Say My Name

[SheikhJahbooty]

I want you all to know that just because I don't submit entries for these 24 hour thingies, it doesn't mean I'm ignoring them. For example, last night I had what I thought was a stroke of genius.

I would create a game about something traditionally thought of as scary, seducing a human, and the human gets to free or otherwise live with the "scary monster" by guessing the creature's name.

Yes, combining Rocky Horror Picture Show with Beetle Juice.

So round one, the "monster" gets a name, just pointed at two words in the dictionary. I considered that I might need cards, like from charades.

Then I decided this thingie was a killer robot, that had fallen in love in a human, and was trying to contact the human. If the human could guess my name, if I could make the human want to, then it would free me from the evil scientist that created me, and I would then be free to love.

So I tried it with my wife. Every time I needed her to take a course of action contrary to what she wanted, or every time I presented something that she deemed made no sense, I got a ten second penalty. Oh Boy! How did I ever get in this woman's skirts? Penalties were racking up. She's impossible to seduce. Finally, OK, she'll help the killer robot.

Round two, I put on some music and make up a dance to try to get her to guess the killer robot's name.

Nope.

She will not do it. She will not guess.

"Why not?"

"I'm having too much fun watching you."

Grrr. OK, how about she take a turn.

It turns out I am vastly easier to seduce. This is in fact a frequent criticism of me. She got far fewer penalties.

But alas. There was no way I was going to stop her interpretive dance by trying to guess the name she had picked. She's right. This is too fun.

So I'm sharing it with you even though it is a horrible failure in that nobody would ever want to finish a game of Say My Name. I doubt I will figure it out by this evening, so another failed idea for a 24 hour RPG.

But it is possibly a tremendous success because nobody would ever want to stop playing it. If I ever figure it out, I will finish it and share the final product with you all. Even in it's messed up condition I think it has the danger of degenerating into sex if you play it with anyone who bears a sexual attraction to you. And that is worth sharing.

[Onix]

I like the idea, I don't understand the ten second penalties though, can you explain how that works?

[Evil Scientist]

Beetlejuice? Make sure you include MICHAEL KEETON.

[SheikhJahbooty]

Oh yeah,

I guess I didn't explain that.

The last phase was going to be a scoring phase in which you took the time from your charades round, how quickly you were able to get your name across to the other person, and added any penalties from the first round.

I thought I still might fix it until just before I wrote that post. I thought, "Man I've lost half the day. Maybe I can make a youtube RPG submission."

But the concept is fundamentally flawed. A scoring round incites competition. In order to compete, you would need teams. And I never go to the types of parties where you can tell sexy stories to your wife and then do a dance for her, amongst other couples also being sexy for each other.

To include a Keeton, I was going to include a Key and a Ton, so the killer robot example would have been named Key Ton, or I would have included cards to print out and trim, and the first two would have been Key and Ton.

If I get other votes of confidence I will develop it into an actual party game with a deck of cards and poker chips (Can I get inexpensive plastic chips that say "+10s" on them?) and actually try to sell it through some Print on Demand type of thingie, because I have to admit that I was hampered by my only playtester. I pretty much used the plot to Jumping Jack Flash, and she was like, "That's stupid. Nobody would ever do that. Take another penalty." almost at every turn.

[Onix]

You can get printed chips and custom cards here

Give the idea a few weeks and see if you don't come up with a fix for the problem. Maybe the seduced needs a winning goal so that they have an incentive to finish the game?