Zones

Zones are the playground of action scenes in Omen. They are the media that expresses landmarks, unique features and distance on the game board. Zones at a bare minimum can be represented by boxes drawn on paper, this document will provide some tips and tricks to get the most story and action out of your zones.

Representing Zones

As mentioned previously at a bare minimum you can represent zones as boxes drawn on paper with notes written on them to describe the area. But if you really want to bring your players in and quickly communicate the context of the Zone, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Art cards are the best way to represent zones because it does two things. Firstly it is more visually interesting and immersive and secondly, it prompts the players imagination when it comes to describing their actions in a story driven way and understanding the narrative permission of the scene.

Let’s have an example, the scenario is you're playing a campaign about spies and secret agents. The players have to infiltrate the Corrupt Warlord’s Mega Casino. They have been told that their way in is through the marina. They are going in underwater because in various locations around the casino they have aquariums that connect to the ocean to let natural sea life float around. All is going well until they come face to face with underwater scuba guards!

Now let’s consider the zones, first let's draw them as rectangles and write a description on top. This first Zone we’ll call “Underwater”. That’s fine, we’ve described the scene and the game can be played. But what if we use the following image?

Now we can see that there are lots of pretty fish and some dense coral, maybe the players use it to hide in or maybe cut the guard with some sharp coral? Or what about this picture?

Now there are sharks! What does that lead to? But the point is that writing these things on the card just doesn’t have as much impact. Or perhaps it's better to say while writing a description onto a rectangle is good for being clear and direct with your narrative permission, but having a picture allows the players to infer and think creatively themselves rather than being spoon fed a plot hook, and this can lead to players surprising and delighting the Narrator .

Zone Layouts

The way a Narrator  sets up the Zones for a session is called a “Layout”, Omen is all about creative freedom so the following aspects of Layouts are not the only things you can consider but it gives a good starting point. The first question you need to ask about Zones for a scenario is, who gets to choose where the Zones go?

Free Zones

The default mode for Omen is that the players get to decide. When they EXPLORE off an edge of a Zone into new territory they chose what the Zone is. Normally the Zone would have to make sense in the setting. You aren’t going to suddenly stumble into an arctic wasteland in the middle of a desert for example. This mode is best for collaborative storytelling where the Narrator  and the players work together to tell something epic and everyone gets a turn to be surprised at what comes next. It also shines when there are now constraints or puzzle solving required for the scenario; it can just be all out chaos.

Fixed Zones

Fixed Zones are on the opposite side of the spectrum, in advance the Narrator  decides exactly what zones are going to appear on the board, and exactly how they are placed on the play area. This mode shines when you really have a specific motif, vibe, puzzle or story to get across to the players. For example, a survival horror where opening the next door and EXPLORING into the next zone could hide something terrible inside. As a Narrator  you want total control over the zones so you can spring the monster at the right moment.

Predetermined Zones

Somewhere in the middle we have Predetermined Zones, the Narrator  lays out many Zones in advance with the word “Unknown” or a question mark drawn on it. These act like nodes that players can EXPLORE to. So to put it simply the Narrator  gets to choose where the zones exist, the players get to choose what they are. This mode is best at creating a sense of distance between the players and their objective. This can be combined with a PRESSURE BAR to create a real sense of urgency. A good example is think of a person tied to the railroad track and the players have to save them before the train comes but there's ten Zones between them but the train arrives in seven turns Oh NO!

Hidden Zones

Sometimes it can be fun for a Narrator  to plan their scenario with a hidden Zone. Think about the hidden revolving bookcase door that you only can access if you investigate and discover it. It can be an excellent way to reward characters that like to be perceptive or an interesting puzzle where a villain disappears suddenly but your players know they can’t be far away. It can also be used to great effect in Fixed or Predetermined layouts where there is an Unknown Zone on the board just tempting the players to investigate and then when they try to EXPLORE into it the Narrator  tells them with a cheeky grin “There is no obvious way to access that zone”.

Layout Orientation

Layout Orientation refers to how your Zones connect and relate to each other. It is important to note that the orientation can be either very strict, ignored entirely or have different orientations in distinct parts of the layout. It’s entirely up to you and your players.

Horizontal Layouts

Horizontal layouts where you choose to think of your Zones from an aerial top down view. In the following images, the players are in a super hero game, where they're challenged to save civilians and defeat various villains around the city. If you look closely at the art cards you can get the feel that these are almost like city blocks. The kind of view you get from a map, the directions on the board are North, East, South and West. This is generally the default mode for Omen. It is good to create a sprawling landscape ripe for exploration and discovery without having to think too hard about how things fit together.

Vertical Layouts

Vertical Layouts are where you choose to think of your layouts as a side view. Think of it like a side scroller video game, the directions on the board are now Up, Right, Down and Left. In the following image the same superheroes from the previous scenario encountered small-time crooks trying to rob a gas station.

You can see the bottom row are Zones that represent the inside of the gas station, the middle row represents the street or ground level and the tiles above that represent the sky and roof tops. This Layout is good for creating a sense of realism and groundedness and the tableau created by all the zones together is almost like looking at a photograph of the scene. The draw back of this layout is that the scale of distance tends to be a lot smaller. What this means is that your players theoretically could explore left and right infinitely, perhaps even downwards, but the sky's the limit for up. Unless you have characters that can fly or enter outer space. Or perhaps you are in a tall skyscraper. You can also get dynamic with Zone adjacency, for example it would make sense in this scene that all the bottom tiles are adjacent to each other because the gas station interior is relatively small. It also makes sense that all tiles excluding the bottom tiles are adjacent to the top two tiles as everywhere outdoors in the art cards has sky or rooftops.

Zone Adjacency

The default mode for Omen is that two Zones are adjacent if one of their edges or corners are touching when aligned in a square grid.

However as discussed in the previous section, it can make sense sometimes to group Zones and say that they are all adjacent to each other regardless of how their edges/corners meet to convey a sense of closeness.  Or you may want to restrict how players can move to make some abilities shine. For example, let's say the setting occurs in a thick jungle, the Narrator  can decide that Zone Adjacency for the session is only Zones that share an edge on the grid unless your character has the ability to fly or narratively is a native tribes person to the jungle.

Special Zones

At a bare minimum a zone can just be a name in a box like “Sky”, “Underwater” or “Grassy Field”. But when every zone is a box with a name they can start to feel a bit bland, Omen already has a mechanic to make the story more interesting and nuanced: CONCEPTS. How can we apply CONCEPTS to Zones to make them more flavourful?

Special Zones have a concept associated with them, it may be a set of rules, specific narrative permission or both. An example of a narrative permission might be “The Kitchen is on FIRE!” It’s hot, you might get burnt, it might spread to other zones that can create all sorts of fun story beats mid game. This is just one example, but narrative permission can be advantageous or a hindrance. The idea is to incentivise your players to work with or around the concept to create action and tension.

Now narrative permissions are good because they are a puzzle that players can overcome or circumvent. However there are times you may not want to give the players those options and instead make the puzzle a challenge that they have to avoid or deal with. That’s where adding some additional rules to a zone may come in handy.

An example of this can be a “Sky” Zone, with a rule that reads: “Falling - unless your character has some way or remaining airbourne, when you leave this zone you take one damage for every turn you were in the Sky Zone.”

Be careful how you implement this as it can limit some of the freedom Omen tries to create for players, however creativity is not born from infinite possibilities, it comes from defying expectations.