Intrigue games! How wonderful are intrigue games? Everyone nods and winks and everyone has a completely different take on what is going on and we’re all wrong. Even the one of us running it.
The thing is a good intrigue game needs a good way to do cloak and dagger communication. And sometimes high-tech is no good (due to say, not being a technologically advanced setting. Or having masochistic players that don't like to make things easy. Not that I’m admitting anything).
So here’s a corner of an idea to think about - use games. We all (I) have seen the awesome (awful) scene in Fortress 2 where a mafioso is masterfully (ham-handedly) given a break out plan by christopher lambert (christopher lambert). Or that bit in that James Bond film where they talk about the meaning of a tarot card. Or a dozen other examples, some of which seem like more natural fits than others.
But how would this work?
Well, if I’m going to be honest, I’m not entirely sure. That first post and how nothing is worthwhile in and of itself? Yeah. But I guess you start by looking at the games in very simple terms. Take from the chess example in fortress 2 the idea of contact as a way of saying what IS the message. What else does chess have? Hierarchy, opposition, and a clear goal. In feudal systems? It has class system, strategic reference. These are the things. And well, this is for evocation. Your game doesn’t need a full game of correspondence chess, or even a set piece. Which can cut a lot of that ham-fisted fortress 2 scene out in favour of telling the sufficiently intelligent player that a piece is being left exposed as you give the dialogue about repercussions, or unfortunate accidents or or or.
But lets boil it down further. Remember the good bit of assassin’s creed 3? That other zero-sum piece taking game [Fanorona] ? Remember how it boiled down to two moves - towards and away? Thats a perfect system for talking in binary. You want to encourage something, you take with a towards action. To discourage is the opposite. That you can go into as much and explore freely.
The more your players are into games and game theory the more this can develop, but in all likelihood you probably don’t want to go too far into it with that one guy at the table, so keep it nice and broad, boil it down to some simple rules and basic innate properties of the game you are playing. Some games will lend themselves more readily than others. For instance, a personal favourite - Cards.
Cards are wonderful for codification. Take your ordinary deck of playing cards, remove the jokers. 52 Cards, divided into 4 suits. Thats a procession of a standard year. They have a hierarchical structure, you can divide them into factions readily and have equivalent positions. In various countries the suits were associated with different classes (this dates back a while, so it might be best not to think in hearts,diamonds etc and start going a little old school - wands/staves, pentacles/coins , swords and that sort of thing). In French and italian in broke down simply -> Wands as peasants, coins as merchants, cups as clergy and swords as nobles. In Germany coins and swords get reversed. Which makes a kind of sense, though I’m not well-read enough to sufficiently articulate why.
The best bit about codification in cards? It was already a done thing. There was a german card game called hofamterspiel dealing with the inter-relationships of feudal germany (http://www.wopc.co.uk/austria/hofamterspiel.html) , and an italian one which was about virtues , arts and sciences (http://www.wopc.co.uk/italy/mantegna.html) . There was even a man who used cards as memory aids for his systems of law and logic (this is of course, because listening to a man talk for hours…. you’re going to remember him finishing and starting. Then you get a card evoking things with visual art, giving it a primacy… synaptic links. Codification isn’t just about conspiracy. Though try letting your wizard explain that hr isn’t playing solitaire, and is actually trying to remember the right level of fireball that he won’t kill the barbarian…)
When we look at tarot, things get even more fun. You see papess cards invoking a joke at the expense of the catholic church (and in one case there’s even the suggestion that the papess was actually meant to supplant the authority of the pope) . You get concepts as cards in the arcana , from the hermit (who can be time, or the sage. Or both) to the hanged man, to death itself. So you have simultaneously this wonderful hierarchical system , and also these cards dealing with ideas beyond the standard structure of hierarchy, which could also have inverted meanings. Another fun strange one - the use of aspect ratios. If you look towards any deck of playing cards you will see a golden rectangle . Now, real history basically boils down to it looks quite nice. But lets take it to a point where the standardising of deck manufacture isn't really a factor. A deck with that would mean that you or your designer were mathematical types. And well, math and geometry and secret societies and magic have a nice happy huggy history...
Here is where I jump off the diving board into pure fantasy of the worst hollywood history kind. What about using them as a clandestine calling card? You have a hierarchy up to trumps, a system for communicating instruction in the arcana, the surviving cards of the visconti sforza decks are all made from expensive material, according to handmade, incredibly detailed patterns according to woodcuttings. That sounds to me like a challenge to forgery. They were banned in a fair bit of europe from time to time, but played nonetheless in simple trick taking games (fun hiding in plain sight) . And this is without looking at using fortune telling set ups for conspiracy purposes.
I’m not sure, any ideas on the use of cards or other games for information?
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