The Dog Blog

Today I had this thing to write for school, a final exam take-home kind of thing. It involved British comic literature and applying this and that to several of the novels we’d read. Yadda yadda.

So I was walking Emmett around lunchtime, and I was trying to figure out how to relate this passage in Steppenwolf to… um, see? I’ve forgotten already. Oh yeah, A Severed Head, White Teeth and Lucky Jim. I was trying to do that on the walk.

I didn’t do that. This game idea barged into my head. I’ve been dwelling on this whole business of ‘immersion’ and Mo’s stuff about I/other and cognitive/impassioned, and I wanted this really simple flowy thing where you don’t have to stop and explain how your ‘role-playing’ connects to the rules. The only game that comes close is Polaris, and I can’t get past the hokey-sounding ritual phrases, but I like the idea of how it works.

Anyway, so this idea barged into my head, like I was saying. And don’t worry, I finished the paper thing, and it isn’t even due until Wednesday but I wanted to finish early. So this idea, it uses cards, right? Cards are cool because you can set them out in front of you and give everybody really clear vivid information. I think you have like five cards in your hand to start with. You have a sheet that explains what the suits are. They’re something like Moxie (clubs), Physique (hearts), Wits (spades) and Resolve (diamonds).

In play, when you’re narrating the fiction, you just say stuff your guy does, in character or via third-person or however you like, but the idea here is that it works well in character. If you want what you say to have some permanence, you can play a card or cards with it. You can say it without, but anyone can counter it with any card. But once you lay a card, someone else has to beat it. You can even do see-and-raise stuff like in Dogs.

How it’d work is each thing you do would have a suit pairing. Like to win a debate would be moxie and wits, so you could play either spades or clubs if you had them in your hand.

Your player sheet would have things that would allow you to draw new cards, play extra cards, that sort of thing. You would normally draw new cards whenever an opposing player played a card or cards. So if you go all out to do something and end up unopposed, you’re going to lose a few unless you check off some thingies on your sheet.

Sounds kinda cool, doesn’t it? If the rules were simple enough, you could express a lot with the cards and minimize metagame chatter. Plus if you always have cards, there’s no weird pause where we say, okay, looks like conflict. It’s conflict as soon as someone plays a card.