GenCon through the Fractals

Every year, Gen Con fills me with regret. As much as I love the “best four days in gaming,” I’m always left pining for the conversations I missed, the games I didn’t get to play, and the cool new thing that I somehow missed while I was there. It’s not the convention’s fault. It’s huge and awesome, just like Gary and nature intended. No, the fault lies with my inability to make plans before the show begins. “Next year I’ll be better!” I promise myself… as I have for the past four years.

But this time I really mean it.

I had a lot of travel time on the way to and from the show, which I split between reading novels that have stacked up into a beside fire hazard, and brainstorming a new approach to creating storyworlds. I’ll spare you the novel recaps, but would like to discuss this storyworld approach a little bit.

What I’m thinking of — in the vaguest way possible — is the idea of fractal storyworlds. Fractals, as any tied-dye-wearing college student will tell you, are neat because their patterns are repeated at every scale: no matter how far you zoom in on a fractal, there’s always more detail, and it’s always an echo of the detail you’ve seen at a previous magnification.

If we can apply this idea to storytelling, we can use the “shape” of the storyworld itself as the fractal, and then organically create new facets of that world based on the repeating patterns of conflict, characters, themes, and other elements.

“Sounds neat,” you say, possibly without condescension. “But how does it work?”

And… that’s where I shrug, smile wanly, and point out that it’s a work in progress. A theory. A half-formed idea that I’m still trying to find the edges on. It might even be nothing, but I won’t know until I try.

And when I do… I’ll let you know how it turns out.