#4: Invent a Game
Game on.
Buckle your chinstrap and pull out your character sheets. Today’s writing prompt is:
Invent a game!
Dungeons and Dragons. Civilization. Fantasy football. This is but a small sample of the many games that evolved into my obsessions over the years. If a game has the right mix of strategy, competition, and aesthetics to give me that “just one more turn” feeling, there is no limit to the number of hours I will invest in reading the rulebook, contemplating new tactics and countermeasures, or in the case of fantasy football, incessantly badgering the commissioner of our dynasty league and sending out trade requests to my league mates in the dead of the offseason.
In the context of writing fiction, giving your characters a game to play lets them demonstrate their skills, act strategically, and reveal who they are when the chips are down. It gives the author (i.e. you) a chance to layer-in larger themes and foreshadow what is to come, all while providing a “built-in” structure for generating exciting scenes to engross the reader. Though it certainly did not invent D&D, the first season of Stranger Things used this tactic masterfully and kicked off a resurgence of interest in tabletop roleplaying games in the process.
If coming up with a comprehensive game for your work of fiction seems daunting, I suggest thinking back to childhood. I bet you could come up with three different games before the end of recess back in the day.
My brothers and I came up with plenty of games when we were kids, but one reigns supreme as far-and-away the greatest game we ever invented. That game is Ralphball.
To understand the rules, I need to introduce you to Ralph. Ralph was our family dog growing up. He was a yellow lab/mastiff mix and weighed-in at a little over one hundred pounds. He had unlimited energy, zero chill, and countless adventures that became family legends.
Ralph could most kindly be described as a “free spirit.” It would also be fair to call him “completely out of control.” We took him to a dog trainer, but to put it mildly the obedience lessons didn’t take. I remember trying to convince him to sit and stay in the middle of the training room while the other 15 or so dogs and their trainers circled around us, presumably practicing walking without pulling on their leashes. Ralph was regrettably unable to participate because he was too busy trying to escape his leash and/or pull my arm out of its socket so he could “make friends” with his classmates. It was the dog equivalent of being forced to wear the dunce cap and sit in the corner.
To be clear, Ralph was not stupid. In fact, his lack of obedience was a product of high intelligence. His choices were the result of a simple question that I imagine he would ask himself before choosing any course of action: am I big enough to get away with this? The answer was usually yes. He would later prove his wit and resourcefulness by figuring out how to open up the oven, but I digress.
For today, the important things to know about Ralph are (i) he was enormous, and (ii) he did whatever he wanted in any given moment.
These two facts became problems whenever my brothers and I wanted to play outside. If you ran, he would chase you and try to cut off your path. If you threw a ball, he would catch it and run away as fast as he possibly could, likely while cackling internally. In fact, if you wanted to play with pretty much anything, be it a football, baseball bat, or hockey stick, there was a good chance you were going to lose it.
We loved Ralph dearly, but it was frustrating to be unable to play outside in our own backyard. If we kept him inside, he would just bark for ages until my parents let him out again. We would get pretty mad when he shot out of the house like a rocket, sprint 30 yards at full speed, leap into the air and snatch a football out of our hands like he was Troy Polamalu, but in my parents’ defense he had a very weird bark. Plus, you had to respect the hustle.
Our fortunes - nay, the history of sport itself - changed forever when we finally discovered how to make “Mellow Yellow” (the most ironic possible nickname for this dog) a part of the game. It began with a distraction.
Ralph had a minor obsession with a deflated basketball that he had popped. There was just enough air left in it so that when he chewed on it, one part of the ball would puff up and stick out of the front of his mouth. It made him look like he had a big orange smile. He would use the inflated end of the ball as a bumper to nudge us when we weren’t performing our choreography to his liking.
One day, we decided to kick and return punts in the backyard. Ralph, reigning defensive player of the year, loomed large. You could feel him daring us to kick the ball. He licked his jowls. “See what happens,” he seemed to say. We needed a gameplan.
Our first idea was to throw the basketball as far as we could, then play our game while he was distracted. It worked at first: he chased the basketball into the woods behind our house and chewed at it happily for a time. I would punt the ball, and one of my brothers would field it off of a hop, sprint across the yard, and dive on top of our trampoline (the designated endzone). Our offensive scheme was working.
Unfortunately, Ralph soon realized that we were playing a different game than he was, and that was unacceptable. After some halftime adjustments and what must have been one helluva pep talk, he came roaring through the line. Basketball in jaw, he forced a fumble, somehow ended up with both the basketball and the football in his mouth, and sprinted away. If dogs’ knees were positioned in a way that allowed them to high-step, he would have done it. Game over.
Except, we still had a soccer ball lying around. Ralph couldn’t possibly fit a basketball, a football, and a soccer ball in his mouth at the same time, right? We began to play soccer, but carried over the points from our punt-return game. Six points for a touchdown, one point for a goal.
Ralph, still playing to the stands, didn’t realize what was happening at first, but the ref never blew the whistle. The game was still on and he was bleeding points. His cocksure orange smile deflated as he turned around and surveyed the pitch. We were about to score on his watch.
He immediately dropped the football (but somehow held onto the basketball) and sprinted to the soccer ball. We tried to dribble around him, but he was a skilled defender (and truth be told we had no actual soccer skill to speak of). Ralph easily disrupted our game and soon had both the deflated basketball and a full-sized soccer ball in his mouth. His eyes were wide with simultaneous triumph and apprehension as our eyes drifted back to the football lying on the ground. There was a pregnant pause as we looked back at Ralph, each of us poised on the balls of our feet. With a face full of soccer ball, Ralph was completely still except for his furiously wagging tail. It was as though he was daring us to go after the football. We obliged, and Ralphball was born.
The rules were simple: if Ralph has the football, play soccer. If he has the soccer ball, play football. If he gets both, Ralph wins.
We spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between football and soccer, perfecting our touchdown celebrations, and playing with our dog.