Caravan

Frame · Adventure and travel thematic

Travelling together, goods and stories in the baggage – the journey is the destination, and every stop brings new encounters.

Design question – Imagine your game is about a caravan. What is transported, who travels along – and what waits at the next oasis?

Reference example – The Banner Saga: a caravan in flight, supplies, morale and decisions on the way. The Voyages of Marco Polo: from Venice to Beijing, stop by stop. The Oregon Trail: west by covered wagon, with river crossings and illnesses.

Associations

• Typical Activities – Traveling, Trading, Socializing, Protecting
• Typical roles – travelling company, traders, strangers who join
• Typical spaces – desert, steppe, mountain passes, oases, caravanserai
• Typical conflicts – travel, trade at rest stops, dangers along the way

Atmosphere

leisurely, dusty, warm, narrative (campfire)

Coherence

Implied Activities: Traveling, Trading, Socializing, Protecting. Mechanisms: Pick-up and Deliver (transporting goods), Route Building (optimal route), Event (encounters along the way), Engine Building (building a trade network). Ludic Organisational Structures: economic order (trade), spatial order (route network).

Compatible with

• Tranquillity (AT-01)
• Solitude (AT-03)
• Uprising (SI-05)
• Crisis (SI-08)
• Alliance (SO-01)
• Host-Guest (SO-15)
• Mountains (SP-03)
• Desert (SP-04)
• Antiquity (TM-02)
• Middle Ages (TM-03)

Tension with

• Hospital (TH-12) – A mobile healing caravan moving from village to village. Healing and trading: every stop brings new patients and new resources.