Game Ideas Un limited: Pens

Sometime years ago when space travel was still fascinating to most people, NASA announced it had created a space pen, a writing implement which astronauts could use to make notes on paper while in space.

For most of us, this doesn't sound at all problematic or interesting. We pick up a pen and write with it, and it works. What's the big deal? We little realize how much of the technology involved in the pens we use is dependent on being used in this environment. Ink is fed to the point usually by gravity, less commonly by internal pressure opposed by atmospheric pressure. Once the wet ink is on the paper, it dries by evaporation, liquids in the ink dispersing into the surrounding air to leave the pigments staining the surface of the paper. These are some of the aspects of how pens work that would be very different without the familiar surroundings for which they were designed. NASA felt that it needed a writing implement that would work without reference to the environmental conditions in which it was used (as long as it could survive those conditions). They spent a substantial sum of money on achieving this goal, and were proud enough of their accomplishment that they made a news bulletin of it.

The Russian space agency responded with muted congratulations. They indicated admiration for this remarkable achievement, but said that they had already solved all those problems and provided their cosmonauts with a writing implement that wrote effectively on most writing surfaces in any conditions they had yet encountered in space. They used pencils.

Whether you use space pens, charcoal pencils, styli, word processors, or some incredibly advanced technology the like of which I have not yet imagined, one of the key bits of advice I have been giving to role playing game players and referees alike for nearing a quarter of a century is to write everything down. The more that you commit to paper, the easier it is to verify and recall the facts of the shared imagined space we call the game world. The very act of play changes that world; knowing what it was, how and when it changed, and what it became may all be very important, and writing it down is the surest means of remembering it.

You may think you will remember it all; but there is already so much to remember. Have you never wished you had some sort of extended memory device, like a disk drive, that you could plug into your brain to store extra information and recall it at will? That's exactly what the pencil is: it is a means of storing information outside the active memory circuits of your brain for detailed recall at a future time. No one remembers everything, even if some are gifted with the ability to recall all of specific types of information. You shouldn't have to remember everything. As Doctor Henry Jones Senior said to his son in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, "I wrote it down so I wouldn't have to remember it." That which we have put to paper we can reliably recall to memory when we need it, without fear it will be forgotten or corrupted.

For example, how many of the articles from this past quarter can you remember, off the top of your head? How many come back with a bit of prodding from this list?

170. Flag Captures picked up our consideration of adventure designs with thoughts on a non-linear model for a quest for a single object whose location is known but for which several paths are possible.
171. Preservatives talked about the problems inherent in keeping food fresh over long journeys, and how this can come into play in a game.
172. Hordes provided a few shortcuts to creating large numbers of creatures for use in major battles and wars.
173. Treasure Hunts provided a second model for quest-type adventures, a considerably more linear type in which the adventurers followed the trail of clues to reach the end.
174. Architecture considered the impact of local conditions and requirements on the appearance of the buildings in our imaginary cities and towns, considering building materials, weather conditions, and other factors.
175. McGuffin is a word coined by suspense master Alfred Hitchcock to define that object in any story which everyone in the story wants, and thus which motivates them. This article discussed the kinds of motivations that drive quests, specifically, and how to connect them to McGuffins.
176. Most of us form judgements of others based on first Impressions. Although I object to this, I confess to falling into it at times myself. I also recognize that it is rather universal that people do make such judgements by appearances and gossip, and that our characters should sometimes face the complications of such prejudices.
177. Wars picked up from Hordes, providing several techniques for running mass combats that avoid the problems of tracking the motion of each one of several hundred combatants.
178. Scavenger Hunts were yet one more approach to quests, a particularly non-linear model in which the quest has multiple objects in different known or unknown places, and the heroes must locate and gather all of these to succeed.
179. Designs asked the question of how to help someone else with a setting when it doesn't fit your view of how things work, and suggested the answer lay in asking the right questions.
180. Wisdom gave a glance at how to play a character who is wiser than you are. It considered some techniques that don't work well, but also provided some ideas that do.
181. Home is where the heart is, or so they say. This somewhat whimsical moment considered whether adventurers ever do find home.

Three months ago we took a similar backwards glance at what we'd written, and talked about Dreams in the process. How much of what we said do you remember?

I will admit that I do not remember all of the one hundred eighty-one articles in this series that precede this one. Sometimes the name of an article will bring it back to me; sometimes I have to read the introductory blurb for it. Once in a while I actually have to reread an old article to remember what it was about. With each new idea, I scan through old pages to assure myself that I'm not copying what I've already written, and that if I've addressed this subject before I am at least adding something to it now. My memory does not retain all that I have already said and done. I have games running in many different worlds for many different people, and the details of all of these are not always completely retained, particularly when the currents of the river of life carry us apart for months or years at a time. My notes are usually sufficient to recover most of these when we return to the table, even though my memories are not.

It is said that C. S. Lewis had what was then called a photographic and now an eidetic memory. His library had shelves on four walls, floor to ceiling. His secretary, Walter Hooper, would select a book from those shelves, identifying it only by which wall, which shelf, and how many from the end, then pick a page by number. Lewis could recite the page. However, if Hooper copied text from one of Lewis' own books and read it aloud to him, he would not recognize it even as familiar. None of us remembers everything. That's why we write it down.

Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.