Game Design: Prototyping "pride"
Some sample output from our Game Design prototyping session earlier this evening. (Explanation and rules after the jump.)
Activity: Freedom Fighter. Constraint: "yesterday"My skill as a freedom fighter is unmatched. Why, I freed the repressed peoples of like seventeen countries just yesterday. Day before that? Nineteen countries, and a Southern state. I won't tell you which one. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Activity: Pig Farmer. Constraint: "as the volcano erupted"
I take care of my pigs better than anyone. I've rescued them from hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and tornadoes the likes of which would make my fellow pig farmers tremble in their muck-covered boots. Once, when I was a pig farmer in Hawaii, I saved a pig from certain doom on the slopes of Mauna Kea... as the volcano erupted, I held that sow in my arms, and she whispered into my ear: "I love you..."
Activity: Limousine Driver. Constraint: "having only lost three toes"
I take dangerous jobs that other limousine drivers would never consider—jobs they'd never even hear about. I'm exclusive. I've driven limos in war-torn nations, in the deepest darkest jungles, across burning deserts, through the bleak Antarctic wastes. Once I drove Michael Jordan all the way up the Amazon. Michael, having lost only three toes (to the ravenous piranha) during the course of the trip, proclaimed me the best limousine driver ever.
Matt, Zannah, Tiger and I began prototyping our game for the latest Game Design assignment earlier tonight. Our assignment is to create a game that induces a feeling of pride in its players. We talked for a while about the various meanings of the word "pride," and discussed a few game mechanics that we were interested in playing with. We ended up concocting a game that's essentially a cross between Apples to Apples, Once Upon a Time and frontin'. It was kind of fun.
Here's how it works. We wrote down a number of activities and professions on some index cards. Each player takes a turn being the "judge"; the goal of the game is to convince the judge that you're better than everyone else in the world at whatever is on the activity/profession card for that round. The catch is that each player has a number of constraint cards, which contain words and phrases that you must use in the course of your braggadocio.
In the most successful version of the game we playtested, players had a two minute session before each round to write a short script. (The fronting above comes from an elaborated transcription of my scripts.) I'd love to make a version of the game that is played more extemporaneously, with a few more mechanisms for interrupting and creating a sense of oneupsmanship (maybe like interrupt cards in Once Upon a Time). All in all, though, it was a lot of fun for a first draft.