the reincarnation thing is an interesting concept, but you can't simulate reaching enlightenment as an effective goal.
I can't exactly explain, but It's sort of like... what's stopping the players from saying "okay so my character reads On The Road and suddenly his whole world view changes and he stops caring about having enough money to support his parents or anything because he's enlightened. What do I win?"
in a game of make-believe, where the goal is to make your character think something, it doesn't work very well. Because either the game is too free and the player can just say "okay my characters thinks of X/thinks in X way", or the game has mechanics that prevent the characters from thinking certain ways, which is very inhibiting to any attempts of roleplaying.

>>16314936

Hmmm. I didn't think about that. But you know, the quest for enlightenment isn't easy in real life, even if you know what you "should" be thinking about. It takes more than waking up one morning and deciding "I am enlightened!"

Every attachment you break from should, at the very least, be one very dramatic scene with a lot of buildup when suddenly you realize the foolishness of greed or somesuch.

Maybe we can work out something with this.

Or we can do something with karma. You have to do a lot of good deeds to gain karma which... will help you in some way, I guess.

>>16314984
A way I could sort of seeing it work is if upon character creation, each player draws a card/rolls on a table, and that determines their attachments. Or perhaps even the Bodhisattva determines each player's attachments secretly.

Anyway, throughout the game, the PCs have to discover their attachments and how to free themselves from them. Each attachment would have a series of "goals" to complete, perhaps. Like objectives to wean oneself off of that attachment, and become wholly apathetic but also aligned.

That's just sort of a vague idea, but still, honestly, I just don't know how well a game about reaching enlightenment would work. Considering enlightenment is a very profound achievement that requires deep philosophical contemplation and examination of everything, and some crazy-as-fuck epiphanies... I just don't see how that can be "simulated" in a game.

>>16315027
>wholly apathetic but also aligned.

i probably shouldn't be posting 5 minutes after i wake up. meant to say "but also enlightened"

>>16315027

Yeah, I guess that idea is kind of ambitious, isn't it? But I don't want to give up just yet. It may have potential.

Why do you think the attachments should be secret or random?

>>16315042
The attachments seem to be the main "challenge" in the game, or at least overcoming them is. The way I see it, letting the players pick/know their attachments could work with good players who RP well, but it's some valuable meta-knowledge, really. It's like knowing what the GM will throw at you in every random encounter, giving you time to prep fire to kill the trolls, or to get some harpoons to pierce the dragon's wings, well before the villagers even complain to you about a band of murderous beasts or a flying monster.

But if you don't know what your attachments are, how can you work towards overcoming them? How will you ever be able to find out, in game?

>>16315089
well that's the idea. part of the game is about the players discovering what their attachments are. of course, now that I think about it, that also sort of sucks. It's just a difficult concept to make into a game, IMO. I like it, I just don't know how possible it is.

>>16315110

Hmm.

What about an Atarashii Games style gamist approach instead of narrativist? The rules guide you towards the drama of self discovery?

>>16315130
unfortunately i'm not knowledgable enough to have any idea what that is.

Well, I guess I'll keep this idea in the drawer for now. Maybe one day I'll pull it out and do something with it. Nice to know it's at least interesting.

>>16315221

I think the idea of Enlightment as a game goal is great!
While reading this thread I started thinking about the Virtues and Curses of the Exalted game.
There you have 4 Virtues that are rated 1-5 (1 meaning you lack that virtue, 5 meaning your hardcore in it). For a "Buddist" style game you could figure out a kind of mechanic that allows karma to change a virtue to rating 3 (perfect balance).

Then I was thinking about Curses or Flaws, thing a soul needs to break free from. Flaws could be bound to an incarnation (like bad schooling, drug addiction or haterd of a particular people) while Curses are bound to a soul itself. These would be constant through incarnations (thing like Greed, Lust or Pride). These would need to be removed each incarnations. Otherwise the next incarnations would gain extra Flaws.

>>16315280
Karma could be gained by preforming good deeds, resisting Flaws and Curses (using role play as bonuses on extended rolls), and good role play in which the character becomes aware of his Flaws and Curses.

While running this game you would have to build characters that were already on the road to Nirvana. Either through inborn piety or conscious effort these characters are TRYING to reach Nirvana despite their many flaws.
I'm thinking that good character concepts are reformed villain, soldier whose sick of war OR (to take from Buddist beliefs) a spoiled prince who has finally seen poverty and death.

One importamt thing to remember is that in Buddist beliefs Enlightement is ACTIVELY opposed by Demons. Try to imagine succubi keeping souls Lustfull or Demon armies trying to sway Greedy characters to conquest.
Defeating these Demons should be role play challenges, not simple combat.
Exalted also has a couple of examples for "battles of the mind", where you could fight someone using your ratings in Lore, Resistance, Craft, Linguistics or any other non-combat stat. These could be used to simulate fighting against the "inner demon of Sloth" or the "Actual demon of Wrath.

Finally I think that even though your game is focused on the soul, you still should not neglect earthly encounters. A soul living in poverty, slavery or decadence still needs to physically free itself from those thing. That could be the "random encounters" you run while the PCs are trying to free themselves from attachment.
Consider a monk trying to meditate while people are coming to him asking him to free their village from a warlord. The character could ignore the peasant but doing so would count as an act of Sloth or Pride. The character would them have to deal with the challenging "combat" with a demon of the Sins. Losing this combat could give a character a higher rating in Curses of Flaws in his next live, while he loses the added bonus of the Karma he could have gained helping the villagers.

bump

bumping for karma!

Not for page 15

bump for enlightenment!

Game sounds legit. I'd play it.

>>16314887
so.. is there any chans the player finds out that "The Bodhisattva" is helping them? like, how will knowing that they are traped in the samsara affect gameplay?

If someone comes to you with a false enlightenment, give them more attachments based on how premature it is.

This way, you're not even necessarily penalizing them. They obviously don't understand true enlightenment and need more time and guidance to ponder it.

>>16325002 Again.

Just because a player knows their attachments does not mean it will be easy to take care of them. Really, I mean I could think of more attachments that I have than I could count on my fingers. That part isn't that hard. Really, they're just pre-made plot points that the PCs and GM would work out at chargen.

Then the GM figures out a few triggers for ridding that character of that attachment, or allows an unforeseen one at the time it's attempted. You could even assign variable difficulty ratings to specific attachments that are dependent on how many attachments the soul/character currently has. Might be hard to see your way through one if you have a mountain of other problems.

Also, make it possible to pick up new attachments if the character creates one.

You can also get around the idea that it's hard to manifest enlightenment in game terms by not really doing it. You're the Bodhisattva, you're closer to enlightenment than any of the players, what do they know? Which actually could create a pretty cool persistent DMPC that the PCs could interact with that wouldn't be overpowered, because, well... he has no attachments or ambitions, he wouldn't be interested in fighting or solving crimes, etc.

>>16314887

It's an interesting, but I see the same problem with it as defining Mage: The Ascension's, well, Ascension, or Vampire's Golconda. How do you even role-play something like *that*?

>>16325064 Again, again.

Also, just style attachments after traits in Dogs in the Vineyard, stuff like:

"Problems at the Bottom of a Bottle."
"Sleeps With One Eye Open"

Abstract stuff like that. Makes interpretation much more open.

A possibly cool way to determine the number of attachments would be to roll a d6 and a d8. The d6 determines the X in XdY and the d8 determines the Y. Move subtract 1 from any odd numbers on the d8 to ensure an even number.

Then roll the correct quantity of the correct dice and then that number is how many attachments your soul has.

Not entirely sure how to assign difficulties and values to the attachments, though.

>>16325100 Again, again, again.

Also, I think the character attachments and soul attachments should be separated into two separate categories. Once you free yourself from X value (all?) of character attachments and X value of soul attachment(s), you are able to move on to the next step in the Great Wheel. However, I definitely think the character attachments should be more important for moving yourself forward in the Great Wheel, but they won't get you to enlightenment.

You could also make a wheel that has different levels of incarnation on it that have the X value that you need to free yourself from during that particular incarnation. This would make the difficulty to move ahead in the wheel rise as you get closer to removing yourself from it and reaching enlightenment.

On initial incarnation or reincarnation, you should have to roll dice close to the same way you do for soul attachments, but the quantity of dice and number of sides go down as you move forward in the wheel.

The problem that would introduce, though, is that if the difficulty to escape that level of incarnation grows every time and the number of attachments lessens, you might run into scenarios where people don't have enough attachments to reach the next level. So maybe allow enlightenment at any level of the wheel? It's obviously just harder at the earlier stages because you have so many more. So the benefit of moving forward in the wheel is that it just makes it significantly easier to become enlightened, I guess.

>>16325156 Again, again, again, again.

Sorry, I keep looking over the thread and coming up with new ideas.

Maybe generally reducing suffering around you could earn you karma points (suck it, Shadowrun!) and there would just be a table in the book that acts as benefits you can buy with karma (lower the difficulties of dropping an attachment or moving forward in the wheel, information from a past life, get hints from the Bodhisattva, etc.) and maybe you need to have a certain amount of karma banked before you can reach enlightenment? This would allow for a pseudo-campaign duration/difficulty setting by tweaking the number of karma points you need, as well.

It could be possible that each level of incarnation grants stat/skill boosts as well. Your innate understanding of existence that you've cultivated over past lifetimes grants you insight into the things you do.

Also, I would definitely run this as a skill-based system rather than class-based. With as much character switching you'll be doing, Personally, I'd make your character statistics really simple with stats or skills like Strength, Wisdom, Intelligence, Agility and Allure and ignore specific skills. Maybe throw in a system for merits/flaws where if you take a Merit, you must take a Flaw, but if you just take a Flaw, you can convert that into a small amount of karma points. It really shouldn't be super-beneficial to just take a flaw for anti-minmaxing purposes. Limit 3 each and make a list of them separated into categories by station in the Great Wheel. I wouldn't even assign stats to these, just roleplaying benefits/penalties.

>>16325239
what about the desire for enlightenment? is that also an attachment?

bump

>>16325252
Yep.

>>16327750

This is why Buddhism is so awesome and such a mindfuck. You need to become one with everything and it's opposite. To become all and none, full of compassion and completely uncaring, without desire and with absolute conviction.

Fuck, Buddha.

>>16325239

Even that sounds a bit complex to me. Maybe there are no traits to an individual incarnation besides it's attachments. Just a general mechanic of "if this person would be good at X, X gets +1" or something.

Merits, flaws, four attributes... That's a whole mechanical character just there.

I say a d6 based mechanic. Clean and simple.

Bamp.

>>16327839
It's why nobody can fuck with the Buddha. Not even Monkey, Yahweh, or even Yog Sothoth.

>>16328907

Buddha vs. Yog Sototh. Now that's something I'd like to see.

>>16325252

This is realized only when you have searched in all the ways possible, when you have done all that you could, no stone has been left unturned, not even a single corner has been left unsearched, you have done all that can be done, nothing is left – then you simply sit; the search drops from you; no hope, no possibility of ever gaining this goal; in a moment of absolute frustration you drop the search – this is how it happened to Buddha, this is how it happened to me, this is how it always happens.

What about when you get so advanced on the wheel of reincarnation, you start incarnating as a celestial being of greater and greater power? Asuras and such?

>>16329335
Most of those existences make it even harder to ever reach enlightenment, and cause it to take even longer amounts of time due to how long the highest ones last.

I mean, who has time for enlightenment when you're some sort of sex-God-being-thing?

The opposite can be said with lower things like animals or hungry ghosts, in that you're usually in too much pain and negative attachment to reach it.

OH MAN I LOVE PROMETHEAN

...Actually this is fuckwin.

>>16329596

...what?

>>16329514

So maybe with my Great Wheel, the difficulty to lose attachments isn't linear, but easier at the "middle" points and harder at the "extremes?"

>>16329680

Wouldn't that make it counterproductive to gather good karma? With enough good karma, you're almost certain to reincarnate as a celestial being.

>>16330329
Well there's a sect of buddhism in japan that believes in reincarnation in the "Pure Land" which is a good karma heaven but run by a Bodhisattva. So instead of just dicking around in paradise for aeons you are actually assisted in overcoming your attachments giving you a substantial boost towards enlightenment.

This gives me an idea for the purposes of the setting: you could think of a typical heaven as being aligned with a certain attachment but in a positive way. So for a Hell of Greed there would be a corresponding Heaven of Charity. Each virtue can have a corresponding vice which represent opposing poles of a single attachment.

If a player accumulates a bunch of good karma they reincarnate in a heaven. The Bodhisattva determines the characteristics of that heaven based on the attachments of the player's soul and thus reincarnating in a heaven becomes as much a roleplay challenge as any other life.

So as far as outcomes go... Your life in the heaven can alter 3 things: the strength of the attachment, your alignment (virtue/vice) with that attachment, and your karma. I'm thinking karma should decay over incarnations both to keep play centered on mortal realms and to keep players from getting stuck in heaven/hell for too long.

>>16330329

Not necessarily, the Bodhisattva is there to guide them, not give them all the answers. Maybe those portions aren't made known to the players or is OOC knowledge. Info you could buy with Karma points, maybe.

Besides, there are benefits to moving up in the wheel, and everyone is supposed to have their own journey to enlightenment. I would imagine half of the fun of this game is to see where it takes you, as minmaxing isn't really rewarded by the system so far.

>>16330667

This.

>>16330667
Well fuck me I wrote all that crap without even addressing the original problem of earning good karma being a bad thing.

I think the simple solution would be that its easier to transcend an attachment to virtue than to vice. Since you have to realize everything is one to become enlightened being in harmony with others (virtuous) is closer than being a self-centered dick (vice)

>>16330801

It could be possible, too, that it costs you a certain amount of karma to get into a Heaven upon reincarnation, and that permanently lowers the difficulty of enlightenment.

That way, if you enter into the later stages of the Wheel without more than minimal guidance, it stays difficult.

That adds another great value to karma, as well, and will make it worth saving up.

Bump for compassion

Some Buddhist sects (especially Pure Land and some Theravadin) believe that someone with a powerful enough mind (trained through meditation, devotions, etc.) can dictate the circumstances of their next life (rebirth as a human, god, into certain heavens or other afterlives).

Maybe certain afterlives or next incarnations "cost" a certain number of karma points? Rebirth as a human (at least in Buddhism, the most favorable rebirth since you have just the right about of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with life to seek out how the cessation of suffering) might actually be more expensive than rebirth as a god (given its ultimately distracting-from-enlightenment lifestyle most gods live).

Likewise, perhaps certain deeds will let you earn karma points that can only be directed towards certain tasks, like the Amitabha sect chanting "Namo Amitabha Tuofo" to gain enough "points" to earn rebirth in Amitahba's Pure Land.

>>16325239
has a good idea here with taking Flaws for karma points. Some sects believe that the bad situations you come across in this life are the result of purifying/untangling bad karma. The guy with a bum leg? Two hundred years ago he walked past a shrine without bowing. The guy with no hands? Last life he tried to force a holy man to drink wine.

Dang, I like the idea of this game. Mechanics wise, why not use something like Barbarians of Lemuria? Very rules-lite, it has the "Careers" system so you don't have to worry about the nitty-gritty individual skills, etc.

>>16331805

Barbarians of Lemuria? Never heard of it.

Please enlighten us.

I thought I say this thread die about 5 time by now.
Good to see it's still going strong!

So what kind of system are we looking at here?
I got a strong Exalted feel from the idea, but I've also heard people in suggest d6's and >>16315130 said something about Atarashii Games.
I had no idea what that was but after googleing it I think it could work for this subject. Check out Ocean, it's Awesome!

>I thought I saw this thread die about 5 time by now

reincarnation, my friend

Ocean is a DMless game. Each player controles his own character but also takes turns describing the scenes and challenges.
Another important part of the game is the fact that some details of your character are described by the other players. This could be used to simulate a reincarnation, some things change about your character but essentially it's the same Soul.

Another thing that would be important in this kind of game is Mortality. Dying would be almost manditory every now and then. Staying put in one lifetime would cheapen the feel of playing an immortal soul.
Dying would force a player to create a different kind of character to prevent a stagnation in roleplay. Because some details would be out of a players hands making some kind of Buddist Ubermench would not be possible.

I don't know that much about Buddhism, so I have to ask, can one soul be in multiple bodies during the same time frame? Since time is an illusion, could you have a party of PCs that all share one soul?

>>16332263
Theoretically possible...I think... but creating a game where the PCs control a single body together would seem unpractical. Also; not very fun.

Though having each player personify a single trait are vice of a monk trying to reach enlightenment might work...

>>16332574

This is idea is so fucked up it's absolutely awesome.

One more bump before bed.
When I come back you guys had better have this game ready to play!

Being a buddhist, I'm interested. Please keep working on this, guys.

I'm really interested in at least seeing how /tg/ itself takes this, since I wonder how buddhism is viewed from an objective standpoint if you're not "born" into a family that (as, most modern lay-practictioners do) sort of practiced it.

>>16332109

I've personally bumped it twice. O:)

Not OP.

>>16334160

Can you tell us more about your experience and knowledge?

I understand living through many lifetimes in different places and periods in history, but the OP mentioned the future. How's that going to work?

>>16339347

Like the past, except the opposite.

bump

>>16339347

time isn't linear, it is kinda like how dr, manhattan experiences time.

>>16342314

So... what does that mean for my future character? Who is in the past and the present simultaneously, it seems?

>>16342610

It doesn't mean anything. One session you are playing in the past, one session you are playing in the future. That's all there is to it, from your point of view.

>>16331996
Hey, it's >>16331805.

Barbarians of Lemuria (BoL) is a freely available rules-lite RPG. The main mechanic is 2d6 + (modifiers) and you must roll 9 or higher to succeed. The GM imposes difficulties/bonuses for the situation (neutral thing is +0, something truly epic is +5 difficulty to the original 9, etc.)

Character creation is also pretty simple:
-4 points to distribute amongst Combat skills (melee, ranged, unarmed, dodging).
-4 points to distribute amongst your Stats (Strength, Agility, Mind, Appeal).
-4 points to distribute amongst your Careers (BoL's "classes", basically; things like Alchemist, Assassin, Barbarian, Magician, Serving Wench, Torturer, and others; BoL was originally meant for a Swords-and-Sorcery world, so yeah).

There's also a "Hero Point" system (fate points, basically, that let you do stuff like influence the environment, reroll, boost a success to higher levels, or defy death for a short time).

I found a cached version of the site with the free download here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tD2M0AJGlgcJ:www.1km1kt.net/rpg/barbarians-of-l
emuria+simon+washbourne+barbarians+of+lemuria+free&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&clie
nt=firefox-a

Also, I think that for anyone working on this game "The Years of Rice and Salt" should be mandatory reading. It's an alternate history book (the Black Death totally wipes out Europe, leaving China, India, and the Native Americas to develop). The cast of characters are followed through various incarnations, always running into each other and being "linked" as some sort of karmic group (it's a heck of a lot more interesting and more meta-gamey than "You all meet in a bar")

>>16343142

>group is united by being bound in karma

I really like this idea. It explains why the Budhisattva chose those people in particular instead of any other group.

Bumping because I was reading and taking a look at some of my Buddhist literature (used to be a history major with a focus on East Asian history, go figure).

Some sects of Buddhism, especially in the Mahayana, believe that skillful deeds (that is, deeds that are considered "good" by Buddhist views) can increase your Wisdom or your Merit. Wisdom is pretty much your "enlightenment meter," how much you understand the true nature of reality. Merit is your "good karma," namely the goodness of your thoughts, actions, and words.

Wisdom is generally gained in silent contemplation and meditation of various sorts. Note that according to most Buddhist schools, the "samadha" or absorptive meditations, while useful for calming the mind, are *not* seen as viable tools for enlightenment (unlike the Hindu yogis who see use samadha meditation to attain their own version of enlightenment, moksha). Various Buddhist meditations that *are* seen as being useful are: vipassana ("insight" or "mindfulness" meditation, such as mindfulness of breath, posture, body, mental states), Mantra Meditation (such as chanting the Amitabha mantra to focus the mind), Patriarch Zen (a meditation that has no "focus" for the mind like vipassana focuses on breath, for example), Silent-Illuminating Zen (focusing the mind on the abdomen at first, and then "letting go" of the focus, letting the mind naturally expand), Bamboo Breathing (I have no idea about this one, the basic technique is interrupting the breathing at various intervals) and Tibetan Yidam meditations (visualizing oneself as an enlightened deity, focusing on mandalas, etc.)

>>16344550 continued:

Merit is gained through "good, skillful actions" and generally contribute towards good karma, the purging of accumulated bad karma (good deeds are seen as cleansing the mind, as honestly good deeds are seen as being irreconciliable with an impure mind), and a good rebirth. Merit can be gained by donating to charity, helping those less fortunate than you, and the most meritorious deed believed by Buddhists is the spreading of spiritual knowledge. Thus, giving a sermon on the Heart Sutra, for example, gains merit because you're helping enlighten other people. Many Mahayana Buddhists believe in the existence of ghosts, spirits, and demons, and reciting sutras, mantras, or dhrani (really long mantras) is believed to bring merit because you are spreading spiritual knowledge to these unfortunate souls and can speed them to good rebirths. The chanting of sutras and mantras can also lead gods and spirits to become enlightened, which is definitely seen as a meritorious act.

Naturally, there's a bunch of overlap between acts that gain wisdom and those that gain merit. Some peope, for example, chant the Guan Yin mantra ("namo guan shi yin pu sa") in their meditation to focus their minds. The meditation gains Wisdom, while the act of chanting, be it aloud or silently (since supposedly ghosts can feel the emanations of your thoughts) gains Merit.

This is all getting pretty nitty-gritty, though, and isn't really addressing how the PCs, guided by the Bodhisattva-GM, aim towards the goal of Enlightenment. Someone else care to take a crack at it?

>>16344586
Me again. I ran across some company called Vajra Enterprises in my Googling and they published Tibet: the RPG (never played it, but it has a bunch of stuff about Tibetan Buddhism. They've got a free version of their game here:
http://www.vajraenterprises.com/!Tibet/askformonastic.asp

The second pdf in their .zip (page 25 of the pdf) talks a little bit about removing attachments. It's pretty much a "figure out you have an attachment" roll, and then another roll to try and remove it, either through a slow but safer purifying process (they call it the "path of the sutras" which pretty much represents any non-Tibetan Buddhist type of mental purification in that game) or the use of Tantra (essentially blasting that mental blockage out of you; more dangerous, certainly, but faster and surer).

I still haven't come up with any more ideas about how the campaign itself would run, though...

>>16344586
>>16344550

Hm, perhaps for RPG purposes you could make Wisdom and Merit the core stats of the PC's soul with effects on gameplay. I'm thinking they could modify everything from the kinds of situations you find yourself incarnated into to your options for handling those situations. Merit could, say, guard you from moral temptations during life or reward you with favorable life events like having your incarnation come across useful spiritual knowledge or helpful persons. I guess the enhanced insight of higher Wisdom could open up more opportunities to confront attachments and give bonuses that make it easier to "fight" them.

>mfw this thread

I will definitely keep this in mind for running for my group.

Monkey King bump because this thread must not reincarnate too soon.

Tantric Bump

(also, a great name for a rock band)