Feel Tiny in RPGs in Four Distinct Ways
One can make PCs feel tiny in various ways. Let's explore them.
This post is a contribution for March RPG Blog Carnival, a monthly event where a bunch of bloggers take a topic and post about it. This month it is Tiny Epics: Small Souls in a Big World!.
Physically Small
The most obvious way to make game with tiny heroes is their physical size in a relatively large sized world. Of the top of my head I can name Mouse Guard as well as Mausritter as games that take this topic on face value. In these games you play as mice in a regularly sized world - so even every rat and squirrel is larger than you, the tree is like a mountain, the grass is like a forest to you. PCs are mice which are small even among forest critters. This situation from the get go creates proper atmosphere. Especially from the human point of view you are rediscovering elements of your own world that are not large to you - like said tree or a field or even a dog. For a mouse these are enormous obstacles, crossing a field is a journey, and meeting a dog is like standing in front of a titan. These are not things we relate in real life as a species that dominated the world but we can feel them as these mice.
Scarcity with No Way Out
Setting of Ironsworn is to me the best example of it. The premise is that people came to Ironlands from old continent ravaged by war, plague or desolation. You cannot go back. There are no known other places, you are stuck here. But Ironlands are also not a comfy place to live. There are large beasts, monsters, there is evil in the land that brings back to life horrors that creep around people in the night. Winters are harsh and the soil is not so fertile. And so the settlements are sparse, travel is rare and dangerous. It is everything a modern metropole doesn't have to deal with. Every travel is significant. Every connection matters. Every information might be invaluable. Every catastrophe might wipe out your community. Or whole humanity. You are small in this world, no super powers, no large cities and infrastructure. It's like living in times when there were a few thousand humans left on Earth.
Space is Big
Sci-fi, space opera and science fantasy settings often don't really adhere to the feeling of being tiny against the cosmos. They sacrifice vastness of space of quick action and adventure. Traveller does not. It is a system in which each chunk of interstellar travel takes around a week. You want to get to the neighbouring world? A week. You need to get to a world with super space technology where they'd be able to treat your very rare disease? A month or two. And not counting the overwhelming costs of such operation. It is not a Star Wars where you'd jump on a ship and skip a few hours and be on the Planet-City. Nope. And because space travel is slow and expensive planetary communities do have their struggles. Some cannot grow their own food. Some cannot manufacture the things they require to survive. Interstellar empires are vast and even they are just a dots on the make up of whole galaxy. It is easy to sacrifice the feeling of vastness of space in order to make adventures more actionable and dynamic. But you can feel tiny in overwhelming cosmos only when it really affects your life. When buying a toaster might take a month, an enormous amount of money and a lot of planning just because there are no manufacturers on ten nearby worlds.
Space is Big but the Other Take
You know what can make you live through Tiny Adventure in a Big World? When you are a regular human who deals with things beyond your comprehension. Yes, I'm talking about Call of Cthulhu and adjacent settings. The cosmic horror is in both the small size of a human against cosmic gods and creatures, the vastness of space holding such beings as well as hopelessness and helplessness of human condition versus the whims of creatures being described as blind primodial chaos, all knowing god of time and space, messenger of gods in a thousand forms or writhing mass being the mother of all life. Being human means being insignificant. You might stop an incursion here or there but in the end all life on Earth might end just like that with a whim of a nuclear chaos sitting in the center of the universe or another terrible force.
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