Archie and Andy Invent a Game
Michael
Rob, to make the Esmology/game design with Krane conversations easier to track I'll do it in here once you've had a chance to roll.
Rob
Esmology-19.
>>>> SUCCESS by 7
Michael
Given Archie's solid and resilient basis in understanding fan culture (from a, er, proper anthropological distance of course), he knows even before doing an esmological analysis that fans are a fractious lot. Individual fen swear their allegiances to authors both popular and obscure, and while that can create a social landscape of larger groups engaging in factionalism, there is a very strong strain of individuality in fan culture, one that can help fans evade totalizing memetic narratives out of pure cussedness. At the same time, of course, authors can obviously command immense loyalty—from Heinlein to Asimov to, yes, Krane, we've seen exactly what can happen when a writer becomes a cult. This is even leaving aside the very recent bifurcation of Old Wave vs. New Wave and the implicit political, social, gender, and age demographic conflict that occurs under that banner, or even the science fiction vs. fantasy dialectic.
So what are the narratives that unite fandom in general? Why do all these disparate fans still flock together? There is a meta-narrative of being a sf nerd: being an outsider is practically inscribed into the sf scene's very heart over the past 35 years or so. An enjoyer of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells is not an outsider the same way that an enjoyer of Robert Heinlein and Alfred Bester (or indeed James Tiptree and Genevieve Abeille) is, but they all find themselves on the outside looking in: the nerds at school, the strident voices in their college literature clubs, the 30-somethings with the weird opinions on life, technology, magic, and society with their noses in a book of speculative fiction. Their passion, the quality which unites fandom, often makes fans appealing, in a larger sense, only to each other. Which is why you can end up with old school fans sparring joyfully with New Wave fans at cons. No one knows you/hates you like family, after all.
Rob
Oh wow, great stuff here, Mike. You seem to know a lot about this "fan culture" … OK, I'm thinking of a response to this or rather a direction to take Archie's query — if I understand you right, we are still "inside" that one Esmology roll, right? We can definitely do some kind of esmological internal dialogue, but what if, just to externalize/dramatize it, Archie went into the room with Krane and started drawing his behavior surface / catastrophe theory curves in there, talking aloud about "Krane's people," still doing his own esmological analysis but just using Krane as a sounding board? (It's terrible tradecraft of course, but I'm enjoying Archie opening up to / pulling Krane in to all this.)
Michael
Yeah, yeah, I like that as well. It makes a lot of sense given the initial thrust of Archie's esmological analysis. It also is, Archie can tell with that level of success on the Esmology roll, a good way of sounding out if Krane himself has any potential or latent talent at esmology: Archie's first instinct is probably not given the sometimes hackneyed alt.history depicted in his books but anybody who thinks about global macropolitics and/or social movements has to have at least a little bit of potential in getting the general vibe of esmology.
Rob
OK, so Archie just comes into the room with Krane and launches into it, he doesn't explain what esmology is or what he's doing. "These 'fans' of yours, Andrew. I mean all the folks at this conference. They're not exactly captains of the varsity squad, are they?" You've got to be a bit contemptuous to get into the esmology headspace, talking about people like they're rats in a Skinner box. Archie starts drawing his weird diagrams — a chalkboard would be ideal cinematically, but if there isn't one in the room, the legal pad will do. He gives a capsule version of what you wrote above, but it's staccato; he's moving quickly, his thoughts moving faster than his words. Krane can either keep up, or not. "They're hungry for stories, for meaning. I mean, they're starving for it — like I said, you should have seen the way were fawning over junk from my garage, eating up old stories about Leonard Nimoy."
More curves on the diagram. "They're lonely, that's obvious. I mean, that's why they're at this conference, right? To be part of a group, to mingle with their own hive. But … they don't seem to like their own kind much. They're ornery. They're individualists, or think they are. Which is good! We can use that."
"How do you sell to the tribe of no tribe? That's easy, Bill Bernbach cracked that nut in 1959. You make the pitch, then congratulate them for seeing through it. Because they're sharp, see? Persuasion 'doesn't work' on them."
"So, maybe we hit them with two narratives. Give them all game to play and a part to play in it: a chance to save the day, get the girl, be part of something bigger than themselves. But, some of them are going to balk at that. They're contrarian, they're too sharp for us, they don't want to play along. So inside the cereal box there's a prize, which is to say, a second cereal box. We congratulate the ones who see through the first level for seeing through it. Aren't you clever for seeing the truth: the game is not a game, it's real … and the fakery is what proves it."
Michael
"That's interesting," Krane says taking a puff from his cigarette and flicking the ash, hands cuffed, into his styrofoam cup. Given he's only been given the vaguest outlines of What This Is All About, he's a little in the dark but catches up quick. "Sure, you could pretty easily get the ones who don't want to 'play the game' interested that way. But you also lose the chance to enlist everyone at the convention in an active narrative by doing that. I think this idea of a secret elect or elite, this idea of the 'you're too smart to fall for x' element is a damn good one—religions and magical orders have used it for millennia, obviously — but I think you're only really getting one half of the crowd with both of these narratives."
"Because I know, Arch … not everyone at that con is there to see me, to have me sign their book, to talk to me about the organizational structure of MARPA. A lot of them don't care for my stuff that much at all... and in fact they might vastly prefer what Viv writes about."
"If you're thinking of doing something that evokes the idea of 'saving the day and getting the girl' … well, what are the girls in that audience going to do with that idea? I know them … hmm, not very well but pretty well, Arch: sure, there's some of 'em that love hard sf. But the reason there's even girls and women at that con in any great numbers now is because of the stuff that lady writers like Viv have been doing. There's the weirder, more spiritual and social sf; there's romance fans, especially fantastic romance; there are even fans of immortal vampires at that show right now. They don't necessarily want to be a hero and 'win' … they might want to build something, or feel something, or have a communal experience instead of an individual one. And from what little you told me about, er, the 'real Atlantis,' it sounds like this type of fan might be vulnerable to narratives like these."
"So what if you … bake that into the scenario. Let people pick sides. You can wear a MARPA badge or an Atlantean circlet. You give them what each side believes in. And you make your 'real Atlantis,' these hivemind bastards in the real world, the game's enemy. Make my US and Atlantis work together to banish them." Krane takes another drag off his smoke. "Yeah, you won't get 100% participation, probably... but you'll give the 'Atlantis fans' in the crowd something to do to keep them away from the real Atlanteans."
"It's … the kind of conclusion I really should write for the series, honestly."
Krane chuckles, "You know, it's long been said that if we were faced with an alien invasion from outer space, that it would end the Cold War in an instant, as humanity banded together to face a common foe. Do you believe that would happen, Archie? You think we'd put aside all our petty differences if humanity were at stake?"
Rob
"That's swell, Andrew! I knew you'd be a natural at this. Choice is key, you're right. The competition are probably just going to brute force it. Shock and awe, that's their way. But not ours. We've got to give our subjects lots of options, multiple belief paths through the persuasion space. Of course, they all lead them where we want them."
Archie starts a new diagram, but this one has three folded "belief surfaces" stacked on top of each other, with the z-axis labeled belief (up) and doubt (down). "Picture a line of ants, marching across a piece of paper, or a picnic blanket. The ants are our subjects. The diagram is a map of what they believe. So this middle surface here, this picnic blanket, is ordinary life. Call it, say, Picnic Blanket A. At this level, on Blanket A, they believe they're just ordinary folks at an ordinary science fiction conference, here to get autographs, argue about television programs."
"But funny stuff is happening around the hotel. Why's it so dark in here? Who are those fellows with dark suits and ray guns? Well, it's some kind of make-believe game. So there's another narrative layer, another blanket, on top of Blanket A, where the hotel is not a hotel, it's, let's say, an Atlantean embassy or something, and everyone gets to be a secret agent in the Cold War between MARPA and the Atlanteans. The ants - the subjects - get to pick their side, just as you say, but they also pick how much they want to believe. The more they want to play along, the more they move up this axis. They pretend it's all real, maybe even convince themselves."
"But some folks don't want to play along. They can tell something's fishy. How come the conference program didn't say anything about this game? The skeptics get to play the game of 'figuring out the truth,' moving down the persuasion space instead of up... but there's another picnic blanket beneath Blanket A, where we pretend this whole spy game is real. It's not MARPA versus Atlantis, it's the FBI and, I don't know, red terrorists. Deadly serious. No flying saucers, no Bobby Kennedy. The G-Men don't work out of a secret base in New Mexico, just a bland subbasement in, say, Alameda County."'
"On every level there are two sides to choose from: MARPA and Atlantis, Krane fans and Abeille fans, the G-Men and the Reds. Choose your side, and choose your blanket. But here's why the blankets are folded. The top level looks enough like the bottom level that if somebody on the bottom tries to see through that layer of deception, they just end up at the top again. Or vice versa. It's a loop, see? A closed system. We keep them all... trapped, like ants under glass. Which is how we keep them safe."
Archie steps back, takes in the whole diagram. "You know what we call the ants in these models? Technically, they're ABCEs, 'autonomous belief-constructing entities'. But everyone usually calls them 'agents.' Which is a little funny, if you think about it."
Michael
So Krane kind of boggles at the multi-layered, multi-dimensional narrative battlespace Archie's crafted here. "I usually adhere to the writers' maxim of 'keep it simple stupid,' but you've really crafted an … intricate matrix here, Archie. I guess this would keep any new obsessives from getting too too close to being tempted by the … say, Archie, I don't want to keep calling these evil forces 'Atlanteans,' especially considering now we've got a faction for this game who are my Atlanteans from the books, and we're going to try to redeem them a little bit with our storytelling. Plus the possibility of miscommunication. So what do you all call the real ones?"
Rob
Archie almost answers that directly, but the sight of Krane's handcuffs reminds him he's talking to a civilian. Saying the word "Anunnaki" or even "Red Kings" feels like a bridge too far. "Oh my goodness, you're still handcuffed! I'm sorry, Andrew. I think we can take those things off you, don't you?" (Assuming he has a key, he'll unlock the handcuffs.) "It's probably best if we don't name them, don't give them any memetic purchase inside our persuasion matrix. What do we call them? I try to just think of them as 'the opposition' or 'the competition.' If I can't avoid thinking of them altogether, ha ha."
Michael
Andrew rubs at the chafing on his wrists while chuckling again. "The Queen of Atlantis, eh? Well, all kidding aside, it may take some convincing to get Viv onboard. I'm willing to try my best but … she may be suspicious, given the circumstances of my disappearance and showing up on, well, ‘your’ side such as it is. On the other hand … Archie, this is what she does for a living. All her family therapy is basically one form or another of psychodrama, getting people in the family unit to look at their problems from a different perspective, to play a different role, to have the catharsis and recognition of understand what it's like to walk in another person's shoes. And so of course she would be amazing at putting these game structures into place. Especially if there are archetypal or mythic echoes, which it sounds like there would be. Heroes. Villains. Temptations. Stories."
"But trust, her trust that I know what I'm talking about, that additionally she can trust you all and trust that … well, that I'm not just having another one of my paranoid episodes, that's the possible rub. She can be … really headstrong. But I've known Viv for 35 years … if she can't trust me on this, who can she trust?"
Rob
"Right. You and Genevieve been friends for years. Use that! Things have gone far enough at the St. Francis that she shouldn't need persuading that something weird is going on. But we do need her to work with us, to trust us, or at the very least, you."
"My advice? Be straight with her. Tell her you know this doesn't make any sense. Tell her you only half know what's going on. But tell her we need her. And all those ant — all those people in the hotel need her too. Sincerity, that's the ticket. Puppets, marketing, the work I'm doing now — I find that people believe me when I believe me. When I try to get sneaky, that's when I get muddled up."
"I won't lie to you, Andrew. Genevieve is in real danger. Maybe more than any of the others. But we can help her. You can help her."
Michael
Krane sighs, unable to meet Archie's gaze for the first time this entire conversation. "Right. Right, I'll do my best. I'll be as straight as I can, as long as you all are willing to give her the answers that I can't. Because I know she'll want them. One thing I'm sure of: she won't want to be taken for a dupe. She'll want to be considered an equal, and if you want her on your side, she deserves at least that much."
Rob
"Do your best, Andrew, that's all we can ask. I'll be right here, we'll talk to her together. And I'll be as straight with her as I've been with you."
A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an infinite regress from which he cannot help us to escape. This argument … demonstrates that God, though not technically disprovable, is very very improbable indeed
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Michael
So I am going to plot out the Memetics rolls necessary to deploy Archie's proposed game design over the next 24 hours or so, and I'll drop them in here when they're ready. I may have Rob roll them at dramatic in-character points in the next couple of sessions to see how sticky the game concepts are among the crowd at Westercon.
One meme to enfold the game scenario of MARPA and Atlantis joining forces to defeat a third force made up of enslaving demons from outside reality.
Evaluate target audience: Krane (Writing) will aid Archie (Current Affairs: Pop Culture), +additional 2 from earlier Pop Culture crit Crafting campaign: Usually this would be Propaganda, but crafting a game feels like a very different skill set from an ad campaign. I feel like Archie could aid Krane here (since Krane will be doing the "flavor" for this Atlantis Risen-set LARP) both of them using Writing. Deploying meme (needs to be done on the ground inside the temblor zone by a "gamemaster"): This would be any storytelling type skill: Public Speaking, Leadership, Acting, etc. etc.
One meme to trap the people who sniff out what's actually happening, which hides the existence of the demons from outside reality.
Evaluate target audience: definitely Psychology, as this meme is meant to trap kids like the Krane cultists and others who might see the reality behind reality. Krane can aid but his Psychology would be pretty low (if non-existent); maybe he'd use Occultism or Current Affairs: Pop Culture for conspiracy theorizing. Crafting campaign: This one's definitely Propaganda. Deploying meme: Up to the URIEL team. Politics might work, as might the aforementioned Current Affairs or Occultism. We should pick someone believable with facility in said skill to spread the initial meme-rumor that the game is meant as a cover for some kind of actual espionage happening at the con. Russia House hijinks here we come!
And it's up to Archie if he wants to spread a third meme meant to keep the Blanket A ants occupied, something to do with the convention itself, or the sf fandom scene … just a thought. But that could get expensive Corruption-wise.
Once you know the final Power at which you're going to deploy the meme (the average of the first two rolls) that's your Corruption. Remember you can always deploy it at a lower Power than your design rolls' average to avoid an onerous Corruption hit. Although the circumstances here might demand a very Powerful meme indeed. Deployment can happen at the Hotel.
Rob
OK: the third meme is for the middle blanket, to cushion the brains of people who don't get into the Atlantis game (meme 1) or get paranoid about real Cold War brain hacking (meme 2, btw the "psychological experiment" idea as Marshall laid it out to Marianne is a great twist on "spy vs spy" as I originally imagined it, so let's go with that).
So meme 3 is meant to infect hotel staff, and hotel guests who are not part of the con, as well as un-engaged con goers. It's fairly simple, it says: "The weird sci fi nerds are playing some weird game at this hotel and anything weird that happens is part of that game, and I should probably avoid them and stay in my room as much as possible." It probably has an after effect of: "Sci fi and fantasy are weird and cons are weird and nerds are weird and in future I will watch soap operas or sports."
Vectors for deployment could be: Roger and Viv to the hotel and con staff, and/or signs to be put up around the hotel lobby and elevator areas, and/or a photocopied note to be slipped under guest doors, apologizing/explaining about the con and the game, memetically loaded with this "nerds be weird" message.
Michael
The two rolls for Meme 3 are going to be Current Affairs: Pop Culture to analyze the social battlespace and isolate the opinions of the non-fans and then Propaganda to craft the message about the game and the "please feel free to ignore this if you're not interested (and if you're not interested, really just stay in your room and watch TV)."
Rob
Ok, made the audience analysis roll by 5 and the crafting roll by 12.
Michael
Meme 1 (the LARP): 11 + 10 / 2 = 11: to be released at Power x thanks to Genevieve's Public Speaking (Storytelling) roll.
Meme 2 (the Cold War game theory espionage thing): 8 + 9 / 2 = 9: to be released at Power 10 thanks to Marshall's Propaganda roll.
Meme 3 (the stay in your rooms and watch TV): 5 + 12 / 2 = 9: to be released at Power x thanks to Roger's Streetwise roll (?).
Thinking that maybe we have Roger do Streetwise to work with the hotel staff to make sure housekeeping slips one under every door? With substantial bonuses now that both the management and the workers trust him.
Rob
Yeah, that's good. Do meme deployers (Viv, Marshall/Marianne, Roger/housekeeping) take corruption or is it all on the creator? (Did Andy take Corruption from his work today? Not that I'd expect you to track it, but just in theory)
Michael
Ken says: "Actively planning a memetic campaign using the Anunnaki source code: Adds Corruption equal to the meme’s Power." It makes sense that it's all on the creators because obviously a lot of times people are Patient Zero for a meme without their knowledge. I wouldn't say people consciously spreading a meme should take any Corruption; it's the letting in of the source code into your own brain, shaping it to the particular ad campaign, that makes you As Unto Them. So Kran … er, maybe he should share a little of the Meme 1 Corruption, because goddamn he'd be good and curious to see what you were adding to his typewritten game documents.
Rob
Oof. Well, now's the time to do it, with Four Days to Save Reality, and Plans B and C looking pretty flimsy. Didn't I say at the start I was going to play our fragile wizard / SAN-loss-soaking scholar? Anybody who wants to say anything to Archie while he's still nice, do it now!
Michael
Actually, I am going to have Krane take 4 of the Corruption from Meme 1, Rob, to leave Archie with an even 25 (I figured this made sense since that's the unit of Corruption that triggers a Will check.)