Culture Shock

I had the great recent pleasure to take a trip into the Carribean, to the U.S. Virgin Islands, in particular, St. John. It's a small island, about nine miles across, with fifty or so miles of coastline. The water is bluer than Hollywood would have you believe; the landside scenery is lush and green, with the majority of the island (and a great many coral reefs) designated as a national park thanks to much of it getting bought up and then donated by Rockefeller back in the day.

I swam in those waters, spending most of my days snorkelling. There were sea turtles with matching pairs of remora hitching lifts on their shells. I saw a "field" of at least a hundred large starfish, each as far across as my chest is wide. I floated and swayed in time with the ocean, watching fan coral mirror my movements below. This experience was common enough that when I got back on dry land, I would occasionally still feel the swaying of the ocean currents, like my blood and body had been adopted by the tide.

St. John itself had a few quirks to get used to. Though the cars have the American layout, they're driven on the left side of the road. The accents spoken there are occasionally impenetrable. There are wild mules, set loose by the Dutch when the liberation of slaves ended the sugar trade. And there's what the locals call "island time", that sense that nothing is rushed, where everything starts late (much like this issue), and where each second passes languidly, such that when you reach the end of your day, you're certain what you were doing in the morning happened at least two or three days ago. My week there felt like a month or more.

It was, in all, a wholly transformative experience. And then I headed home. Which ended up as the strangest experience -- because, when I arrived back at my regular life, I got hit with the culture shock of the everyday. Driving on the right side of the road seemed the bizarrest choice. The fact that the world was not painted in hues that were more vivid than Technicolor clearly indicated something was amiss. Time moved faster here, and my calendar grew mystifyingly complex and intricate. Even now, as I write this several days later, I haven't quite been able to shake the sense that what was normal before now occupies a kind of otherworld, and I am an interloper in it.

As I've sat down to assemble this somewhat delayed issue of the Factor, I've been thinking about how my "island time" experience relates to the experience of stepping into Fudge. Fudge certainly has its wonders and its strange quirks, after all, and after you've spent some time as "Fudge time", it certainly can leave the rest of gaming -- which seemed so normal before -- looking strange and not-quite-right.

This is at least especially true for me, with the last half-decade strongly immersed in Fudge (and Fate) gaming. In that time, I've also played a little d20 and Tri-Stat, and I'm currently a player in an Exalted game and running a Nobilis campaign (heck, there's even been some Risus in there -- but Risus is at least part of the same island chain). And post-Fudge, they do look a little different from before, and they often gleam less than they otherwise would, since I know I can get something much more to my taste out of Fudge.

That said, I wouldn't have wanted to play Fudge games instead of these other ones.

St. John would not have been St. John if I hadn't left a regular life to go there, and wouldn't have stayed St. John if I didn't then head back to my regular life afterwards. St. John worked for me, and grabbed me right in my bones, because of the contrast to the rest of everything.

It's my opinion that much the same can be said of Fudge -- essentially, I believe everyone who loves Fudge should take some time away from Fudge too, to better appreciate what it is, and what it can do. Moreover, I think doing so inevitably enhances the Fudge experience. There are lessons and modes of thought and stealable, usable things out there in the rest of the world of gaming, and it's well worth exploring that stuff, well worth carrying it inside you when you take your trip back to Fudge. Both your non-Fudge and your Fudge gaming will inevitably benefit from one another.

So, it boggles me a bit when I see folks proclaim that Fudge is the only thing they'll play; that seems to invite the same thing as living constantly in a place of beauty -- eventually, that beauty dims, because you have become accustomed to it. It's only when you take a step away, and let a little culture shock creep back in, that you can then begin to see what you've been seeing all along all over again, with new eyes.