No NO EXIT.
Among game-development projects not carried to completion, mentioned in passing:
Peace & Prosperity, based on factors that contribute to (&/or detract from) synergistic economic-political-&-cultural effects, players lead societies into better & worse futures….
Presidential Pathways, in which candidates “roll up,” “round up” (earn) & choose characteristics & strategic advantages in competition for an electoral college credits!
Exit No Exit, a game of no’s & exits, in which players find exits for their noses & deploy no’s to block opposing noses, &/or no-no’s to counter no’s….
[Ancient Order of the Exit members, like non-members of the almost as venerable Order of No Exit, trace their lineage back to long before entrances & exits were routinely video-looped by surveillance cameras. In the EXIT NO EXIT game, players may move tokens about to collect Exit & No Exit signs, put chits in EXITs &/or block other’s chits making NO EXITs…. Throw in a few worm holes & warm holes, snap traps & doors in the floor…Zero Points & Point Zeros….]
Thinking Like a Mountain…discussed elsewhere on this site, and in the library’s Eco-Wing, based on Aldo Leopold’s insights, intended to shift player-perspective on biotic flow in natural systems, from entity focus to dynamic exchange. Players “occupy” various potentially inter-dependent forms: wolf, deer, forest, weather, & “the mountain” (i.e., system as a whole), as feeding takes place clockwise from player-place to player-place in a circle. Each position starts with one or more bions, small rocks or beads representing the organic energy fueling life-form at that level, starting with 1 wolf-unit, 2 deer-units, 3 forest units, 4 weather units & 5 mountain-units. The wolf must eat 1 of the deer-units to survive, leaving the wolf with 2, deer with only 1. but returned to 2 when the deer eats a forest unit, which in turn is left with 2 until it replenishes from weather (sun, rain, soil & time), needing 2 units to get fully back, leaving the weather with 2… when the action reaches “the mountain,” which is invested with a unique ability & thus responsibility requiring judgment. This ability is to give &/or take bions, life-units.
Two ways of playing Thinking Like a Mountain have been tried so far, though neither fully. One way is for the four players in the other biotic positions to play the role of “the mountain” together, collectively choosing units to give & units to take, the explicit aim being to keep the system as a whole flowing (i.e., & in balance). A group can play entirely for the hands-on feel of the “annual flow” around the circle (which can be quite dramatic & affect the feeling for ecosystems going forward), or KEEP SCORE by adding a point for each cycle successfully completed without disrupting the bionic flow. One may have an aim (say, 25 years) within a specific time limit, making speed of flow part of the equation.
A second format invests all the choosing power in a single 5th player, though the group as a whole helps keep score. After either meeting a goal or breaking down, the players all shift one position with respect to the roles, and the process is repeated, so player choices may potentially illustrate more & less successful bionic management….
ROUGH DRAFT–NOTES TOWARDS A “NATURE-CONNECT” GAME???
Partly COPIED from b.net’s private Nature-Connect page:
Interplay 2–Nature Connecting Games
Introduction to 2 categories–
a. games in nature;
b. games of or about nature played elsewhere.
1. For our purposes, there are two kinds of Nature Connecting games (with overlap). One uses game-play to enhance observation, exploration and discovery in & of nature. The other represents ecological themes, concepts &/or dynamics for play outside the natural setting. Like photographs, poems, articles, paintings & place-inspired music, games can draw content & inspiration from an original source, then extend the connection beyond the original setting….
[Interplay 2-Nature Connecting Games may have more of the overview (1st draft).]
2. A few nature-relating game themes we have in early stages of prototype design include: # Thinking Like a Mountain; # Refuge Network; # Game Management; # Enchanted Flyway; & # Worlds In Common.
The first begins with an experiment (outlined below). The rest are ideas available for collaborative development. If you might be interested in working on any, let us know which & a little about yourself & your interest(s). We’ll send you what we have so far, with suggestions for follow-up. Contact us c/o bodlibrary2020@gmail.com.
Thinking Like a Mountain Game Experiment
The following simple experiment has been carried out so far with groups of 4 & 5 people, then 1 & 2, more or less working together. No matter how many people are used to “play them,” there are 5 positions or life-forms arranged in a circle. To start, 15 stones are distributed among the positions or forms as follows: 1 to the first position (representing one wolf); 2 to the second (representing 10 deer each); 3 to the third (representing 100 trees per stone); 4 to the fourth (1000 units of “weather” each); & 5 to the fifth position (representing the mountain as a whole).
The game action is based on the premise that each form needs to feed, taking nourishment from other forms in an amount equivalent to its own requirement. This is represented by each stone needing to take a stone, starting with the one wolf “eating” one deer, taking one stone from position 2 into position 1, making what are now two wolves. This leaves one deer-stone which takes one forest-stone, putting deer back to two. Two forest-stones then take two weather-stones, leaving two, which replenish their number by taking two of the mountain’s original five, leaving three. If at any time, a life-form stone has no stone to feed on, that stone “dies off,” returning to the mountain. If at any time, a position is empty, the play simply moves on to the next position.
All of the actions in the first four positions are meant to take place more or less automatically, proceeding as fast as the player(s) can comfortably manage. Only when play comes to the mountain is there a change. Whether the mountain is played by a single player or cooperatively by all players at that time, the mountain chooses–on behalf of the system as awhole–whether to give or take a wolf-stone.
The mountain’s first challenge (or the group’s as a whole) is simply to maintain a connected system, with dynamic flow through its forms. The second is to keep the flow going as quickly & smoothly as possible, say a half dozen times around the circle in x minutes….
The group may experiment, re-set its own rules, explore how easy it is to maintain a system in balance, &/or how easy to disrupt, simply by over- or under-supplying wolves. When we have tried the basic experiment so far, we haven’t tried to set specific goals or put it into a game form. The interesting result has been affective, rooted in the feeling of the life-energy flow, as attention shifts from players identifying with their life-forms to the life that flows through the system as a whole, part of yet apart from the entities.
Follow ups: 1. Make a GameBlox version of the simple, five-part cycle. 2. Add more “mountain-circles” with some possibilities for cross-over &/or other interactions, so empty niches may be filled, resources be exchanged, & effects spread. 3. Make more layers &/or sub-loops to put more knots into the connective weave. 4. Explore ways to represent the multi-layered connections on screen, on board, & for live groups. 5. Refine the figures of how many units each stone stands for within each life-form, according to real-world data on the food chains. 6. Make the circle a network, adding many more species, so some feeders may draw their appropriate stone-energy equivalents from more than one form in a turn. Each player-species, then, might exercise some choice in trying to maintain sustainable food sources, taking care to avoid those endangered….
Comments and suggestions are invited, along with related experiments and ideas on how to turn “Thinking Like a Mountain” into a worthwhile game!
[Last editedDec. 16, 2014 at 7:58 pm; re-saved 7-10-17 to see if paragraphing & line skips will start to show up on web-page, as curently not translating from edit page on MacPro, tho Gus reports showing up alright in his. Re-saved 8-16-17 for same reason]
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