The Space Between the Frames

In comics, there’s an area called gutters: the space between the lines that delineate where one panel ends and the next begins. And those gutters do a lot of work.

There’s a magic that happens between the frames: all the action happens there. 

The vision you have of what’s going on? It doesn’t exist primarily in the pictures on the page…it happens between them.

We never see every step Batman takes as he walks down the street. We don’t see Superman throw a punch.  Instead we see Superman surrounded by villains in one frame and we see his fist connecting with someone’s chin in the next. Everything in between? Your mind fills it in.

The gutters are the imaginative space. The space where you take still images and give them life. And in games we have this, too.

Take these two cards:

   

 

In Cyberpunk Legends, you’ll face Bouncers and Another Way In simultaneously. This is supposed to feel like some of you are chatting up the bouncers, distracting them, while the rest of you sneak or hack your way into the back entrance of the club.

All that imaginative lifting though?  It's done by you, within the space these cards create. You get the setup with the imagery and the flavor text - “You’re at the door, but you’re not on the list.” “Time to find another way in...” - but all the real action happens in the mechanics.

The bouncers require Charisma “to hit” and if you hit them they do no damage to you. Why? Well this represents you going up asking about the show tonight, maybe flashing your best smile and asking if they can let you in (they’re never going to) and doing all the things that will keep them engaged with you while your buddies sneak around the side of the building and look for…another way in.

If you’re awkward, maladroit and babbling, if you’re that gonk whining to be let into the club, they’re going to kick you to curb…but, if you’re charming enough, they’ll take a second from a boring night to chat with you rather than rough you up.

But there’s more to it than that. You also can’t do damage to the bouncers. Why? Because you’re supposed to meet your fence in this club. You can’t just gun down the bouncers and storm your way in. Your contact would vanish, the NCPD would be all over you, and the club where you’re looking to do business would never let you back in. 

That’s not how running the edge works. 

You can only defeat them by actually finding your way into the club. Because as soon as your team’s in you’re basically like “I forgot, I left toast in the toaster…gotta go!” and slip around the back.

If we look at Another Way In itself, we’ll see that instead of charisma, the requirements focus on stealth or tech: hacking or lock picking your way in. We’ll also see that it doesn’t do any damage to you at all…because you’re not fighting something here, you’re searching for an alternate route. And the “damage” you do to it? That just represents the progress you’ve made towards that goal.

And in playtesting, we see people play it out that way all the time, talking about sneaking in, making jokes about bringing in a whole biker gang to distract the bouncers because their solo decided to try to hammer down the door...

Reading the meaning in the mechanics, painting a picture out of play, is like what we do when we cross the gutters in comics. Realizing when “damage” represents you physically beating something to a pulp, vs when it represents how close you are to convincing someone to do what you need them to do, is what brings a static card to life. 

It’s important for us as designers to think about that space. To help define that space for you, so you’re imagination is not only filling in what happens between each card, but seeing each card as living scene itself.

JP