The genre of Mayhem drifted. Some drift is inevitable for a multi-year project, but I’ve identified a way in which the game design itself failed to support my original narrative objectives. The original intent was to tell a story of cosmic horror and oppressive peril, where cleverness and desperation are the primary modes for the characters. A very different game evolved. Here I will give an explanation of what happened, as well as a prescription that I believe would correct these issues.
After a certain point, I had to borrow tropes from superhero stories. The characters were concerned primarily with the responsible use of their enormous power; their difficult decisions turned on a desire to repair a fragile, broken, and mysterious world, while doing the least harm possible to its vulnerable inhabitants. This is the very soul of a superhero story, and I quite like what we finished, in the end. But how did we end up there, from the genre I was intending to run?
Essentially, I made a shortsighted design choice for the magic system. As soon as time travel was introduced, I knew that I wanted to give the characters the ability to travel through time, under as few restrictions as possible. This was, in my mind, the direction of “maximum fun” to take the game. But this set up a narrative tension: travel through time was supposed to be difficult and fantastic magic, near-impossible even in a fantasy world. So shouldn’t the characters who can do it be fantastic mages? Based on the magic system I had designed, the answer had to be yes. But, it could just as easily have been, no. Consider the following two assumptions, which were implicit in the magic system:
Under these assumptions, a mage capable of time travel must be an extraordinary mage in general. These two assumptions were fundamental to the magic system, but failed to support my original narrative goals. So, the game twisted into a “supers” type narrative and genre. I am now convinced that by simply negating these assumptions, we obtain a magic system that supports the genre I originally intended. Let’s examine why and how that is.
I dispensed with tracking mana directly for two reasons: first, it was a resource management game, and I dislike these on principle. Second, the enormous reserves of mana that seemed necessary for time travel obviated that game anyway. But what if mana had been “strongly typed” instead of interchangeable, as I had assumed? Meaning, each noun of magic requires a distinct type of mana, and it is impossible to convert between types. This neatly solves the time travel problem, in general. Taking the example of mayhem, there could have been a dangerous and harrowing quest to obtain a whole shitload of “chrono-mana” from some godawful place. The characters would have been just as fragile as before, but with an incredible ability to travel through time. In general, strongly typed mana allows for wizards that are extremely specialized: stupendous at their chosen discipline, but overall fragile and weak. This design decision would have supported my original intent for the game’s genre.
Knowing spells and secrets was equated with having the ability to use that knowledge to create powerful magical effects. For the genre I intended, this is not the natural choice. We played with magic that was mechanistic but also intuitive: to apprehend a magical word was to understand that category of being. This united the activities of spell design and casting in one person, and barred us from playing with spells that are completely incomprehensible!
For the game we played, I do not believe this was a problem. The “power curve” that resulted in time travel being slowly understood as ability grew was natural and satisfying. But the “knowledge is power” assumption cut off whole categories of risky behavior and genre tropes.
I am working on a new cosmology, a new world, and a new magic system. I have learned some lessons from Mayhem. This time, I think my design will support a delicate game of “low” fantasy, an atmosphere of oppressive doom and desperate acts by clever characters at the very end of their resources.