Atmospheric Spaces on Campus
The arrangement of game locations can affect the pacing and flow of the game. However, these spaces can also important for conveying the atmosphere of the game world to the players. Because players take time and effort to travel from one point to another, players can get a better sense of the size and physicality of their environs if the GMs choose to enhance that aspect of the game.
Players need to know where their characters are in the game world before they can start walking around in it. In many games, the GMs provide the players with a map of campus, labeled with publicly known game locations. However, maps may not be appropriate for games with secret locations or for high-action games such as SIK games. For those situations, GMs will use wall signs to convey the necessary geographical information. With each important room or corridor having its own sign, the extra space allows for a large amount of descriptive prose. The preparation, production and setup of signs can consume a considerable amount of GM time; generally, GMs ask Guild members who are not involved in the game to help with the setup. However, players tend to respond well to a proliferation of game signs, as it takes some of the effort and guesswork out from having to imagine the game world, reinforcing the shared reality among all the players reading the same sign in the same space.
Some rooms and room arrangements may be chosen based on their similarities to the game world. Experienced GMs, knowing that certain rooms have the furniture and professional décor for roundtable meetings, may designate them as corporate boardrooms or council chambers. Lecture halls are excellent sites for courtrooms and churches. In A New Deal, signs with important information were placed under street lamps and in campus alleys, requiring players to meet at spaces that cast dramatic shadows and evoked stereotypically film noir locales.
The dim, claustrophobic and echoing tunnels under MIT are often used in games that emphasize spatial exploration as a significant challenge in game play. Like their characters, players need to discover clues and routes through the tunnels that will direct them to secret locations dotted across the campus. The atmospheric qualities of the underground passages, combined with the similarity between the activities of the players and their characters, can make tunnel exploration an extremely immersive experience. Unfortunately, a poorly written tunnel mechanic could end up hosing players, and continuous traversal of the MIT tunnel system often results in tired players with sore feet, which rapidly snaps them back to reality.
In Panoramic Steam Intercontinental, a summer 2001 game that I wrote with Charles Leiserson, the characters were passengers in a train. The space for the game used two floors of three interconnected buildings. Players were told that the corridor representing the front of the train was directly below the corridor representing the back of the train. In order to walk to the back of the train, however, players had to stay on the same floor and walk away from the front until they reached the very furthest staircase, which they could then use to go up a floor and make their way back.
This gave players an impression of the linearity and the length of the train. The corridor that I designated as the front of the train had a room that was particularly warm in the summer, making it a natural choice for the boiler room of the train. To heighten the atmosphere, a stereo system played the sound of a train engine in that room. The further one walked away from the front of the train, the less they heard of the engine.
