, O King. If I die, I will not travel directly to the Far Reaches but will stay and serve you until the very moment of your death. So that when you die I might accompany you on your journey."

This unnerved the King, who did not like to meddle with the Dead. He asked Nadiya if there was any way he could release her so that she might depart in peace.

And Nadiya said "Marry me and make me the head of all your wives so that, when I die, I can proceed to the Far Reaches as Queen of the Pattern and thus have the authority to properly prepare for your arrival."

To the great consternation of his existing wives, the King agreed. He married the slave Nadiya and named her Queen of the Pattern.

However, on their wedding night, the wild fever lept out of Nadiya and into the King, who soon died.

Consequently, all the King's wives, royal guards, servants, horses, camels, and dogs were executed. They became a great caravan of the Dead, one that would comfortably bear the great King of the Pattern to the Far Reaches where the sun shines not.

But Nadiya was not among them.

The King was very angry at this. He went to his Queen and demanded that she take her proper place at his side, so that they might journey to the Sunless Lands together.

But Nadiya said "I promised to serve you until the very moment of your death, O King. But I will serve you no longer, for that moment has passed."

And so the King of the Pattern traveled to the Land of the Dead bereft of his dearest wife.

And Nadiya ruled the south as Queen of the Pattern for a further 50 years. She married a few men and women that managed to win her heart and named her favorite as King.

And when she died all her wives and husbands escorted her to the Far Reaches where she ruled another 50 years as Queen of the Dead.

And so the slave Nadiya became Queen In Life And Death.
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Three Old Men [Oct. 16th, 2006|03:34 pm]

unrequitedthai
The Grandfather
The Grandfather is stooped and his hands are folded in his lap. He speaks slowly and is nearly always smiling. He drinks his tea with both hands round the cup.

The Hermit
The Hermit sits straight up, and he has a death-grip on whatever is in his right hand. His voice is shrill and he does not listen or agree, only objects.

The Veteran
The Veteran always keeps one hand at his side - that arm was injured in the war. He is quick and alert but not at all creative. He does not see the better side of things, but is ready to adapt to a hardship.
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Discussion 3 [Sep. 21st, 2006|04:19 pm]

foreign_devilry
Reading the first few discussions, it's interesting to see what people selectively chose to remember or emphasize. What I remember, mixed with my current inclinations:

Four Nations is very much modeled on board games. The idea is: it comes in a box with a map/board (maybe?) and booklets. One booklet is for each player. You need four players to play. Each player takes on the role of a great storyteller of their nation. The Four Nations are composed of the people of Dreams, the people of Fate, the people of Doors, and the people who are Dead. Each of the nations has an epic storytelling tradition. Each tradition is rather different: some may be based on dance or music, some may involve gestures, some may involve props, some may involve reciting poems in the middle of stories, and they all have their own structural and performative elements. Each booklet tells one player how to play and gives them guidelines for playing. Each player interfaces with the game differently.

The four storytellers from Four Nations are coming together for a sacred, ritual purpose, but also one that's based on entertainment. My brother recently wrote about when the Illiad was first written down, which has been a major inspiration (Shreyas, Thomas: I'll send you a copy of the paper). Apparently, before the Illiad was a written text, it was a storytelling tradition, meaning that the different episodes were told slighty or significantly differently by whoever was reciting a piece of it. But that, for special occasions, kings would bring a group of storytellers together and have them recite the whole thing, from beginning to end, taking turns (because it was way too long for any one person to tell). And one of these occasions may have been when the text was first written down in full. The Chronicle of Four Nations (as Shreyas called it) is an event like that.

A century ago, four great storytellers came together and gave the first public performance of the complete Chronicle, the components of which had long been told throughout the Four Nations. Here, at last, was the entire record of the great heroes of their age, the ones who set the sun on its path and visited the city on the moon, and discovered where the Door people went when they went away, and saw even the lands of the Dead, hidden in darkness. The Chronicle was pieced together by four great storytellers of the past from the stories their traditions shared, but also the stories unique to their nation. Everyone knows that the great hero of the Dead helped restore the sun to the sky, but only the Dead know what happened once he returned to Most Beautiful Cage.

However, the telling of the complete Chronicle happened just that once. No one has heard the entirely of the tales for a hundred years. But now the Four Nations have decided to tell the Chronicle again. Four storytellers have spent months going over the 100-year-old notes of their predecessors and talking to those old enough to have heard the original Chronicle. Perhaps they even travelled to the lands of the Dead, like the heroes of old, and sought out the original performers of the Chronicle, practicing with them on the dark wastes beyond the moonlight.

In any case, when playing Four Nations, this is what you are doing: recreating the Chronicle with the assistance of your fellow storytellers, using both the traditions of the past and the newer traditions of the present, using the notes of your predecessors, but also your own ingenuity. In summery, it is a ritual event, with all of the characteristics that apply to such things.

This is where I'm at right now. There are a lot of other details we talked about, but I think it's important to lay the foundation first, so we're all on the same page.
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Characters in Crisis: The Sleeping Queen [Sep. 19th, 2006|09:41 pm]

unrequitedthai
In the black stone palace of Njaaluwe-in-Dreams there is a room draped in dark curtains, the royal hall.

Two thrones sit there, facing one another. Between them is a table with a mirror, a comb, and a flask of wine.

One throne is the throne of the king. Usually it is empty, because the king of the city of dreams is very involved with his people, and is more easily found in the tangled streets outside.

The other throne is the throne of the sleeping queen. For longer than anyone remembers, a woman has been sleeping here. She wears a silver crown in the ancient style, with unfaceted gems and the bones of tiny dragons. We dare not wake her. We dare not move her to the Hall of Sleepers, for she fidgets and mutters when we try. So it is that Njaaluwe-in-Dreams has only ever had one queen, and in her hall it is dark and we speak in whispers, with horse-headed violins and the whining of iron flutes to play lullabies over our voices.

The Crises

The Sleeping Queen wakes up.

You are the Sleeping Queen. You wake, you take up the mirror and comb your hair. You wet your throat with the wine, and you rise from your throne.

Njaaluwe-in-Dreams has changed, and you are going to change it back.

The palace is the queen's dream. The royal family of Njaaluwe is scattered and injured. The king is unconscious and the queen is missing. Forces move to usurp the throne.

The sun is the queen's dream. Who can dream something glorious enough to push back the darkness?

The Sleeping Queen has become a monster. She makes terrible, hard-hearted decrees. They will destroy the city, and no one will fight her but you.

You have always loved the Sleeping Queen. Will she love you back?
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Discussion 2 [Sep. 19th, 2006|01:41 am]

unrequitedthai
Hopefully Jonathan and Shreyas will do the same, so we can see just how different our impressions of the conversation were.

Well, fine, Thomas. My thoughts:

Interfaces

What was most important to me about this discussion was the excitement and energy over the idea of different interfaces, and the beautiful ideas we had for them. The concept, see, is that Four Nations runs on one central engine, but each nation interacts with that engine differently.

There's some thought that the players have some palette of recurring heroes that appear in all the stories; when you compile them, you get a sprawling, interlinked epic, something more like Three Kingdoms than Edith Hamilton's Mythology.

Some ideas we had for this:

Ritual Roles. Each story has several slots in it, like, "The Maiden," "The Prince," "The Barbarian King," &c. You the player slot whatever recurring heroes you're using into these roles to determine what's going down in your instance of the story.

Props. Mechanical force is held in various symbolic props. You might have a folding fan that stands in for doors and swords and wings and so forth; you can use this to make forceful statements. See The Mirror I Face for a crude implementation of this.

Location-Based. Rather than presenting stories as sequences of events, they are presented as a tense situation which is disrupted by the entrance of the wandering heroes. Maybe they react differently depending on who the heroes are.

This isn't actually based on a strong concept of the core engine, so they are sort of pie-in-the-sky at the moment. I'm really excited at the directions we are looking, though.

Archetypes

We talked a little about the nature of the heroes that the Chronicle of Four Nations is concerned with. I'm really excited by making them sort of ciphers—the textual evidence for what they are like is scarce, only enough to identify them as vague archetypes.

I have been trying to do this somewhat in my work for the game already, resisting naming characters and characterising them too much. In The Road of Five Flavors, the princes and princesses are actually named after the flavors, except for Temur and Temulun who are named after iron. The other characters are, I hope, equally abstract: the king of the city in dreams, the dragon Gloom, the hero whose name is forgotten...

Packaging

We also talked about book formats, binding, and so on; Thomas wants to make the game so that it contains all-you-need-to-play in a box, and sometimes I want to tell him I think that's lame. See, it's cool and fun and it has its tactile appeal, but I think that it makes the game more appealing, makes it physically draw you in better and connects you to it better, if it asks you to bring in some things from your life. Suppose that you need some leaves to play; get them from your garden. Suppose you need several bowls; get them from your kitchen. This is like, way better, and it makes the game something I can feel good about buying and feel good about recommending to my friends to buy. I would rather it be a financially accessible product that asks you to be a little crafty than a really costly product that's perfectly out-of-the-box.

Similarly, I'm not so big on this idea that we pass around one group's records of play, but only because I don't find that other people produce play I find particularly interesting. I play with the people I play with because they are creatively compatible with me; we interest each other. You're welcome to do this, Thomas, and you have my blessing. My heart won't be in it, though.

More importantly, though, we talked about the game's appearance, which is essential. We talked about having the different nationbooks bound and laid out differently, which is fantastic; it means that you'll always know which book is which. Colour schemes and stuff can differ too, and styles of interior art. I think the navy-cyan-bronze-gold style of the map, and its geometric formalism, feels appropriate for the people of fate; I imagine the dream people relying on more organic shapes and motifs rather than patterns; maybe their colours are navy-crimson-silver-black, or something more lush, white-lime-vermillion-bronze. In any case, the colour schemes and graphic motifs will overlap and interlock, enough to make it clear that the four subsets are part of a single visual identity.

One of my favorite packaging ideas is to present the game as a boxed-set of books, in a very plain navy blue box, with a simple logo to identify it. It should be something that looks at home in an old, dusty library.

I'm also pretty excited about making special hand-bound editions for friends-and-family. It would be thrilling to make a game that's not just an artifact (think of Keith's untitled), but actually an heirloom. I'm thinking of like carved cedar chests here, fine old props scavenged from an antiques store in China, books of rare papers.

This is clearly at odds with the disposable story-book aesthetic that Thomas champions; we'll have to resolve that. I'm confident we will.

More later; those are not all my thoughts, no.
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Ongoing discussions [Sep. 18th, 2006|10:57 pm]
lordsmerf
Sunday Jonathan, Shreyas, and I had a long three-way phone conversation. It was about an hour and a half. We talked a lot about the project.

My take-away from such a long conversation is, necessarily, limited. But I thought I'd share. Hopefully Jonathan and Shreyas will do the same, so we can see just how different our impressions of the conversation were.

The stuff that stuck with me was mostly related to discussions of physical object and design. One of the things about the project that has excited me from the very beginning is the idea that you write in the book. The book is used up in play, and it contains a record of what happened. The coolest part of the conversation to me was discussion of this sort of thing.

Remember that all of this is tentative. It may all end up being in the final production, but maybe none of it will. This is just what we talked about, or at least my interpretation of that discussion.

So, there's a core book. You don't write in it. It has all the rules and stuff. Then there are four books of stories. These are smaller. I think they'll probably be something like 16-page saddle-stitched affairs. These you write in. And you replace them when you fill them.

Each book has a set of stories. I'm envisioning them taking up two facing pages, so you lay the book open and you have all the story stuff you need. There are between five and eight stories in a book. Each player gets a different book. So someone has the book of Fate stories, and someone has the book of Dream stories.

The stories themselves are sketchy. They have titles, like 'The Tale of the Immortal Fisherman' and 'How the Golden Princess Built Her Palace'. They also have some characters and some places and (maybe) some events, but they're all vague. Further, each of these things is full of blank space. You are supposed to write down important stuff about each one. Maybe even important mechanical stuff.

You must play the stories in the book in order. You can't play the second story of the Fate book until you've played the first. But nothing controls which book you choose the next story from. So you might tell four stories in a row from one book, or you might cycle through a story from each book in turn, or you might switch back and forth between two books.

This allows you to construct an over-arching story that is unique, but still allows stories to refer to previous ones. So the third story in the Fate book might make use of stuff from the first story because you will have already done that story. At the same time, the context of each story will be shaped by stuff you've done in other books.

Once you've played each story in each book, you're done. That's the campaign. This allows for some broad pacing stuff. You can play a shorter campaign by simply playing a single book. Add more books for longer campaigns.

This also allows us to do what I consider to be functional supplements. A new book of stories is added content. If you want some new stories of a given type you can buy them, but it's not going to hurt your ability to play if you don't. Also, it will be great if we can keep those books cheap. 16-page saddle-stitched books should be pretty affordable.

One other cool thing that all of this does is it allows you to do some cool sharing stuff. A group might upload its record of a story, and then some other group might play the next story from the book using the first group's record. And they might in turn pass their record to a third group. That gets me pretty excited.

Thomas
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Morning Conversation [Sep. 10th, 2006|01:57 pm]

foreign_devilry
Jonathan: Thomas' new posts about publishing drip with Four Nations
Shreyas: yes
Jonathan: i'm really into this idea of the four storytellers from 4 great storytelling traditions.
but that their storytelling styles don't really match and have to be negotiated
Shreyas: yeh i like it a lot too
Jonathan: it's gonna be hard, though.
Shreyas: i have been thinking about dance a lot lately because of current events
Jonathan: designing 4 games that interact effectively?
Shreyas: i am not sure that it is like in any way relevant
Jonathan: ooh, well, we could make one a dancer
steal from Mri and other stuff.
Shreyas: it would be kind of neat to have like a textual trademark
like in everything i write you can find someone dancing
Jonathan: heh.
seems like the dream speaker shouldn't be the dancer, though
they have enough neat stuff going on already
Shreyas: yeah, i agree
i think the dream speaker is someone who's like quite old and not like infirm
Jonathan: Fate would be cool, or the Door people.
Shreyas: but more like Iroh
Jonathan: cool.
Shreyas: sort of like a bit creaky
Jonathan: yeah, i kinda wonder if the Speakers (which is what I've been calling them in my head) aren't all older, being masters of their craft
which is kinda unusual for roleplaying protags
Shreyas: i kind of think if they are, one of them should be a prodigy
but i also think that is a good idea
Jonathan: a prodigy would be cool
Shreyas: terra nova talks about variable interfaces recently
this is four nations relevant material
Jonathan: hmm. yeah.
i can see our Speakers having orthogonal goals.
which is why they have different interfaces
Shreyas: yeah
i'm not sure if we are subtle enough yet to make four interfaces that all lie on top of the same foundation and interact comfortably
but it would be awesome if we were
Jonathan: it'll definitely take a lot of playtesting
especially to make sure the balance is okay
this is one of those cases where game balance will be really important
Shreyas: yeah
Jonathan: we should figure out the core game mechanic at some point so we can start working on individual interpretations of it
i assume we still like the idea of having a core group of shared characters that the stories are about
Shreyas: by all means
i guess if school is still like dense for Thomas and you're excited about Vesperteen and stuff we can take a break, maybe i'll look through the stories and see who characters we have named so far
and like do other organisational materials
Jonathan: i don't know if we want each character to be represented by an essential contradition, but having a twin Key Chain of conflicting goals might be a good way to represent them.
which draws on old Torchbearer stuff, actually.
Shreyas: yeah
i think twin opposing goals is a better way to handle it too
it's more easy to interpret and use
Jonathan: ha, just had a thought!
what if each Speaker also defined the characters slightly differently.
so collectively, they define the character
like the Dreamer might define them based on some weird set of symbols
and the Fate people might define them by possible actions
i do think it would be cool if the Fate people thought the great queen Swajhe was a tyrant, while the Dream people loved her.
and if those were both parts of her character
Shreyas: that's very cool
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The invisible dance [Sep. 5th, 2006|12:38 pm]
lordsmerf
When two masters of the Pattern meet on the field of battle only other masters may follow their movements.

For both of them are aswirl in possibilities which constantly shift and slide. Strikes are blocked before they are thrown, movements are countered before they are made, and to the untutored it appears that they simply stand facing one another.

But to those with the eyes to see it, it is the most beautiful dance that can be imagined or dreamed.
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The Four Tellers #1: Blind Maatji, Speaker for the Dead [Sep. 5th, 2006|12:43 pm]

foreign_devilry
Blind Maatji was born with her eyes closed. The greatest storyteller of Njaaluwe In Dreams, she was not bothered by the appearances of things, only their essential qualities. Her rivers ran red and gold. When her heroes fought, they bled silver and starlight. Even the Dead would return from beyond the moonlands to watch her unearthly dreams dance before the hearth and to hear her acrobatic tongue giving them voice. But then, in the fullness of time, she died. And at that moment, her eyes opened and she saw the world, for the first time, as it truly was. Since that day, she has not told a single tale. Until now.

----

Jonathan: i'm thinking of making guidelines for Maatji that require her, out of practice, to use unusual imagery, since she used to be blind. but, she can see now, which is my way of not making it impossible for the player

Shreyas: cool

Jonathan: rules like "describe one element as if it was another." grasses blaze. the wind churns and boils.

Shreyas: mhm. i was just thinking, 'so i could totally have a running thing where she confuses water and fire'

Jonathan: yes.

Shreyas: "they sat around the camp-spring and roasted sausages..."
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Scribbled Notes [Aug. 28th, 2006|06:09 pm]

foreign_devilry
My notes from this morning:

"four nations as a series of books of different sizes"

"1. the unfinished gazateer, a map with mostly blank markings, except for a few major cities"

"2-5? the cities of the world described by 3-4 different authorities, each of whom lists a whole bunch of rumors that they've heard about them. each book only contains some of the cities. the cities are all named according to their own culture/perspective, but it's unclear if certain cities are the same or seperate"

"the game consists of trying to reconstruct a non-extant text called Record of the Four Nations (sorta like the reconstructions of the Q gospel), which these various authorities collaborated on, based partially on the notes they left behind in the other books"

"each play is responsible for playing a particular authority? or a particular set of historical characters? or representing a particular nation?"

Better yet, now I think the text was supposed to be a grand epic or maybe even an opera.
Four of the great narrativists of the age collaborated on an epic story of some variety, but, because it was, like roleplaying, ephemeral and never written down, there is no record of it aside from the notes they left behind.

So it is our duty to reconstruct it.

And here's another idea: the players play these reconstructors. That's who the characters are. You play actors, directors, singers, musicians, dancers who are trying to perform a version of the long-forgotten epic Record of the Four Nations. And maybe part of the game can be deciding what has become of the world since the time in which the Record was written.
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The Secret of the Gate [Aug. 23rd, 2006|02:57 pm]

unrequitedthai
"I have also thought of a model city from which I deduce all the others," Marco answered. "It is a city made only of exceptions, exclusions, incongruities, contradictions."

This is the technique by which the proclamation of tales becomes an offering of ideas!

By explicitly, energetically raising questions about the setting, in the form of contradictions and roaring gaps and nonsensical statements, we involve the players in making a setting, and this will involve them emotionally without their even realising it.
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Invisible Cities [Aug. 23rd, 2006|10:35 am]

foreign_devilry
Dev was saying that he didn't really get this project yet. He liked the color and some of the neat things we were doing, but he couldn't tell what it was about yet.

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, aside from being my favorite book ever, also contains the sum of all human wisdom. I'm going to quote a few of the passages that have and will continue to heavily shape my work on Four Nations.

1. What is the point of all this setting? Why is the setting structured around these cities?

You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours. Or the question it asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx.

Setting then, in this game, presents or resolves problems. From the viewpoint of Ron's 5 elements, the setting of Four Nations is just Situation in disguise.

2. How can you have a pre-determined setting/flavor and also have fundamental components of the setting created by the players themselves?

The Great Khan has dreamed of a city; he describes it to Marco Polo... "Set out, explore every coast, and seek this city," the Khan says to Marco. "Then come back and tell me if my dream corresponds to reality."

We hope to present setting elements tenatively or as a mostly empty framework, and provide mechanical tools which enable players to fill in the framework or determine things more concretely.

3. If the cities are so colorful and powerful, doesn't that risk diminishing the importance of the characters and their choices?

   "Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know."
   "There is still one of which you never speak."
   Marco Polo bowed his head.
   "Venice," the Khan said.
   Marco smiled. "What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?"
   The emperor did not turn a hair. "And yet I have never heard you mention that name."
   And Polo said: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."

If the cities are presenting or resolving problems, then the characters are the unspoken Venice. Every city is saying something about one or more characters, something that will necessarily change them.

4. Quotes whose meaning I am still pondering, but which I'm sure will be very important:

   "...I have contructed in my mind a model city from which all possible cities can be deduced," Kubulai said. "It contains everything corresponding to the norm..."
   "I have also thought of a model city from which I deduce all the others," Marco answered. "It is a city made only of exceptions, exclusions, incongruities, contradictions."

...it would suffice to play a game according to the rules, and to consider each successive state of the board as one of the countless forms that the system of forms assembles and destroys.

The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhuast their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins.
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The Road of Five Flavors [Aug. 22nd, 2006|02:25 pm]

unrequitedthai
One night I looked to see the dragon Gloom coiled around the hills, black as the sky, and the city rearing up on the rocks in fear, for Gloom's claws are long and its teeth are sharp and its eyes are full of that predator's look that is not hunger but something worse and wilder.

Gloom coiled up to the city's tallest tower and spoke to the king, filling the throne room with his steamy, rotten breath: "O you king of the succulent people, this dragon coiled around the hills is hungry, and he falls on your mercy to feed him. He merely requires a thousand virgins to sate his need."

Being a merciful and generous king, he could not refuse the dragon outright, but one thousand virgins was too many. The king said then, "O you dragon black as the sky, this king of the city that dreams can feed you, but one thousand is a feast that we cannot afford. He will give you one grain of sand."

Naturally the dragon was taken aback. It said then, "O you king whose generority is without peer, surely you can spare nine hundred and ninety-nine lissome youths, for this pitiful beast dying at your gates?"

"O you dragon whose teeth outnumber the stars, willingness and ability are distinct in this country where sleepers sometimes wake! The king under the most glorious spire can perhaps take three grains of rice from his very own bowl to feed you."

So they continued until the sun croaked and alighten from his nest, and the dragon said then, "O you king with an ill-fitting crown, the dragon whose claws dwarf the moon will accept one princess, and thanks you humbly, but now it must depart, and see you in the eve." So saying, Gloom coiled into the caves and the waters and awaited the nighttime of the sun.

So I went to see the princes and princesses under the tower. Who would go? Princess Amtataiqan, whose hair was braided with honeysuckles, took her halberd from the shelf and donned her boots and jacket-of-war. "This princess will go to feed the dragon," she said then, "and she hopes it does not enjoy its meal." I kissed her hand and looked in her eyes with longing, for Amtataiqan was very beautiful.

When the sunset clouds lifted into the sky, Gloom coiled out of the dark places and the city trembled to see its hide rippling with black waters. Its mane was like a thousand serpents and its tail like a river of tarry mud, leaving a deep scar in the green earth. It raised its head and said to the king, "O you king in this place that loves the sun, you have promised this dragon whose hunger makes it hollow a princess," and today its breath was cold and dry like a breath from the tomb.

"I am here," said Amtataiqan. "Eat me with one bite if you can."

So the dragon did, and said to the king, "O you king with many children, this dragon wonders if tomorrow's prince will not be so sickly-sweet like an overripe peach at the end of summer? It worries that it will offend its digestion, and the results will not be loved by many."

It seemed hardly moments until it was evening again, and Prince Iljarkai took up his salt-crystal spear, and soaked his clothes in the juices of rotten meat, and he said then, "This prince will go to feed the dragon, and he hopes it does not enjoy its meal." I bowed to him and we embraced with a tear, for Iljarkai was my friend and we rode horses together in the fields of the dead.

"I am here," said Iljarkai." Eat me with one bite if you can."

So the dragon did, and said to the king, "O you king of the undiscovered country, this dragon pleads that tomorrow's princess be not so salty like a stone beside the sea! It makes it terribly thirsty and there is not a river nearby to drink."

So it went on for three more nights, with Princess Chaghasi with her bow-and-arrow and her gown made stiff with vinegar, with Prince Ghasighun with his sword made of bitter almond, with Princess Darbighana and her red-and-yellow pepper crown. Each night the dragon ate the youth and complained to the king about its offensive flavor.

Finally Prince Temur and Princess Temulun, who were made of iron, went to feed the dragon. The dragon lifted them and weighed them in its paw and said then, "O you prince and princess whose faces are black as the stones of the city, you will make a royal meal for this dragon whose hunger is nearly sated."

Temur and Temulun smiled and replied, "We await you. Eat us with one bite if you can."

The dragon tossed them into its toothy maw, and Temur snatched one of its teeth. "This will be my sword!" Temulun pulled out one of its tongues. "This will be my whip!" They crawled into the dragon's belly, singing a song of war that echoed to the shores of the eastern sea, and gathered their brothers and sisters. "Tonight we return to our seven empty thrones," they said, and together they defeated the dragon's ribs, who fought them with curving swords like slivers of the moon, and its muscles who wrestled them like the fat wrestlers of the dead kingdom, and its scales who wore suits of clammy fish-scale armour, and finally they fought its head, armed with its own teeth and tongues and terrible gaze.

Even the sun did not dare approach that day, so dire was that battle. The dragon did not survive it, and the king, in celebration, draped its black body over the towers of the city and hung it between its many gates. "Now," he said then, "we will walk on the dragon's back when we wish to go from place to place, to remind all dragons that we are not to be trifled with."

"Or bargained with," Temur said to me.

"I will call it the Road of Five Flavors," said the king. I do not remember what happened next, for sleep overtook me.
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