Out Of My Mind

I have noticed that the theme of mystery has grown in importance as my worldbuilding has progressed. My very earliest campaign worlds were dominated by fairly open, cards-on-the-table set-ups. Maybe the players would have to journey somewhere to retireve an artifact or elicit help, but rarely did their quests include solving a mystery.
Now, by mystery, I don’t mean like a whodunnit style adventure, although that could certainly be possible for an evening’s play. I’m talking about a campaign founded upon one or several essential unknowns. Before I bring this around to Savage Earth, I’m going to talk a bit about how the previous campaigns were influenced by this concept.

Crossroads was a GURPS-based campaign that started with a simple premise: What if all stories are true? The premise was fulfilled by creating an area outside of all space and time where characters from any story could interact. At that time, we were still very much in the larger than life action mode, and the characters were all cut from adventurous cloth. We had a 12th century English knight, and android, a superhero, a noble ape-man, a cowboy, and so forth. Some were actual fictional characters, some were homages to actual fictional characters, and some were created wholecloth. The camapaign was not designed with a central mystery, but one grew out of the premise as the stories progressed. Who built the Crossroads? Who was the Storykeeper? (A god-like figure of serene sagacity who dwelt in a library that contained every possible book). Ultimately, “mystery” failed as a central theme because there was the very justified sense that we were “making it up as we went along”. It was a jointly run campaign, where anyone could take a turn that week as the GM. Often stories would arise from the damage control more experienced world builders had to exercise in order to curb the excesses of GMs with a less practiced sense of game balance. In that sense, the mystery didn’t work because there was no real mystery. No one knew.

The second campaign was the Solar Colonies. This was a campaign with a mystery built into the very foundation. The most important feature was that the mystery was known in nearly its entirety from the very beginning. The Solar Colonies premise was: A group of adventurers will slowly discover that mankind is being subverted by an alien, thought-altering microscopic organism. The campaign had a major conceit as well. (I’m not sure if “conceit” is the right word, perhaps Paul from IMWorlds can suggest the proper literary term). Anyway, the conceit was that the entire campaign would be conducted with a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. I’ll write more about this world in a future post, but basically, it had a loosely defined structure that the historical events of the campaign would follow. PCs could have an effect on the details, but the larger picture was too immense for them to directly effect. The players understood this from the get-go and it allowed me as GM immense freedom in the use of foreshadowing, motivations and small-scenario development. Again, more on that aspect later.
The campaign was designed around:

1. The discovery of the Spore (the aforementioned microorganism)
2. Proving the spore’s existence, fighting its effects
3. Destroying the spore itself
4. Rebuilding the damage left in its wake and,
5. The eventual discovery of the spore’s creators and their unexpected purpose.

Mystery was the theme, and its solving was the scope of the activity.

The Savage Earth plays with that theme a bit more. There are several central mysteries to the campaign, most of them historical: dealing with why the world is the way it is. Who were the Demon Kings? How was civilization destroyed? Why does the world operate with different physical laws than in the ancient times? The big difference here is that the mysteries are not there to be solved. Oh, a group of characters could make that their mission, but it is entirely nonessential to the premise of any campaign set in that world. The mysteries are there because I chose to have those particular elements remain hidden from the world at large.
By giving no one, hero nor villain access to the Big Picture, we arrive at a world that is much greyer in morality. Who’s to say anyone’s actions or opinions are unjustified? I as GM/Creator am aware of why people and groups act the way they do, but there is no need to reveal all of these things to the players. By keeping the Prime Movers of action hidden from PC and NPC and player alike, the world instantly becomes one of tension. Conflict is implicit everywhere because no one has The One True Answer. Do gods exist? Maybe. Are the Demon Kings truly gone? Maybe. Is the Path of Prometheus justified? Maybe.
In particular the last question is the one most players will come up against. The Path of Prometheus is the code of behavior,the cultural touchstone of the primary campaign area. It makes no claim to morality or ethics as they are understood in a modern context, merely that they are the best way in which a society can function. Certainly following the path leads to a powerful society that can make the best use of the new physics that underlie the world, but there is no sense of social justice in them. Why does the world seem to work to serve this plan? Characters have spent many adventures examining aspects of this question, and although they have learned many fascinating things, the ultimate answer remains out of reach.

It’s a delicate balancing act, in a sense similar to the Moonlighting Syndrome. For readers unfamiliar with the series, Moonlighting was a television show that built up fantastic ratings by the building sexual tension between the two main characters. Once they finally consummated their relationship, the ratings tanked. But tension can only be tightened too much before it snaps. Trying to maintain the mysteries of the Savage Earth is difficult in the same manner. If I make the answers unattainable, players can lose interest. If they are revealed, much of the tension is lost. I have survived by several means. Some players are uninterested in solving ultimate mysteries. That’s easy; we just ignore them and deal instead with adventure in the world the mysteries have created. For characters who have actively sought answers, the game becomes one of bait and switch, distraction from purpose, or adding ever more layers to the onion.
The next post will deal with specific examples of how I have used these tools to maintain mystery, and dramatic tension.