For To Our Health, I had to design a framework for worldbuilding and interacting with the world for both the players and for my own usage in designing prompts and cards for the game. This was necessary in order for me to embed my engagement into ideas of systems thinking, complexity, entanglement and assemblages into the game, as my search for other potential frameworks was not fruitful.
The Framework sits on the Summary Card handed to each player at the start of the game to remind them of gameplay.
To begin designing this framework, the question of what goes into a world came up a lot, as well as how can you break down a world into broad categories. The most challenging aspect was getting the balance between detail and generalisation, as a framework such as this cannot be overcomplicated nor oversimplified.
I drew inspiration from frameworks such as the PESTEL/PESTLE, which is used in marketing, the Japanese concept of 'ikigai' and an ACT Australian Government framework for personal wellbeing as ways of breaking down both the world and health & wellbeing.
When deciding upon the categories I started to map out and diagram what the framework might look like and was reminded of the magical circle as a visual reference. This, complimented nicely with the fantastical/magical realism of The Trait.
In the iteration process shown below, you can see as I began to incorporate different aspects, played with the linework, legibility, negative space and added elements that I was reminded of during the making process such as old compasses and Chinese Ba Gua - a Taoist cosmological symbol used in many different practices including astronomy and anatomy.
This framework is then also incorporated into the card designs, through shape, linework and icons predominantly in Act Two: Simulation as this is where more interactions across multiple systems occurs.
