Manifest: Setting

Last time, I figured out a narrative lynchpin for my game: Monsters wander the earth, manifestations of powerful emotions. This time, I’d like to solidify the setting a bit more.

I’d also like to bite something in the bud right now: “My Game” is a dumb name for an RPG, so I have decided to give the game the working title of Manifest. The name centers on the fact that the core of this game is these Manifestations of emotion. The rest of the game could be anything, use any mechanics, be OSR, Narrative, be Powered by the Apocalypse or use d20 Modern, but the Manifestations are the unique aspect of the system that requires a concrete and cohesive system.

Because Manifest is partly inspired by Pokémon, there needs to be some kind of “capturing” and/or “training” mechanic, so specially trained people can incorporate these manifestations into themselves. Where these monsters come from is also important to explore, and the relationship between them and humanity.

Here’s an idea I came up with:

Dark February

We don’t know the day. We don’t know the week. We don’t know what time the first one appeared, or even where in the world it first happened. All we know is the Februrary of 2055 was the darkest month in the history of humanity.

Demons, monsters, beasts, creatures that defied description began appearing. Some of them appeared out of thin air, rampaging through the streets of metropolitan cities across the globe. Some were found in the middle of abandoned buildings, wailing or screaming and driving the people around them mad. Some didn’t seem to do anything, but were nonetheless terrifying for their stillness.

The powerful and wealthy did their part. They sent armies and police to fight the monsters, but their efforts were in vain. Bullets did nothing, granades and bombs were worthless. Innocents were caught in the crossfire, and it became very clear that the usual tactics of the so-called elites were useless in the face of this new threat.

The world shuddered. People fled their homes, fearing the end of the world. Pundits, politicos, and CEOs — anyone with a microphone — spread their own tales of what was happening. It was a judgement, an opportunity, an attack by the Americans, China, India, the Left, the Right, the Enemy.

Humanity turned on each other. Society struggled to maintain itself as the thin strands that connected everyone together started to fray and break. Fear fed anger, which in turn fed grief. It seemed the world would soon collapse. The governments and wealthy of the world funded paramilitary organizations and scientific committies, both public and private, to combat these monstrous things.

But from grief grew compassion, and from compassion grew joy. By the end of the month, signs of hope began to manifest. Communities banded together in solidarity, desperate to protect both their loved ones and their hope for a future. While the monsters seemed impossible to vanquish, humanity was not willing to go down without a fight.

Then, not thirty days after the end seemed inevitable, news began to spread: video of three people cornering a shimmering bull-like monster and halting its stampede through a populated street in Cairo. In the hands of one person, a sword lined with claws and crystal. At their side, a six-legged cat with burning eyes and fangs like knives. Monsters were working with humans to protect the helpless.

By the end of the week, the remaining governments of the world conviened to fund a worldwide organization devoted to study and control of the monsters. Where did they come from? How could they be controlled? As far as the rich were concerned, it was a new gold-rush: whomever whomever learned the secrets of these monsters first would become masters of the new world.

Setting

Players take on the role of (at first) agents of the Company, a global organization with the financial backing of all the major world governments. The Company’s role is fourfold:

1. Protect the holdings of the world governments and their populous from destabilizing Manifestations.
2. Learn everything there is to learn about the Manifestations and their origins.
3. Study and develop methods for the control and/or explotiation of Manifestations.
4. Maintain the World Order.

After extensive and expensive study, the Company has discovered that the monsters — now labeled Manifestations — are the embodiments of specific and powerful emotions. The accepted theory is that certain individuals, when subject to powerful emotions, cause a kind of psychic representation of their emotion to materialize into existance. Whether these Manifestations are physical beings or not is still up for debate, as they seem to be material or ethereal as their whims dictate.

There has been no recorded instance of an individual creating more than one Manifestation at a time, nor more than one in their lifetime. Similar events or impetuses do not reliably result in a Manifestation. Scientists currently believe there are multiple variables which must all align properly to result in a new Manifestation, though there is currently no accepted theory as to what those variables have to be.

Manifestations can, and often do, break away from their Manifester after their creation, a state that is known as “Flailing.” A flailing Manifestation poisons the surrounded area, causing intense emotional response in a radius anywhere from a few feet to several miles, depending on the Manifestation’s strength.

Flailing Manifestations can be “captured,” as it were, and calmed by a specially trained¹ individual. After this occurs, Manifestations become “attuned” to the individual. The individual can will the Manifestation into or out of caporeality at their discretion.

As Agents of the Company, the PCs have been trained in this skill, and are therefore on the front-lines of capturing, controlling, and protecting people from the Manifestations that are now spreading over the planet.

Mechanics

With that setting as a foundation for the game, we can now take a look at the system itself.

Players play Agents, who will have access to a specific number of Manifestations, which they can utilize in specific situations, similar to how Pokémon Trainers capture Pokémon to battle, fly, surf, or play games with. Agents are dynamic action-forward characters, who will be expected to get involved with plots, disasters, dramas, and high-stress situations.

With Manifestations being such an important focus of the game, I need to work out exactly what Manifestations are for.

Let’s start with a couple assumptions. Since the setting includes the potential for violence, and Pokémon is centered around arena combat, players will/should assume their Manifestations are a tool to be used in fights. There will be tactical-combat portion of this game, and it will not be insignificant.

But Pokémon is based on arenas and sportsmanship. It’s a sport, not an all-out brawl. In the arena you have six Pokémon, but pull out one at a time, and trade hits back and forth. It’s a bit more complex in the cartoons, but the basic rules are the same. One Pokémon versus one Pokémon.

What if there was a war in the Pokémon world? What if there weren’t any rules of sportsmanship? If your goal was to take down a monster or save your own life, why wouldn’t you pull out all six of your Pokémon and have a big ol’ brawl?

Again, there is precident. Miniature wargames handle multiple squads at a time, and funnel adventures usually see you controlling four or five PCs at once. I like this idea, because it also frees up some internal strategy: you aren’t just worried about growing your individual Pokémon, you’re worried about developing your team. A Pokémon whose role is protecting other Pokémon is suddenly viable in a way it wasn’t before.

For this to work, however, the rules need to be simple. Not rules-light necessarily, but specifically easy on the cognitive load. Easy-to-learn is always a nice standard, but once learned, a player shouldn’t have to constantly remember a bunch of fiddly computational bits just to figure out what happened, much less strategize about what to do next. I’d rather have the rules be easy to remember than have charts, diagrams, and complex math better suited for computers to chew on. Funnel adventures work because you’re controlling a group of similarly effective level-0 characters, not a group of complex PCs with their own set of rules, abilities, and considerations.

With emotions being the other current lynchpin, There needs to be some method of gamifying emotions and how they relate to action. With the “action” scenes focusing on high-stress or action-forward play, the robust² option would be to include a downtime system as well. Players will be forced to strategize with two goals in mind: effectiveness in combat/missions, and stability/usefulness in the downtime.

We can shorthand these two frames of play as “missions” and “rest.”

That feels like a great place to start, and also a fine place to pause. Next time, I’d like to look a little closer at the unique hook for this system: the Manifestations.