Here’s a weird confluence of story and game for you: I’m working on a screenplay that’s about—among other things—people who play a particular game.
This has been done before, of course. Take Jumanji, Zathura, and perhaps most obviously, The Game. In these cases and others that are similar, the game that’s the basis of the story frequently doesn’t make a lot of sense as a game qua game. Sometimes, it makes no fucking sense at all: Shade is a film about poker, except that you’re allowed to bet more than you have on the table, and an opponent who can’t call a given bet has to fold. Uh… yeah.
As I wrote and re-wrote drafts of the script, it became clear that the game really ought to be designed as well—I’m a game designer, after all—so I finished a complete draft of the rules a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t played it yet; I haven’t bothered to mock it up, for that matter.
Designing a game whose primary purpose isn’t to be played, but rather, to provide an interesting structure for storytelling, was an unusual challenge. I needed a tone for play that fit the dramatic needs of the story. I developed and wrote down the customs of gameplay alongside the rules themselves. I decided to include specific ways an apparent loser could gain a tremendous advantage by making an apparently crazy play in just the right circumstances. These are things you’d never do when writing a game to be released into the world as a game.
I’ve been thinking of the game design as a mountain range, and the story as a sea that covers parts of it. The game itself is only exposed to the reader in places where the water level is low enough. But with the whole mountain range more or less defined, as I get to parts of the story where I need to give the reader more or fewer specifics, I can just lower or raise the water level. That’s much easier than lowering the water level to discover—as I did when I was first working on the script—that there’s nothing down there, and certain swaths of story have stopped making sense.
All that said, for your amusement—and feedback, if you like—please feel free to download Rules and Customs for Playing the Game, version 1.0, as a PDF. As intimated above, the document itself is bare explanatory text. That said, you could mock it up and play it from just this. Naturally, I hope someone does; if you do, please report back! If you create a prototype, it would be swell if you’d post a link to any documents you create so others who are interested can check them out.
Without talking too much about the story that’s in the foreground of this game (Keep it secret! Keep it safe!), you wouldn’t be too far wrong to imagine a setting similar to that of Unknown Armies.
Enjoy!
Sounds interesting! I’m not sure if I’ll get a chance to test it out, but I did want to ask a point of clarification. One page 4, the 5th paragraph starts off with “Once the stones have been removed”, which pretty obviously refers to the 4th paragraph. What happens in the conditions of the first three paragraphs on page 4? Do heaven and earth switch roles, or do they keep the same roles?
It was my intention that the only way the roles reverse is for the earth to misrepresent his card play and be caught. So, it was intended that reversal only happens in the 4th paragraph’s case.
However, on re-reading, the 1st paragraph case is a lot like a misrepresentation, caught. I’d probably revise the rules to call for a reversal of earth and heavens in that case, as well.
Heya Jeff.
I was intrigued, and thus: I made cards.
My brother beat me to it: the board
So the only significant downside to the Heavens challenging a play by the Earth is if the Earth has played all blanks? Seems like you’d pretty much always challenge everything except a 1 card play. Especially if you had one of the three blanks. Is that by intent? That almost every play will be challenged?
The downside to failing an all-blank challenge is huge at the beginning of the game, though, when so many of the earth’s stones are in the outgoing cut. It amounts to an auto-loss, is my guess.
But yes, I was shooting for something like half to two-thirds or even three-quarters of plays challenged. Good or bad for actual play? I don’t know.
Having knowledge of where blank cards are becomes critical. If you have one in your own hand when you’re deciding whether to challenge gives you a lot of information. If you have two, that’s huge. Knowing that one or more are currently in the discard pile is equally useful, so memory of cards played becomes a factor.
Were you writing these as actual rules, I might suggest rephrasing them so that instead of coming away with the impression of “Heaven can pass OR he can challenge” it plays more as “Heaven challenges the play… although, if he wishes, he can choose to pass.” That said, such a semantic tweak is probably outside the scope of what you’re doing with this.
It also makes me wonder why anyone would throw a blank card away; they seem too valuable, and the risk of getting caught is so harsh… Is there any point in there being an advantage to playing a single blank card that *doesn’t* get challenged? But these are actual playtesting questions, and thus, again, outside your scope.
As far as a fictitious game being played in a film that only needs to be understood in the extent to which it is seen, this feels great to me. It feels like it has depth and options, and has an old school, classic game feel–I’d believe this game was played in China 3000 years ago.
I wouldn’t say that “actual playtesting questions” are outside the scope. Part of the hope is that the game stands on its own as a game; that we don’t have to suspend our disbelief that a game like this would be played by sensible humans. So I say it’s a fine objection.
The hope, as I recall, is that the earth might be forced to play a blank as part-but-not-all of a set of cards, due to the four-three-two-one way cards are played. But as it becomes clear in thinking about your note, you’d never be forced to do that. If your hand of ten contains one blank, you’d play it in the play-of-one. If two, in the play-of-two. If three, either both of those, or the play-of-three.
On the subject of movies built around nonsensical games, I point to Existenz, which is apparently about the worst LARP/RPG/VR game ever conceieved.
Playing this game will automatically generate dialog suitable for a Tim Powers novel. Mission: Accomplished.
Creating a game that exists to be the focus of a story vividly reminds me of of Iain M. Banks’s book The Player of Games with its fictional, society shaping game Azad or Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.
Jeff is the game intended to evoke a particular cultural feel? Is it supposed to feel like a game played by sages for many centuries, one that can be read at a deeper level (like Go), for example?
I’m not familiar with either of those stories, John. I’ll check them out.
As to your question about whether it’s meant to evoke a cultural feel, to a certain extant, That Would be Telling. My goal was that the game would feel baroque in each sense of that word—that it would have a sense of sophistication almost for its own sake, and also suggest its own historicity.
The gameplay and game elements are not intended to be read at a deeper level. (At least, not in the modern day. So, from a story standpoint, it’s not used like Assumption is, in Last Call). I wanted them to suggest that there’s something behind the gameplay going on, but not go so far as to intimate that the game, as it is played, corresponds to real events. That is, there is no “Ram,” “Hare,” or “Serpent” in the story.