Atmosphere

I post this as something of a humour, wishing to be clear at the outset that I'm not serious.  Some might think I am.

Just prior to my long illness of nearly two months, my partner Tamara and I acquired a rather sophisticated treadmill, to keep us company in our old age when sidewalk cracks and curbs lie malevolently in wait for our benign footfalls.  Using this, I've considered a D&D rule that argues for the players to travel any significant distance in my game world, say more than a mile, then one or more members of the party must mount the treadmill to aid in covering the distance.  I imagine some ratio is reasonable, say 1:20, so that if the party would travel 20 miles, then someone must walk 1 mile on the waiting mill.  A moderately brisk pace could manage this in about 20 minutes ... and of course any distance, of say 400 miles, would definitely be memorable to the tag-team group of players doing their time, that they'd certainly hesitate before setting out across my game continent.

This puts me in mind of other possibilities.  For example, if it's evening in the game world and not day, then the party should be limited to forms of light created by physical candles and actual oil lamps by which to read their character sheets — and underground when in a dungeon, also — with all the electrical lights in the room suspended.  Arguably, a small portable LED could be used if the character were to cast a bluelight cantrip, preferably a blue one, and the overhead chandelier turned on if someone were ready to expend a light spell.  Obviously, the duration of these would be limited by my phone alarm.  Naturally, the player characters should be billed the correct spoilage on burning candles and lanterns.

And this could also be applied to the food being eaten by the party during game time.  Before bringing a dish or bowl of anything to the table, a set amount of copper or silver coins would have to be expended from the character's sheet to cover the cost.  After all, characters must eat ... if the players are made hungry by the taste of adventure, it stands to reason the characters must be also.  So long as the money were paid up front, the players could then imbibe at will.

The representation of weather would have it's difficulties.  I could hardly represent rain at the D&D table, except to perhaps spritz the players as they walked on the treadmill.  Certainly, if I said as a DM that it looked like it was about to rain, there'd be considerable activity at once for players to rapidly slip their laptops and paper sheets into waterproof containers ... though naturally I have no plans to soak my living room on a bi-weekly basis.  I could open all the windows in the house to effect a December weather day in Romania, but no doubt the pipes would freeze even in a few hours.  I can't help thinking this an unrealistic approach to providing the "feel" of adventure.  Getting summer temperatures is far easier:  ten persons in a 200 square foot room, while ample for a 90-inch gaming table and chairs, nevertheless manages to produce temperatures in the '90s by ten p.m.  This is, no doubt, due to all the hyperactivity, the higher brain functioning, the occasional object hurled at the DM in lieu of a polite response to bad puns and so on.  Yet as I wrote in the last post, it can't always be balmy in the game world.

It might be interesting to require players to bring along bedrolls, to roll them out on the floor at the start of every evening in the game's timeline, only to have to roll them up and again while breaking camp some five or ten minutes later — but some might find the process tedious after several runnings.

Which, I admit, I find those people who feel the need to create "atmosphere" with costumes or decorations.  If we're going to insert physical applications into the imagination of the game, why stop at a plastic sword, which can only get in the way of another player's donuts.

Though it doesn't hurt to give time and thought to things we ask player characters to do, such as travel great distances or eat constantly over a campfire.  Some actual sense of this is necessary, else we're bound to cease thinking of the player characters as biological entities rather than the bits and bytes of our self-mage graphic images.  Travel and survival are far more unpleasant and aggravating than we suppose.  It doesn't hurt to remind players of that, which is why I've written the post.  At the same time, we don't have to get silly about it.

Lest we forget its a game.

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