Resolving the Cognitive Dilemma

How much of our daily activity is instinctive? How much is trained? How much requires cognitive deliberation? How much not? Does it really take 10,000 hours to master a skill?


My earlier thoughts on the development of characters and the acquisition of new skills, or the improvement of inherent abilities are mired in the dilemma of realism, and what realism actually is.


Walkabout may be a game about people making decisions, it may also be a game about characters who derive their powers from their relationships to the world around them, but it transcends those too. It's a game about heroes linked to the spirit world.


Regular people in this setting often spend a big percentage of their time simply surviving, it is only in recent decades in the setting that people have been able to shift their focus toward non-"survival oriented" skills, it's only in recent years that the old technologies have had any chance of returning to the world. (That's not entirely true, the Sheltered in their fallout shelters, and the Skyfarers far above the ground have been making their own technological headway, but are finally willing to trade with the other ground survivors.) People gain the skills they need in their childhood, then find a trade and a purpose in their life... this then becomes their role in society and they tend to stagnate.


The player characters have agency, and this makes them protagonists in the setting, so the rest of the world's rules don't quite apply to them as much.


I'm working on the idea that most people in the setting earn an experience point every season, but this follows the European "four season" structure (autumn/winter/spring/summer), rather than any of the Indigenous structures that vary from 2 to 8 seasons. This experience progression unfolds from an age between 12 and 24, when characters choose a path for their adult lives. The experience track follows a triangular progression, where advances are gained at 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, etc. This means that a few advances are gained during teenage years, then come more slowly during early adulthood, and it becomes much harder to gain new abilities and skills with more maturity. This basically fits the neural plasticity model. Let's say on average, a person finds their goal at about 18 years of age, this means that characters have the following "levels"...

1 bonus at 18 years 3 months

2 bonuses at 18 years 9 months

3 bonuses at 19 years 6 months

4 bonuses at 20 years 6 months

5 bonuses at 21 years 9 months

6 bonuses at 23 years 3 months

7 bonuses at 25 years

8 bonuses at 27 years

9 bonuses at 29 years 3 months

10 bonuses at 31 years 9 months 

11 bonuses at 34 years 6 months

12 bonuses at 36 years 6 months

13 bonuses at 39 years 9 months

14 bonuses at 43 years 3 months

15 bonuses at 48 years

(I think these numbers are right)

The other thing to consider here is that regular people might lose a bonus every five years, maybe slower if they have lived a relaxed and protected life, maybe faster if they've struggled. This basically sees characters improve relatively quickly through to their 30s, more slowly through their 40s, stagnating in their 50s, then starting to decline after that point.

When characters become player character wayfarers, that rate of development accelerates. While actively working as the agents of the dreaming, they gain an experience point every story session they engage in due to the risks they take and as a bonus for simply pushing themselves beyond the safety zone. They may also gain an extra experience point if successful in restoring the balance, or for other narrative reasons. This basically means a character will gain a few advances during a three to four session campaign when early in their career, but later in their career they might only gain one advance, and later still they might not gain any advances at all. They still end up ahead of the people around them though. Any decline still hits at the same age, but probably hits harder because the characters have pushed themselves as Wayfarers. The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long.