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Rituals
51 Plays1 year ago
In the second episode of Tabletop Tune Up, Mark and Ben explore the fascinating world of Rituals in RPG gameplay. Rituals are the subtle customs and routines that imbue our games with regularity, structure, suspense, and moments of release. From the ritualistic ways we begin and end sessions, to the suspenseful moments of rolling initiative or revealing plot twists, these rituals shape the cadence and atmosphere of our tabletop adventures. Join us as we uncover how Rituals can enhance immersion, build anticipation, and foster deeper engagement among players and game masters alike. Whether you're looking to refine existing rituals or introduce new ones to your gaming group, this episode offers practical advice and creative ideas to elevate your RPG experience to a new level of storytelling mastery.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Are you a new Game Master who is nervous about running a first game? Are you an experienced Game Master who wants to improve with new insights and fresh thinking? Well, we're here to help you with the Tabletop Tuneup.
00:00:30
Speaker
Hey, welcome to Tabletop Tune Up. My name is Mark, and I'm here with my friend Ben, and we're here to tune up your games. That's right. On Tabletop Tune Up, we're going to offer you, the GM, an opportunity to think through great ideas, to think through submissions you send to us. We'll talk about that a little bit
Feedback and Theme Music Discussion
00:00:47
Speaker
later. And today we're going to talk about rituals. But ah before we get to that, ah two little items of business. Number one, we would love it if you would give us some comments, give us a rating. Let us know what you think of the podcast and ah we'd love to hear from you. Secondly, Mark, that's a different title track than we had last week. What's up?
00:01:06
Speaker
That's just some synth-ing goodness. Came straight out of the 80s, Ben. I don't know if you ever heard that hit track. It's called Tabletop Tune Up. I dig that synthwave sound, so that's great stuff. Now, last week it was Anthem Rock. This week it's synthwave. We don't know. We don't know what's coming. Who knows what next week will be. It doesn't get much better than Night Rider,
Exploring Rituals in Games
00:01:24
Speaker
though. Well, this week we're going to talk about rituals. Well, what is a ritual, Mark? Well, that's a good question. If you think about rituals just in general in life, you could think of things like, I don't know, bar mitzvahs, vows at marriage. But like for me, I always think of things like sports and entertainment when I think about rituals. I think they're a little bit more in line with what we're talking about in games, right? Yeah, so rituals can take on all kinds of different things. I think historical sense is in that religious sense you were talking about. But then there's informal senses of that too. So we've got them in sports. We've got them in entertainment. So there's different like catch phrases like when Arnold says, I'll be back. That's a kind of ritual.
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah. And like, you know, in storytelling, when you look at a book, it says like once upon a time. Yeah. Rituals in storytelling go a long way back. I mean, you can find these all the way back in Homer as he's talking about Rosie Fingered Dawn or the Wine Dark Sea. And so we actually are are in good company when we think about incorporating rituals into our game. So what's an example of a of a game ritual or or why would you want to have a ritual in your game? Let's answer that second question first, I think. Why would you want to? I think one of the things about rituals is they kind of bring people together. that's I think the main purpose of the ritual
00:02:42
Speaker
And I think that like bringing them together in like a group format, in a group sense, a togetherness. um When you do it in sports, you know, the huddle where you all put your hands in, that is like bringing everybody in together on a focus. When you say, how do you want to do this, as Matt Mercer would say, that's kind of bringing not only the people at the table together, but the people listening are now leaning in. Well, that's great. So now we have some examples that we're thinking of probably. So what are some other examples? You started with ah the finishing move, the ah famous Matt Mercer. How do you want to do this line when he signals the defeat of a foe and gives the player a moment of agency to narrate how they're going to take out this villain? um What are some other rituals that gamers have? I think I can think of a couple, but what's give me one that comes to mind for you.
00:03:31
Speaker
Well, my friend Jeff used to always start his games with when last we met our intrepid adventure. And I don't think it's an uncommon one. I think other people have used it. But for whatever reason, that always kind of snapped us to attention and got us ready to play the game. Do rituals always have to be spoken things or is it just the act of doing a recap? Would that count as a ritual too? I think it could. The act of doing a recap is a ritual. It's it's setting your mind into a space to which you're gonna enjoy whatever activity you're gonna be doing. you know When you go to a church service, they're gonna sing a song and it's not gonna be the same song every week, right? But that's the act of singing that's gonna bring people into that next stage. And so when we're talking about recap, it's the act of the recap.
00:04:21
Speaker
There's rituals that you could apply to all kinds of different moments of a game. So we've talked about the moment where you're in combat and you've just beaten a foe. ah The recap is something you might do at the beginning. Something we might do along the way might be something you call Trail Talk. This is one of my favorite rituals that you have. Tell us about what Trail Talk is. I'm not a big fan of random encounters, as you know, Ben. So I like to kind of fill those with other things. When you're on a journey, you're going to be asking maybe a question of when you're a friend. So what we do is we roll the dice.
00:04:53
Speaker
somebody gets selected and they get asked in character a question to another player who's going to respond in character. It's just a way to kind of instigate some humorous talk or maybe some serious talk, just a way to kind of get characters talking a little bit and to pass a little bit of time and have that
Trail Talk Ritual and Session Endings
00:05:11
Speaker
moment. One of the things I like about that ah little ritual that you do is that it gives players a chance to talk about their character or to reveal things about their character's backstory or personality that a lot of the time you don't really have an opportunity to do. Players
00:05:26
Speaker
get an opportunity to shine in combat when they take a turn and they roll a dice, maybe if they do well, things go well, that's great. But it's pretty rare that like players actually have a moment to, in character, say, oh, well, the things we did just reminded me of that villain that I suffered at the hands of those years ago, or imprisonment way back when. Whatever it is that's in their backstory that wouldn't otherwise have a chance to come out, that can come out when you do this. Yeah, it's it's ah it's a fun way to kind of also bring some people out of their shell a little bit. If you got kind of a, maybe a player is a little shy, not as talkative, you can engage them in something like that. Maybe them just asking a question is enough of a starter for them to start feeling comfortable answering a question.
00:06:13
Speaker
I really like that because with the how do you want to do this, the finisher move, that's what this looks like in combat. You're giving a chance for a player to come out of their shell, as you say, and to offer something. I also like this idea of doing that when they're on the road. A lot of the time people consider travel time is just downtime, wasted time. This is something that you could also do when everybody's convened and has a an evening to have a meal and maybe sleep and if what's in your head is like kind of your standard Dungeons and Dragons party that's great but this could also be travel time in a starship as you're traveling between star systems it could also be
00:06:49
Speaker
time in the airplane as you're moving across the globe in a modern espionage game or something like that, right? ah This kind of model will work in all of those settings. And so both the finisher and the connector are neat ways to bring players into the game a little bit more. There's one actually that I like a lot too, which is the cliffhanger, the farewell. I think one of my favorite bits is to look for that moment in a combat or look for that moment when an enemy might jump out of of an ambushing spot somewhere where you can raise the tension immediately and then end the session where the players want to really get into that next moment. But nope, we're going to do that next week.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of, you know, the old, um, dukes of hazard where they'd always end up with a car jumping in the air and he goes, well, it looks like the Duke boys got themselves in the pickle. Let's see what happens next week. The freeze frame was that bit of torture. You'd have to wait until they came back. And we kind of like doing the freeze frame if we can. I'm always looking at that clock thinking about how I'm going to end my game on a note to which I can give off a good farewell. It doesn't always happen. We'd like it to always happen, but we should certainly go for it. Yeah. And I think something that's neat about that too, is that it doesn't have to be a big dramatic thing. It doesn't have to be the villain jumping out at the players. It doesn't have to be some big event. It could be just something that a player says. You can actually in some ways almost
00:08:14
Speaker
crowdsource that. If the player has a realization and all of a sudden they say,
Creating and Balancing Game Rituals
00:08:17
Speaker
wait a minute, I think there's no way out. Aha, there you go. Jump in right then. That's your moment to stop the session. If you're, again, I mean, if you're within 10, 15 minutes or whatever, I normally don't think to myself, oh, we really have to play out the time. I'm like, cool. That was it. That was the best ending I'm going to get in this next 15 minutes. And we stop and get ready for next week. think about why that kind of cliffhanger can make for a ritual in the traditional sense is that it is something that kind of brings people together. They're all ending on this kind of like moment where we're all had that kind of anticipation and excitement together and it carries over into the next week. Well, this is great. So we've talked about a lot of different kinds of rituals and
00:09:02
Speaker
there are many more kinds of rituals people can have. I think the next thing we need to do is we need to talk about how do you create rituals. So Mark, when you're thinking about rituals, do you do you intentionally create them or do players make them and you kind of grab onto them or is this coming from storytelling conventions of some kind? What do you think? There are some that you can create right out the gate and make it work, but there are also some that come along through natural gameplay. So keep your eyes open for those moments and things that people might gravitate toward naturally. I'll give you an example though of maybe one that I use in my games and I use it every week and we do an intro. We always start with an intro. One of the players is responsible for writing that intro. In in our Western game, we always do it in the voice of this kind of Western narrator. So the Western narrator is somebody who's got that dukes of hazard narrator voice or they sound like they might be
00:09:54
Speaker
might have come from the Firefly set, maybe. Yeah, we're all just kind of like trying to write a little intro in that kind of voice. So we kind of have this consistency throughout the the campaign as we move along. And that's one of the rituals we've developed in one of my games. ah To some extent, it's worked out really well. And there's some ah problems with that, which we can discuss a little bit later about why a ritual like that might be problematic in some cases. But what about you, Ben? What kind of rituals do you enjoy? When I'm thinking about rituals, what I'm looking for is anywhere where I can elevate the game mechanics. And in a certain sense, use that to embellish story. So in a sense, it's a little bit of an abstraction. But without making that sound weird and mysterious, just think about what Matt Mercer does when he says, how do you want to do this? Hold on hold on right there, Ben. We're going to owe him some money if we keep using that. where we got That's the last time we're going to use that. We owe him $5. Don't we every time we say it?
00:10:49
Speaker
I hope not. I mean, others have said that first. And, you know, he made it famous. Let's be clear about that. lets Be careful. Tread carefully. All right. Let's not get lawyers involved. No. So here's the thing, right? What I am working on creating rituals, what I'm looking for is an opportunity to lift and embellish game mechanics with some element of story. Imagine it's I get out my bow and arrow and I shoot the monster, roll dice, roll some more dice. OK, cool. Monster's dead. What would you like to do next? Or it goes onto the next player's turn, right? This is a very strict mechanical way of talking about the sort of transactional elements of the game mechanics.
00:11:26
Speaker
But how much more interesting is it for everybody if it's you reach back and you pull out the bow made of horn and ivory? You draw back the string in the sinew. You can feel it in the in the tips of your fingers and you you exhale and you release that arrow. It sails true through the eye of the goblin. You can go further with that. So the point is is that those are the the ways that we describe what happens in the story that the mechanics are telling. and so I'm gonna look for any moment where there's something going on mechanically that people would either pass over or that people might kind of get bored with or that, frankly, should be dramatic. An old GM used to do this trick to us. You would start with your rogue and you'd approach the door. As you get there, you'd break out your toolkit and you would work on that lock. And you'd say, why don't you roll a perception to see if there's a trap there?
00:12:21
Speaker
And so you roll your perception and then he would say after you fail he would say you failed to find the trap. That was his line every time. There may or may not have been a trap in that door. But he would say you failed to find the trap which sounds like there is a trap there and it's just that you failed to find it. Yeah, you would say it every time. Uh, so yeah, look for opportunities to embellish your game mechanics with story elements and give your players agency. That's the other thing that the trail talk and the finishing narration does is it gives players a chance to participate in the telling of the story. What about like trigger phrases, you know, like things that you would want to repeat? Like we always say roll for initiative. Is there a better way to say something like that? This is a great note, right? I think when you have these kind of stock phrases people use again, ah I don't want to involve the lawyers. so
00:13:09
Speaker
will only refer to M.M. and his typical way of finishing a bad guy. But yeah, I mean, you could have all kinds of different phrases you use. Instead of role for initiative, it could be battle is upon you, role for initiative. Yeah, like you could have in different genres, it could be like saddle up, you know, if you're playing in the Western. In a sci-fi setting, it could be something like phasers on stun. It could be something like, well, it's time to see if the force is with you. Well, initiative, you could do you could do all kinds of stuff. Yeah, definitely think about the genre of game you're playing and how you can make that work for you and work for your game. If rituals are really about helping you tell the story, then you want to make sure that whatever rituals you come up with are embedded in the tropes and the assumptions of that narrative and that setting. So we've been talking about rituals and all the great things that they are and that they do and how to create them.
00:13:57
Speaker
ah When you're creating rituals, though, there are probably some things you want to avoid as well. Number one, I'll offer this thought. Don't make it something that happens at someone's expense or the belittles or disrespect someone. Whenever you fail a dice roll, if you look over at that one player and be like, ah, thanks, so and so, like there's some sort of karma sink and they've just screwed up your dice roll or those kinds of rituals are things that make people feel bad. And pretty soon that guy won't be showing up at your table anymore. What are some other things that you would avoid when creating rituals, Mark? Well, a big one for me is I don't like the ritual, whatever we're doing to disrupt the tone of the game. The ritual itself should complement the tone of the game, not disrupt it. So if your ritual is adding a trombone womp womp to your horror fantasy, womp womp. Yeah, maybe leave the womp womp at home. Maybe that's not the game to add levity to. So let's just think about that.
00:14:49
Speaker
I'd say also, rituals should be something that if you're asking players to participate in them, we've talked about how there's some real value in helping players come out of the show a little bit, but you also have to be sensitive to what they're going to be ready to do with you. So, for example, if you had a song at the beginning of every session, I really hope everybody in that group likes singing. If they do, great, wonderful. but You might find out that there are people who don't like doing that and then the ritual becomes really uncomfortable and awkward for them. You don't want that. Yeah, you never played World of Darkness, the musical. On that note, also, let's avoid rituals that are hardship. You know, asking for a written intro from a player each week could encroach on their time.
00:15:29
Speaker
And you know earlier I talked about how we write an intro every week for our game. And there are some times we've had a week where it's just too much of a hardship for somebody. And so let's go easy on that person and realize that we all have lives. So it it might work. Just talk to your group beforehand. Have a discussion about what kind of ritual, if that's a ritual that everybody's ah on board with. And go with it if that's the case. Otherwise, maybe try something else. Rituals can take lots of different forms, and so the kind of hardships that might mean could be different. The kinds of comfort levels people might have might be different. So I think this is a good note to highlight a principle that's always useful, regardless of what topic range. Maybe the number one rule for GMs is listen to your players.
00:16:14
Speaker
If your players aren't into a ritual, make sure you know that. Make sure you ask, make sure that everybody's having fun with that, and that it is really great.
Ritual Recap and Listener Submissions
00:16:22
Speaker
Otherwise, it's just going to be you trying to do something that nobody else wants to follow in, and it's not going to be great. So let's ah let's just recap it real quick. So number one, rituals can be great. They're a time-honored practice of storytelling. Things like stock phrases, such as once upon a time, or how do you want to do this, are things that we use all the time in these kinds of games. Some of the rituals that we identified for you are things like the recap, when last we left our intrepid adventurers that focuses people on the game. There's the finisher, the how do you want to do this that invites people to narrate the end bit of a fight that they're having with someone. There's the connector, we talked about trail talk, which is when we give players the opportunity to make use of some of that downtime they have.
00:17:07
Speaker
And then we've also talked about the farewell or the cliffhanger, which is when we end on a strong phrase or on a surprise for the players that creates anticipation for the next week. We've talked a little bit about creating rituals and how some of that might be crowdsourced if the players have their own things that they like to do or ways that they like to play together. We've talked a little bit about how a great ritual is one that embellishes game mechanics with elements of story and player agency. and how important it is for trigger phrases that you want to repeat. Then also remember, there are some things you want to avoid when creating rituals. um Don't make them something that disrespects or belittles somebody. Don't let them disrupt the tone of your game or the genre that you're playing in. Don't do things that people aren't comfortable with. And finally, avoid rituals that are onerous or kind of a hardship.
00:17:54
Speaker
Before we close out this topic, I'd like to invite you all to share your rituals. If you discover some, if you create some, we'd like to hear about them, and we'd like to hear how they're going. Go ahead and email us at tabletoptuneup at gmail dot.com, and we'll look for your email with those rituals. And now, Mark, I think we have something special
Enhancing Listener Ideas: Hidden Villain NPC
00:18:13
Speaker
this week. We're introducing for our own new ritual, our first tune-up segment. Tell us, what is the tune-up segment going to be? Well, so this is going to be kind of a reoccurring segment where we take ah an idea from you, the listener, and we're going to try to ah turn that up a little bit. you know We're going to take it from a 10 to an 11. We're going to try anyway. That's great. um It could be an encounter or it could be an NPC or some aspect of world building or anything else that's something that you do as a GM. We're going to brainstorm some new ideas that you can use or not use. It's fine. We hope that that makes this idea even better for you and give you some new places to go with it.
00:18:52
Speaker
work who's our first tune-up coming to us from then our first tune-up comes from our friend captivator who submits this idea for an interesting npc what you want you read this out all right. So let's imagine a surprise bad guy who seems like a nice NPC at the start of the campaign. A simple lower class NPC in the lands of the local lord where your party meets up. Not a major player in the storyline, just always on the fringes as the group meets up at an inn or purchases potions and weapon upgrades in town. Harmless enough. Even a bit helpful or funny at times. But somehow the real bad guys always know what the party is planning. Ambushes abound.
00:19:30
Speaker
And it's only over time that the villainous scene have a more nefarious than beneficial interest in the party's progress, and his or her appearance in the penultimate fight as the lieutenants start falling, feeling a shocking and devastating blow to the cleric or the paladin of the party, comes as a mighty surprising blow to the entire party, making them question everything they thought they knew, both as characters and as players, about how stories go. This is our our hidden villain, the innocuous NPC, who is revealed later in the game. How would you how would you tune this up, Mark? I like this idea. This is like something that I would really chew on as a GM. First of all, I would not treat this as a minor player in a storyline. I would think of this as a major. It might start minor, but let's plant a seed. And you know what? I'd probably start out with this NPC. I'd probably start this NPC out a little, little unassuming, maybe even a little bumbling, maybe a drunkard, maybe somebody who's just a little in the drags of society that the group maybe rescues.
00:20:30
Speaker
I like that there's a way to generate sympathy for this guy. Yeah, it also kind of makes them think that this person's harmless. you know As a GM, you got to think about like how players look at your NPCs. They're always looking at which ones are going to be future villains. you know They're always sizing these up. When you give this character a name as a GM, you almost want to make up a name on the spot or at least pretend you're making up a name on the spot to show how little you've thought about this character. I love that. I love the idea that in that moment, you're playing the players, not the game. Yeah, this is next level stuff, guys. It's for D chess. Yeah. And also, ah ah think about the most important thing about is think about this character's motivations.
00:21:12
Speaker
What is this character all about? Let's just imagine ah this lower-class NPC. Maybe he hates the Lord, or whoever you're working for, and he's working to subvert that person. He could be feeding bad information to the players. He could be causing their sympathies to be spread out amongst different factions. Something I like about this as well is that this person seems kind of forgettable. The thing you also need to do is somebody who's going to be like that. is You need to have other forgettable NPCs. If I go into the bar, it's a bunch of NPCs that I don't really name. And then it's Morton over there, who's supposed to be the forgettable NPC. But he is the only named guy here aside from your party members. And he's going to become memorable. And he's not going to seem like scenery. He's going to seem like somebody who may actually have a purpose in the story. So it would be good to have
00:22:04
Speaker
say three or four named NPCs in the bar, give them all a little bit of story and make it that the hidden villain here actually has a crowd to hide in. So I think that would be an important part of getting this right. The other thing I think is interesting too is you want to be careful with this one and not do it too often. Otherwise, the players are going to start murdering every NPC they come across and going, I knew he was a villain all along. This is a very, very good way to get a very paranoid party. I imagine that that there's some risks here too, though, right? Because if if it turns out that every time they talk to this guy, the next thing that happens is that bandits rush them. That's probably going to be a clue that not all is as it seems with this guy.
00:22:43
Speaker
I agree. One of the things you really want to think about is how often you want to use this character and when they're going to appear. And you want to build it up to a reveal. At some point, the group is going to find out this person is the villain. And that is that moment when you reveal it to them, you want them to gasp. So you got to think about these all these little seeds you're going to drop. Maybe they're chasing down this other villain that they've never met. And they're tracing down all these different avenues and mysteries to get to a point where they start slowly revealing that this person maybe was a relative of that lord.
Surprising Players with Villains
00:23:18
Speaker
Maybe it was a bastard's son. Maybe that person died in a battle. And then you start uncovering slowly and slowly and then,
00:23:27
Speaker
Something you can do that's connected to that right is is you could give the players the name of the big bad Nobody's ever seen this person or there's not a description attached to it Nobody knows exactly what that person looks like It's just a we have a name of a nefarious villain and then you know your local buddy drinking buddy down in the taverns like And that guy sounds scary and when you finally revealed those two are one in the same, that's gonna be a big day very memorable Yeah, so just always think about the surprise NPCs that you want to like turn into bad guys. I want GMs to think about their ideas as little seeds they're going to throw and scatter around the ground. And they're going to water all that until they grow. And you're going to see which ones grow over the course of the game. And those are the ones you want to kind of like push, because those are the ones the players are gravitating toward.
00:24:13
Speaker
So think about think about that as you're having a longer campaign. It may not always be that it's one that you created. That maybe it's something that one of the players created out of their own mind at the table and you realize, I'm going to make that character they just made up, that's going to be my villain. You can create these kind of villains opportunistically. I think that's great. ah Something else you should be prepared for. And Mark, you and I ran into this. There are going to be players in your game who are just pretty naturally capable of detecting that hidden thing. And we had a player that we played with who
00:24:47
Speaker
I think the first time he saw the unassuming villain that had not been revealed, um he he figured it out like pretty much immediately, which was no fault of yours.
Managing Player Discoveries and Surprises
00:24:57
Speaker
You were jamming that game. I think it was even a kid, so it was even more unlikely as a villain. What do you do in those cases when they all of a sudden steal your reveal? I'll tell you what, I get them the next time. And I did. You're undeterred, you say, I'm going to arrange another reveal with a different villain on another day. Well, we did have another villain in the game and and he fell for it, hook, line and sinker. And it was very satisfying to see him deal with the existential crisis of his his power failing him. Excellent.
00:25:27
Speaker
Well as you can tell, sometimes there is some joy to be had in snookering the players, but ah try not to do it too often, otherwise they're going to think you're in an adversarial relationship and and all of that nice stuff we said last episode about this really being a sort of a servant's task and being a GM is going to go out the window and you're going to polarize your table, which nobody wants. A special thanks to Captivator. We do appreciate your your offering here, and I hope our ideas have spawned something in your imagination to take this to another level. I hope so. Well, look, we gave you the email address before. We'll give it to you again, because we want to hear from you. Again, tell us what rituals you've created, and send us your ideas that you'd like to get tuned up at tabletoptuneup at gmail dot.com. So here's our final ritual for today. Until next time, keep those dice rolling.
00:26:51
Speaker
I'll never go far
00:28:32
Speaker
you