Color Theory 101

I wonder how long I'll keep up this college theme before I get sick of it. You let me know if it starts to get old. Right now I kind of like it though.

So as part of my art minor I'm taking a design course. It can be a tough class, but covers some things that you artists might consider basic. Like the color wheel for instance.

For those of you who don't know. There are three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. These colors have compliments such as green, purple, and orange in that order. When a primary is mixed with it's compliment it tends to make a more neutral, usually brown like color.

In painting we mix pigments like this to try and get less intense colors and more earth like tones that you see more of in the natural world.

This, like many things, gave me an idea for a game mechanic. I used something similar for my SAGE entry with Zak S. here. You will probably have to scroll down pretty far to find it, but it is in orange and basically consists of a treasure chest you can only open by matching colors with their compliment.

A pretty simple mechanic, but simple isn't always bad. I think I could expand it to a whole dungeon though. There would colored barriers of light that you couldn't get through without first countering them with light that was their complimentary color. 

So, say there is a green barrier, you have to shine red light on it to get through. This does use the classic 'reflect light to solve puzzle' mechanic but also makes it a little more interesting.

The players may have to find a colored lens somewhere in the dungeon to get the light to the right hue or they may get creative and say run the light through a semi-transparent colored cloth or something (assuming they have one of course.)

You could even toss it into combat. Take a regular baddie, than spice him up with a hazardous aura of light or force field that once again can't be neutralized without using light of the complimentary color.

I'm probably going to take things a step further by shamelessly stealing a little something from DC comics.

Don't know what that is? Those are the rings of the seven main Lantern Corps. The center one being the most famous. They have one for the main colors of the rainbow - ROYGBIV or red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

What's more is that each color has an emotion tied to it. Red for rage, Orange for greed or avarice, Yellow for fear, Green for willpower, Blue for hope, Indigo for compassion, and Violet for love.

Using this idea, I can give my my rainbowy dungeon a new way to mess with the players, which is always good. Now, there are light based traps and weapons for the enemies.

Say your players really need that red lens to get through that green barrier. Well a wizard has that lens. And he knows how to use it to send the heroes into a blood boiling berserker rage. This rage may give them an attack bonus but I'm sure they aren't going to be thinking to clearly or making the best decisions.

Of course since my original plan only calls for six colors I'll probably cut out indigo. I wasn't sure how to convey compassion as a game mechanic anyway. 

Although what exactly am I going to do for hope or willpower? They seem mostly like ways to increase moral so I think that's what how the enemies will use them as well. Avarice should be interesting, I think it is going to force you to spend your action trying to steal from the nearest person, friend or foe. Love and fear already have pretty solid game mechanics so I'll just use those.

Now, what monster will actually be in this color coded place? I'm thinking those mirror people, Nerras. In 4.0 they basically look like humanoid prisms, which to me means they can bounce light off each other creating some interesting team tactics.

The only real danger with this dungeon is non-art players may have no chance at figuring out the gimmick. This can be fun, but in my experience, not knowing what is going on for an entire game can get frustrating. Even those relatively familiar with complimentary colors may take a while to figure things out, but there's nothing that says you can't drop them some sort of hint. Maybe a color wheel or something?

What I found most interesting about this exercise is how I was able to take an educational concept, something I learned in class, and turn it into a full game. This has possibilities certainly. I mean games have always been excellent educating tools along with stories. Dnd has both, I'm not saying you can learn quantum mechanics with this stuff or that anyone should take the time to figure out how to do that (but if you do let me know.)

But I know if I had kids, I would be seriously trying to find a way to implement some fantasy game time instead of their regular homework.