Exchange of Realities

Last week I discussed the possible uses of putting a group of characters in a zone between members of an organization/subculture/what-have-you and nonmembers—the ares and the are-nots, as it were. Noumenon suggested I post some examples of such organization divisions and how to use them, so here they are.

Military and civilian. There are a lot of things that distinguish one from the other: purpose, jargon, etiquette and social ritual, ranking systems, mindset, dress code, etc. One important thing to keep in mind about it is the reasons for all these differences, particularly with regards to its emphasis on knowing what the pecking order is—in a battle, you’re going to want to make sure that if the person in charge bites it, only one person steps up and people know to obey that one. The civilians, on the other hand, aren’t necessarily going to get it, and don’t need to. In-between, one’s likely to have some of the issues but not all; while an affiliated civilian isn’t in the chain of command per se, it’s a good idea to be able to tell the officers from everyone else.

Class-based. This one’s fun in that while most people expect the “ares” to be the upper class and the “are nots” to be the lower class, it doesn’t have to be that way; a rich boy trying to pal around with the lower classes may not have the same kinds of difficulty with the boundaries as a common girl who’s been brought into higher-class or noble social circles, but they’re still both going to have trouble with their gray areas.

Religious. I don’t just mean the devout and the unbelieving, though you can have that too (and in a system like the average D&D world with its polytheism bordering on monolatrism, you can have multiple flavors to boot). But in many religions, there’s also the division between the priesthood and the laity, whether this division comes through training and scholarship, the gift of divine powers, inheritance or something else entirely. In-betweeners might be the kinds of people who handle day to day situations so that the priesthood can focus on their religion, people who’ve gone beyond the average layperson in trying to understand the mysteries but haven’t been fully initiated, or find similar ways of having one foot in the door.

Cultural. Our world is more of a mixing pot than it’s been for most of history, but even in this day and age, there’s a lot of division between one culture and another. History, traditions, appearance, etiquette and other factors set people apart, (sometimes) leaving room for people who were raised in one to try to assimilate into another. Many gamers play with this already, though often it’s confused further by different members of the group having different cultural backgrounds to try to reconcile with the ones they’ve been given.

Magical. If magic is something that some people have and some people don’t, that’s definitely going to create a division between the ares and the are nots. In-between types might be people who are interested in how magic works but don’t have it themselves, relatives of magic-users, and people with a bit of power but nothing serious.

And that’s just the basics. Almost any situation in which you have a division of people—these, professions, you name it—will result in having ares and are-nots. The difficulty is just knowing how to use them.