Silent Story

[Nathan Herrold]

So, I've been thinking about a communication game that you play without speaking or seeing a person's facial expression.
At first I pictured it played by people wearing black see-thru hoods, made out of something like silk.  You'd be able to see out of it, but other players would have a tough time seeing facial expression.  You'd also wear a headband that you'd velcro colored tiles onto. These tiles would show their emotional states.  If need be players could be gagged, but that may be a bit much.
I was thinking I'd use  Plutchik's Wheel of Emotionsalong with a limited palette of colors.
I'm still wondering how to include action + emotion along with reaction + emotion.
This all came out of me wondering how much of communication is purely verbal and recognizing facial movements.
Thank you

[Callan S.]

Your trying to emulate play by post gaming, at the table top?
*wah wah wah waaaaah*

Or to be serious, have you considered just playing by IRC or such?

[Nathan Herrold]

I'm thinking dressing up like some kind of wacky performance art would be cooler, also more immediate.
I'm thinking in practice, it'd be alot like mime, without the goofball facial expressions.
Instead you'd wear this goofball hood and a weird marker showing your current emotional state.
I'm curious about communication, not just online communication.
...and what the fuck is "post gaming"?
Oh, gaming by forum or email, not like post-rock or post-modernism.
I get ya.
No. because in online communication, you do alot of informing and not-so much communicating.
So, it'd kinda be the opposite of that...they'd be very little informing.
Also, I don't see it happening much with the players simply sitting down and facing each other across a table or a living room.
It'd be very awesome if it looked from the outside like weird mime or noh theature. 
With big sweeping gestures.

[Nathan Herrold]

So, there's no talking, I'm nto sure if I made that clear enough.
I'm thinking it may be set up like a Jeepform thing, but perhaps simplier.
There'd be a story that would link all of the players together.
Players would read a little bit about what's happened to them, a tiny bit of backstory.
Like "You lost your dog".
Someone else would have "You stole someone's dog" or "You found someone's dog", something like that.
Everyone's stories would be interconnected beforehand, but they'd have very little information beyond the little sentence they read.
I'm visualizing the stories all fitting together like the letters in hangman.
I'm also thinking about a way to win random words from a hat or something.

[Vulpinoid]

So let me get this straight.

The players mime their intended actions and flavour the mimetic actions with a coloured spot on their foreheads to indicate emotional connotations.

It'd be a great way to roleplay a session about a completly alien species, because it would really enforce a different mind-set onto the players.

Would there be any kind of writing allowed during the course of the game? Or would the action purely be through the medium of mime?

At the moment it's looking a lot more like an exercise in a theatre class than a roleplaying session. I'm just trying to work out a way that this concept can be grounded in a form of narrative that everyone shares, or even trying to justify how a competitive angle could emerge.

It would certainly be an interesting experiment to watch in action.

V

[Luke]

Hey Nathan,

What's your game about? What's the point of it, not the setting.

How is your game about that? What do the players do in the game to reinforce the point?

-L

[Nathan Herrold]

Luke,
It seems more like an experiment for myself than a game with a simple theme.
I'm curious about communication, especially nonverbal.
Maybe the goal is to win words?
But what qualifies someone to win a word?
I'll try and just answer your questions...
What's it about? - It's a game about telling a story without talking.(<if it's really about this, maybe you shouldn't win words)
What's the point of it? - Do you mean like endgame stuff, capture the king, kill bigger creatures type of stuff?  I'm not sure.  Maybe the writer of the connected sentences, leaves a part missing, letting the players try and find what's missing?
How is your game about that? - ?
What do the players do in the game to reinforce the point? -
So, either a game ends with a player taking the last word, or a player finding the missing sentence?  Maybe every player has a missing piece, and if another player brings it to the correct player, they get a word?
I'm not sure.

[Bert]

Hi Nathan,

Very odd, but interesting.

This all came out of me wondering how much of communication is purely verbal and recognizing facial movements.

I work a lot with communication theory, which is rooted in information theory. Lots of research has already been done on this kind of thing. Only about 7% of the information transmitted in verbal communication is what you actually say. About 38% is how you say it - tone, modulation etc. A whopping 55% is what you do while you're saying it - body language, facial expressions, gestures, eye contact etc.

Without actually speaking you immediately lose 45% of the information that's transmissible. This leaves you with body language, of which facial expressions and eye contact are a key component - with the hoods you wouldn't get much of the remaining 55%.

Here's a random idea based on yours with communications theory in mind:

Purgatory

Everybody plays a person who's died in a plane crash (or maybe how they all died at the same time is something that needs to be figured out...) and they're in some kind of limbo. Jolly eh? Each player writes a 100 word (?) background about their character; gender, occupation, an area of personal guilt, something they want to tell another player (rather, another players character) and their fictional relationship to 2 (?) other players. Something like that. Players write a number of key words on cards some are good (highlight in green) some are bad (highlight in red).

People take turns being the Interpreter - draw straws for who starts. The Interpreter can can speak, gesture, draw diagrams or whatever, but they can't talk about their background. Their role is to try and interpret everyone else, asking questions and recording information and piecing together the relationships etc.

Each player (mute) takes turns trying to communicate with the Interpreter, maybe for a limited time - egg timer? When the time runs out, the active role passes to the mute player on your right and the time is reset. When the interpreter says a good key word, the player with the good key word automatically becomes the interpreter - and the previous interpreter becomes a mute. If the interpreter says a bad key word, the player loses an aspect of their ability to communicate - either gestures (hands on table) or facial expressions (hood). If you get another bad key word, you swap.

The object of the game is to figure out everybody's relationship to each other, communicate everything that needs to be communicated and turn it into a story (?). If an interpreter figures out a mutes story, that mute leaves limbo and becomes a permanent Interpreter / angel - whatever. The Interpreter gets all their remaining good key words for when they return to mutedom.

Anyway, its just a random, half-formed brain dump so feel free to flush it. Hope this all helps you figure out where you want to take this. And good luck explaining what you're doing if somebody walks in unexpectedly on you with a bunch of grunting, gesticulating people wearing hoods and gags!

Bert

[Nathan Herrold]

Thanks Bert.
I know, it'd look a bit like gitmo.
I've been thinking that it may be neat to have everyone be missing something.
Beyond that, really nothing new to add.

Luke's three questions are great!
I'm just not sure how helpful they are.
I'm not sure if I could answer them even with games I know quite well, like tag, backgammon, chess or go.