Matters of Scale

The boy and I have been watching Star Wars Rebels lately (it runs on TV in Paraguay, though I have to ask him to translate the show for me). It's good enough, and fun enough (and kid friendly enough) that we decided to go ahead and download the first season on iTunes. Unfortunately, with the crap internet connection here, that means about four+ hours per episode. When the internet is working.

*sigh*

Things aren't always this exciting...but often enough.

Still, the first three or four episodes have been worth the cost (in time and money), especially as I now get to watch the show in English (the boy misses a lot, after all...he is only five). But while there's a lot of annoying things about it (mainly about the main characters), I'm still finding the show to be (in sum) a good watch and interesting from the possibility of game development.

The idea of using a single ship as a reason for an adventuring crew to stick together isn't anything new. Traveller did it. Star Trek (and IP-inspired works like Far Trek) did it. Ashen Stars did it. Bulldog did it. Back in '05 I was working on something called "Shipboard," I was doing it. I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting. But having adventures/stories revolve around the exploits of a single crewed vessel is a time-honored tradition of science fiction...whether you're talking comics (the Micronauts, Dreadstar), television (Star Trek, Space 1999, Firefly), or film/novels. It's a good trope, the whole "life-in-a-can" thing. Very Das Boot...you're stuck together, so better work together.

So that's not anything I find terribly interesting (though it is a rather new thing for the "Star Wars" 'verse...usually, you've got SW protagonists operating all over the galaxy simultaneously). No, what's more interesting to me is the scale at which these rebels are carrying out their various subversive ops against the Empire. Rather than the usual galactic scale, we find them working at a planetary scale...in and around (for the most part) a single planet.

This is a very interesting choice of setting and one that makes a lot of sense when you think about it. I mean, the scales in Star Wars are all wonky anyway...you have a couple dozen (maybe) star fighters going toe-to-toe with an Empire that has the resources of a trillion beings to draw upon? Um...okay.

What can one ship or rogues do against a whole galaxy? Or a whole system of inhabited planets? Or against even a couple capital ships? Not much, of course (run away!)...but I'm not just talking about open conflict (laser-on-laser action). What kind of difference can a single ship make in helping the oppressed people of an over-thrown, galactic republic?

Not much...that's a lot of (refugee) mouths to feed.

Much of the Star Wars comics published by Marvel (back in the pre-prequel, pre-RotJ days) centered around the antics of Luke and Leia acting as spies and diplomats, trying to drum up support for their rebellion (flying around, talking to planetary governments about throwing in their lot with the rebels and getting all united in The Revolution), while Han and Chewie did their Hand and Chewie "loser thing" (getting into small change trouble with small change crooks). I mean, you can't rescue a princess and blow up a Death Star every episode/issue, right?

[you know, come to think of it, Lucas really did a huge disservice to his whole franchise by rehashing the Death Star thing in Return of the Jedi. Forget your hate of ewoks, forget the inconsistency of yet another appearance on backwater Tatooine at the ass-end of the galaxy, forget the whole crazy Leia-is-your-sister thing. Sure...those things all have varying degrees of suckage and lazy-plotting attached to them. Lucas, at the tail end of a broken marriage and a thwarted attempt at (real) empire-building was just trying to tie the thing up in as expedient a manner as possible, in order to make a buck (thank God for licensing, huh?)...and that, of course, is understandable. BUT, the bit that sucks the hardest is the recycling of the same film plot from the first movie with a bigger scale. What we should have seen is a showdown with Vader and the Emperor (and those dudes in the red imperial guardsmen) in some shadowy, lava-moated citadel with ALL the protagonists present and accounted for, with ALL the heroes facing their "moment-of-truth" with new Dark Side mind-fucks and Jedi mysticism, a culmination of the path of the first two films, while matched with the B-SciFi monster horror and Flash Gordon comic-tropes that Lucas mashed together in the first place. What a wasted opportunity]

[*sigh*]

But doing what Marvel did isn't a great recipe for an RPG. Playing diplomat is fun if you're playing a game like Diplomacy (natch), but it's fairly boring stuff in a game that's supposed to be about soaring space opera and blasting stormtroopers. Splitting protagonists and giving them different agendas in different parts of the galaxy may be nice for expanding and growing a setting, but it's a superficial exploration...not the dig-down-deep that it could be.

A while back I wrote a bit about "closed systems;" what I suppose I meant as limited environments for exploration. A single dungeon for a D&D-ish game. A single city for a superhero game. For a game that features a spacecraft capable of faster-than-light travel (and a galaxy filled with a million inhabitable worlds) confining the setting to a single planet (with occasional side jaunts) seems fairly limiting...at least given the homogenous environments of the Star Wars universe (where every planet has a "type:" water world, desert world, forest world, etc.).

I like this. Sorry, I do. I know some folks buck the ideas of limits, of artificial restraints imposed on their adventures. But for me, it seems there's plenty of good adventures to explore in such a small environment, plenty of impact to be had by acting on a single world, plenty of character that can be developed within a small crucible. I mean, it IS a planet...even if it lacks the diversity of environment, culture, and species found on little ol' Earth, it's still big enough that you can make for a meaningful series/saga. There's a lot of potential there, even with a relatively unimportant planet in the empire (and I'm not so sure Lothal IS unimportant...being a farm planet, it appears to supply a ton of food to the Empire's military. Tampering with that supply will get the number of troops at the garrison upped in no time flat).

So, cool. It's got me thinking of one or two ideas. It's also making me think I might have short-changed Star Wars (the West End Games D6-based RPG) back in the day. If I'd considered something of this (small) scale, I might have found it easier...and saner...to run a SW saga.

Closed System

I spent the entire morning doing research relating to child sex abuse (mainly comparing Paraguay to other countries in North and South America) which was...well, depressing, to say the least. But it was a favor to my wife and relates to her work here and gives me a chance to "contribute." Just so people don't think I'm blowing off the blog for watching Netflix shows or something (that was the other week).

ANYWAY...closed systems. Lately (the last 24 hours), I've been reflecting upon two television shows of the 1970s that I find quite interesting, especially with regard to the nature of their settings as "closed universes." One is, of course, the 1974 serial Land of the Lost (still have to finish that looooong post...this isn't it), the other is the short-lived 1972 cartoon Sealab 2020.

I never had the opportunity to view Sealab 2020 when it was on TV...I wasn't born till '73, after all. But I did regularly watch the parody show Sealab 2021 when it was first running a few years back (funny, funny weirdness), and last year I was able to pick up the original series on DVD from the Warner Archive. My son digs it (as do I), and it's quite interesting from the point of view as an action-adventure show that involves no combat with antagonists...simply the hazards inherent in conducting scientific research in a hostile (undersea) environment.

Need Dyson to map this thing.

Both Sealab (with its undersea complex located on "Sea Mount"...an underwater mountain, natch) and Land o the Lost (with its pocket universe) are closed environments...there's a limit to the amount of exploration that can be performed by the characters. In LOTL, individuals exiting one side of the map simply end up entering the map on the opposite side (this phenomenon is a key element of the first season). The folks of Sealab are restricted based on the hostility of their environment...while they might exit the 'Lab to explore the surrounding ocean, there's only so far they can go due to needing to replenish air supplies. All their adventures take place within Sealab itself, or within close proximity to its safe enclosures.

I'm just looking at the concept in RPG terms...most RPGs make their bread-and-butter by being open environments where exploration might take a character "anywhere." Even when there are some geographical limits -- like "Planet Earth" or "Medieval Europe" -- those "limits" are so vast as to be not terribly limited. I'm trying to think of an RPG that has a truly limited setting of exploration...Paranoia's Alpha Complex is vast (and adventures can take characters into the "outside world") and I don't think spaceship Warden was particularly limited in size for Metamorphosis Alpha (though MA isn't a game I've owned, or had the chance to really study).

No, RPGs don't shut their people into small box environs unless they're designed for short games with very specific objectives (usually examining tragic tales within the confines of a session or two sessions play)...here I'm thinking indie games like My Life With Master and Dust Devils. Even then, I don't suppose the environment has to be particularly confined...but the scale of the game is such that exploration of "the greater world" doesn't usually have the chance to occur.

Anyway, it's an interesting idea. The recent "thing" I was working on has a fairly small scale, but that was an accident of design (based on the game setting) rather a purposeful choice. The thing about the closed setting is it seems to really, truly limit "how far can this game go;" not just in terms of what can be explored, setting-wise, but what can be explored character-wise.

I mean, talk about a big fish in a small pond...if a character (or characters) have nothing to do but probe the confines of a single mega-dungeon (a possible D&D-ish example of a closed environment), how high in level do they really need to go? Without the possibility of building castles or exploring other planes, what's the maximum level you really need?

For some reason, my brain is drawing a correlation between such "closed systems" and board games like Dungeon!...there's no character development/advancement in the board game, there's simply roles that you play (elf, hero, wizard, etc.). Your role provides you with a certain degree of effectiveness, perhaps some different options, but the role is completely static...closed, just like the environment. Is there room for character development in such a setting? Should the elf, at some point, grow in experience to the point that she can take out one of the blue dragons or black puddings inhabiting the 6th level? Or should they always be out of her reach (sans the use of a magic sword).

Would a Land of the Lost RPG ever see the Marshalls developing the skills to take on Grumpy the tyrannosaurus? Or operate Enik's time portal?

I never played something like GURPS: The Prisoner (based on another show with a closed environment) so I don't know what one would do in such a campaign. It would seem there is room for  a series of "adventures" within such confines...a serial television show is able to come up with a number of different stories/"sessions" after all. But is it enough on which to base a game? With a limited environment, you really need some kind of win scenario or endgame, no? Otherwise, you reach the actual (if imaginary) limits of your environment and your stuck just ripping down the continuity of the thing...like the way the 3rd season of LOTL had people and monsters of all sorts just "wander in" to its closed confines.

That's what I'm thinking about today. Well, that and how Paraguay really isn't a great place to raise children. Oh, and bolt-action rifles...but that's for a completely different (and totally off-topic) reason.