Heed the spirit of the place.
- Principle
- Heed the spirit of the place.
- Type
- Core Principle
- Primary Agenda
- See the Fifth World together.
When you play a place, you take on an obligation to speak for it and tell its story. When you go to a place, you participate in its intelligence and creativity. Observe how things happen there and you’ll start to hear the story it has to tell, a refrain repeated through the experience of every living being that dwells there or passes through it. Watch how the light shines, how the water flows, how the wind blows. Study the shape of the place. Listen to its sounds until you can hear its particular music. Study its past and what sorts of things happened there before you — in the deep time of geology, in historical records, and in living memory. Pay attention to the things you feel there, and the way the place speaks to you when you go there. Then bring all that to the table, and play that place as honestly as you can.
#Examples
- Many old churches across Europe stand on the sites of even older holy sites, sacred to even older faiths. If the church fell into ruin and the jungle swallowed it up, what would still make this place sacred? What about this place puts human beings in touch with something larger than themselves?
- The United States highway system largely follows Native American trails used for continental trade long before Columbus. The trails themselves followed the migration routes of mammoths. So this more-than-human network may become more-than-human again when elephants escape from zoos and move into the niches lying abandoned since the extinction of their Pleistocene cousins. When you go to a major crossroads in this network, do you feel a sense of movement, a restlessness there that calls to human and other-than-human beings alike?
- Lakes form where water rests deep in a depression of the local elevation. But more than just water comes to rest in such areas. Do you feel such a place beckoning you to rest, as well? With nothing but uphill on all sides, do you find yourself considering that you should linger here a while and gather your strength before continuing on?
- If a place fills you with happiness, you can honor the spirit of that place in play by letting characters find some solace, peace, and joy when they go there. Let them find the things they’ve come looking for. Make life easy for them there. You don’t need to worry about presenting a challenge or unbalancing the game, but you should focus on honestly communicating the happiness that you feel at that place.
- Have you ever gone to a place that made you feel nervous or on-edge? When you play a place like that, you can honor its spirit by bringing that energy to your description. Describe lurking, unseen dangers and reasons for caution. Create suspense in the way you describe the place to put everyone on edge, the same way you feel when you go there.