Entry: When The Forms Exhaust Their Variety

[spaceanddeath]

Okay now I so want to play a dancing corsair who dresses like a man to murder a captain and steel his ship.

Gameplay sounds interesting (as did KKKKK) I like the kind of agreeable, witty, dreamy, back and forth of the banter.

I really like the deliniation of the three ages. That's some nifty.

Maybe I'm missing something in my current sleepy state... are the Bodhisattvas of the ages drawing on *multiple lives* of the same soul to establish a trail of evidence (forgive my cop talk, I've got Crime and Punishment on the brain) that the soul is a qualified Buddha-to-Be?

If so, what will the Bodhisattvas of the Age of Memories have to draw on? Can they introduce lives in the ages to come, or are they to concentrate on the lives right now? If they can do say, a futuristic, 3500 AD life, will that life be snuffed out once the particular Seed of the Blossoming Flower is accepted as the Buddha-to-be? Do the Bodhisattvas of the Age of Memories have special insight into the age that they can never be a part of, or are they part of an age that is doomed to die because of the new future the Seeds are ushering in?

I think the new Mandala is funky cool. Is it just a symbolic, ir is it a playboard (a way of measuring progress in the game)? I have this very cool feeling about markers placed on the squares being moved, one way or other via a cool, push-pull, lyrical, dance dynamic as the opposing Bodhisattvas work to please each other but still get what they want. I have no idea in this moment how I would accomplish it, but I have this neat sense of movement about that as a possibility. I guess that's wehat a Mandala of Possibilities should do though, huh?

[jwalton]

Mo, the game you're describing is exactly the game I'm writing :) I have a big post planned for this afternoon that'll explain some revelations I recently had in the shower and shore all this up.

Until then, here's the semi-final version of , complete with the Petal Steps numbered 1-7 (and note that there's 4 ones, 3 twos, 2 threes & fours, and then 1 of the rest; I wonder what that means...). Where's step 8? ;)

[peccable]

[kleenestar]

[spaceanddeath]

[jwalton]

Hmm... next year maybe I'll just post a really provocative idea and then just steal whatever cool suggestions get posted.

Folks, unfortunately I caught some bug in the past couple days and feel pretty tired and sick today, but I'm gonna do my best to finish this.

D, it's cool to watch your mind chewing over the possibilities, because it follows the same paths mine did, as I think you'll see when I begin talking about the system, below. In fact, the system of modifying/questions others contributions is something I played with in KKKKK, but I'm going try something a bit different here.

Kleene, yes, more structure to ensure drama is certainly needed, and that's what I've been working on. However, I'm trying to avoid as much inter-player and inter-character conflict as I possibly can, as a kind of personal design goal.

Mo, your suggestions make a lot of sense, except that these folks are bodhisattvas, selfless individuals who have already reached enlightenment and chosen to return to the world to save others. For them to selfishly manuver to be the ones who survive into the Age To Come is just not in their nature. They have to tread carefully in order to avoid killing the lowliest insect. Being even slightly competitive is pretty much impossible for them, which is one of the reasons I chose them to be the PCs, so we can't reach for more traditional design tools, even ones as progressive as Polaris...

Okay, real system stuff to come in the next post, which should be up soon.

[spaceanddeath]

Heya,

When I was mulling it over I did think of the Bodhisattvas vs. conflict thing, and almost stopped writing it. But I realized that what I was suggesting was not conflict between the PC goals, but mild conflict between the player goals. The Bodhisattvas motives remain unfailliable when they are merely discussing the potential of candidates that they have seen, or anticipating the qualitites of the candidates that are being introduced. The players however, have been given more dramatic tension and an enhanced impeteus to please the speaker.

Now all that said, if you want your players to model the selfless behaviour of your PCs (which it sounds like you do) then the idea's still not conducive to your design goal.

I do think we should play with it later. It sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

[jwalton]

Yes, by all means, we should play with it later! I have tentative plans to collaborate on games with Shreyas (which may or may not have been fulfilled by my working with him to finish Mridangam) and Annie (project yet to be determined), and would love to work on something with you. Non-competative-yet-mutually-exclusive player goals sounds like fun!

[jwalton]

Excerpts from the working draft:

As We Mourn the Ephemeral Beauty of This World of Suffering, Let Us March Out Dancing!

When The Forms Exhaust Their Variety takes exactly 8 hours to play, but it should not be played straight through, without breaks. Maintaining focus and creativity over that length of time is rather taxing, no matter how enthusiastic the players may be about the game. Your physical and mental faculties, as well as your experience of play, will benefit from breaking up this 8-hour block into more managable sections. Don't worry, the World To Come will arrive at the proper moment, not before.

To assist in keeping track of how far along play has progressed, one or more players should create an (approximately) 8-hour soundtrack for the game, mostly consisting of the work of minimalist composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, Terry Riley, and the like. It would not be too uncouth to include a few popular music tracks heavily influenced by minimalism, such as Sufjan Stevens' "Oh Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head!" and "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us" or the various remixes of Glass or Reich's work. Overall, I would recommend instrumental music, since the lyrical content of some songs may interfere with the established feel of the game. As amazing as it is, President Richard Nixon's first aria ("News Has A Kind of Mystery") from John Adams' opera, Nixon in China, might not be appropriate, but excerpts from Philip Glass' Sanskrit-language opera about Gandhi, Satyagraha, are probably cool.

Using a music-organizing program such as iTunes, it should be easy to set up a list of tracks totalling 8 hours. If you don't have enough music that you think is appropriate, create a 4-hour playlist that you will listen to twice or develop some other compromise. If possible, allow all the players to have a hand in selecting music for the game, since you don't want to force people to listen to 8 hours of music that they hate.

With your playlist set up, you are free to stop or pause the music whenever the group wants to take a break. Write down where you currently are ("Music for 18 Musicians: Part X, 0:02:16") and you are free to return to that exact moment in the game at a later date.

Minimalist music that I listened to while writing this game includes:
-- Philip Glass, Music in Twelve Parts (3.4 hours total)
-- Philip Glass, Music with Changing Parts (1 hour total)
-- Philip Glass, Orion (1.5 hours total)
-- Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians (1.1 hours total)
-- Reich Remixed
-- John Adams, Nixon in China (2.4 hours total)
-- Sufjan Stevens, excerpts from Michigan
-- Sufjan Stevens, excerpts from Illinois
-- Richard Wagner, "Vorspiel" from Das Rheingold (an early example)

[jwalton]

More:

The Four Ages of Humankind Are But A Whisper in the Infinite Night of Material Existence, Or: We Only Get 55,000 Years!

Human experience is the state of carrying a single candle, lit from the fires of your mortal predecessors, a light that you hope to pass on to others before it is extingushed. The way this candleflame is transferred divides the path of human life into the Four Ages, each half as long as the one before.

The Age of Dreams (50,000 BC - 20,000 BC): 30,000 years

The annals of human reckoning began long before the ice finally retreated to the north and south, long before people began to tame the wild beasts and foliage of their terrestrial home, long before the first stories. Before there were voices to tell us who we were, our identity, our knowledge, our life-lore was transmitted though the dreams sent to us by our ancestors, and the visions left for us in the sacred places of the world.

During the Age of Dreams, there were no great nations of people and few fetters beyond the ties of family and clan. Women and men lived to support and protect their children and ensure that the invisible forces did not array against them. While people all over the world lived in diverse ways, according to the resources of their environment, they shared the necessity of movement, following the herds, following the seasons, following the voices of the spirits and ancestors, following their dreams.

The Age of Stories (20,000 BC - 5,000 BC): 15,000 years

Once the ice went away forever, people began to tire of their endless wandering. Why should we not camp every winter in the valley and stalk the upland herds from our summer hut? Why can we not scatter some seed when we gather fruit and vegetables, to ensure that the plants will return the next year?

So human existence began to fall into patterns. While they did not cease their wandering, they began moving in circles; while they did not till the earth or fence their prey, neither did they live and die according to nature's whim. As a response to the new regularities of their life, people began crafting their dreams into patterns, creating a new language for passing on knowledge. Thus began the Age of Stories.

The Age of Histories (5,000 BC - 2,000 AD): 7,000 years

Writing changed everything. No longer did people have to remember who they were, because they had priests and record-keepers and historians to tell them. And with the invention of histories came kings and kingdoms and cities and wars and taxes and religion and civilization and everything that has occupied humankind for these past 7,000 years.

During the Age of Histories, humankind stopped moving, growing sedentary, growing fat or thin based on the wealth of his kingdom and the generosity of his king. And people began working harder, very hard. There were more of them now and the wild herds and fields were not enough to feed their bellies. So they mastered nature, fenced it in and made it their own, fighting others to keep it, dying for it.

The Age of Memories (2,000 AD - 5,000 AD): 3,000 years

Things changed again when writing was replaced by machines that could hold memories. People could stop remembering who they were, because their machines held more knowledge than they could ever possibly know. Soon humankind stopped moving altogether. They lived in the memories and the memories lived in the machines. Life had come full circle; people had become dreams.

The Age of Memories is the last human age, for humanity will not exist in the Age To Come. Only their souls will go on, the souls that they have shared with animals and insects, the souls that existed long before there were humans, the souls that will continue to exist in the Pure Land, as long as they are worthy.