- sit with their chair turned away from the table, their back to players/DM
- turn their character sheet upside down and interact with it in that way
- any notes or writing they do must be in something ridiculously hard
to read like yellow crayon, or highlighter - no writing allowed, they must remember anything they would normally make note of
- no talking allowed, either communication by note, or by gestures
- blindfold
- all dice must be rolled with off hand
- if using minis, must substitute their character's with a troll (unless troll use considered normal)
- sit in another room calling out their player actions
- write down plans of action for combat/npc interaction etc., give them to DM and then they must abide by those exact actions when the situations arise
- always last to act in order of battle
- finger puppets
Any other ideas?
Not gonna lie, if a GM imposed any of those 'enforced isolation' effects on me without prior consent, I would leave the table. Gaming is a super-social activity for me and anything that forcibly cut me off from that for some sort of verisimilitude would piss me off to no end.
ReplyDeleteI do very much like the off-hand dice rolling and the highlighter notes. I end up reading a lot of stuff upside-down, so the character sheet flip might not affect me as much. :)
I agree with Jamie. For it to work, it needs to be annoying but in a "fun" context, lest it simply alienates the player(s). Another fun one might be to restrict the number of words you can use in any given sentence.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm totally on the same page. This was just my unedited brain dump.
ReplyDeleteAt some point I guess you just have to trust the imaginations of the players even if fear, sleep, paralysis, and paralyzation are pretty much functionally equivalent. Thanks for the comments.
@Doc Johnson: Like Og! If you've never read Og, try and get your hand on a copy. It's the RPG of playing Hollywood-style cavemen and as a result, everyone has a limited vocabulary with which to convey their actions.
ReplyDeleteThe offhand rule is cool but I don't think it's the sort of thing that would represent an effect except for a really specific curse, like perhaps a holy magic item where the deity associated with it becomes furious at the lack of respect if it is ever carried below the shoulder.
ReplyDeleteSo if the player forgets to roll with the off hand for anything, it represents them letting their mind slip and lowering it, with smites-a-plenty.
The other things remind me a little bit too much of "Chaos Orb" in MtG or similar. Fun for the right sort of game though, good ideas.