Imaginary Style Guides

No, not style guides that don't exist, style guides for the imagination. Yes, potentially a dick move, but hear me out.

Differences in expectation and visualization can contribute to the breakdown of a game. The way the player's visualize the game is not only responsible for a great deal of the appeal of tabletop gaming, but it is also helpful if the DM and players are on the same page. Jeff Rients had an excellent post about accommodating player's wants into the campaign, you have to fit in cyborgs, and ninjas, and gnome wizards, and so on if your players want to play them. But if you can present a coherent vision in a way that the players respond well to, you can create a stronger game- get people's expectations on the same page, and things become easier.

Just the angle at which I picture the game when I play accounts for huge differences in my character's actions. I tend to see my fighters and clerics in third person, from behind, as in a comic book. The power of the persona inspires me to acts of stupid bravery, makes retreat hard to imagine, details hard to picture.

Conversely, my thieves and warlocks see things in first person. Imagining the bugbear in your grill, and the same bugbear but with Conan-with-your-face between your mind's eye and the bugbear can change your tone and playstyle. It's easier to imagine details, straining at the dark, poring over librams and locks alike from the first person.

The same principle applies when I referee, even more overtly. I could go on, but it comes down to whether I want to focus on the SCENE, or the EXPERIENCE. You see, Vs. Grignar sees. Expectations of power and competency change when you add or subtract the mighty alter ego.
Similarly, I don't find it at all unreasonable to try to find a shared idea for the campaign aesthetic. Live action vs. Cartoon. Frank Frazetta or Terry Gilliam. Amateur line work Vs. Airbrushed titans/ Black and White or color? The referee presents a myconoid. I could see this, as a player in any number of ways, and if I am seeing Elric in front of the Tony Diterlizzi illustration, while the thief is imagining a live action, 1st person mushroom man, and the referee sees the ominous Dave Trampier picture, everyone's actions run the risk of seeming bizarre to the others.

Diversity of imagination is not a bad thing. And it is both impossible and absurd to want everyone at the table to see exactly the same thing all the time. Just the same, I'm heavily considering a check of my group's personal imagination styles. I think I'm running Marvel Conan mixed with Dali and Tales of The Black Freighter.

What are my players seeing?

The Awful Curses of Sorcerers and Other Supranatural Entities

I keep starting long-winded game theory posts about superseding mechanics and engaging players as creators. Blargh.

My point was, a player in my regular game recently incurred the wrath of Kheiros the Butterly-Demon, in the form of a curse. This marks the third occasion on which I have adjudicated the results of a woeful enchantment, hex, or the like. Each time, the curse has taken a different form, but in the end, I haven't been happy with any.

First curse I remember assigning took the form of a minus one to hit in combat. The benefit of this approach is that it is simple, hinders the player enough to seek help and not enough to end their playing, and has enough mechanical basis to make it mean something.
The problem is that this in no way improves or enlivens the game, and exists only as a mechanical construct.

Geases by contrast, like alignment changes, force the player to change his character's decision making, and tend to derail anything the party has goin' on right then. They can be fun, I have no doubt, but necessitate a sharp change in the behavior of one player, or the group at large.

Most others I've seen fall into the cosmetic. Now, turning into a bugbear, or sneezing flame can create fun. They give players an in game, but not mechanical problem to overcome, and add detail to a character. At worst however, these get ignored. Players hold their breath for fear of one-way trips to Baator, or halved intelligence scores. When it turns out they "just" weep snails, the impact is lost. Life goes on, and the high Warlock's dying utterance is forgotten.
The following table is going to enter play in the near future. It is my hope that the results will prove baleful, but not debilitating, while remaining entertaining. Your mileage may very, depending on how your player's feel about forced accents. I do run a fairly lighthearted game.

The Grand Chart of Player Curses
1. Player must assume an exaggerated french accent while playing.
2. The irresistible Macarana
3. Steve Erwin
4. Awful Pirate voice
5. Cowboy/Belle Accent
6. Sam Spade voice
7. Christopher Walken
8. In game actions conveyed by written note from now on
9. Player must declare character actions in rhyme.
10. Can not look at character sheet
11. Sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" to all gathered.
12. Pig latin character declarations.

Does this reduce the game to utter childishness? Probably. But I think the crone with a raven's beak where her tongue should be ought to be treated with just a little bit of awe.