Some time ago, on this very site, I spent hundreds of pages in Word (or equivalent) in building up a grand Fantasy Setting.  Was it good? Eh, results were mixed. Some people liked it, others were of the opinion that it literally offered nothing new to the worlds of Fantasy and had no reason to exist but that I was bored.

But enough with the back story.

One of the features of this setting was something called the Great Engine.  I meant it to be a sort of Holy Grail, or for less cultured types, the RIFTS Phase World's Cosmic Forge, something players could sink their teeth into searching out for answers, a divine McGubbin (or, for you snobs, a MacGuffin, which isn't exactly what I meant, but I know you'll want to correct my McGubbins...).  

The twist was that the Great Engine was essentially just a fancy way of describing The Meaning Of Life, so to speak.  Living sentient beings were the Great Engine, created by the Gods to work magics and so forth to keep Reality from dissolving into the Great Sea of Chaos, and to quest for it was... well... a chance to get into some great stuff (or so I thought) with the Gods, the underpinning metaphysics of the world itself and so forth.

I mean I had it all worked out, the immortality of the soul and what the dead got up to in the Afterlife, why the Gods kept granting Apotheosis to heroic mortals, why they kept giving Magic back to the world despite the number of times it had led to divine level disasters (twice in living history, presumably more in the long span before History) and all of that...  

And over five or six years and two campaigns a lot of that great stuff got used.

What didn't get used, not one fucking time, was the Great Engine concept. No one ever bit, no one cared about questing for the Grail and my players more or less gave the entire thing a big, fat Meh.

The same players that leapt at teh chance to explore the Lands of the Dead, and fought the Gods over their right to disbelieve in them and a bunch of other cool things that the Great Engine was supposed to lead to.

Looking back on that odd failure (and realizing that I haven't made a decent Gaming related post in months, if not years...) I am left to wonder if I... well... the title of the thread says it all.


And I wonder: Should I have just slapped the table said: "Holy Grail, motherfuckers. You should quest after it."?

As a character, I would seek out such Great Engine, and kill it. Or at least haul it back to the village for the Mad Iq to unlock its secrets.

That would be both hilarious and awkward, especially since I'm sure I'd let you pull it off if you worked at it.

Now, how exactly does one go about killing the metaphorical meaning of life and dragging it's corpse about for Mad Iq's to study?

Sounds like a good theme for a campaign. If the journey was interesting who cares about the destination?

Players are autistic at times... If you want them to follow something, then you've got to 'sow the seeds'. If they don't notice your hints or ignore them. Then start dangling bigger carrots in front of them, and make sure there's a big reward (or at least pretend theirs one at the initial stages).

Sounds like a good campaign though none-the-less.

You made a world and the players chose to explore and go after those things they went after.  Sounds like everyone had fun too- I call that a win.

I think it sounds like a cool idea too.

There is some irony here that you as the creator of this world *are* that God that is disappointed in his creations for not following the real goals of his creation. So meta!

If you built in some in-game benefit to pursuing that goal, I think it would be a winner. Of course the real key is in the execution and sticking that landing, as with most things in game design.

You cannot convince players to undertake activities. You have to find a way to make the players want to do stuff. The concept sounds fun, and it sounds like your players had a good time in your campaign, so I don't think it was shit GMing. A different group of players might become obsessed with finding the great engine if you just happen to mention it in passing. Having run the same adventures for multiple groups over the years, I have found that reactions to certain setting & adventure elements vary widely.

So keep the concept and try it with a different group.

Quote from: Spike;972280That would be both hilarious and awkward, especially since I'm sure I'd let you pull it off if you worked at it.

Now, how exactly does one go about killing the metaphorical meaning of life and dragging it's corpse about for Mad Iq's to study?

1. Study Pratchett's "Hogfather".
2. Adapt to campaign world.
....

Profit!

Quote from: Spike;972280That would be both hilarious and awkward, especially since I'm sure I'd let you pull it off if you worked at it.

Now, how exactly does one go about killing the metaphorical meaning of life and dragging it's corpse about for Mad Iq's to study?

The Great Engine is real all right. And it's huge. It'll have to be hauled, similar to how Gulliver was hauled from the beach in the Hal Roach cartoon. It's furnaces run hot. Steam pressure galore. Lots of whipping of slaves to pull it through the mangroves, and across the ocean desert floor. The Mad Iq will learn its functions, its powers, its mystrees.

And with it comes the End Times. See Trashcan Man's haul, from The Stand.

Did you tell the disinterested players that there was this sort of thing and it was called "The Great Engine"? Because revealing that there is one real key to the universe to players who aren't into it and that it even has a peculiar brand name seems calculated to inspire apathy and aversion in many players even more strongly than starting out with the centuries-old history of their homeland. I would not tell them about it at all at first, have few NPCs know about it, have several different groups of NPCs who are interested in it but have different names for it and different philosophies and theories about it. If the PCs fail to even learn or care about it, I'd let them not care, but if I care and think people should care and they'd want to if they knew more, I'd put NPCs around them who are interested and have different ideas about and names for it and different ways they are interested in it, and who have various types of reasons to be interested in talking to the PCs about it.

When Phil Barker started running Tekumel, he made it known that there was a great "Secret of Tekumel" and that the object of the game was to find the Great Secret.

Most of us didn't give a shit.  For that matter, I still don't give a shit.  Finding "The Great Secret of the Game World" still sounds singularly uninteresting to me.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;972328When Phil Barker started running Tekumel, he made it known that there was a great "Secret of Tekumel" and that the object of the game was to find the Great Secret.

Most of us didn't give a shit.  For that matter, I still don't give a shit.  Finding "The Great Secret of the Game World" still sounds singularly uninteresting to me.

Yes, and the upside is that way it can STAY secret!

So your players didn't take the bait you offered. Players are gonna do what players are gonna do.  This is why I never plan out massive, sweeping campaigns any more. I just sketch the world in broad strokes and fill in details as I go, one step ahead of the players.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;972328When Phil Barker started running Tekumel, he made it known that there was a great "Secret of Tekumel" and that the object of the game was to find the Great Secret.

Most of us didn't give a shit.  For that matter, I still don't give a shit.  Finding "The Great Secret of the Game World" still sounds singularly uninteresting to me.

What was the Big Secret?