"Do you know where we're going?" I asked my buddy. We were both sitting in the back of a sleek in the '50s cab winding down dusty roads in Cairo's outskirts. We also weren't wearing any pants.

"Well, I wasn't really paying attention," my friend whispered back, arranging his borrowed galabiyeh which was riding up. A galabiyeh is one of those ankle length Arab shirt things, or at least they're ankle length if you aren't 6'3". "I think we might be heading to the Mystic Heart of Egypt."

"Mmm. That's what I heard too. He said something about horses didn't he?" My galabiyeh fit me, but I'd just remembered that my wallet and my watch were in my pants, which were on the floor of a supposed policeman's apartment. "How do you ride a horse when you aren't wearing pants?"

My buddy shrugged. Uncomfortably.

"Dude," I asked, "what the hell are we doing? How did this happen?"

He shrugged. "It's Ramadan."

Today we're talking festivals and how they shape the places we visit.

I've only been to Egypt once and it was during the major Muslim festival of Ramadan. Ramadan lasts for a month and while it's going on Muslims are not supposed to consume anything during the day. No food, no drink, no cigarettes, no sex. Then at night everyone gets together and breaks the fast with a big meal. Ramadan breakfast is huge. And it's a time when you welcome strangers.

Ramadan completely changed the way I experienced Egypt. First, even though we aren't Muslims, we tried not to eat during the day, or if we did eat we did it discreetly. I wasn't about to go being completely insensitive and munching on a Big Mac while practically everyone around me was hungry. So right there that made us feel a bit more like we were taking part in the culture, not just riding the surface impressions.

Second, there were inconveniences. Because it was Ramadan places closed early, because who wants to work when you've got no food in your belly? And then around sundown everything shut down because everyone was having Ramadan breakfast at once.

But we got to experience the festival nature of Ramadan breakfast in lots of different places, and most of them were really great. All through Cairo people set up outside tables and chairs for everyone to eat at. Strangers invited us to join them at their meals, whether they were hash puffing beach-bums, middle class families, or even policemen who wanted to take us to the Mystic Heart of Egypt. We were quite literally taken in with everyone's hospitality.

So what does this mean for a game? Well, it seems to me that most of the festivals you run into in-game tend to be more along the Mardi Gras style thing. Lots of parades and masks and such. Now those kinds of things can be great, but they're one time obstacles and such. Lots of festivals are longer and change the way you experience a place. If you only come to North America during the first part of December you have a very different idea of what the country is about.

What happens to your Wild West town in the seven weeks of Lent? Does the preacher keep everyone penitent, or does no one care? What about those patriotic holidays? I went to Pennsylvannia on July fifth and thought I was in some caricature of America, what with every frickin' house having a flag on its porch. Then people reminded me what the day before had been and assured me that in September or March the flags are only on every third house.

Often we forget about all the extra logistical things that happen with a major celebration. I just got back from some travelling within China. My mom was here and I was showing her around. Everything went smoothly, we were buying our tickets as we went, giving us lots of flexibility to go when and where we wanted. And then we got to Beijing and I put my mom on her plane back home and I tried to get back to Chongqing.

I'd known Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) was coming but it wasn't here yet. "How many people could possibly be going to Chongqing?" I thought. It turns out lots and lots of them could. You know how Christmas travel is really busy? Transfer that to 1.3 billion people. There were no train tickets and the flights had no discounted seats so eventually I had to pay a not insignificant amount of money to get home. Kind of a kick in the teeth but the lesson is learned: travelling around festivals is murder.

But it's rewarding. You can use this in games if you're adding difficulties to getting from point A to B, but don't just stop there, think about what evryone is looking forward to about the festival. Is it a family reunion kind of thing? Then people are probably travelling away from those big populated centres to the villages that spawned them. Is it more of a riotous time of partying? Maybe everyone getting onto your plane has been drenched with multicoloured paint.

Another thing to think about in terms of festivals is where are they most important? Is a far off colony world going to take its traditions very seriously to keep ties to its home, or will they be too busy trying to survive? People in little Midwest towns don't really do Mardi Gras. And imported festivals change. China is starting to do more and more Christmas stuff, but it always seems a couple of steps off, especially when students ask Santa to wipe Japan off the map as their present. What kind of analogues can you pull into your games?

Next time we'll delve a little more into that "wipe Japan off the map" comment when we discuss a bit of the military history and ideology in some different places.

And if you're wondering, we never did see the Mystic Heart of Egypt. We begged off saying we were scared of horses (instead of having our throats slit as a sacrifice to Nyarlathotep).

J Unrau Hungry J Propaganda www.djs5.com/hjp