Sgëno!

I have an idea I'm really taken with at the moment about using a compass/medicine wheel/mandala as a character sheet (Design Diary entry with full details), where skills/traits/attributes are rated by their angle on the wheel.  There's lots of crunchy things to work out here, but my immediate concern is quite practical.  I want this to be an easy game to set up and play.  My first thought was pinning the character sheet to a piece of cork, and then using push-pins and string to make radii for the skills, etc. that could be easily rotated as they change.  But I'm afraid that might involve too much work.  So I thought I'd put it before you clever people: do you know of any simple, easy ways to accomplish this?

If you're trying to measure distances, won't a common ruler work? Or perhaps you can print a ruler of your own, with a different (or more than one) scale, on the border of a piece of paper. Actually, a square sheet of paper can hold 4 different rules, one on each side, without them affecting each other.

You could also print a diagram on a transparency paper, which you can position over your mandala in any position you'd like and use it to measure. This diagram can be as complex as you'd like, allowing you for lots of different measurements.

Also, that mandala idea has interested me a lot. Specially because, in a circle, there's always the opposite side. So every ability can have a downside to it.

Would you mail me your mandala designs, if you already have some?

In my experience, as long as you're accomplishing something that can't be done any other way, a reasonably large amount of extra work is tolerable.  That is, if you're fiddling with bits of string and cork board to generate information that can easily be recorded by just writing a couple of numbers, that's going to get frustrating very fast.  If, on the other hand, your strings and corkboard convey information that's very hard to write down any other way, then that's cool.

monstah wrote: If you're trying to measure distances, won't a common ruler work?

monstah wrote: Also, that mandala idea has interested me a lot. Specially because, in a circle, there's always the opposite side. So every ability can have a downside to it.

monstah wrote: Would you mail me your mandala designs, if you already have some?

Simon wrote: In my experience, as long as you're accomplishing something that can't be done any other way, a reasonably large amount of extra work is tolerable.  That is, if you're fiddling with bits of string and cork board to generate information that can easily be recorded by just writing a couple of numbers, that's going to get frustrating very fast.  If, on the other hand, your strings and corkboard convey information that's very hard to write down any other way, then that's cool.

Me wrote:

monstah wrote: Would you mail me your mandala designs, if you already have some?

No problem. So, angles? There's the protractor, but as I said before, you could print one of your own. The protractor only measures one algue, you could make one that not only get's the angles, but possibly relationships between them. Or, now that I think of it, the background for your mandala itself can be printed as to offer guides for measuring the stuff in it. So, only the mandala itself is needed (and pencil, of course)

To be rather mundane about a mandal, what exactly are you trying to measure? Determining the angel is how you are measuring, but what abstract concept is this supposed to represent and how does it fit in with gameplay?

As you said in your diary post, east of the center might mean that the character just learned something (say combat, represented by a red stone or some such) while west means it has atrophied, but what then is North and South (adept and master?)? This seems to imply a degree of aptitude. A simple line would thus seem to be simpler and easier to read. As Simon said, the amount of work is fine if it produces a unique result; as it stands, I am not seeing that your result is unique.

But of course, so far I only see a different depending on what quadrant a skill is in; the need for measurements imply a finer degree of detail that eludes me. What is this detail and what is it supposed to represent?

Be careful: I like the mandala Idea in theory, but wasn't one of the design goals to make sure the required game pieces could be easily made from primitive materials? It seems this mandala on corkboard with pins and string could easily get out of hand.

How often will the position of things on the board change? How important would it be to retain this information from one game session to the next? If it doesn't matter where things were last session, you could simply draw the mandalla on the ground when you started play and use sticks. If you need to remember the locations between sessions, then you need a portable media. And when it comes to measuring, I'd think it should be something you can eyeball, not something you need to use a protractor on.

Andrew Jensen

Thanks, everyone!  I can see I left out some crucial details here.  The character sheet would have 360 degrees ticked off along the edges, with major lines indicating the cardinal directions.  We might use two axes (N and S), or possibly four; in either case, the more a skill approaches the axis, the stronger it becomes on that axis--the further away it is from any of the axes, the weaker it is.  So it encodes information about how strong a skill is, but it also has several (2 or 4) different ways in which a character can be strong in a skill.  I haven't figured out the specifics yet, obviously, but one possibility might be that North indicates a skill you have great technical mastery over, while South indicates a skill where you have plain, raw talent, and then we'd have mechanical differences in how those are used.  At East, you know nothing about it; at West, it's utterly atrophied.  So maybe at perfect East or West, it's +0, while at perfect North or South, it's +4.  Then, ranges of degrees are marked off around the wheel.  With four axes, the basic idea remains the same, but North, East, South and West are all at +4, while NE, NW, SE and SW are all +0.

In the earlier version of the game, we had skills with straightforward ranks; the more ranks in the skill, the better you were at it.  But we also used "training points," so to increase your rank, you needed to use that skill.  I like that basic idea that to get better at something, you need to use it, but it wasn't the easiest system to use.  Again, I don't know about the particulars, but what I'm thinking is something like, when you use one of your skills, it moves around the wheel one degree (hence the one-degree tick marks and ranges), so yes, it would be changing quite often in the course of the game.

The character sheets we're used to are quite powerful philosophical statements about the nature of the universe and identity.  The Fifth World's goal is to give the player an experience of an animist world, so the character model needs to be consistent with animist identity--that is, self as "that which relates."  So far, everything is set in terms of relationships.  For skills, I like this wheel concept because it's still about relationship: directions on a compass just tell you how you relate to the earth's magnetic pole, or the horizon around you.

J Tolson wrote: To be rather mundane about a mandal, what exactly are you trying to measure? Determining the angel is how you are measuring, but what abstract concept is this supposed to represent and how does it fit in with gameplay?

Andrew wrote: Be careful: I like the mandala Idea in theory, but wasn't one of the design goals to make sure the required game pieces could be easily made from primitive materials? It seems this mandala on corkboard with pins and string could easily get out of hand.

Andrew wrote: How often will the position of things on the board change?

Andrew wrote: How important would it be to retain this information from one game session to the next? If it doesn't matter where things were last session, you could simply draw the mandalla on the ground when you started play and use sticks.

Andrew wrote: And when it comes to measuring, I'd think it should be something you can eyeball, not something you need to use a protractor on.

Thanks for providing more information. It is always easier to imagine how something might be done when one knows more about that something and how it needs to be done. Or something like that.

Anywho. Quick question; is it important for the "push-pins" (or whatever marker is used) to be a certain distance from the center? This is implied by the fact that the string is there (as it will create a set distance every time it is moved). If that is important, than an easy way to get rid of the string is to just draw a few more circles around the center. To be mathematical, let’s say you have 4 circles, one with a radius of 1 unit, one with a radius of 2 units, and so forth. The center of each circle is still the center of the mandala. When a skill moves from East to north, the marker moves along the same circle the appropriate number of degrees. It keeps the same distance from the center, as this can easily be seen by the various circles (not a precise method, but it doesn't sound like you need precise).

Additionally, you can then use the distance from the center of the circle to represent more information if you so need (and if you aren’t already planning on doing this). Perhaps the first circle (and any skills there in) represents the skill in how it relates to the self, the second in how the skill relates to others, the third in how the skill relates to the world, and the fourth something that I can't think of. Thus a "healing" skills might be the result of natural talent (hence near the south pole) but it is a matter of control over the self (thus in the first circle) so the character is best at using it in regards to its self.

As for the markers (the push-pins in your original description), simple stones would seem to suffice during gameplay (or perhaps bones; it is mixing cultures a bit, but it seems slightly "cool" to have "the bones" telling you about a character). At the end of the session their spots on the mandala are then marked.

Alternately, have your mandala on a sheet of paper and put it inside a plastic protector cover. Here is a quick link to the first product that I could find. Simply dry erase markers then work wonderfully. If you are worried about things getting erased accidentally between sessions, permanent markers work too and ethanol will take it right off when you need to erase.

Either should be rather simple to construct on the player's part (print, slide into the cover, done!)

Or is that missing the tactile feel that you are looking for?

~Joel

p.s. because I just can’t resist commenting on theory as well as design, I really do like your idea of the mandala. If you are looking for other possibilities for what the poles represent, might I suggest each pole could represent how a skill relates to one of the “competing interests” you mentioned in your core mechanics post? Animal:Plant:Human:Spirit for North:South:East:West. These could even represent more abstract concepts as double duty. Animal:Plant:Human:Spirit for Destruction:Creation:Order:Chaos. A healing skill to the north might be particularly good on animals and if it is to the east it primarily mends wounds, while to the west it primarily destroys infections or foreign agents within the body (and on perfect north it primarily does both, as those are then in balance).

The mandala seems like a pretty neat idea.

One thing--do you really need the precision of 360 degrees around the circle? You could mark the circle like a clock, with 60 notches around the circle in groups of 5, and people should find it pretty easy to read without getting into exact angles.

I too like the mandalla, but I don't think it should be used to demarcate your relationships or your skills. In your other thread we've talked about rating a relationship (skill) in terms of beads. I had imagined you had a series of cords with beads on them which held your relationships. Perhaps the mandalla can be a measure of something else, some sort of status indicator?

I've been reading a bit of the old tom brown recently, and he talks so much about awareness that I can't help but think about it. Imagine the east/west axis is focused awareness to wide awareness, and the north/south is spiritual awareness to physical awareness. At any time a character can shift their focus around the edge (and for myself I imagine a painted hoop with a sliding bead on it) to show how they are currently seeing the world. A character who is more focused would get bonuses on noticing fine detail but penalties on noticing changes around them, the opposite would apply to a widely aware character. A spiritually aware character might notice that Sheila is very upset today, but not notice that she'd wearing a new dress. The more you approach any one direction, the farther you get from the other and the more balanced your view of the other axis becomes.

J Tolson wrote: Anywho. Quick question; is it important for the "push-pins" (or whatever marker is used) to be a certain distance from the center? This is implied by the fact that the string is there (as it will create a set distance every time it is moved). If that is important, than an easy way to get rid of the string is to just draw a few more circles around the center. To be mathematical, let’s say you have 4 circles, one with a radius of 1 unit, one with a radius of 2 units, and so forth. The center of each circle is still the center of the mandala. When a skill moves from East to north, the marker moves along the same circle the appropriate number of degrees. It keeps the same distance from the center, as this can easily be seen by the various circles (not a precise method, but it doesn't sound like you need precise).

J Tolson wrote: Perhaps the first circle (and any skills there in) represents the skill in how it relates to the self, the second in how the skill relates to others, the third in how the skill relates to the world, and the fourth something that I can't think of.

J Tolson wrote: As for the markers (the push-pins in your original description), simple stones would seem to suffice during gameplay (or perhaps bones; it is mixing cultures a bit, but it seems slightly "cool" to have "the bones" telling you about a character). At the end of the session their spots on the mandala are then marked.

J Tolson wrote: If you are looking for other possibilities for what the poles represent, might I suggest each pole could represent how a skill relates to one of the “competing interests” you mentioned in your core mechanics post? Animal:Plant:Human:Spirit for North:South:East:West.

Selene Tan wrote: One thing--do you really need the precision of 360 degrees around the circle? You could mark the circle like a clock, with 60 notches around the circle in groups of 5, and people should find it pretty easy to read without getting into exact angles.

Andrew wrote: I too like the mandalla, but I don't think it should be used to demarcate your relationships or your skills. In your other thread we've talked about rating a relationship (skill) in terms of beads. I had imagined you had a series of cords with beads on them which held your relationships. Perhaps the mandalla can be a measure of something else, some sort of status indicator?

Andrew wrote: I've been reading a bit of the old tom brown recently, and he talks so much about awareness that I can't help but think about it. Imagine the east/west axis is focused awareness to wide awareness, and the north/south is spiritual awareness to physical awareness. At any time a character can shift their focus around the edge (and for myself I imagine a painted hoop with a sliding bead on it) to show how they are currently seeing the world. A character who is more focused would get bonuses on noticing fine detail but penalties on noticing changes around them, the opposite would apply to a widely aware character. A spiritually aware character might notice that Sheila is very upset today, but not notice that she'd wearing a new dress. The more you approach any one direction, the farther you get from the other and the more balanced your view of the other axis becomes.

I think that very notion may need to be examined. Perhaps all people are equally capable (or all people in a tribe are equally capable) before you factor in relationships. Where we might say "he's good at running" they might say "he's swift like the wind" and we note on the sheet his favorable relationship with wind.

I don't know if that's how animists actually do that, though. I'm just saying that's how we could do it for this game. Then everything becomes a relationship. I don't know if that's what you want, but I'm tossing it out there.

One of the most common tropes of animist myth is that of the proud hunter: he brags about his skill as a hunter, ascribing his big kill to his own skill, rather than honoring the deer's sacrifice.  That offends Deer, so he never finds another deer again (unless he makes the proper offerings or reparations).

That story doesn't make sense unless there's a concept of skill to be proud of in the first place, right?

Perhaps the hunter can learn only the basics of a skill with the aid of other human tutors, but if they wish to ascend to higher levels, they need to earn the favour of a specific spirit (and probably acquire some kind of taboo as a result of this learning).  This would also work to prevent characters from trying to master all trades as they would effectively have so many taboos that the character would become unplayable.

Such characters may be able to call on their totem spirits to temporarily improve their skills in a given field, in exchange for some kind of sacrifice. If they do this enough times, their skill may permanently increase. This could be integrated into the experience system as well.

Just some ideas...

V

Thanks, Vulpinoid.  I think we've got something like that in the relationship system.  Every character has some number of relationships, each with a number of points in it.  A hunter's ability to hunt a deer will depend on his relationship with Deer, and if you have a spirit guardian or totem or some other kind of relationship that can help, you might be able to burn off relationship points as part of your bid.  Which will mean you'll need to do some work later on to build those relationships back up.