Performances and Costuming
Some mechanics require players to perform theatrics in front of other players. For instance, they may have to deliver a speech to win the favor of NPCs. Some characters may actually be performers, such as singers, actors or musicians. In Nanopunk: Tokyo, a game in 2003 written by Jay Muchnij, Jennifer Clay, Eddy Karat and I, number of characters were chefs, and another character was the host of the Iron Chef cooking competition. This required players to perform a variety of different staged roles on a simulated television show.
Some players may feel empathy for their characters when they are preparing for their performances; stage fright can be a powerful experience for players. However, when they are actually performing, players tend to think more about the details of the performance, not about their characters. This is particularly true if the style of performance tends to hide the traits of the characters, such as drama. It is easier for a player to perform a theatrical role than for a player to pretend to be a character performing a theatrical role, and the nuances of expression between the two would be lost on most Guild members.
The chief benefit of in-game performances is for the audience rather than for the performers. Performance mechanics often require players to act quite differently from their normal patterns, or even their characters’ normal patterns. The spectacle effectively communicates to an audience that the performance is firmly rooted in the reality of the game world. It means little to the audience whether the characters or the players are the people singing on the stage. All that matters is that they are audiences of some sort of in-game show, presented with an in-game spectacle and surrounded by other members of an in-game audience who are sharing in that same experience.
Many games require players to perform “rituals� to achieve some in-game effects. These rituals visibly communicate the occurrence of an important game event: the approaching success of a player’s goals, an impending change to the game world, or some alteration among all the participants of the ritual. Many rituals also have requirements for some sort of performance, such as a chant or speech. This brings the informative property of the mechanic well into the game reality. Players chancing upon a performance ritual not only see opponents achieving their goals but may also hear characters calling out the names of evil gods. Thus, when they decide, “this is bad, we should stop them,� they make that decision both as a player and as a character.
Many GMs encourage costuming and many players go to great lengths to prepare costumes for their roles. Some games even grant players certain advantages in the game if they take the effort to costume. Like performance mechanics, this tends to improve the verisimilitude of the game world for other players who actually see the costumed characters, encouraging them to interact directly with the fictional characters, not with the players pretending to be characters. It is worth noting that the process of dressing up may help players get into character, and costumes that change a player’s posture or the way they move can be an effective physiological reminder for the player.
By that same token, however, costumes and costume props can quickly become uncomfortable. As a game wears on, hats come off, gloves are removed and suits and dresses are replaced with t-shirts and jeans. Sometimes, it can take a little sleight of hand to encourage players to keep using costume props. When designing A New Deal, I wanted the players to pretend to smoke as often as characters would in a film noir movie, which is to say, incessantly. However, it is very difficult to convince twenty non-smokers to keep a stick in their mouths for hours on end. Even edible candy cigarettes required more persuasion.
The key was to appeal to the competitive spirit of Guild players. The rules stated that characters would be a little harder to kill if they were shot or stabbed with a cigarette in their mouth. As a result, players kept candy cigarettes in their mouths at all times, not wishing to lose the competitive edge that came with the props. However, once they had the incentive to keep the candy cigarettes around at all times, the players began to play, gesture and flirt with the white sticks of sugar. Once players discovered that the candy browned nicely over a flame, lights were offered as openers to conversation. Players have remarked that the ever-present cigarettes played an important part in making the entire experience more “cinematic,� which is good for a game based on a genre of film.
This is an example where a competitive mechanic (combat bonuses) satisfied tensions of verisimilitude (cigarettes in a film noir setting) by giving players a way to identify with their characters (a reliance on cigarettes) even though they did not have the abilities of their characters (smoking). Competition can be an extremely powerful tool for steering player activity in a variety of ways but describing the value of competition in the Guild games will require another chapter.
