meepleomancy

meepleomancy n. divination by means of the interpretation of patterns of meeples

Yeah. I invented a word.

I didn't originally set out to do that. After the fun of Meeple Trek, I had ordered more meeples in colors I didn't have for the purpose of more spontaneous casual skirmishing. The nice folks at The Game Crafter got them to me this past weekend.

As I added the new guys to the pile with my other meeples, I looked down at the table and began to consider the patterns of colors before my eyes.

People shapes...colors...composition... I wondered: Was I looking at a symbolic representation of something...a person, perhaps? Maybe a personality? I suddenly got inspired!

Here's what I came up with - a combination of random RPG character generation and tea leaf reading:

meepleomancy

(for RPG character personality generation)

I. Print out this image I made of the five dimensions of personality. (The colors don't matter; they just make this picture look better on the blog. Feel free to make your own ink-saving version, but do keep all segments of equal size.)

The dimensions are a framework for a range of traits (more at Wikipedia).
     Openness to experience – inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious
     Conscientiousness – efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless
     Extraversion – outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved
     Agreeableness – friendly/compassionate vs. cold/unkind
     Neuroticism – sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident


II. Get meeples in 11 different colors, 8 of each. (Other types of tokens or even dice may be used. Meeples are only mandatory if you want to be cool.)

Each "spectral" color represents a different emotion as detailed, more or less, by the Plutchik Wheel.

RED - anger

ORANGE - anticipation

YELLOW - joy

GREEN - trust

PURPLE - fear

PINK - surprise

BLUE - sadness

BROWN - disgust

For the three "achromatic" colors, the following special rules apply:

WHITE - count this meeple as any other color of the player's choice

GRAY - consider all meeples in the same dimension as this meeple to be of equal impact

BLACK - remove this meeple and a spectral meeple in the same dimension from the graph

III. Put all of the meeples in a bag, shake them up, and then, without looking, grab a handful and drop them on the print-out of the five dimensions of personality, like so:

IV. Interpret the personality of the character created by the patterns.

• Apply any achromatic meeple effects before interpretation.
• Apply the representative emotion of each meeple to the dimension trait upon which it landed, even if it is only partially in a segment.
• If a meeple has landed on more than one segment, count it as being in the dimension upon which most of its form is resting.
• When multiple spectral meeples of different colors have landed within the same dimension, give greater emotional impact to the more numerous colored emotion (unless a gray meeple is present). In fact, the dimension with the most meeples in it should be the most dominant personality domain.
• If a dimension does not have any meeples in it, that aspect of the character's personality may be indirectly developed by the emotional elements of other dimensions.
• There will certainly be more than one way to interpret the meeple patterns, especially if the character has some preexisting context, as in knowing its role or class in advance of dropping the meeples on the graph.

For example, here's what I would do with the picture of the drop above:

• First, I'd remove the black and pink meeples from the Neuroticism dimension.
• Next, I would declare the white meeple in the Extraversion dimension to be yellow (to sort of soften the one blue that is already there).
• The gray meeple in the Agreeableness dimension has no effect as there is only one other meeple, a red one, in that dimension.
• The orange, gray, yellow, and black meeples not touching the graph are removed.
• Then, I INTERPRET: Foremost, this is an individual for whom order is of the utmost importance. He or she lives in fear that personal or professional aspects of his or her life could become disorganized, and that potential disorder makes this person very concerned. When things are carelessly handled, he or she may become angry or saddened by the consequences. Dealing with others, thus, can be somewhat difficult. He or she is happy when in the company of like-minded, efficient people, but can become quickly disappointed with those who are too carefree about what matters most in life. Though always glad to learn of new ways to keep order in his or her pursuits, this individual may be easily angered when expected to be accepting of everyone's point-of-view, especially the points-of-view of those for whom order is not as important.

If there was a preexisting context to the above interpretation - such as knowing that the character was a male space marine or female cleric of a particular deity - the interpretation would have the same elements, just with more specific details.


And, that's it. Meepleomancy. Try it!

I've no idea what I will do with this or if it is of any real gaming value - solo or otherwise. I still plan on using my new meeples for skirmishing, but this exercise of RPG character creation has been quite inspirational...