Speed, perception and social strata

In Aeon Flux's 2nd season, 1st episode, Utopia or Deuteranopia, Trevor Goodchild serves as the president after the former representative, Clavius', mysterious disappearance. Turns out, Trevor is guilty for this, and keeps Clavius in a sort of parallel dimension, barely visible from outside, accessible only when wearing a garment that allows the body to vibrate at the same frequency Clavius does. 

A few experiences driving and the memory of this episode helped a few ideas condense into this article about speed and perception, which, I hope, isn't too abstract.

Relative speed and perception

When your body moves at a certain speed, your perception is conditioned by such speed and direction of movement.

When you're driving your car, let's say at 80 km/h, and another car moves at 90 km/h, same or similar direction, it's movement will be perceived as it slowly distancing from you, as an equivalent object in speed. Somebody walking at 10 km/h, on the other hand, will be perceived, almost, as a stationary object. Greater contrast will be perceived if the difference in speed is even greater.

Other than suddenly crashing your car into some pedestrian, your chances of interacting one with each other are faint and brief, unless the driver slows down, stops the car, or either invites the other guy in. In that case, both of them would be moving at the same speed, towards the same direction, which would allow them to have a longer conversation than a few shouted words.

The above principle is similar to the one from Aeon Flux's episode: a body's speed, or vibration frequency in the first case, puts it in contact with other bodies having a similar movement.

Relative speed, perception and level design

A property deducted from what's already been exposed is that the same scenario may in fact contain many superposed planes, all of them geographically similar, but accessible one at a time, and only to bodies moving in the right speed or frequency. No body can access 2 planes at the same time, unless it's got 2 speeds, which for now would be impossible, but more on that later.

But enough abstraction for now, let's take this metaphor to games and level design. First, there are already games, like Zelda Oracle of Ages, which reuse maps, but allow Link to travel back and forth in time, letting him explore the same areas in the past and present. 

This is fine, but I'm interested in exploring this metaphor without time-travelling, and I think it can be applied to a whole different topic: how to make class and culture disparity seem real in an urban environment.

So, 2 persons of a different social class, cultures or ethnicities may share an environment, but both actually see and interact with a wholly different world. The same objects and bodies may take up different meanings according to the observer's position in society's gradient: the police, bank, school, the back alley, the highway, all of those things mean something different according to the observer. Each social stratum has blind spots: objects, places and people invisible to it, inaccessible, or insurmountable. At the same time, each stratum's ecosystem allows people sharing a social status to interact with each other, and provides them with opportunities invisible to anybody else.

Changing a body's speed

Cars sometimes have accidents and hit pedestrians, of course, and unexpected encounters between different strata may sometimes happen. This interaction should feel undesired, awkward, asymmetric, and full of misunderstandings: each of the participants is perceiving the other through the distortion of their own speed. True interaction is impossible unless one of the 2 bodies changes its vibration accordingly, but how could that happen?

It's your garments, your look and how you present to the world, overall, what places you in a social stratum. You might change your stratum by being introduced to another one by somebody else. In Oracle of Ages, you travel in time in a particular spot in the map, you can't do that everywhere. In this scenario, you couldn't just change your trappings in the street, or else people would react weirdly: are you one of us, have you been in disguise all this time, why are you naked now? Your current stratum is seen as your identity, so shifting it in plain sight will generate weird reactions.

Another scenario: you might collide with a body and suddenly find out your own speed changed, whether you wanted it or not. An unexpected experience might lead to an uncontrolled change in your stratum and your perception in the world. Such a change might be perceived by yourself and others as an affliction or lucky strike, and you'd find that transitioning back to your former speed is hard or even impossible.

A body in 2 worlds at once

Finally, an edge case I find quite interesting: what if you actually exist in 2 different strata, and are perceived as such by others? There are certain individuals that exist in a curious limbo: they can interact with 2 worlds at once, and are perceived to be neither fully here nor there, but instead as visitors or strangers in both planes.

Again, an example from an actual game: in Trollbabe, by Ron Edwards, player characters impersonate trollbabes, who exist somewhere in the spectrum between a human and a troll. They exist in an unique position that allows them to interact with both species in a non-antagonistic way (in theory, at least), but are shunned by both as strangers in their communities. Something similar happens in Monsterhearts, whose characters inhabit both the life of the schoolkid and the criminal errands of the monster, and this intersection creates trouble for them.

If we borrow these examples, we could characterize adventurers as bodies that get to change their stratum, to explore different planes by virtue of them being "native" to no world, which frankly suits what adventurers are/do in many tabletop roleplaying games.

Conclusion? None today, this article was more of a random brainstorming of ideas/thought about game design. Let me know if you enjoy this posting format! I'm kind of exploring how to keep writing in a comfortable way (that is, not feel it like an obligation), plus practicing a bit my written English, until I wait for some motivation to continue working in some of my other projects.

See you next time!

Some thoughts on outdoor exploration

Last weekend I went camping with a group of friends in the highlands near my city (Sierra de los Difuntos), and this experience inspired some thoughts about, of course, tabletop rpgs, specially about their treatment of outdoor exploration. I'm not by any means a skilled photographer, but I'll supplement my thoughts with a few pics I've taken this weekend.

Outdoor exploration

It's puzzling to me that outdoor exploration struggles when micromanaging movement, time and resources in a way that dungeon exploration sorted out long ago. Probably the answer to that is plain obvious: dungeons contain a structure that lends itself pretty easily to mapping, grid combat, and exploration room by room. It also contains well defined boundaries, which allow for precise level design.

But the outdoors provide a different challenge: designing environments without precise mapping, or how to design "levels" that are, in theory, infinite and uncontained.

When we went trekking, I noticed, first, how much geographical variation there is even in short distances, at least in highlands. Vegetation and insects might change a bit in 20 meters, there are differences in altitude which help creating distinctive landmarks (muddy soil, thick grass, exposed rock, a couple of trees, an abrupt fall, etc.). Rarely outdoors felt like treading on the same stuff for hours.

Regarding that, I feel like mapping, for the GM, doesn't work well for open land. It'd be hellish and also boring to try to map a forest or jungle, so the approach should be different, and I'm reminded of The Shadow of Yesterday, a wonderful 1st generation forgie game by Clinton R. Nixon, which got rewritten and expanded by several authors, one of them Eero Tuovinen. 

In The World of Near, Eero's book, there's a chapter devoted to Knotwork, the art of traversing the jungle. In this subsystem, some travelers remember knots, relevant landmarks that have a spirit associated with them. Skilled travelers may travel to a known knot after a simple roll, or if they know a path between knots, do not need to roll at all. In this game, there's no map, only a graph containing knots and roads between them. New knots may be created by a special skill, too.

I noticed that this subsystem matched quite well my experience outdoors: friends who knew paths, knew how to reach particular landmarks, and that would be stuff like a waterfall, or a small zone with trees casting shadow, ideal for lunch, or some caves where clandestine parties sometimes take place.

Subjective distance

So, we where walking towards this waterfall and pool where we'd be able to bathe, which was needed, because the day was so hot. We reached a little forest and started descending an increasingly abrupt, downwards path, but the waterfall was dry. So the guide would tell us to go further downward, because the pool would be there, but the path would get harder and harder. Eventually we stopped, took a break, ate a bit, chatted, and decided to return to the camp base before the sunset.

This bit made me think about subjective distances in the outdoors. Landmarks in a game don't need to be always equally distant, like for example 1.5 kms. The pool you sought might be dry this time of the year, or only exist further down the hill. The common path towards the ruins of a gazebo might be swampy, and force you to take a long detour and reach it by night.

In this new model, you travel by bits of time, or turns, by rolling dice and checking against a skill or table. Sometimes, you'll reach destination after a single roll, sometimes it'll take more time. You decide after a roll, whether you want to keep pushing, or go back.

The role of the guide

Another thing I've noticed, specially in tight paths, is that the role of the guide is key to the success of the expedition, but for different reasons than I thought. First, the guide's responsible for picking the path all of the expeditioners will go through, which means that their trekking skill is secondary to their ability to evaluate and pick the simplest path for everyone to follow, a path even the least skilled of us can go through. I used to dismiss the rigidity of games like Mouse Guard or Goblinville, where one character's always strongly leading a situation or roll, but now I can see how it is necessary for the outdoors exploration.

Another thing I noticed is the role of fear in an expedition. As a feature of my personality, I tend to overestimate danger, complain a lot, be overly cautious, and this strengthened in a context where the act of walking is by itself an adventure. Fear can be both a blessing and a curse, depending on the situation. Sometimes, it lets you avoid or detect risky situations just in time. Other times, it prevents you from engaging in an activity due to an incorrect gauge of its risk. It can be paralyzing, too, preventing you from acting decisively when you need to, or from reacting fast. At times, I noticed I got grumpy or slightly fearful only because I was hungry/thirsty. I could imagine a game where the main meter is not health nor hunger, but Fear (I think The Warren does this already). With enough fear, everything looks dangerous and unsurmountable, and you become a nuisance to your fellow expeditioners. Hunger, sleep deprivation, etc., only contribute to Fear, dull your senses and make it harder for you to properly perceive your current situation.

Group dynamics

The previous ramble leads me to group dynamics during moments like these. What happens when an individual is plagued by fear or a similar sentiment, and starts dragging down the group's mood? Do you share with everybody how you feel, potentially annoying them, or do you keep it to yourself and start slowly withdrawing from the group? 

There's some tactic game to be played around the group chatter, as they undertake a stressful journey. In such a game, a player might have to choose between sharing their PC's dark feelings and dragging morale down, or keeping that to themselves. What's the danger there? As you stay silent during a journey, people start forgetting about you. Welp, where's Jason? And then everybody realizes they haven't seen him for a while. It'd make for an interesting horror experience.

There's also an interesting tension between the act of leading and the act of criticizing. At some point, if you're willing to question the leader's choices, you've gotta be willing to take up their position and propose your own solutions. This truth's even applicable in other fields: politics, business management, at work, etc.

What to do when you don't lead

How do we make the game interesting for those who don't lead an expedition? I noticed that, often, those who didn't lead had some spare attention to do something else, for example taking photos, thinking about deep stuff, chatting, gathering flowers, providing advice to the leader, whatever. There are some light activities to partake in, which might make it interesting to be a follower sometimes, to the point of allowing a nice leading rotation to ensure everybody wants to take that position and cede it too. This often happened during the trip too: when cooking and when trekking, different people would take the lead, for example. Goblinville, again, provides this in a somewhat mechanical way, but it is a useful starting point to further develop.

That's it for today. I'm probably using this experience as inspiration for the rpglatam jam, which will be an origin game for Vampires & Claymores, but you'll know more about that in the following weeks. Until next time!