[Fifth World] How might you model tracking with beads and a mancala board?

[jefgodesky]

These previous threads should help introduce some of the concepts this game idea works with: Power 19 for the Fifth World, previous discussion about a core mechanic.  I also started a very similar thread on Story Games, where I did get some good ideas, but the mystery remains unsolved.

I've continued to research, refine, and hone the basic concepts for the Fifth World, and I think I might have something like a core mechanic--enough to get started with actually turning this into a game--but for one, crucial problem.  A bit of necessary background, first.

We have lots of RPG's with rules that model different parts of a literate, domesticated culture. I want the Fifth World's mechanics to model on the outlook and assumptions of oral, wild cultures. So, for instance, it doesn't use a randomizer, because animists don't see the universe as really involving randomness; it's always about your relationship with others. A hunter does or doesn't find prey not because of luck, but because the animal decided to either reveal himself or not, based on their past relationship, and whether the hunter has treated the animal with respect. Randomizers do a reasonably good job of modeling the way we think the universe works; but animists don't see the world working that way. Running a game about hunter-gatherers with rules that fundamentally spring from a literate idea of how the world works doesn't draw you into an oral lifeworld.  It actually seems a little condescending: they might have their quaint beliefs, but we know how things really work.

In that vein, I've undertaken a fairly large task: trying to understand hunter-gatherers in their own context. David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous, Graham Harvey's Animism and Tim Ingold's Perception of the Environment have helped me greatly in this, and it feels good to put that anthropology major to good use, but I've come to this: it all comes down to perception. There you have your atomic action in the animist lifeworld, just like the attempt against fate or chance as the atomic action in ours, which we model with a die roll. Some examples of how this is expressed:

• Most band-level social life focuses around the rather slow-moving process of building consensus. To express this with a Diplomacy check suggests that you achieve consensus by overcoming someone else's arguments. That's not typically how it works. For this to work, consistently and long-term, you need to achieve consensus by understanding the other's point of view, and aligning your points of view, so that you can match. (Hence why it so often takes so long!) So, you basically have a problem of perception--awareness of the other's ideas, opinions and values.
• A traditional hunter must get very close to an animal to take it. At the ranges of a sling or a primitive bow, or even an atlatl, there comes a critical moment when a deer notices the hunter. The deer looks directly at the hunter and stands there. This evolved in conjunction with wolves, where it gave both a moment to gather themselves before the final burst. Cree hunters see in this behavior an offering; the deer offers itself to the hunter. In fact, they do not see any violence at all in hunting. To take an animal that has not offered itself would constitute an unforgivable act of violence. The animal would punish you; no other would present itself to you, and the revenge may not end there. Sickness, when it did occur, often stemmed from such offenses. But because of this, hunting requires a great deal of effort in tracking, but the kill itself happens quite easily. With each track, the tracker comes closer to the animal. Most trackers describe the experience as an exercise in empathy. To represent the moment of the kill with a die roll would seem like blasphemy in the animist understanding: it suggests overcoming resistance, which means that you've taken an animal against its will. The challenge, rather, lies in becoming aware of what the animal offers you at the critical moment that it makes that offering.
• Shapeshifting doesn't involve emic vs. etic accounts, nearly so much as a basic ontology of the universe. In our dualist worldview, owing to Plato ultimately and Descartes more recently, mind and matter belong to entirely separate categories, so when we think of dreaming, we think of a mind "unplugging" from the material world, so what we experience in dreams seems internal to the mind. That doesn't make sense in an animist sense, because they don't separate mind from matter. Rather, "mind" acts as a verb, something the body does, not something it has. Dreams, like everything else, mean precisely what they appear to mean: a different means of perceiving the same world they perceive at all other times. So if they see themselves become a deer or a bear in a dream, vision, or trance, they do not take this as a metaphor, analogy, or ceremony.  They became a deer or a bear; they experienced it, first-hand.  Shapeshifting, then, means shifting one's perception to mimic, as close as possible, that of a different animal. You could consider it the utmost extreme of empathy, but successfully shifting shape doesn't involve overcoming a challenge--it means adjusting your perception to match the animal's perception.

Now, I've already figured out that rather than skills, traits, or other attributes which reflect the cognitive consequence of literacy that makes us think of the universe as a collection of object with definite characteristics, the Fifth World should use relationships to define a character. Many animist languages already reflect this; the word to "sneak," for instance, often also means "coyote." So to sneak into the village means, in their language, to coyote into the village. So rather than, say, a "sneaking" skill, you have a relationship with Coyote that could guide physical sneaking, clever planning, guile and trickery, etc. These would have fairly broad definitions, and you'd have a lot of breadth in choosing relationships, so I see them as somewhat related to Traits in Dogs in the Vineyard, or Keys in The Shadow of Yesterday.  You have a relationship with the land, with the other PC's, with your tradition (the closest thing to a class), with any objects of particular personal importance, with your clan, etc.

We represent those relationships with strings of beads, the number of beads indicating the strength of the relationship.  And what do those beads represent, if not encounters?  As I mentioned before, it all comes down to perception.  The basic metaphor here comes from tracking.  Each track leads you closer, as you become more and more attuned with the Other, all building the tension to that final moment of release, the encounter with the Other.  So what the core mechanic has to model, basically, comes down to that kind of tracking, and whether or not you succeed in encountering the Other, whatever that Other might look like: the person/party/argument you mean to make consensus with, the animal you want to take for your dinner, the shape you mean to transform yourself into, the wampum belt you mean to weave, etc.  When you do succeed, that encounter adds a bead to your relationship with that Other.

With perception or awareness as the fundamental challenge, we don't need randomizers, since a different kind of game immediately presents itself: resource management. In this case, the resource signifies attention or awareness. Wide-angle vision, like trackers rely on, means compromising focus, for example. Paying more attention to one thing may mean paying less attention to other things.  Your relationship could impact this check as a kind of margin of error; your familiarity with Raccoon, for instance, would make it easier to track a raccoon.  So if you have 10 beads in that relationship, you would succeed in tracking a raccoon even if you missed by +/- 10.

But I can't figure out how to determine success.  Right now, I have a mancala board in mind.  With its two stores, each with its own trail leading to the Other, the possibilities seem very strong.  I just can't figure out how it would work like that.  Whatever the answer turns out, it would need to allow for possibilities like one trying to hide from the other, one trying to reveal itself to the other, and the possibility of missing the critical moment of revelation.  At the moment, I have no idea what would achieve that.

[Guy Srinivasan]

My first rambling thoughts:

When I think of mancala, I see two stores, and a 2x6 set of holes, all with varying numbers of beads. The stores are opposite each other. Each hole has an opposite partner. Beads move around in a great circle, sometimes jumping to one store or another.

Let's call one store Self and the other Other. We'll let beads be Perception. Mount each mancala board on a whiteboard, so that we can write a word or two corresponding to each hole. The resolution mechanic is to pick a hole and sow its beads. Let's assume the common U.S. sowing method of picking up all of the beads, placing them one at a time clockwise in subsequent holes or stores, until the last seed either lands in an empty hole, a filled hole (re-sow starting with those beads), or a store (go again for Other, stop for Self). What do we have so far? Say each of the six hole pairs is marked with a word, like "Raccoon, Deer, Brother, Knife, Pond, Wife". Now I want to hunt a deer. Say there's a number associated with this, like 10. I have two choices of which hole to start from, either side of Deer. Maybe I can even start from another hole given narration... perhaps one of my Knife holes, for instance. If one of my holes has more beads than the number, then I narrate perceiving the deer offering itself to my knife. Then those beads go away? and I put a bead on my Deer strand. In fact the hole need not have as many beads as the number, only as many as the number minus my Deer strand beads. But at least 1, probably? Anyway, there is also the option (before beginning the sowing?) of putting more beads in a Deer hole from my Other store, removing 2 from the store and putting 1 in the hole. That's a net loss of beads from the board, so there needs to be a way to get beads back. Perhaps add a bead to the appropriate strand and to the appropriate hole? Also we've got the Self store which is just getting bigger right now. And for completely missing the moment of clarity, perhaps something like "if your sowing ends on an empty Deer hole, GM narrates what the Deer communicated and how you misinterpreted it".

Maybe the two sides of the board can be differentiated, too. No idea how. And there would need to be a way to change the words on the board. Maybe this is how Self beads are removed from the system.

[Creatures of Destiny]

I like this idea alot - also because the mancala board is both a resolution tool and a prop that sets the atmosphere.You've also got a clear philosophy behind your game and I like that.

But your question is a toughy.

It's been a long time since I last played mancala (about 15 years) so I looked up the rules her:

http://www.bgamers.com/mancrul.htm

Anyway the Warri variant rule where you forfeit all your beads if you don't allow the opponent a move fits your idea of "offering". Leaving the prey animamall with any beads to move is to cheat its spirit.

Rather than standard mancala where you put a set number of beads in each pit, why not have the hunter place his beads whereever desired - maybe skill ranks could be how much variation you get: so a player whose character has no skill tracking deer must put three beads in each pit, while a player with 3 beads of skill can place as many as 6 and as few as none in any given pit (or maybe just in one given pit). The Prey plays its turn and then the Hunter plays his turn and must capture a number of beads determined by the prey difficulty in ONE move.

You'd need to play aroudn with that on an actual board, but I think some variation along those lines would be interesting. Player skill is high in such a  method, much higher than in die rolling systems (so a character with 4 beads of skill is only good if the player is good enough to use them well).

It could also be fun for players to sometimes be prey - to large animals, "civilised" man, enemy tribes or evil spirits. Sometimes players could take on the roles of animals fleeing hunters too.

Daniel

[Creatures of Destiny]

Sorry to double post but I always think of the best stuff after I post and you can't dit here so...

Each prey animal could have it's own bead formation - I mean a deer could be 0 2 2 3 0 while a buffalo could be 3 2 4 4 0 (try to imagine these as shapes of beads in a mancala board).
Rather than writing these up on a D&D like table you could use a tribal/cave art style picture where each table has its beads shown (think aboriginal art or similar where teh animals are made up of dots or the dots are painted on the hides of the animals). I mean it would look really cool - a table that you put up on the wall in your living room - it would also get people curious . "Hey what's that art?" "Oh that's from Fith World", "So what are those dots on the animals?" "That's part of the game."

Hunting styles and weapons (bows, atl, spears whatever) could have their own bead fromations too, as well as hunting styles (a dog could add its formation to the master's side of the board for example). PLayers could also "shapeshift" by setting up their beads as an animals (so I set my beads up as "wolf" and I am in a wolf form/have a wolf's aspect.

The prey always gets the first and last move, so each tracking is 3 moves Prey hunter prey. I figure it would have to be that way for prey to not be too predictable. The third move is where the prey "offers".

For Consesus forming, the objective might not be to "take" beads, but rather to align your side of the board with the others. Sometimes you could play for either - for example witha  warring tribe you could either take beads (representing victories in battle) or align your half of the board with the opponents (representing making peace). When you're aligned then you as one. Spiritual journeys might involve both "trakcing" a spirit and aligning with a spirit self.

Also you could sell this game in those ethnic art stores with its own macala board. You could interest people who might not normally be gamers that way. This is a really beautiful idea of yours.

Daniel

[jefgodesky]

YES!  Genius!

Thank you, Creature!  That gives me a whole new direction to explore, and my oh my, the possibilities it holds!

I'll need to work with it and test it out a bit, but I have a very good feeling about this direction.

[Creatures of Destiny]

Glad you like it,

There's so much you can do with this - you can even have formations for terrain (mountains and forests) and character names (my character, "Mountain Bear" starts with his beads set up in Mountain and Bear formation). Also it does get players thinking in tribal ways - using visual intelligence (especialy if you play the "Only count by looking rule").

Oh and my name's Daniel by the way!

[jefgodesky]

Daniel, yes, I should have looked closer.  Thanks, Daniel.  The potential for other-than-human persons takes center stage here.  Trying to tell a story?  You track a story person.  Trying to withstand the storm?  You track the movements of a storm person.  Trying to carve a mask?  You engage a wood person.  It seems cheesy, perhaps, but it really jives with the actual animist perspective.

[PlatonicPimp]

OK, so you have your half of the board, and their half of the board. Each of you has a starting arrangement of beads.

You can add a up to number of beads (determined by a relationship) to the board. This represents bringing something new to the table, like a new argument in a discussion or drawing a bow on the hunt.

You can take away up to a number of beads (determined by relationship) from your opponent's side of the board. This represents removing an opponent's advantage, like disproving an opponent's argument or approaching the deer from downwind.

You can move up to a number of beads (you get the just) from one of your piles to another. This represents changing your opinion in a discussion, or using your knowledge of deer to determine where it would be, or otherwise aligning your view to match your opponent's view.

You cannot choose to do nothing. The act of stubbornly holding on to one's position would consist of constantly adding more beads to the same hole over and over and over again.

The story is finished when one side matches the other. The person who made the final move has the advantage of crafting the final narrative, or "Last word." But of course they are bound by what was narrated with all the other moves. So if the two people discussing come to a conclusion, the person with last word gets to determine what is done, but within the bounds of the consessions made in the discussion. If the deer gets last word, it probably runs away at the last second, whereas if the hunter gets last word, he probably brings home dinner. Or you can give up sooner, if the cost in beads is getting to high for you.

It's kind of important to know where the beads come from and go. So the initial set up beads for both sides come from out of the bead bag. When you add to the discussion, those beads come from your bowl. If the GL is playing a side, it comes form his bowl when he adds. Beads taken away go to the bag. (perhaps one is put in your bowl?) At the resolution of the story, everyone takes a number of beads from the board equal to an appropriate relationship and puts them back in their bowl. The rest go to the bag. This may mean that you can get more beads out of a conflict then you put in, if you were careful to subtract and realign and not to add.

Is this about right?

Question: How would such a system scale to situations with more than two viewpoints?

[jefgodesky]

Hmmm ... that sounds like a promising direction.  I should play around with that and see if I can work out something like that.

Should we work out something for more than two sides?  Or should we make a robust group dynamic?  Because the conflict may not involve two organic persons.  It could involve the conflict of two idea persons, with two groups, each siding with a different idea in some major meeting.  It could involve the conflict of the wolf pack person, made up of individual wolf persons, against the deer herd person, made up of individual deer persons.  Have I missed something, or would we ever have a situation with genuinely three or more persons at odds, rather than a series of two person conflicts, given that kind of group dynamic?

[Creatures of Destiny]

Well given a group of players, they'd probably all want to contribute to the outcome, so you could have each player take turns to affect the board - for example if a party of hunters is tracking a deer. Some player's will make better moves than others, just as some hunters are more skilled than others.

The question is do you want to reward group or individual success more? For example, if the player who makes the "winning move" gets the beads, than the hunters are competing for the trophy, if all the players get the beads from victory - then group success is more important. Of course there's no reason why both froms couldn't exist in game - hunting for the tribe (all hunters get the beads) and hunting for a trophy/symbolic gain (where the hunters are also competing against each-other).

You could also use the competetive model if the player's tribe is competing for food with another tribe - both tribes play on one side of the board, but the final move gets the prey (so there's the added complication of moving towards success without handing it to your rival).

I you had a hunted tracking a moose while trying to survive on a freezing mountain top, than one side could be moose and mountain (you could even use different colour beads), while the other is the tracker. If the hunter wins then the hunt was successful. If moose wins, then the moose escapes, but the conflict between hunter and mountain is not resolved. If the mountain wins, then the hunter may well freeze to death, or be forced to head down the mountain. This may end the hunt then and there, or it might be that moose has to descend too, so that the conflict between moose and hunter is not finished.

Make sense?

I think you'll probably only really have two sides actually opposed in a given conflict, though you may also have these rivalries happening too. You may also have multiple conflicts happening in succession.

I still also like the idea of having two forms of resolution - taking beads (more like regular mancala play) to represent conflict and aligning beads (more like Platoni Pimp's post) to represent consensus building. Taking beads gives a player more in their hand to work with.

[PlatonicPimp]

Also, there is one more required move, and that is to take beads from your own side. This would represent backing off from a position of strength.

There will inevitably be situations where there are three or more sides to a conflict. In fact, these are the most interesting conflicts in my mind. Imagine a debate where one side wants to move up river, one side wants to move down river, and one side wants to stay put.

I'd if we break a bit from the mancala boards, and focus on the mancala dishes or holes, then this is workable. Each side has 6 holes in front of it, with their pattern layed out. people can build up their own pattern or work with both other participant's patterns, and when all 3 match, then consensus is reached.

I think each side also would have a "primary speaker," who's personal pattern is used for the starting pattern, and then anyone who takes their side can use their relationships to support.

Burning a relationship bead for extra moves represents strong-arming the others in such a way that resentment forms. In a conversation, this would be like insulting your opponent or otherwise behaving rudely. In a hunt, this might be taking the deer before it offered itself to you. In other words, consensus building by force. In the short term you get what you want, but in the long term it screws you over.

[madunkieg]

...jumping over from the Story Games forum.

While I can certainly see how Mancala could be used to create a system, I'm not so convinced that it creates the system you want. The following is a list of some of the featurs of some features of Mancala, both beneficial and not:

- it is a two-player game, at least in all the variants I've seen
- it takes many turns to play out a game of Mancala (linking many actions together, but also making quick resolution impossible, and essentially pushing aside other players for a long while)
- you can vary the number of beads used at the start (meaning other beads can be set aside for unrelated actions)
- it only allows one group of actions at a time (unless you have multiple Mancala boards)
- it is difficult to assign categories to the pits in a truly meaningful way; they are inherently generic, with the number of beads in them at a particular moment mattering just as much as their position
- while this is not done in any of the forms of Mancala I've played, additional beads could be added midway through the game, overcoming the question of several pools
- there exists the possibility of a tie (I like ties, but many game designers don't)
- nothing is hidden, so mystery is difficult to create
- player skill plays a big role

[Creatures of Destiny]

madunkleg

Player skill being a big factor is a positive thing - in that there are no random events - you suceed or fail based on how you act - results can be unpredictable, but not random.

Nothing is hidden - it may seem that way, but it's pretty hard to see "the big picture". The mechanic (unlike acutal mancala play), might not involve all the beads being placed- so if the players are tracking a deer and there's a bear there, then the GM might not place the "bear" beads till the bear appears - or might add them to the deer beads so that the form is mixed (the players see that it's not a "deer" pattern, but is it a deer+forest mountain, a deer+bear or some other pattern that resembles what they see).

It takes many turns - this is true, I think this may lead to the need to create a resolution mechanic based on one, two or max three turns of mancala or at least tie each turn to a narrative event. Taking a set number of beads for victory, or beads of a certain colour, or leaving a certain shape of beads on the board are all viable options.

Multiple players- alternating turns, group decisions and single turn resolutions are all potential ways round this.

This is certainly a very  complex mechanic to create - doesn't really have a precedent and needs lots of playtesting (concentrating on the resolution alone, before true RPG playtesting begins) to get it to work. Some way of understanding mancala mathematically is probably needed for game design too.

[madunkieg]

I agree, games that rely on player skill can be a positive thing. Like I said, that was a list of features, both beneficial and not.

The one that really makes it tough, though, is that the pits in mancala change value moment by moment. Imagine you put a whole bunch of beads in your pits according to some patter of skills and attributes. In a few turns a good number of those beads will be on your opponent's side, making the differences you were trying to create with different numbers or patterns of beads vanish. That back and forth is what makes it a great boardgame, but it also means that it's very hard to define anything well enough to get a feel for the characters or animals or whatever through the mechanics.

If the Mancala board and beads were used for a roleplaying game, I think they would need to be used in a way completely different from how Mancala is played.

[jefgodesky]

Apologies for taking so long to get back, but you've all given me so much to think about!

Well given a group of players, they'd probably all want to contribute to the outcome, so you could have each player take turns to affect the board - for example if a party of hunters is tracking a deer. Some player's will make better moves than others, just as some hunters are more skilled than others.

The sociality of mancala really suggests it for this.  Even in its usual form, it has a very social kind of play that basically pits two teams against each other, more than two people.

The question is do you want to reward group or individual success more?

Definitely group--our common theme of the individual vs. society simply doesn't make sense in a "dividual" paradigm, where relations exist intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, to a person.  Individual and society can no more oppose one another than soil can oppose a healthy plant.  The self, to a significant extent, includes the group, and one can only defines oneself in terms of one's relations.

There will inevitably be situations where there are three or more sides to a conflict. In fact, these are the most interesting conflicts in my mind. Imagine a debate where one side wants to move up river, one side wants to move down river, and one side wants to stay put.

I see two conflicts there, each with two sides.  First, do we stay, or do we move?  Then, do we move upstream, or downstream?

it takes many turns to play out a game of Mancala (linking many actions together, but also making quick resolution impossible, and essentially pushing aside other players for a long while)

This gives me the most pause.  The fact that it has two players bothers me less, but does it take too long to play out?  If you model out a whole conflict, maybe not.  I drew my inspiration here from the way Dread uses Jenga.  You don't play a whole game of jenga in that every time you take an action--you just pull a stick.  Does it work the same here?  A whole hunt, a whole battle, a whole debate that might form the center of a scene, played out on a mancala board, narrated according to how the beads move around the pits?  I don't know; it might still take too long.

it is difficult to assign categories to the pits in a truly meaningful way; they are inherently generic, with the number of beads in them at a particular moment mattering just as much as their position

You haven't played much mancala, have you?  Each individual pit has its own traditional associations, just like playing cards or tarot cards.

This is certainly a very  complex mechanic to create - doesn't really have a precedent and needs lots of playtesting (concentrating on the resolution alone, before true RPG playtesting begins) to get it to work. Some way of understanding mancala mathematically is probably needed for game design too.

Fortunately on this score, lots of mathematicians have studied mancala.  Unfortunately for me, it all involves math that makes my head hurt.

That back and forth is what makes it a great boardgame, but it also means that it's very hard to define anything well enough to get a feel for the characters or animals or whatever through the mechanics.

But I think might work well to reinforce the animist understanding of a universe made up not of attributes, but of actions; so you define a Bear, or a Deer, or an Eagle, not as a type of thing, but as a pattern of movement.  Yes, it defies the static assumptions we usually bring to the table.  But there you've got my whole design goal.

If the Mancala board and beads were used for a roleplaying game, I think they would need to be used in a way completely different from how Mancala is played.

Probably, yes.  I never really had in mind playing a game of mancala, so much as using the pattern of mancala to do something else entirely new.