The Campaign Builder's Guild

I agree... your take on demons is pretty fascinating, actually. I'll have to think about this when I next look at summoned beings of a supernatural nature...

All I really have to add is things like:

Basic drives. Humans are very, very, VERY sex-oriented. Almost everything, when you get down to it, is about procreation, especially for males (not to be stereotypical or anything, but still) - impressing women and showing your dominance over other men. Other species may not be so focused towards sex, and may have other focuses instead.

Lifespan. If you have a lifespan of say, six-hundred years, then you'll probably not have such a great obsession with things like nations and wars - most nations for example, particularly in medieval times, did not have that kind of lifespan! Take a look at articles on things like the Kingdom of Mann and the Isles and the Lords of the Isles in Scotland, or even, for a more modern example, North and South Vietnam or Yugoslavia.

Pack mentality, symbiotic relationships, solitary mentality - humans are naturally herd-based animals, really - we gather into groups for defence etc. But some animals live only with their mates naturally, or in small hunting packs that are (at least from the romantic's point of view) much closer than human groups. How would this affect a sentient psyche?

I have one race (the moshrayah i posted earlier) that aren't nearly as sexually oriented as only a fraction of them can procreate. Demons in general might not be up for it either, but there is of course the exception of the succubus. For humans though, i think i might focus slightly more on the aspects of our rationalism and curiosity. Free Will is a proven fact in my setting, and we do after all have the ability to say no to sex (technically).

Lifespan: I'm planning on having one very hardy race (loosely based on water bears :p ) for which some of those ideas could be useful.

Hmm, not sure, but more a sentient race with more tight-knit packs might focus more on instinct and emotions as a more rational approach would in many cases be to get as many together as possible, but this of course results in most people in a city being strangers to each other. Again, my Moshrayah often live in more tight-knit groups although i'm not sure they are tight-knit enough to warrant any real change.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowI'm currently thinking that demons differ by lacking emotions and free will... They also possess a certain envy...
I'm also considering a hyper-conscious creature where every single action is up to his free will.

Different minds bring up serious philosophical and physics questions- in order to do that I'd have to design the entire universe's system of magic to revolve around it so it would make sense (and even then it might not, because there are some basic logistical problems behind truly different minds.

Free will, for example- what is it?  In our world, it's mostly unpredictability- if we don't know why somebody did something, then we call it free- but isn't it all based on complicated series of past experiences and predictions made to the best of our abilities to maximize pleasure and minimize pain?

And a being without emotions, but with envy, which... is an emotion... it seems very problematic.  When we try to create different minds, we ultimately end up with more random ones, ones that simply exaggerate human qualities, or gaping plot holes.

Minds work the way they do for good reason- it's rational emergent intelligence.  We see the same emerging trends in AI (emotions being those basic commands that feed back positive or negative to the developing and changing neural net- respectively being pleasure and pain for us, physical or 'emotional').

We need two basic impulses to change our thoughts for the more effective, survival wise- pleasure and pain.  More than two are superfluous.  Fewer than two is useless.

We need emotions and other senses to feed us those impulses- without which we will not- can not- act.

Inevitably one of those emotions must be a sense of self preservation, or else the being wouldn't be around long enough to encounter.  The others can be summed up in a short list- desire for preservation of others (love), for the destruction of others (hate), etc.

From this palette we draw very interesting experiences... but the logistics behind the basics don't really allow for any massive fundamental changes without undoing logic, and the backbone of how the universe functions itself.

I don't use them because, quite simply, it doesn't make sense.


Now very strangely proportioned and weighted minds, yes, I do use.  This being is very good at this, not so much at that... very motivated to do this, etc.

First off, i totally agree with your outlook that free will is but the sum of a lot of unrealised factors (as i saw you also argumented for in your own setting), but for my setting i have made an assumption that there is, indeed, some strange factor on another plane of existence that allows for free will.
And yes, the envy thing was a bit convoluted... But it's not so much the emotion of envy as an instinct of emulation. And demons are just controlled by subconsciousness; they don't lack impulses as such.
So my minds still follow logical (if enigmatic) rules and impulses.

Quote from: Cataclysmic Crowbut for my setting i have made an assumption that there is, indeed, some strange factor on another plane of existence that allows for free will.

Hmm... based on what you said, it sounds like the interpretation of free will in your universe is actually a case of perceptive responsibilty.

That is, for example, a being with "free will" is one deemed by a deity to be responsible for its actions, and thus is subject to judgement based on this deity's opinion of absolute "Moral" and "Immoral"

That's what it sounds like, anyway.

In more objective terms, though, it's still a gradation of perception, rather than an actual difference.


Maybe what you need to do is define mind in terms of more elemental factors- or a palette

Red- impulsive desire to destroy.
Blue- impulsive desire to preserve.
Green - Random fluctuation between Red and Blue.

Green might be your "free will", and a being without it is fully and completely predictable in action.  A being of pure free will is fully random and unpredictable by any means.  Humans would be a mixture of the colours- white, or grey.  Demons might range from Red to Magenta.  Angels from Magenta to Blue.  Evil willed creatures might be Yellow, good creatures Cyan.

Try to take the emotions and actions out of context, and reformulate them based on something more objective, and then convert the system back into human terms.  Doing this will provide you with more implications to your system that can make it more interesting.

When i said other planes i just meant the plane of the soul (as per cartesian dualism).
Souls are of another nature than our (deterministic) world and are therefore capable of what we call free will; so there is always a choice even if one option is much more likely. What we call soft determinism.
I do not use meddling or actual gods in my setting and all ideas of demons being controlled by gods or devils are due to human misconception and superstition.
I'm not sure i like your color idea, sorry.
I really can't see how my demons are illogical in the framework of my setting. (at least, not more illogical than magic is supposed to be).
I try to aim for as logical and "technical" descriptions as possible when describing supernatural phenomena, but some assumptions have to be made.

"Souls are of another nature than our (deterministic) world and are therefore capable of what we call free will; so there is always a choice even if one option is much more likely. What we call soft determinism."

So, they're kind of like a little connection to a plane of ethereal dice?  Interesting visual.  Or something else?

I'm just trying to understand the effects of this plane in game terms.  It's divergent from determinism, so it is carried out randomly?

"I'm not sure i like your color idea, sorry."

Twas just an example of how to break something down into objective elements to sort out the original concepts without the interference of our preconceptions, or the inconsistent connotations these words have on their own... I didn't mean you should use that idea or colours themselves.

No,it's completely removed from our concepts of either causality or chance. It's the quantum physics of psychology; laws that seem counterintuitive to the world as we know it (just look at the Copenhagen interpretation or entanglement for examples of something we can't possibly explain with causality).
My campaign has actual free will as we humans like to imagine it; where every soul occupying a body can make a free choice (of course taking their knowledge and preconceptions into account, but a free choice nonetheless).

Quotejust look at the Copenhagen interpretation or entanglement for examples of something we can't possibly explain with causality

Well, the Copenhagen interpretation is generally understood to be *very* wrong now (some people still hold onto it, but some people still believe the world is flat too).  These are things that can and are explained logically- look at 'many worlds'.  But of course I don't want to turn this into a quantum physics debate... I have to sleep at some point ;)

Chance is fine as a mechanism we have meta-dice to represent that.  The lack of either causality or chance, however, begs the question as to how you're actually representing it.  If free will is dependent on the soul, which makes 'free' decisions dependent on knowledge and preconceptions, that sounds like straight up causality to me.  If it's not causality, and there's no determining factor as to whether the will returns 0 or 1, that sounds like pure radomness (which is fine if that's your thing- that's a *good* difference- and of course if you put that randomness in the players hands, using their choices which are random as far as the game is concerned, for their characters, then you create a good representation of a soul).

I'm sure it's fine for the purposes of a campaign- I doubt many players would question it, or dig that deep.  I'm just criticizing this notion on a logistical basis- as a player, I would ask questions, and then probably lose interest if I found out it didn't make any sense (of course that's just me- for example, I could never get into Vampire, because of all of the plot holes I saw early on).

If you don't want to have this kind of argument, I won't press the point, but I'm just wondering how you're going to manifest this seemingly logistically impossible thing in game terms- how does that play out, and by what mechanisms will you highlight it as a truly fundamental difference from creatures that do have free will?

I realize that free will in our world is illogical (at least if we follow the rules of logic that we use now), but in my world it isn't. It has been mathematically proven as a fact.  This is completely impossible in our world but it isn't in mine, and it's an axiom of my setting that free will exists. Just like other campaigns have illogical axioms of magic. Free will is externally illogical but internally logical.

(the following isn't of any real consequence to the thread)
Also, i might have gotten the interpretation mixed up with entanglement, but as far as I'm aware entanglement is still very much as close to a scientific "fact" (even though epistemological facts can't be achieved through science) as you can get; it was featured in the newest scientific american, and has enough people believing in it that they are annoyed it doesn't fit with their current rules. And the negation of spatial interaction seems pretty counterintuitiv e to say the least...  

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowI realize that free will in our world is illogical (at least if we follow the rules of logic that we use now), but in my world it isn't.

Just like other campaigns have illogical axioms of magic.[/quote]Free will is externally illogical but internally logical.[/quote]Also, i might have gotten the interpretation mixed up with entanglement, but as far as I'm aware entanglement is still very much as close to a scientific "fact"[/quote]and has enough people believing in it that they are annoyed it doesn't fit with their current rules.[/quote]Psst, the answer is C. :)[/spoiler]

Hmm, maybe i shouldn't have used quantum mechanics to explain this since you obviously know way more about them ^^ Anyway, my point was just that there can exist things we can't readily account for.
Free will, the illusion that we humans have a choice, is a fact in my setting. I have chosen that choices are real. The process itself exists on another plane that follows a different set of rules and therefore breaks no rules of the material world. Essentially, if faced with two identical doors there is no way of foretelling which one you might pick; you might have a subconscious preference for one like you do in real life, but in the end you could as easily pick the other one. We can even use something similar to the Many Worlds theory to explain this: every time you make a choice the world splits (which was actually an idea i had some fun with a couple of years ago). This is similar to chance, which is probably the conclusion you wanted me to reach since you only seem to operate with the factors of chance and causality, but i still feel there is a difference between chance and choice (at least as abstract concepts).
And although Many Worlds is well-known and solves many issues I'm pretty sure (albeit from my layman's perspective) that it isn't the "official" theory (yet). But let's not get into that. Can't take another beating ^^  

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowWe can even use something similar to the Many Worlds theory to explain this: every time you make a choice the world splits

But let's not get into that. Can't take another beating ^^  
[/quote]

Hehe, fair enough.

Good observation with micro- and macro-choices. I remember having some similar considerations when philosophising about my version of many worlds (of course, it's easy for me to claim that after you've said it :p)
So yes, some choices are so obvious that they wouldn't cause the world to split. Maybe some "enlightened" people can make the choice anyway, but they are a minority.

And yes, demons would react in one of two ways depending on what theory you adhere to:
Either they have a subconscious preference for one door (as per the psychological theory of them being controlled by their subconsciousness entirely) or they are commanded to open one of the doors (as per the Authority Theory).
But you're right, maybe i should focus a bit more on the "splitting". I think i called the theory the Tree of Eternity back then; each split being two new branches on the tree that goes from past to future.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowMaybe some "enlightened" people can make the choice anyway, but they are a minority.

Either they have a subconscious preference for one door (as per the psychological theory of them being controlled by their subconsciousness entirely)[/quote]or they are commanded to open one of the doors (as per the Authority Theory).[/quote]

This works well with the lack of command resulting in thumb twiddling and an inability to choose- or perhaps many demons have been commanded in the past to always choose the right or left door (a command that acts to provide them with decisions in the future).


I really like the idea of a coin flipping demon that uses the coin to mimic free-will; I might have to use that myself in a campaign.  So many interesting player encounters I can imagine from just that.