Behind the Shift

This morning I was having some internal debate with myself about mechanics vs. setting in THE GAME.  Thankfully, it didn’t come to blows.  It remained a civilized discussion.  The internal discussion revolved around which sections I am working on writing and in which order (setting my writing plan).  At the core of it is one of those chicken or egg questions that can be answered different ways by different people, but I think defines the core of any game (notice that in any incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons, the mechanics are the first thing in the book, while in the White Wolf games, the setting comes first).  What comes first, the setting or the mechanics?

Obviously to me, the setting comes first.  When I began to hatch this diabolical plot to actually sit down and write the game I wanted to play, I had to define the setting first.  I didn’t decide on a set of mechanics, then build a setting to fit.  For that matter, are setting and mechanics independent of one another, or can they be?

When I think of setting, I am thinking of more than just the world in which the action of the game takes place.  I am thinking more along the lines of the “story-world.”  In my mind, the “story-world” is the combination of the meta plot of the setting and the environmental factors that directly influence, or are directly influenced by the circumstances of the world that are unique to this particular game setting.

For this game in particular, my first thought was that I needed a world that was dark and threatening.  Also, I wanted it to take place in the modern world.  From there, I started listing some preferences.  I didn’t want the game to rely on the typical tropes of modern horror tabletop role-playing games.  Hence, I wasn’t too keen on zombies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves or mages being the major players in the game world.  Those are all excellent horror tropes, and work well, but I wanted a departure from that.  The average horror gamer knows a lot about all of those things.  Hell, the average gamer or would-be gamer knows many different varieties of them, their ecology, their habits, how they live (unlive?), how they are destroyed, etc.  There are tabletop rpg’s out there that handle all of those tropes quite well.  That is not territory I wished to tread.

I also decided early on that it was a must that the characters play ordinary schmoes.  I didn’t want supers or monsters as characters.  I didn’t even want characters who knew what  the hell they were getting into.  I wanted “Joe the Plumber.”  I think that some Cthulhu games (not Delta Green) manage that pretty well, but I don’t want the characters in my game to have the gradual spiral into insanity be their only option.  As I’ve written before, pre-existing games come with a built-in mindset.  Players who know the game almost unfailingly play it a certain way.  So, if I announced that I was playing a certain game, even if I set it in a completely different world and changed most of the rules, but called it… I don’t know… Picking Daisies With Cthulhu or Vampire: The Office, people would approach the “hybrid” game the same way they approach a typical game of CoC or Vampire.

So, I knew I wanted ordinary people as characters in today’s modern world.  I also knew that I had to do something that would enforce that this was a horror game.  I had to isolate the characters and, vicariously, the players as well.  One additional concern I had was something that has always struck me about horror games in general:  It is damned hard to instill and maintain that feeling of horror (or dread or terror) for long.  In a movie, you have a two hour (or so) timeframe.  In a novel, the reader can put the book down when the tension needs to be released.  I wanted a game mechanic that reinforces breaks in tension at the appropriate points.  Who is to determine these points?  That is where “the shift” was born.

“The Shift” is the defining feature of the setting.  It in fact makes the setting what it is.  Yet, at its heart, it is also a mechanic (perhaps also the defining one) .  To me, it is a marriage of setting and mechanic.  When the players (and the characters) first realize “the Shift” is happening, or even worse has already happened, that reinforces the horror.  It is an unknown thing.  It is dangerous.  It is surreal and extra-normal.  It gives the players the sense, like good music in any drama, thriller or horror movie, that “something is about to happen.”  The gamemaster can make the Shift happen when appropriate to the story.  Or maybe the players can, through their characters, eventually find ways (albeit unreliable ones) to spark the event.  Then, when the tension needs to be ramped down, or cut off completely, when the players need to piss or eat or smoke or just tell jokes and talk about video games (or better yet, tell jokes about video games), the Shift can happen again.  The characters are back in the real world.  The immediate danger is past.  The characters have time to rest, research, resupply, and recuperate.  The 4 R’s.  The scene, the episode, is over.  Then, before plunging them back into the unknown, the gamemaster and players can do a brief recap of events and  prepare for the next episode.

Props to Alan Wake for showing me what that structure could do for (and to) a game.  I started working on this a few months before that game was released and had no idea that I would see glimpses of the potential for what I was working on actively demonstrated in that game.  Silent Hill has always used it, but Alan Wake makes it even more of a narrative technique.

Now, it’s your turn.  What games have you played that have a setting/mechanic feature that reinforces the game to you?  What is that setting element/mechanic?  They can be video games, board games or tabletop role-playing games.  Share with me!

Photo Credit: Stephen Calsbeek