The Parable Engine

Inquisitive: Design Document

The Three


What is the experiment about?


Inquisitive is an experiment about the powerful, de-humanizing hold that centralized organizations have on individuals and the desire of humans to be self-directed.


How does it go about doing that?


The subjects take the role of secret police officers, called Shepherds, tasked with tracking down revolutionaries and insurrectionists in a totalitarian theocracy. These officers have the superhuman ability to sense the emotional content of others, but this ability leaves the Shepherds themselves nearly emotionless, or as the Church calls it, Hollow. Where most people form a structural lattice of relationships and connections, these men are empty. They have trouble discerning their own pale emotions from the maelstrom of others around them. The Church finds this ability useful and consciously creates these individuals. Children who are unwanted are given over to the Church. Raised in a huge monastery in the heart of the country's capital, these orphans are the backbone of the religious order that governs the known world. Those who have the required personality are placed within a school that begins the process of removing the humanity that keeps the Shepherd from doing their job. When they reach the age of sixteen, they are placed within a team of boys of their age and trained to hunt down enemies of the state. When the team reaches the age of twenty, they are made active and their training is considered over.

Their duties range from active hunter seeker missions to passive "scan" patrols through the streets of the country's capital, a massive metropolis called the City of God. They'll be hunting everyone from lowly terrorists cut off from their cells to corrupt politicians bent on taking the power and glory that belongs to God alone. The Church is not as singular as it first appears. The Shepherds don't know exactly where their orders are coming from and can easily be swept up into the politics that drive the Church at its highest levels. In this way, the subjects can progress in the sense of learning more about the intrigues of the Church, without forcing the experiment to constantly increase the power levels of the subjects.

To add to this, the subject's characters must also contend with their reintegration with society. They begin the experiment with a relationship with someone they knew before they were 'chosen' to be Shepherds. This could be their mother, father, sister, brother, the little girl they played with down the street, whatever. It's some connection they have to their past. The subjects and experimenter can both explore the changes the Church forces on people through the changes that have been rendered on their former loved one. This provides conflict in that this initial relationship drives the first wedge between the subjects and the Church.

With their training over, they're now placed back into the community. Each team is given a district. They live in this district, work in the district, and are expected to lead "normal" lives. No one is to know that they are the weapons of the Church.


What behaviors does it reward?

The experiment is designed to reward a character's normalization. The goal of the subjects is to become self-directed and remove the Church's influence from their lives. The core mechanics of the experiment intentionally remove self direction from the subject. They are able to make decisions about HOW to achieve their goals but they aren't able to define those goals themselves. Over time, with disobedience, the characters will gain more and more autonomy.

Core Mechanics

The central mechanic of the experiment is an interconnected system of personality Strengths combined with an aspect system similar to FATE or Houses of the Blooded, as well as a number of specialized subsystems.

Core: At the heart of the experiment lies the Cross. The Cross is just that: a set of qualities arranged in the shape of a lower case "t" that interacts with one another in a way that simulates the emotional make-up of a character. It's comprised (clockwise, starting from the top) of Hollow, Zeal, Connection, and Self, with Weary at the center of the Cross. It is a sort of semi-closed economic system.

Ø Hollow represents how "empty" your character is. It allows him to sense the emotions of others and acts as the experiment's "magic" system. Subjects can use this on NPCs or each other to get the measure of one of their Strengths, among other things.

Ø Connection represents how connected the character is to normal human emotions and drives. Subjects use it to form relationships with NPCs, organizations, places, or objects, as well as general deception and the like. When the experiment begins, this Strength is at zero and the character has no ability to form relationships. One of the themes the experiment explores is how the character moves from a state of inhumanity to a state where he's connected to others and to himself.

Ø Zeal represents the character's belief in the Church. It's used for conflicts where the subject is performing physical actions in the pursuit of his Heavenly duties, like chasing a suspect, or beating a suspect, or chasing and beating a suspect. It is also used to "create" suspects.  Every time the characters interact with an NPC verbally, the NPC gets a name. The first time the characters encounter a named NPC in a session, the character with the highest Zeal must make a Zeal roll to see if they are a Heathen. If the roll succeeds, then the GM must ascribe the suspicious aspect to that NPC at Rank 1. The NPC is under suspicion and now does suspicious things. Whether or not they actually ARE a heathen is up to the GM. To some degree, it doesn't matter. In the eyes of the Church, suspected heathens are heathens. You know what to do.

Ø Self represents how balanced the character is within their own skin and how self-directed they are. This Strength will start at zero in the experiment and the character will simply accept the orders being given from Up High.

Ø Weary holds the center position on the Cross. It's where the points spent on other actions go (see below). The weary points are refreshed through the Internal Review mechanic.

Risk mechanics: The Risk mechanic works something like blackjack. You roll a series of d6s, deciding to hit or stay, on a target of 18. In order to roll dice, you must either shift points on the Cross, or use dice from Aspects. The Strengths on the Cross represents reserves of Strength the subject can draw on during conflicts. Each time the subject decides to roll another die, he must declare the task he's performing in the pursuit of the declared conflict and move a point of the Strength being called on into Weary. The nature of the task determines which Strength the character is relying on.  In opposed rolls, both Subjects still resolve the conflict based on the Risk Chart below, with the subject closest to the target achieving his stakes first. In other words, both characters may achieve their stakes but the subject with the highest total not over 18 receives precedence. In the case of stakes that are diametrically opposed, as will usually be the case, the subject with without precedence will achieve his stake to the extent that it does not supersede the character with precedence. In this way, more than two characters may roll at the same time and each may achieve their stake. It's the Experimenter's job to arbitrate disputes.

v Experimenters call for risks for conflict resolution, not task resolution. They call for them when a conflict needs to be resolved, whether that conflict is external or internal. The subject determines what actions the character will take to resolve the conflict with each roll, and the GM and player decide what qualities and aspects that falls under.

v With each roll of the dice, someone should be narrating. These individual rolls represent actions your character is taking towards achieving the intent of the proposed stakes. These dice can represent setbacks, escalations, reversals of fortune, etc. They're the action and reaction, the task resolution used in traditional experiments. From a narrative standpoint, each roll means something. The current value of the dice also lets us know who is narrating. While the dice are under 15, the GM is narrating the conflict even if the entire conflict is not resolved yet and the dice total eventually goes over 14. Once the total reaches 15, then the player is narrating with each die roll. The final total reached when the subject decides he's done with the dice lets us know who narrates the final stakes and ultimately, the outcome of the conflict itself, taking into account the way that the task have been resolved up to this point.

Risk Chart:

Ø 1-11 – The character does not achieve the proposed stakes

Ø 12-14 – The character achieves the proposed stakes, but with a minor complication

Ø 15-17 - The character achieves the proposed stakes exactly.

Ø 18 - The subject narrates the conclusion of the conflict.

Ø Over 18 - Bust - The character achieves the letter of his proposed stake in the conflict, but the GM provides a major complication that is contrary to the spirit of the stakes. If the character is fighting over a girl, he wins the fight, but the girl is disgusted with his violent ways.

How does the church ensure the loyalty of its Shepherds? Obviously the whole cultlike indoctrination and life of privilege stuff goes a long way, but it seems to me that emotionally detached (bordering on sociopathic) ubermensch aren't exactly gonna be inclined to fanatical loyalty.

The whole thing kinda strikes me as a setup where achieving the goal of the exercise would be most easily reached through exploiting the potential for power and profit in one's position as a Shepherd, and becoming a shameless hypocrite who mouths pieties while ripping the system off for all he can get.

Quote from: Rallan;357755How does the church ensure the loyalty of its Shepherds? Obviously the whole cultlike indoctrination and life of privilege stuff goes a long way, but it seems to me that emotionally detached (bordering on sociopathic) ubermensch aren't exactly gonna be inclined to fanatical loyalty.

The whole thing kinda strikes me as a setup where achieving the goal of the exercise would be most easily reached through exploiting the potential for power and profit in one's position as a Shepherd, and becoming a shameless hypocrite who mouths pieties while ripping the system off for all he can get.

Well, of course. That's what a lot of people have used religion for for years.

But yeah, thanks. Things like that are things I need to address in the text. At the start of the game, the Shepherds have spent nearly their entire lives in the bosom of the Church. They know nothing else.

Have you seen Dexter, on Showtime? He's a sociopathic serial killer whose foster father trains him to kill murderers. Dexter latches on to his father because, for him, that's all there is. A large part of the show is about Dexter discovering that he doesn't actually HAVE to follow the code his father laid down before him.

That's that feel I'm going for here: on one hand, the players are powerful, but on the other, they know next to nothing about the world. They may be Shepherds, but the Lambs around know more about how the world actually works.

In playtests, almost every player, once they get a taste of the real world, goes one of two directions. They either buck hard and try to resist the Church's influence of them, or they stay the course so that they're bad ass. And the dynamics between the players at that point are really interesting.

The "stats" of each player are a closed system. If you want your Self to go up, so you can be less autonomous, you have to lower your Zeal. But a lot of combat maneuvers are tied to Zeal. So the whole game is about the character's movement away from being a beat stick and away from being railroaded.

The game also has an endgame and a number of "checkpoints" depending on the totals in the party. When the total Zeal drops below certain thresholds, certain things happen. The whole thing should last about 15 sessions.

Good feedback, though. The game is at the point now where I can run it, but getting the text to TEACH other people how to run the game when I'm not there is.... difficult.