: A very good college friend of mine, Fred, is an old hand
: at running GURPS campaigns. He's even written several
: guidebooks for "Call of Cthulhu". He was
: faced with an even thornier problem when writing the
: voodoo sections of the New Orleans guidebook: how do
: you create a workable gaming system out of something
: that is in such heated dispute amongst its
: practitioners? I saw all the research he did, all the
: long nights staring into his computer screen,
: wondering how many skill points Baron Samedi should
: have and who was the toughest of the Loa. He was in
: constant contact with numerous primary sources and
: still the system he came up with, while elegant and
: playable to a fault is completely unlike the voodoo I
: read about in my own research. CoC guidebooks, and
: GURPS books by association, are not meant to be the
: final truth on anything, merely a "best fit"
: for the available facts, filtered very heavily for use
: in role-playing games.
Your friend worked on CoC? Cool! I have some issues with their interpretation--particularly the creation of the category "Great Old Ones" and the tendency to put every big nasty guy in this category unless there's a heap of evidence to the contrary--but as you say they had to make a "best fit", and it was their call to include a lot of Cthulhu Mythos stuff by other authors, at the risk of annoying HPL purists like me. On the whole, I'd say Call of Cthulhu is the most thoughtful, immersive and entertaining RPG I've ever seen.
: This is already very long, so I'll cut it short here with
: my modest proposal. I think that GURPS is an
: invaluable resource for story discussions but that it
: can't be taken as received text. I propose this:
: anyone playing a role-playing game set in the Myth
: universe should use GURPS as their bible and ignore
: where the computer game seems to get things
: differently. Anyone playing the computer game should
: take GURPS with a grain of salt and, wherever it seems
: to contradict things you've seen on your monitor first
: hand, should be ignored. I'm assuming most of us fall
: into the latter category (with the exception of those
: playing the eRPG).
Well, as far as I'm concerned, non-Asylum Myth RPG players might as well use whatever they want. There's no real issue of truth for them. They can use GURPS, or Wallace's RPG, or Dungeons and Dragons if they want to. I'd suggest that we Asylumers try to stick with Wallace's, since WW's trying to make it as true to the story as possible, aided by our advice and feedback.
As for what the Asylum should believe when doing plot research, allow me to offer a suggestion with elements both of your ideas and Forrest's. Your idea is very useful, I think, but it could benefit from Forrest's observation that different types of in-game evidence have different validities. I think we should rank evidence in the following order, from most valid to least:
1. In-game observations. If you see something happen on your screen, then you *know* it's reality. The screen is our only direct window onto the Mythworld.
2. Reports of directly-observed observations made by the narrators. They may be occasionally wrong, but I think we should assume they never intentionally lie in their journals. If a narrator says he peeked through Alric's window and saw him wearing a black lacy bra and fishnets, we should believe him unless we have evidence from category #1 (we saw Alric in-game and it was obvious he was actually wearing a satin teddy).
3. Pre- and post-game pics, including the maps, and the cutscenes. I'd rank all these up with #1, because I don't think Bungie ever intended to trick us (and yes, I do believe the post-game failure pics represent what *really* would have happened if you'd lost), but their validity is obviously reduced by the fact that sometimes they're clearly wrong. Nonetheless, I think they should be accepted unless it's clear in gameplay or from the narrator's direct observations that they're incorrect.
4. Factual statements in GURPS. Much as it may annoy us (okay, just me and David, really), Bungie did approve the thing and did say that those who were interested in the Myth backstory should get it. Known facts from the game should certainly override it, but if GURPS flat-out says that something's true, and the game doesn't directly contradict it, we should accept it.
5. Statements by the Myth narrators that aren't direct observation. As I said above, and everyone here already knows, the narrators are often wrong, especially when they're speculating on the thoughts of others, or on events a great distance away or a long time ago. Even when a narrator's claim isn't directly contradicted by the evidence from the above categories, I don't think we have to accept it as true; as long as your theory has a good explanation for why the narrator's wrong, you should feel free to go against him.
6. GURPS suggestions. Whenever GURPS says "it could be," or "perhaps," I don't think this can be used at all. Its only purpose, as far as we're concerned, should be to give GMs the ability to add to the Myth story for the purposes of their campaign. That's not to say that GURPS suggestions can't *inspire* our theories, but they shouldn't be used as evidence.
Note that there's a difference between GURPS saying "it could be that X," and GURPS saying "some believe that X". The second is a factual statement about certain citizens of Myth, and can be used as class 4 evidence--if a lot of knowledgeable Myth people believe something, that increases the odds that it's true. The first says nothing more than that X is not impossible, and as such has virtually no value in Asylum arguments, since most of us have personalities geared toward the idea that nothing is impossible.
: Final disclaimer: the above is merely my humble opinion,
: which I advance purely as an attempt to help reconcile
: what I see as a major problem. If you disagree (as
: many, I'm sure, do) please don't attack me for stating
: how I feel.
YOU BASTARD! YOU DISGUSTING, VERMINOUS, PURULENT--just kidding. Were you really worried about personal attacks? What do you think this is, a Halo forum? :)
But just in case, I'll jump on the bandwagon. Don't anyone shout at me, or I'll cry. Plus I'll go to a Tribes forum and tell them the Inmates were capping on Tribes. Believe me, the resultant response will bring the Asylum down in flames.
--SiliconDream
