I first came across the concept of the “supernatural dial” in Dogs in the Vineyard, but I’d encountered it in casual form long before. Sometimes the supernatural dial is expressed as “How gritty do you like your fantasy?” or “It’s a low magic setting”, while similar analogues exist for modern and sci-fi games. (“Is the tech Hard SF, or space opera?”)
In Dogs, the towns you visit are plagued by demons–but depending on your specific Dogs campaign, demons might be walking tempters with red scales, while in others “demons” are just random misfortune and social feedback without independent reality. Similarly, the character’s “magic” might be as difficult to document persuasively as real world prayer, or as blatant as deflecting bullets and leaving trails of sparks. Often the two correlate–a “high fantasy” Dogs game can have the town’s faith manifest as a tree of light in the city square, while sorcerous rot spreads across the glimmering roots, driving people mad.
High magic worlds can call for sorcerous controls; if one person can unmake reality, the inhabitants probably don’t want just anyone having access to magic. Troy mentions worlds with magical training regimens, like Dragonlance’s Tower of High Sorcery, or the White Tower of the Aes Sedai. Governments are also reluctant to grant unaccountable power to anyone, often including their own agents…
Supernatural Dials In Hidden Worlds
Hidden World settings often center themselves around the power or conspiracy that sets it apart from everyday reality. Many settings are the modern world we all experience, with a twist. Sometimes magic is real–just well hidden.
In the first Hidden World article, I listed several concealed realities used in popular games–many of which include magic. Of those settings that eschew magic, many include super-science or alien technology–but that’s not an essential property of hidden worlds.
The Dial Starts at Zero…
A hidden world game can play out with the supernatural dial set almost to zero–say, action movie coincidence at most. Spy and military games are often close to this; James Bond might occasionally have a useful gadget, but rarely something incomprehensible– the devices are often only slightly more advanced or miniaturized than is practical today. A game like this is often all about the conspiracy–finding out who runs things for real, acting behind the scenes as members the UN’s black-bag squad, or investigating the week’s unusual cases… even if you can never convince Scully that there’s more to them than she’ll admit.
…Increases Slowly…
Sometimes the game world is 99.9% the world we see outside… until you stumble across a crazed ritual deep in the woods. Even experiencing that ritual isn’t always enough to classify the world–you never know if the ritual’s real unless you wait to see what happens. Sure, the crazy person says they were summoning Azathoth, but no one showed. 
Tightly restricted, or not terribly advanced alien technology can also keep the setting feeling grounded and low key. If there are only three phasers in the world, you’re unlikely to be assigned one on your next mission. Of course, both looming horror and super-advanced-but-rare alien technology imply that the world is different; if even one phaser exists, who knows when the aliens will return with more?
…Moves at Quite A Clip…
Once you visit the alien’s homeworld, your character knows the universe is a bigger place–even if they don’t come back with proof. [Contact, anyone?] Similarly, just encountering a Vampire reveals that a lot of what the character learned about reality is false. If ghosts exist, do witches? Werewolves? Aliens from Alpha Centauri?
With the supernatural dial set this high, games often involve characters learning to manipulate this deeper, more complex reality. Unraveling the vampiric conspiracy is critical–but to do that, you need to learn this universe’s rules for vampires, not just what their executive board’s org chart looks like. Mystery plots in these worlds often explore “how can that be done?” in the early exploration, continue into figuring out “who has the power/knowledge/tech” to do that (to build a suspect list), and resolve based on a traditional “who had a motive” sleuthing from that winnowed pool.
…the Dial Goes to 11
When your supernatural dial pegs, the question becomes how (and whether) your characters interact with reality at all. Archmages may interrogate the Spirit of War on the Plain of Eternal Battle, or your planeswalker may shift from one reality that has grown inconvenient to a world of her dreaming. At this point on the supernatural dial, the stories often become about interests of the characters–they might consider everyone else a projection of their delusions. Or view them as cogs empowering the Matrix, who need to wake up and fight.
Plots on the Dial
One of the biggest factors that changes as the supernatural dial increases is the relation of the PCs to the world. At low points along the supernatural dial, the characters are still very tied to people and everyday life. The conspiracy is interesting, but because it’s subtle, you probably spend more time with ordinary people, trying to map its influence.
When the supernatural dial cranks up, the GM needs to remember to keep normal people vibrant. This can be tricky; it’s hard to spend a lot of time on making the waitress feel realistic if she’s a part of the world the PC’s going to leave in a few minutes and is unlikely to return to. Part of what’s needed to make these worlds feel real are people who haven’t been sucked into the Hidden World yet. There’s a tension here, because the PCs who start dealing with the supernatural are likely to cut back their contacts with people they want to save… exposing their friends to the conspiracy only exposes them to danger. But it’s these human interactions that do such a good job of showing the character’s growth and increasing alienation. As a GM, you might have to encourage these “random” interactions to illustrate the PCs’ growing estrangement from the average citizen.
Dials and Games
I enjoy games all over the spectrum, in terms of the Supernatural Dial. Do you have favorites? Do you have similar problems keeping characters with tremendous power connected to daily life? If you have approaches to keep a characters interacting with the whole world instead of just the “in the know” clique in games high on the dial, I’d appreciate your advice.
Do you insist on high fantasy, no matter the game? “If I wanted reality, I’d go bowling.” Or do you enjoy variation from game to game? Have you tried to drift your game–turning a high fantasy ruleset into something a little more low key? Tell us about your experiences, and warn us away from pitfalls you discovered!
Good article!
I really liked the Wild Talents axes of design mechanic. You decide how far along each axis the setting you want to create lies – historical inertia, the lovely and the pointless, moral clarity and talent inertia – the last referring to the effects of superpowers on the setting.
I have found this, with a little finagling, to be highly portable to other systems/settings/genres. It provides a really strong framework on which to hang the other tropes or elements of your setting.
I’m enjoying your series on the Hidden World – more! More!
That sounds like an excellent formalization of the concept. Breaking it into the mentioned chunks lets you also tackle things like adherence to cannon [the historical inertia axis] and other closely associated/ related elements.
It’s often so important to be on the same page as to what kind of fantasy you’ll be playing. One person’s version of “low” fantasy will be far too “high” for somebody else
The fun thing about starting the dial at zero is that nobody knows how far it’ll go. They get enjoy the thrill of discovery and the tension of mystery until all is revealed. And in my experience players will be more forgiving of things going “higher” or “lower” than they’d normally enjoy.
When you do it that way, though, you’ve got to be careful to keep the motivations of all involved ring true. If you crank it up to 11 you’ve got to have damn good reasons as to why the world is still hidden.
Finally, you’re totally correct that normal people become something akin to weirdness-vs-still-human barometers for the PCs. A great formalization of this concept can be found in Part Time Gods, an excellent/intriguing/clever Hidden World system/setting.
Yeah, “low” and “high” are interpreted personally. Often a setting can be “low” in some senses (like, magic is unusual), but “high” (in that what magic does exist is world-breaking, when found), or other variations.
Starting the dial at zero is great for a first play in a setting; my last article (The Hidden World Part 2) brought up how difficult it can be to return to “clueless” characters in a complex setting after playing through the excitement of discovery on the first pass.
I’ll have to look at Part Time Gods. Thanks for the recommendation!
One of the keys to a good “Hidden World” campaign is bait and switch — set expectations for one thing and then start cranking the dials and turn the campaign into so much more.
However, one of the most difficult things I’ve experienced with this sort of campaign is simply selling it to my player base. If your gamers all GM, each new campaign requires a sales pitch and is in a competition to be selected.
So, how do you generate enough excitement for the bait to get buy in?
Similarly, once you have that buy in, how do you avoid upsetting your players once you begin cranking the dials away from what they originally agreed to play?
I’ve repeatedly tried to run an Over the Edge campaign, but simply not known how to sell it.
Bait and Switch can be tricky; you almost have to set the expectation that things will change in the presentation, or you might face an uprising! (Well, not really an uprising, but grumpiness and frustration.) I suspect that winking at them during character generation is how you finesse it… maybe, “You’ll be making ‘normal people’ for this campaign. Surely that’s the way it’ll stay…”
I’m intrigued by Over the Edge, but have only heard about it, not experienced it. I don’t have a good pitch in mind, but I’ll let it percolate. [As presented to me, “It’s a world where the tabloids are often right, but their truth is suppressed.”]