Haunted Dolls

So one of the things I planned on using this blog for is posting ideas that I would like to use for my game at some point. At the very least it lets me write down and polish them for myself and maybe share them with someone else while I’m at it. I’ve seen the haunted doll trope a lot recently. Between the podcasts I listen to and the various short stories I read it has come up a lot. So I thought about how I’d like to use them.

Poppets are dolls that either intentionally or accidentally harbor a portion of someone’s soul. Either they are dear to someone in life and the ghost maintains a connection to it or a living person secrets a sliver of themselves into one through a ritual.

The Ritual:

That a humanoid form is the best container to keep a soul in is fact. Some scholars argue that’s why people are shaped the way they are. The more the doll resembles the subject the better. Also the more care and time that is spent in its creation the better. A hand made doll with hair from the subject and carefully selected glass eyes of just the right color works best.

The ritual itself lasts a few hours and must be done while the subject still lives. Once they have died they are beyond the reach of this magic. The ritual has two goals. First, it symbolically gives the doll the same name as the subject, blurring the line between the two metaphorically. Second, a shard of the subject’s soul is placed in the doll with the name. Some philosophies make the claim that a person’s name is their soul and by sharing the name with the doll it accomplishes both feats at once. But that’s just theory.

After the ritual is complete the poppet shares a unique bond with the subject. It is a common story for poppets to manifest scars and wounds that the living counterpart sustains. The subject subconsciously begins to view the poppet the same way as they view themselves. A well adjusted person would be find it quite companionable. A person filled with self-loathing would grow to resent the poppet. Other people might find the poppet unsettling but as long as the subject and poppet survive that is the extent of the effect.

If the poppet is destroyed the living person will feel a jolt of pain and chill as the separated portion of their soul is destroyed. If they are weak enough it is possible this will kill them but most people shake it off after a few minutes. However the real reason the ritual is performed is insurance against the living person’s untimely death.

Sharing the same name and a sliver of the same soul between the living person and the poppet confuses the natural process of death. If the living person dies from something other than old age while the poppet still exists their soul is torn in half. Half going where ever it is supposed to go and the other half flowing into the poppet. This results in the poppet animating under its own power and consciousness. A broken consciousness.

Having a portion of someone’s soul splintered is traumatic enough. Surviving the experience of death with only half of a soul is mind shattering on a whole new level. Many poppets have difficulty remembering who they were, why they are here, what happened to them, and all suffer some manner of obsessions.

Still surviving with mental trauma is still better than not surviving at all. At different times nobles in several different kingdoms were known to create a poppet of their children at birth in case they were assassinated or killed during war. This certainly didn’t help maintain a stable nobility and has also lead to darker situations.

Borennon:

The tradition of making poppets is long and storied in Borennon. Most people don’t know the actual magic and just hope that the doll will absorb the tragic fate set out of their child in place of them. Some nobles know the truth though, they still practice the old ways. By severing a portion of their child’s soul when they are an infant there are better chances of them recovering and growing up normal. Of course that also means there are more animated poppets running around too. Unable to be seen in public many are tasked with clerical roles in the family. After all if they can’t be a physical presence they might as well be an intellectual one.

Some servants talk though. They tend to the chronically ‘sick children’ of the nobility that never seem to eat much and never leave their rooms. They tell other rumors too. They tell of secret meetings between poppets. Of hushed whispers and councils by candlelight. Necromantic laboratories staffed by walking dolls intent on reversing the process and putting themselves into living bodies. These can only be rumors of course. Can you imagine a soul that had managed to place themselves back into a living body? How broken would they be? How obsessed with physical sensations. And if they did the poppet process again? A splinter of a splinter? Not to mention one that had mastery of such arts and in such a powerful position as a noble family.

Safety Nets

So one of the things I’ve noticed recently in games is the use of mechanics to try and compel or protect the themes the game wants to utilize. I’ve seen it more in ‘genre’ games like 7th Sea. The book not only tells you that this is a swashbuckling setting but tries to use the rules to enforce that. It rewards roleplaying that goes along with the setting and tries to curtail characters acting against it.

I suppose the important question is should anyone do this? On the one hand it rewards clever roleplaying which I feel is always a positive. On the other, it tries to shape what kind of game you’re running. Now it’s true that you don’t ever have to use the rules or setting as written. I’ve certainly lifted rules out of a setting and reapplied them elsewhere. But should a designer try to control the stories their customers tell? As a way to balance gameplay mechanics it can certainly be a shortcut. In the old West End Star Wars the Force was incredibly powerful but also opened you up to corruption. If you ever committed an act the gamemaster felt was dark side worthy you got a dark side point. Then you rolled a d6 and if you rolled equal to or below your number of dark side points you became an NPC that fell to evil.

That’s an extreme example but an important one. It gives the gamemaster an easy way to simply take your character away. One that they can wield by ruling an action as ‘evil’ which is an incredibly relative idea. You see the same thing in the old World of Darkness Vampire: the Masquerade books. Every character had a Humanity track that they were supposed to struggle with and try to maintain as they slip lower and lower on it over time. It wasn’t something that could take your character away in one bad dice roll but it was a central mechanic to the game. Usually when I’ve seen it used it ended in two ways, either it was largely ignored except in the most despicable acts or game stopped to debate whether something counted or not.

I find myself in the middle, leaning towards using the mechanics to support themes. I think you shouldn’t threaten to take a character away from one bad decision unless it’s not arbitrary at all. I also think it shouldn’t break the flow of the game. If anything it should help it. If you act heroic and with panache in a swashbuckling game, you should be rewarded. If you confront your character’s worse nature in a horror game, you should be rewarded. If you’re in an over the top anime game, you should be rewarded for giving an over the top dramatic description. Maybe that’s the answer then. Maybe it should only be positive reinforcement that is used to protect the themes of the game. It’s less likely to interrupt the flow of the story, the players are more likely to have more fun, and it still encourages you to get into character.

Just Like Peanut Butter

So I’ve found in the past few years I’ve grown to appreciate simplicity in my games. I used to love playing GURPS, HERO System, and Pathfinder. I even played Rollmaster once. But these days it’s getting more and more annoying to keep up with the intricacies and mechanics. The crunch has become more annoying that comforting.

I’ve found that my gaming group has moved more into FATE based systems. I’ve even played around with Powered by the Apocalypse games a bit and enjoyed it. Now I certainly recognize that you need the right gaming group for any game. For story heavy games it seems especially true. If a single player can’t get into the mindset then it ruins the flow that those games seem to run on.

With that said I greatly enjoyed the past few Dresden games I’ve played though I feel they are too specialized for me to ever want to run. For a game centered around wizards and simplicity the magic system is surprisingly clunky. I’m not especially interested in the world of Dresden and the system greatly expects you to build off of what they’ve provided.

Currently I’m playing a game of City of Mist. It’s a Powered by the Apocalypse game that was build around the idea of superheros. The setting in the game is a mystical, noir city. However the system isn’t tied to the setting at all. So far I’ve really enjoyed the demo rules they’ve put out. You can find the Kickstart here. The flow of the game is very dependent on the GM since the player is the only one who ever rolls. It takes some getting used to but I still recommend giving it a try. The starter set is free after all.

First blog post

So I’ve tried this once before and it ended up falling apart. However I’m starting this blog again so I can write about my experiences and thoughts on my table top RPG hobby. I hope you’ll find it entertaining as I try to collect my thoughts and put them in some semblance of order.