The Scope of Everything

I keep running myself into what I ‘ve been calling “scoping problems”. An example of this problem on Earth comes from an overly retold story about a special forces raid in the middle east. The story goes:

In the middle of the night US Special Operations raid a compound with dogs, killing local terrorist and his men, capturing some and dragging them back to base. The following morning a regular army patrol is sent out to the neighboring area, the regulars are informed and told to keep an eye out. As they get to the closest village they find the whole village out in the streets. It’s a party. When they ask why are you out partying the villagers say, “Last night, Allah sent ninjas with lions to kill our oppressors.”

Generally this is seen as a comedic bit of culture shock. Look at the poor Afghani civilians who don’t know any better. Yet what could they use as reference? These people generally don’t have running water, let alone anything else that they could use to understand a midnight operation of this kind. Sure dogs are probably something they should have a point of reference for. Yet in the Islamic world dogs are generally overlooked if not looked down on. Thus why would warriors bring dogs? They would bring something much more aggressive, like lions. The ninjas on the other hand I got nothing. How Japanese assassins made their way into the culture of rural middle east is beyond me.

Thus I would ask, what is the frame of mind of the people in your world? I know it’s a question I have to ask myself fairly often. Each world will be different, and the way people think will be shaped by that world. If there is no electricity would day to day life be governed by sunrise and sunset? If so, how does that reframe life; if not, how does that reframe life?

Take a world where everyone has superpowers. You get yours around age seven and it evolves until age twenty one or so. A major metamorphosis happens around age fourteen that solidifies the ability. How does this affect things? If you have a weak, or late appearing ability is that seen as shameful? Are some power types seen as manly or womanly? Perhaps there are some powers that are seen as immature, since they tend to evolve into something else as time goes on. Think about how that changes the frame of mind for the average person in the world. Would someone not want to use their power if they see it as something that would hold them back? Would there be awkward conversations between father and son about the current girlfriend’s power or lack there of?

Yet this is only the beginning. Should one’s story cross between worlds there’s the gap between them that has to be accounted for. Take an example of an alt-today meeting a high fantasy. The alt-today is legally distinct enough to keep me from getting sued, and the high fantasy follows the generic Tolkien-Gygax paradigm, with two major differences: There are no humans, and there are mammalian-humanoid hybrids, because I like that as a species concept. Portal opens up in let’s say downtown Chicago and an army marches out looking to set up a frontier. How does that go? Would the army need to be called in, or would Chicago SWAT be able to contain it? Maybe instead of Chicago it’s a more legally armed city? Perhaps Atlanta, or take your pick from Texas, how many men would form up in militia because they’ve been contemplating this since they started carrying?

When the advancing army is dealt with and the USMC is sent back though. How do the locals respond? They’ve never seen a human before, let alone all the stuff the USMC would have on the average grunt. If the local governments panic, because there’s now someone holding no man’s land and form an alliance of convince to restore neutrality what do they make of the machine gun nests, mortars, and barbed wire as their army gets cut down. This is beyond the obvious: How does magic impact things? Perhaps a strong enough lucky enough court mage survives the receiving end of a handful of mortar bombs and M2 emplacements. What is his recounting, does he assign magic to the propulsion of the guns? He couldn’t dispel the projectiles so they are clearly alchemical explosives, yet there’s no way they could have gotten them thrown that far without magic. Likewise they have bad fuses since some of the mortars exploded before they hit the ground. After some more detailed examination he may understand and maybe even apricate the humble firearm. Until then, they are all clearly magic. Likewise the trucks, magic. The aircraft are also magic, and have to be using the sound to propel themselves into the air, quite obvious if you listen to them.

On the flipside the grunts may not understand how fireball is cast, after clever grunt got everyone playing D&D as ‘training’; they understand both that it functions like a grenade and that wizards aren’t likely to ask how big the room is they are casting into. Sure the species may not be 1:1 with what is in the books, yet it’s close enough.

This would be an asymmetric scope gap. Thanks to the aforementioned D&D we can understand the fantasy world at first glance. The details will be brought into focus over time, yet the large shapes are already there. Yet the Fantasy world is completely blindsided by what we can do. Sure some things may be understandable after some thought, yet there’s a lot more work that needs to be done. Think of the differences in scale, the largest kingdom houses four hundred thousand souls. The city on the other side of the portal is closing in on the ten million mark, which could be more people than they think exist in their world.

There is also a symmetric gap, although those are more difficult to illustrate. The simplest would be culture shock. Where the gap is smaller and is centered around how things are done. Yet it can be equally as impactful. One example I can think of is the possibly fictional position of ‘token American’ a position in a Japanese company where an American is there not to do meaningful work, although that my be a side effect, but to rather to push back against the bosses and clients. Story could be one of American Man getting his company bought out by a Japanese one, being the man sent over to help integrate things, during a meeting his correcting of a few minor facts during a presentation gets him offered a position in Toyoko. Then culture shock hits in his new Japanese co-workers don’t understand Americanisms, and he doesn’t understand the culture he’s in.

Both don’t know roughly the same things, the culture of the other and thus you get a fairly symmetric scope gap. There may be more to learn on one side or the other yet both are approaching the same issue: Differences in culture. Or to fit the theme of this article, differences in scope. Symmetric scope gaps are often easy to overlook, as it can be surmised as “another way of doing X”. While that doesn’t make for the most compelling plot it is important to take into account since those differences will be apart of the world.

That covers the differences in scopes, and sketches a few ways they could be used. However there’s one more thing to keep track of with this kind of scope. The double blind problem. This is when both sides, or all sides should there be more than two parties involved, can’t see a problem because it’s out of scope. It could be something as simple as each side only knowing one part of a double entendres, or something much more complex. As long as the problem, or solution sits outside of both scopes of knowledge it would fall into this category. I would generally avoid basing a story on this kind of interaction as no one knows the issue that is outside of scope, the exception would-be an exploration story. Where the goal is to make this unknown a known.

All said and done I suspect this won’t be my last article talking about a world’s knowledge base and how to use it, or how it should impact things in the world. Thus if you have questions ask them, and I will see you in two weeks.