The Ritual(s) of Play
Mea culpa: This is what I get for only being on the fortieth page of Houses of the Blooded at the time I wrote the original post. As Sam Zeitlin (
detritus9 ) and John Wick (
wickedthought ) point out in the comments, the vocabulary of Good Form entered our circle from a second game of origin. Wick's Houses embraces ritual and ritual phrases -- Dueling, Insults, saying "not yet" instead of "no," inviting the players to invent rituals for mundane tasks -- more than any game I've played so far. I just wasn't aware it emphasized Good (and Bad) Form.
I've recently noticed that several Thursday night gamers, myself included, have adopted a new, delightful habit. Sometimes, when a player says or does something particularly entertaining, another person at the table will show approval by saying, "Good Form!" Another player sometimes follows suit: "Indeed, Good Form!" We've adopted this behavior from PDQ Sharp's Good Form Gifting rule, which provides a mechanical incentive for players to show "flair, courage, audacity," heroism, and style in their play, and -- perhaps more importantly -- to pay attention to each other. The approving player gives whoever did the cool thing a Style Die either while performing the speech act ("Good Form!"), or immediately after. Despite feeling that I GMed poorly that night, I consider the evening a success because we use "Good Form!" during our [edit] Torg [/edit] games and in general conversation.
[edit] Possible point of confusion one: I'd originally written, "our Houses of the Blooded games." This lead to some confusion; not only does Houses talk about Good Form (as I noted in the Mea Culpa section, above), but its Style Points and PDQ Sharp's Style Dice are also similarly named. Possible point of confusion two: when I say "we use 'Good Form!'" during other games, I mean we use the phrase as an act of praise, not that we've lifted the mechanic from one game and planted it in others. [/edit]
In a sidebar, Chad Underkoffler calls "Good Form!" a "ritual phrase," and describes how one can change utterance to suit other genres ("Well Played!" "Arr!" etc.), and other ritual phrases a game master can use to signal mechanical states to the players. There are plenty of evocative game mechanics out there -- my personal favorite is pulling from a Jenga tower as the resolution mechanic for the suspense game Dread -- but this sidebar contains the most practical advice about evocative mechanics I'd ever read in one place.
Ritual phrases seem like the perfect tool for a Courtroom Drama game. There's so much ritual to borrow. Adversarial jurists arguing points of law and fact before an impartial third party, where strategy can be just as effective as truth -- that already sounds, as Jake Richmond notes, like a pretty good game. As for specific, ready-to-steal ritual-mechanics, Objections seem obvious (aside: I've never played a Phoenix Wright game), but Filing Motions and Serving Subpoenas are just as good. Best of all, none of these hypothetical mechanics need to be limit their scope to matters of law like they do in the real world.
Next time I talk about games, I think I'm going to tie this ritual stuff back to the Classes and Clichés posts I started a while back.
detritus9 ) and John Wick (
wickedthought ) point out in the comments, the vocabulary of Good Form entered our circle from a second game of origin. Wick's Houses embraces ritual and ritual phrases -- Dueling, Insults, saying "not yet" instead of "no," inviting the players to invent rituals for mundane tasks -- more than any game I've played so far. I just wasn't aware it emphasized Good (and Bad) Form.
I've recently noticed that several Thursday night gamers, myself included, have adopted a new, delightful habit. Sometimes, when a player says or does something particularly entertaining, another person at the table will show approval by saying, "Good Form!" Another player sometimes follows suit: "Indeed, Good Form!" We've adopted this behavior from PDQ Sharp's Good Form Gifting rule, which provides a mechanical incentive for players to show "flair, courage, audacity," heroism, and style in their play, and -- perhaps more importantly -- to pay attention to each other. The approving player gives whoever did the cool thing a Style Die either while performing the speech act ("Good Form!"), or immediately after. Despite feeling that I GMed poorly that night, I consider the evening a success because we use "Good Form!" during our [edit] Torg [/edit] games and in general conversation.
[edit] Possible point of confusion one: I'd originally written, "our Houses of the Blooded games." This lead to some confusion; not only does Houses talk about Good Form (as I noted in the Mea Culpa section, above), but its Style Points and PDQ Sharp's Style Dice are also similarly named. Possible point of confusion two: when I say "we use 'Good Form!'" during other games, I mean we use the phrase as an act of praise, not that we've lifted the mechanic from one game and planted it in others. [/edit]
In a sidebar, Chad Underkoffler calls "Good Form!" a "ritual phrase," and describes how one can change utterance to suit other genres ("Well Played!" "Arr!" etc.), and other ritual phrases a game master can use to signal mechanical states to the players. There are plenty of evocative game mechanics out there -- my personal favorite is pulling from a Jenga tower as the resolution mechanic for the suspense game Dread -- but this sidebar contains the most practical advice about evocative mechanics I'd ever read in one place.
Ritual phrases seem like the perfect tool for a Courtroom Drama game. There's so much ritual to borrow. Adversarial jurists arguing points of law and fact before an impartial third party, where strategy can be just as effective as truth -- that already sounds, as Jake Richmond notes, like a pretty good game. As for specific, ready-to-steal ritual-mechanics, Objections seem obvious (aside: I've never played a Phoenix Wright game), but Filing Motions and Serving Subpoenas are just as good. Best of all, none of these hypothetical mechanics need to be limit their scope to matters of law like they do in the real world.
Next time I talk about games, I think I'm going to tie this ritual stuff back to the Classes and Clichés posts I started a while back.