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!