Autonomous Zone started out as a vague mental urge to explore the namesake setting of William Gibson's 'Bridge Trilogy', which is about life on the derelict and inhabited remains of a bridge in San Francisco. It is what is termed an autonomous zone (funnily enough) and what that means is that it operates outside of the reach or control of any existing government or governing body. They exist independently (or perhaps in parallel of) the conventional economy, supply chain and infrastructure. The concept of Autonomous Zone as a game is also highly inspired by the comic series DMZ written by Brian Wood which deals with a second civil war in America which comes to a stalemate and creates a demilitarized zone out of the island of Mahattan, and it looks at the lives of the people still living there and unwilling or unable to get out.
My intent with the game is to explore a variety of issues, or to at least use them to inspire interesting stories. Stories about community, want and need, supply and demand, the cost of being self-sufficient or relying on others, of living outside of what is deemed 'normal society' and a whole bunch of other things.
I'll admit, originally it was supposed to be a slick postcyberpunk future with all kinds of neat people like hitmen and couriers and such. It can still be that! But I realised that instead of making other people play around in my derivative setting based on someone else's work, I would open it up to explore the whole concept of an Autonomous Zone. A large part of the game will be creating the characters you are going to play and you cannot create those characters without creating the structures and networks they depend on for survival.
So at the end of the day your zone can be a derelict bridge, a self-contained aquatic habitat, a space station or a hippy commune in the desert. What's important is how and why it is autonomous.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Bones
Here is, roughly, how my game will work. I've only got another day or two to work on it anyway and this seems alright to me. I think I personally would enjoy playing this.
First of all, you set up.
SETUP
1. Draw a map of the area in which you live. It can be a spaceship or it can be a station, the difference is negligible but you should consider it. Either way, you are alone but you are able to have a rather large space if you wish. Add a few notes if you like, make it personal.
2. Write a bio of your astronaut. This doesn't have to be an epic life story, but simply enough to give you some flesh to get some hooks into, enough to give you a person that you can inhabit. You can write it like your astronaut wrote it themself, like it's a personnel file, like it's some sort of wikipedia entry or (and this is my favourite idea) like a class project about their dad that your astronaut's kid wrote. Make sure to give them a name you like! Think about why your character is alone out here and took this job.
3. Find somewhere to post multiple documents, videos and possibly audio recordings online. Somewhere people will be able to view, comment and reply. They don't necessarily have to be in the same place but you could perhaps create a blog to keep all of the varied links together. People will (hopefully, if they enjoy this game and enjoy participating with people playing it) send you videos and messages, but don't read or view them before the end of the game. After all, it's only a single player thing so you shouldn't engage with the outside world. It breaks character!
4. Note down, somewhere (publicly or privately, your choice) the levels of your three gauges, which are Sanity, Health and Happiness. They all start at Level 10 but will fluctuate throughout the game.
And that's all the setup for now. Oh and you'll need a deck of cards that you can keep to yourself and not have disturbed.
The Game Proper
G is a simple enough game to play. It's divided up into 52 turns, each of which represents one week of time passing for your astronaut. Most of the turns will be relatively uneventful. They should not take you long either, although that depends on how long you take to write a journal entry or record a video or something like that. After all, you'll be doing it each turn. Each turn is divided into two parts. The first part is Stuff Happens and the second is Create Something.
Stuff Happens
In this phase, you flip over the top card of the deck. When you do, you're looking at two things. First is the colour, second is the value of the card.
Red Cards represent an overall good week for your astronaut whereas Black Cards represent a negative and bad one.
The value of the card is how much it has effected the mood and disposition of your astronaut. Face cards have a value of 10, except under certain circumstances that I will explain.
Aces are Incidents and are also different.
If the card is neither an Ace nor a face card that meets certain conditions, you get a number of shifts based on the value of it. A shift is changing the value of one of your Gauges by 1. Whether this is up or down depends on the colour of the card. This means that if the card is red, you have Up-Shifts equal to the value of the card. If the card is Red and has a value of 8, for example, you may distribute 8 Up-Shifts among your gauges in any way you wish, each Up-Shift increasing the value of that particular gauge by 1. If the card is black, you have Down-Shifts and have to reduce your gauges equal to the value of the card.
The maximum value of each gauge is 10. If all of them are at 10 and you have Up-Shifts left, any extras are lost. If you have Up-Shifts and any of your gauges are below 10, you must use them on those gauges. You cannot deliberately assign them to a gauge that's at maximum.
The minimum value of each gauge is 0. If all of them are at 0 and you have any Down-Shifts left, any extras are lost. If all of them are at 0 and you have Down-Shifts left, any extras are lost. If you have Down-Shifts and any of your gauges are above 0, you must use them on those gauges. You cannot deliberately assign them to a gauge that's at minimum.
So that's what happens if you draw a non-face card. You spread the shifts amongst your gauges.
If you draw an Ace, you suffer an Incident. I'll go into some more detail about that in a moment.
If you draw a Jack and one of your gauges is below 5, you suffer an Incident. Otherwise it simply has a value of 10 and applies shifts as normal.
If you draw a Queen and two of your gauges are below 5, you suffer an Incident. Otherwise it simply has a value of 10 and applies shifts as normal.
If you draw a King and all three of your gauges are below 5, you suffer an Incident. Otherwise it simply has a value of 10.
When you suffer an Incident, you choose one of your gauges that has a value above 0 and you reduce it to 0 immediately. No other shifts happen this turn. When you Create Something, you must discuss and describe the Incident instead of or as well as whatever else.
Just to make it clear, the colour of an Ace makes no difference and if you meet the conditions for a Face Card causing an Incident, their colour doesn't matter anymore either.
Create Something
This part of the game is simple enough. You 'Create Something' and put it in a place that others can see it. You are creating the public record of your astronaut's one year mission. You may create what you wish, but here are some suggestions. Always remember to keep in mind the events of the turn, how your gauges have changed and how that has changed your astronaut. 10 is flying high, 0 is rock bottom, everything else is variable.
A Video: Record a video that's either some kind of 'video journal' or a message to someone back home. It doesn't have to be particularly long, just long enough for you to say what you want to say that day.
Designer's Intent Challenge: Record no fewer than 5 videos through the course of this game. It's a unique and interesting medium.
A Journal Entry: Write a journal entry in your astronaut's journal. Describe feelings, events that have happened, memories, thoughts. All sorts of things.
A Dream: Write about a dream you had (which of course you invent wholesale). Feel free to include outlandish elements, people from the astronaut's history, that kind of thing. Be creative with this one. It's a chance to step outside the normal logic of the game and to give some sort of insight into the concerns of the astronaut.
And uh, that's it. That's my game. That's how you play it.
Some questions for specific feedback:
- Would you enjoy playing this game?
- Is there enough 'management' or 'manipulation' of the gauges?
- Is it too arbitrary?
First of all, you set up.
SETUP
1. Draw a map of the area in which you live. It can be a spaceship or it can be a station, the difference is negligible but you should consider it. Either way, you are alone but you are able to have a rather large space if you wish. Add a few notes if you like, make it personal.
2. Write a bio of your astronaut. This doesn't have to be an epic life story, but simply enough to give you some flesh to get some hooks into, enough to give you a person that you can inhabit. You can write it like your astronaut wrote it themself, like it's a personnel file, like it's some sort of wikipedia entry or (and this is my favourite idea) like a class project about their dad that your astronaut's kid wrote. Make sure to give them a name you like! Think about why your character is alone out here and took this job.
3. Find somewhere to post multiple documents, videos and possibly audio recordings online. Somewhere people will be able to view, comment and reply. They don't necessarily have to be in the same place but you could perhaps create a blog to keep all of the varied links together. People will (hopefully, if they enjoy this game and enjoy participating with people playing it) send you videos and messages, but don't read or view them before the end of the game. After all, it's only a single player thing so you shouldn't engage with the outside world. It breaks character!
4. Note down, somewhere (publicly or privately, your choice) the levels of your three gauges, which are Sanity, Health and Happiness. They all start at Level 10 but will fluctuate throughout the game.
And that's all the setup for now. Oh and you'll need a deck of cards that you can keep to yourself and not have disturbed.
The Game Proper
G is a simple enough game to play. It's divided up into 52 turns, each of which represents one week of time passing for your astronaut. Most of the turns will be relatively uneventful. They should not take you long either, although that depends on how long you take to write a journal entry or record a video or something like that. After all, you'll be doing it each turn. Each turn is divided into two parts. The first part is Stuff Happens and the second is Create Something.
Stuff Happens
In this phase, you flip over the top card of the deck. When you do, you're looking at two things. First is the colour, second is the value of the card.
Red Cards represent an overall good week for your astronaut whereas Black Cards represent a negative and bad one.
The value of the card is how much it has effected the mood and disposition of your astronaut. Face cards have a value of 10, except under certain circumstances that I will explain.
Aces are Incidents and are also different.
If the card is neither an Ace nor a face card that meets certain conditions, you get a number of shifts based on the value of it. A shift is changing the value of one of your Gauges by 1. Whether this is up or down depends on the colour of the card. This means that if the card is red, you have Up-Shifts equal to the value of the card. If the card is Red and has a value of 8, for example, you may distribute 8 Up-Shifts among your gauges in any way you wish, each Up-Shift increasing the value of that particular gauge by 1. If the card is black, you have Down-Shifts and have to reduce your gauges equal to the value of the card.
The maximum value of each gauge is 10. If all of them are at 10 and you have Up-Shifts left, any extras are lost. If you have Up-Shifts and any of your gauges are below 10, you must use them on those gauges. You cannot deliberately assign them to a gauge that's at maximum.
The minimum value of each gauge is 0. If all of them are at 0 and you have any Down-Shifts left, any extras are lost. If all of them are at 0 and you have Down-Shifts left, any extras are lost. If you have Down-Shifts and any of your gauges are above 0, you must use them on those gauges. You cannot deliberately assign them to a gauge that's at minimum.
So that's what happens if you draw a non-face card. You spread the shifts amongst your gauges.
If you draw an Ace, you suffer an Incident. I'll go into some more detail about that in a moment.
If you draw a Jack and one of your gauges is below 5, you suffer an Incident. Otherwise it simply has a value of 10 and applies shifts as normal.
If you draw a Queen and two of your gauges are below 5, you suffer an Incident. Otherwise it simply has a value of 10 and applies shifts as normal.
If you draw a King and all three of your gauges are below 5, you suffer an Incident. Otherwise it simply has a value of 10.
When you suffer an Incident, you choose one of your gauges that has a value above 0 and you reduce it to 0 immediately. No other shifts happen this turn. When you Create Something, you must discuss and describe the Incident instead of or as well as whatever else.
Just to make it clear, the colour of an Ace makes no difference and if you meet the conditions for a Face Card causing an Incident, their colour doesn't matter anymore either.
Create Something
This part of the game is simple enough. You 'Create Something' and put it in a place that others can see it. You are creating the public record of your astronaut's one year mission. You may create what you wish, but here are some suggestions. Always remember to keep in mind the events of the turn, how your gauges have changed and how that has changed your astronaut. 10 is flying high, 0 is rock bottom, everything else is variable.
A Video: Record a video that's either some kind of 'video journal' or a message to someone back home. It doesn't have to be particularly long, just long enough for you to say what you want to say that day.
Designer's Intent Challenge: Record no fewer than 5 videos through the course of this game. It's a unique and interesting medium.
A Journal Entry: Write a journal entry in your astronaut's journal. Describe feelings, events that have happened, memories, thoughts. All sorts of things.
A Dream: Write about a dream you had (which of course you invent wholesale). Feel free to include outlandish elements, people from the astronaut's history, that kind of thing. Be creative with this one. It's a chance to step outside the normal logic of the game and to give some sort of insight into the concerns of the astronaut.
And uh, that's it. That's my game. That's how you play it.
Some questions for specific feedback:
- Would you enjoy playing this game?
- Is there enough 'management' or 'manipulation' of the gauges?
- Is it too arbitrary?
Friday, January 7, 2011
Turns
G uses a series of turns. More specifically a game runs for 52 turns, because there are 52 weeks in a year and, well, each turn is a week. That's why the year without human contact works for me, it's enough time to carve it up into a bunch of turns but not, y'know, ludicrously long.
It's my intent that a turn only takes a few minutes at most but that the player doesn't have to take any more than one at a time. So I could play this in a few hours or over the course of a week or I could take one turn every week for 52 weeks if I really wanted. There's no hurry or rush or schedule.
Each turn involves two things.
The first is that either something happens or nothing happens. That probably doesn't make sense. What I mean is that either it's an uneventful week and you're bored and lonely and all that stuff. Or it's a week where you're scared you're going to die and there are things going wrong, some sort of major problem. There should be enough boring weeks that you wish something would happen. The things that happen should be terrible enough that you wish for nothing again.
The second is that you produce something. You journal or you video or you record a dream you had or you do something of the sort. Each week you do this so by the end of the game you have 52 individual items that map and record and express the mental state of your astronaut.
The turns (and inherently the game) must guide and inspire these two elements of each turn while still allowing creative freedom.
It's my intent that a turn only takes a few minutes at most but that the player doesn't have to take any more than one at a time. So I could play this in a few hours or over the course of a week or I could take one turn every week for 52 weeks if I really wanted. There's no hurry or rush or schedule.
Each turn involves two things.
The first is that either something happens or nothing happens. That probably doesn't make sense. What I mean is that either it's an uneventful week and you're bored and lonely and all that stuff. Or it's a week where you're scared you're going to die and there are things going wrong, some sort of major problem. There should be enough boring weeks that you wish something would happen. The things that happen should be terrible enough that you wish for nothing again.
The second is that you produce something. You journal or you video or you record a dream you had or you do something of the sort. Each week you do this so by the end of the game you have 52 individual items that map and record and express the mental state of your astronaut.
The turns (and inherently the game) must guide and inspire these two elements of each turn while still allowing creative freedom.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Making my own fun
The interesting part of the challenge, for me at least, is making it a game that's fun for me to play. It's easy for me to imagine putting in various elements and toys that make me think 'this will be so awesome!' but if it's not something that I personally will enjoy or engage with then what's the point? After all, if I can't enjoy my own game then how do I know anybody will?
The videos are an example. I fully intend for whoever plays this game to end up creating videos of themselves acting in character as their astronaut, addressed to various people and friends and family and loved ones and relatives back home. Would I do that? Would I have fun doing that? At first I wasn't so sure but the more I think about it, the more I think that I would. It would be fun, as long as you got into the spirit of things. And I think the rest of the game should be such that it encourages you to want to do these videos, to embrace the loneliness and isolation that is part and parcel of the character's experience. So it's a matter of figuring out how to do that. The videos will be part of a guard and a defense against insanity and unhappiness, but I want it to be more than mechanically driven.
I imagine myself recording them in the wee hours of the morning for at least two different reasons. The first is that nobody will be around when I do this potentially embarassing thing because regardless of how into the spirit of the game I am, I don't think I could do it in front of people. The second is that the wee hours of the morning are when I feel the most disconnected from everybody else and most alone, regardless of how happy I am otherwise or how surrounded by people. It's just part of being awake at that time and I think I could quite easily tap into that.
To me the videos will both require you to be in character and also draw you deeper into the character, all at the same time.
The videos are an example. I fully intend for whoever plays this game to end up creating videos of themselves acting in character as their astronaut, addressed to various people and friends and family and loved ones and relatives back home. Would I do that? Would I have fun doing that? At first I wasn't so sure but the more I think about it, the more I think that I would. It would be fun, as long as you got into the spirit of things. And I think the rest of the game should be such that it encourages you to want to do these videos, to embrace the loneliness and isolation that is part and parcel of the character's experience. So it's a matter of figuring out how to do that. The videos will be part of a guard and a defense against insanity and unhappiness, but I want it to be more than mechanically driven.
I imagine myself recording them in the wee hours of the morning for at least two different reasons. The first is that nobody will be around when I do this potentially embarassing thing because regardless of how into the spirit of the game I am, I don't think I could do it in front of people. The second is that the wee hours of the morning are when I feel the most disconnected from everybody else and most alone, regardless of how happy I am otherwise or how surrounded by people. It's just part of being awake at that time and I think I could quite easily tap into that.
To me the videos will both require you to be in character and also draw you deeper into the character, all at the same time.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
G - Solitaire Game
Right now there's the RPG Solitaire Challenge going on, which is a challenge to design an RPG that can be played and enjoyed by one person only.
It's an interesting concept to me and I decided to at least work on something that I would enter into it. In fact, due to the fact that I can describe how I'm building this game and what it's about rather than simply building it in the timeframe, I'm almost certain to enter it.
My idea for this game is inspired by things like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon and to a lesser degree parts of Red Mars and Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. The concept is that of an astronaut or such (I know astronaut is a more specific term, but I'm rolling with it for now) who has been assigned by themself to a ship or an outpost of some kind. They are at least one year distant, communication-wise, from any other living thing and they must remain there for at least a year. The game is about exploring boredom, diminishing levels of sanity and health and happiness, about dealing with problems as they arrive and generally just exploring the mental and physical space this character finds themselves in for a year.
It's equal parts a tactical or strategic game dealing with the accidents and manipulating the 'points' of happiness, health and sanity that you have, but it's also a creative game where you record videos in-character, from your astronaut to people back home. You maintain a personal journal, you have weird symbolic dreams that you invent and then write down.
I don't have a lot of structure at this point. I have some vague ideas that I don't want to write down here and in fact I think I'm going to try and just... play it. Simply make up enough of a structure to play it and play it. After all, I'm the only person it has to entertain at this point.
There are two 'steps' or things you do in the game that I have decided upon and you do these before you do anything else.
1. Draw a map of your ship or outpost, with a few little unique labels of your own. Make it familiar.
2. Write a history of your astronaut, as detailed as you wish but remember this is the foundation you build the character on. Also, other people outside of the game will be able to read this and send you messages or videos that you can access after the game is over.
And that's it. For now.
It's an interesting concept to me and I decided to at least work on something that I would enter into it. In fact, due to the fact that I can describe how I'm building this game and what it's about rather than simply building it in the timeframe, I'm almost certain to enter it.
My idea for this game is inspired by things like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon and to a lesser degree parts of Red Mars and Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. The concept is that of an astronaut or such (I know astronaut is a more specific term, but I'm rolling with it for now) who has been assigned by themself to a ship or an outpost of some kind. They are at least one year distant, communication-wise, from any other living thing and they must remain there for at least a year. The game is about exploring boredom, diminishing levels of sanity and health and happiness, about dealing with problems as they arrive and generally just exploring the mental and physical space this character finds themselves in for a year.
It's equal parts a tactical or strategic game dealing with the accidents and manipulating the 'points' of happiness, health and sanity that you have, but it's also a creative game where you record videos in-character, from your astronaut to people back home. You maintain a personal journal, you have weird symbolic dreams that you invent and then write down.
I don't have a lot of structure at this point. I have some vague ideas that I don't want to write down here and in fact I think I'm going to try and just... play it. Simply make up enough of a structure to play it and play it. After all, I'm the only person it has to entertain at this point.
There are two 'steps' or things you do in the game that I have decided upon and you do these before you do anything else.
1. Draw a map of your ship or outpost, with a few little unique labels of your own. Make it familiar.
2. Write a history of your astronaut, as detailed as you wish but remember this is the foundation you build the character on. Also, other people outside of the game will be able to read this and send you messages or videos that you can access after the game is over.
And that's it. For now.
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