Cards
I’m a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and have played a fair variety of different people over the years. I’ve even watched it played professionally. Watching the big tournaments was what made me realize how important demonstrative play was. Pros need to communicate with their opponents and the audience.
In Magic you indicate that you’ve used a card by turning it sideways, called tapping. Pro players always turn the card 90° and if the card is part of a stack will pick it up and lay it down rather than risk tapping it accidentally. As the game state becomes more complex they will group similar cards together to compress the table and indicate clearly what is tapped.
Comparing that to most of my friends it’s often hard to tell what is tapped. Sometimes they will pick up tapped and untapped card and lay them back down tapped making it hard to determine how many were just tapped. Laying aside thoughts of cheating, worrying about my friends cheating in a friendly game is worse than being occasionally cheated by my friends, mistake are pretty frequent and it’s very frustrating to spoil a game through shoddy mechanics.
Other Games
There is much more to gaming than simply dice and cards. Measuring for movement in wargames, placement of tokens in board games and even the way in which you pass your turn can all benefit from a little thought towards sportmanship and demonstrative play. The point of demonstrative play is not to make gaming rigid and formalize but to simplify the game to the point where players can worry about strategy and having fun rather than trying to figure out what actions their opponent just completed.
When it is your turn think about how easy it is for opponents to follow your actions. Things like pointing at a figure for whom you are rolling the dice is a good way to let your opponent know what the roll is for. Speak clearly when declaring your rolls and make eye contact with your opponent so you know that they heard you.
Demonstrative play isn’t only for competitive environments. Playing a 5-player game with a group of friends can drag on when people lose track of who’s turn it is. When a group of friends get together to play a game socializing is as much or more important than the game itself. The more demonstrative each player is during their turn the easier it will be for the rest of the group to follow, allowing them to keep up with the game while catching up with their buddies.
If everyone was just a little more demonstrative our games would take a little less time, be a little more fun and more relaxed. Sounds like a win-win to me.
What do you think?
