A Journey
In the past Iâve explored the function behind regular combat encounters in JRPGs. These encounters are, more often than not, an expected feature of moving through an open, explorable world â on your journey through the wilderness, these stories suggest, you should expect to meet a few things that want to end your life.
In that post I also suggest that players might benefit in different ways from these encounters and hint that those benefits might change over time. I think this extends to the experience of travel writ large; the way a player interacts with an open world will change over time. My goal in Opera Eternaš is to provide support for these different forms of interaction with the fictional space by articulating and structuring these different modes of play.
Wander Mode
Wandering is about the joy of experiencing something new.
You leave the town gates and step into a wide open field. Grassy hills cascade over each other. A road curls around the bend and disappears. Far off in the distance a mountain rises above a forest. You can not see your destination, though you are told it is somewhere out there in the wild. Did they say it was to the east?
With a sandbox laid out before you, you are invited to explore all of its various edges, vistas, and hidden spaces. Truly you are wandering, and this is the way that most players describe playing in explorable space. Sometimes you fill out a map as you go which serves as a record of the space you have crossed and simultaneously a handy reference for where you have yet to go. Sometimes youâll even reveal little icons to let you know when youâve found something notable, and the task becomes finding each and every icon so you know your exploration is âcompleteâ.
After all, in digital games these explorations are almost always finite. The sandbox is, quite literally, a box. Your wandering is destined to come to an end, but that is not always the end of play. What do you do when you have found everything there is to find?
Travel Mode
Travelling is about the joy of moving toward the place you want to be.
You have been through this forest before. You know that in order to reach that overgrown, abandoned cottage, you first have to follow this path until you reach the widest tree. Then climb over the fallen log with the mushrooms growing on its side and follow the slope down until you reach the creek. Turn right and walk for a little while along its edge until you spot the cottage. Right where you remember it.
Sometimes RPGs will ask you to revisit places you have already been. These returns are often less about exploration (though sometimes they do add more things to find!) but instead are more often about making it to a destination where an event can continue to unfold.
Sometimes this feels like an inconvenience. âWhy canât I just fast-travel there?â Fast-travel (AKA the ability to teleport between those little icons youâve previously revealed on your map) is more often than not a short-cut the new experience that waits in that old location. It is a mechanic that understands that it can be boring to be asked to do the same thing repeatedly and concludes that the best way to avoid that is to skip over the boring part.
Sometimes, though, travelling from place to place can be its own kind of activity. In digital games, a speedrunner will make a game in-and-of-itself to get to the next objective as efficiently as possible. When you take joy in the act of movement itself, the mundanity of travel becomes a fulfilling part of play.
Farming Mode
Farming is about the joy of getting stuff, plain and simple.
The first time you visited this cave, you came across a few strange beetles with glittery pairs of wings. You didnât pay them much attention at the time as you had other more important matters to attend to. The sparkle has stuck in your mind, however, and you have yet to see another beetle like this on your travels. With that in mind, youâve returned here today to see if you can find them again. With a hunterâs blessing and one or two beetles in your pocket, maybe you can fashion something pretty.
âFarmingâ here is not a literal term; you are not tilling the fields, irrigating your crops, and reaping a bountiful harvest. Rather, it is about spending time in a place with the goal of acquiring the resource that that specific place provides. Farming in your typical combat focused RPG usually looks like running around and getting into trivial fights with the local wildlife until you can collect 99x Venomous Fangs which you can use for some purpose or sell off to the highest bidder.
Farming rewards both the knowledge of a place and the tedium of time spent within it with tangible goods or resources. These rewards might be something physical like and item or immaterial like points used to acquire new abilities. With digital RPGs this is usually a grind â a frustratingly slow and repetitive process â but with analogue games itâs much easier to conceptualize time as a resource in itself to be spent. As a result, farming can become a kind of worker-placement game in previously explorable areas. Where do you spend your time and what will you get for it?
Notes
- I’m trying out a new name for Nova Crystallis. Let me know if you like it â¤ď¸
