Altared States

[Harlan Quinn]

How does one get to the NeverNever?    I know there are rituals and doorways, but how will it be handled in the game?
 
And few other questions: 

How does topography match up?   Example:  If I leave an area of plains in the Prime Material, will it be plains on the other side?  (Yeah, I know it's magic and they can end up anywhere, but generally speaking...)

________________________________
 
How many different dimensions are there?   If each religion/philosophy has a metaphysical afterlife or state of being, you could have numerous destinations.    Not to mention, how to "fit" them all in, is the Prime Material a focal point with all the other dimensions dividing it?   And what about a "cosmic pecking order"?  Which dimension would trump what dimension?  (Not asking for a ranking, but more an idea of how the power/space is shared and mapped out.)
 

 

[TheMouse]

No clue how the game will handle it, although I imagine that there will be rules for the various ways of getting there. We've seen several types of beings cross over from the Nevernever, so there'll probably be something.

I think that the novels have been pretty clear that our world and the Nevernever don't match up topographically. There seem to be spots that match up, but places here don't correlate with one another the same way that the associated spots correlate with one another there.

Imagine it like two decks of cards. The king of diamonds in one deck is associated with the king of diamonds in the other, etc. Lay one deck out on a table such that all of the diamonds are in order, then all the clubs, etc. Now, shuffle the other deck, and lay them out with the same number of rows and columns. You can't say that the third card in from the left in the second row matches between arrangements, but you can say that the king of diamonds matches with the other king of diamonds.

I also get the impression that the topography of the Nevernever is rather more mobile than what we're used to here.

[skakid]

Great analogy.  I'll probably use that.

[Harlan Quinn]

How do you design places that have magic as part of their essence?
 
Example:In a game I've been thinking about, there's a bar called Dean's Place and there's some problems with it :
 
(1) The original Dean's burned down about 43 years ago and was never rebuilt.  However, to certain "people" Dean's can still be seen and entered.  (I'm thinking mystical folks and drunks would be probably the preferred guests.)
 
(2) Any piece of technology built after 1965 will not function in Dean's.  Cell phones, laptops, etc. stop working the moment they cross the threshold at Dean's  (Hmmmmm...when were pacemakers built  ?)   There is a rotary phone, jukebox (no music past 1965) and a television which plays all three major networks following the 1965 daily schedule for whatever day it is outside Dean's.
 
(3) Food and drink is available inside Dean's, but has no real substance once back outside.   Money, no matter what the year, is taken inside by the bartender and wait staff.  Or as Dean says "Money is money and we ain't sticklers for everything..pally"
 
So how do you build something like this in the game?   You have to build both positives and negatives and not sure how you would build this using something like the FATE system.

[T.R.C.C.]

Dean's Place reminds me about a story I once heard about a family that travelled to France and stayed at an old tavern for a night that was decorated as if it was the turn of the century. A year later they went back and couldn't find it again. They arsked the local's about it and discoverd that it had burned down in the late 1800's.

1/ Perhaps the doorframe was moved and reused. The door is still linked to the bar for those that know how to step through it the right way. Or if they knock in tune to a old song before opening the door?

2/ Mac's bar is designed to help stop magic effects in the Dresdenverse. Dean's bar could flood the area so no other magic but Dean's could work. The T.V. might work on the local day if the antenna was somehow linked to the outside. Perhaps the T.V. is in an antique store gathering dust in the local timeline?

3/ The barkeep and staff could just mindblank the odd money and clothing by seeing it as the normal everyday clothing of there time. I.E. Instead of seeing a man in a biker jacket and motor helmet. They see someone in a tweed jacket, trousers and felt hat with the money of the time they are from.

I have never played in a FATE system but if you can think of an interesting place to set a scene in. Sometimes the face it can't be explained easliy is a good way of getting the players into the story/game your running.

Hope that helps you Harlan Quinn.

[Storykeeper]

How does one get to the NeverNever?    I know there are rituals and doorways, but how will it be handled in the game?
 
And few other questions: 

How does topography match up?   Example:  If I leave an area of plains in the Prime Material, will it be plains on the other side?  (Yeah, I know it's magic and they can end up anywhere, but generally speaking...)

________________________________
 
How many different dimensions are there?   If each religion/philosophy has a metaphysical afterlife or state of being, you could have numerous destinations.    Not to mention, how to "fit" them all in, is the Prime Material a focal point with all the other dimensions dividing it?   And what about a "cosmic pecking order"?  Which dimension would trump what dimension?  (Not asking for a ranking, but more an idea of how the power/space is shared and mapped out.)
 

 

If I recall, locations are connected by points that have significance to each other (see the analogy to a deck of cards.)  That's partly why (to my understanding) openings between the normal world and teh nevernever are so hard to find, because they simply don't sink up very often.  For instance, an opening to some location important to the Summer Court might only be accessible during the longest day of Summer during dusk and twilight (the in-between times, i.e. the times when thing are more mutable and less defined.)

If you've read the books, think about how the terrain changed whenever Harry has crossed into the nevernever.  He also gives some explanations of how it all works together in a couple of books.  As for the number of planes/afterlives/whatever, all of them are there.  I don't think one 'trumps' the other, although some may be larger than others.  I believe that the nevernever follows the idea that some locations are connected metaphysically.  A morbid after life area might tie to a ghost's demesne because they're both linked to death.  The ghost had a thing for teddbears, so  teddybear factor has a portal to the nevernever if you crawl under a conveyor belt from the correct side.

Am I making myslef clear, or is that all still jumbled?

[talktotheHand]

I would love to hear from Jim or one of the bunch at evil hat about the Topography / NN relationship. after reading small favor and re reading the series again I could never quite draw the connection myself.

[TheMouse]

This is going to start out sounding like I'm not talking on subject. Stay with me for a second.

Books and gaming are different media, with different strengths and weaknesses. Creating them serves different needs and has different power dynamics. While there is some overlap in what works well in both, there are times when stuff that's brilliant in one quite simply doesn't work in the other.

An author is trying to tell a story. To do that he needs to create and justify all the actions which comprise that story. We need Harry to get into the Nevernever, so there will happen to be a way to get there; it will generally be dangerous or complicated, but that's all part of the creating a story thing. Here's a key concept: With a book you go back and rewrite stuff, and you need not fully flesh out some aspect of the thing.

Okay, how's this relate to what we're talking about?

Well, games don't quite work that way. For one thing, everyone sitting around the table contributes; the power is more diffused around the group. There's actually a thing in the FATE system which allows players who aren't the GM to say things like, "This gate into the Nevernever is sensitive to blood magic," and be right (if they make their roll, of course). So the story draws from the imaginations of everyone sitting around the table, and it happens in real time; you don't generally get the chance to edit a role playing game.

Now, to draw this a little tighter onto topic.

A lot of the particulars about the Nevernever is likely to be at least somewhat different from the books. As a group, you and the other folks around the table will all contribute aspects to it, and you'll all decide how to use it to make your game more fun. Also, we don't know if the Nevernever in Chicago behaves the same way as it does in, say, Boston.

I guess that basically this was all a rambling way to say that the Nevernever is just a tool to help your gaming group have a good time. Because role playing gaming has different strengths and responds to different pressures, the way you use that tool will be a little different from how Jim uses it in his novels.

[Harlan Quinn]

That's one of the things I'm curious about:Is the Nevernever the same in Boston as it is in Chicago?  Or Paris, London, Moscow..etc?  How much does the local "flavor" of a city change the Nevernever and vice versa?

[Rel Fexive]

Faerie is always being described as that part of the Nevernever that is nearest to the normal world, and everything we've seen of it so far looks nothing like the part of Chicago they enter it from or leave into.  The supposed other parts that are "further away" probably look even less like the mortal world.

But the Nevernever doesn't seem to work like, for example, the Umbra in the old World Of Darkness.  You don't go there and see a strange magical and spirit-filled reflection of the real world.  Except... when Harry and Michael cross over into the demesne of Agatha Hagglethorn.  Then it looks very different and does reflect, after a fashion, Chicago - albeit a twisted remembrance of it.  This would suggest that some parts of the Nevernever are subject to alteration by a particularly potent spirit or ghost or (possibly) real world event.

So I would think that most of the Nevernever that you might visit in a game would be the usual faerie realm, but that some parts of it could be shaped by the ghosts, spirits, monsters and events that are present in the real world, imposing some of the character of a real world location on the area of the Nevernever "nearest" to it, and those areas would represent places of extreme correspondance with the spirit world, allowing all kinds of things to cross over both ways.

[TheMouse]

The ghost's demesne seems to be a special case. It's her place, and she's caught up in her old life. So her place looks like her old life. I didn't get the impression that the similar appearance was an intrinsic thing about the Nevernever.

[Rel Fexive]

I'm not sure what you mean.

[TheMouse]

What I mean is that my impression is that the ghost's realm looked like Chicago only because it was her realm. Ghosts appear as the people they were in life. Likewise, it appears that their realms look like where they lived. Since she'd lived in Chicago, her realm looked like Chicago. That is, it is the fact that the realm was modeled after the ghost's former life, not any proximity to the actual Chicago, that makes it appear as Chicago.

If this is indeed the case, then you can get interesting things with which to play. For example, a long time resident in location A moves to location B and dies shortly thereafter, before really getting a chance to think of location B as home. Their death is terrible and leaves behind a ghost powerful enough to carve out a little niche in the Nevernever. Because of how the person thought of themself as a resident of location A, their realm looks a lot like location A at the time of their death.

So you could theoretically get a chunk of the Nevernever in modern rural Washington that looks just like 1920's New York City.

[Rel Fexive]

Ah, I see what you mean now.  The demense was shaped by her rather than by Chicago, and only looked like sorta-Chicago because that's what she knew, yeah.  So this opens up the possibility of other (small) parts of the Nevernever being shaped by other creatures into... well, whatever they knew, as I suggested.

So what would the Nevernever hideaway of a grendelkin look like?  Or a nest of (Red of Black, take your choice) vampires?  Or potentially, if you want to take things that way: what would the site (in a "roughly corresponding location in the spirit world" way) of a major mortal disaster look like in the Nevernever?  A place shaped by the extreme and intense emotions of human beings in distress (some of whom died).  Is this even possible?

Our answers to this are only our own, and possibly inspiration for others

[Harlan Quinn]

Hmmmm..maybe I'm saying this wrong.    What I mean is, how is the Nevernever shared among the various mythos?   We've seen elves, trolls, etc and they all have a strong Anglo-Saxon background.   What I want to know is what about kami, oni, yeti, rashaka (sp?) etc...   How do they all share the Nevernever?  Is it divided nationally as well as between the seasons?