Crossing the ideas of oracle and calender, you could look at having not only a myth map but also kind of myth calender for your region.
Firstly, welcome to REWILD.info, Matt! I haven’t seen you around here before–and since it says you’ve got two posts here, I guess that makes sense!
Secondly, have you ever experienced a time without a place? Or a place without a time? One of the points David Abram makes in Spell of the Sensuous speaks to the notion that modern physics with its notion of four-dimensional space has only now come around to what we phenomenologically experienced all along, what most human cultures take for granted, and what only we ever lost along the way with our abstractions of things like featureless Cartesian space: that you simply cannot separate space and time. Particularly with nomadic people who move in great seasonal cycles, the different seasonal camps don’t just exist as locations in three-dimensional Cartesian space, they also mean a time of the annual cycle when they inhabit those camps. The place (as opposed to the location) exists as a kind of sediment of story laid down by all the stories lived there. So at the winter camp, all the stories take place in winter, all move around the challenges and features of winter. That place really only exists in winter. In the spring, it becomes a very different place.
So I agree! The myth map and the oracle already cross time and space, because really, we never managed to separate them in the first place.
I was also considering the idea of oracle not focused strictly around re-wilding but looking at the broader possible ways people will survive the future. There are so many different things that could happen and I think it might be interesting to explore how they could work out and interact.
What do you imagine would fall under the heading of “possible ways people will survive the future,” but not under rewilding? I may mean something broader by “rewilding” than you do.
One final question. I know it isn't strictly relevant to this post, but of all the story games that people have played, do you think that In a Wicked Age is the best one to start people off with?
Well, first you have to ask, where do people start from? The regular In a Wicked Age game has a very “sword & sorcery” feel, so if you’ve got people who play traditional roleplaying games, it might offer a really good place to start. Then again, you might also use Burning Wheel to introduce narrative mechanics a little more gradually.
If you mean people who’ve never played an RPG before (a.k.a., normal people), maybe not. Primetime Adventures might offer a better starting point for people who really like TV or movies. If you want to introduce your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/sweetheart/crush/other-person-you-desire-romantic-or-sexual-liasons-with, you might want to take a look at Breaking the Ice.
If, sight unseen, you asked me to run something to introduce a group of people to story games, and you wouldn’t tell me anything about them, though, I’d probably pick Primetime Adventures, myself.
Listen, if it makes your heart sing, I don't think you have a choice. Do it! Do it! Add 'em to the oracle thread I'll start right now, as soon as I finished writing this.
YES!