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A month or two back, I perceived the plot need in my superhero campaign to have one of the PCs appear on the celebrity edition of a game show.

The complication: Licensing of formats

The problem was that Game Shows are licensed for big money and the owners are very protective of their rights. While it was possible that – even if they came to know about it, something that would not necessarily ever happen – they would not mind one of their shows being adapted for RPG purposes, I didn’t feel like taking the chance (you can read a great overview of the situation in general at Deal or no deal: copyright protection in television formats by Leonard Glickman for Lexology).

Besides that, the game setting argued in favor of doing something new – I’ll get into that in a little bit. So, after concentrating on the problem for a while, I came up with my own original game-show format. And because other GMs may also want to incorporate a game-show into their RPGs, I am presenting it here.

The License

The game-show format and key elements thereof, as described in this blog post and its sequel, are ©2018 Mike Bourke. Licensing is free for any RPG-related purpose. Licensing for any other purpose (but especially for use in an actual televised game show) are negotiable, contact me through the website.

A Terminology Note: “Participants” vs “Players”

You normally term those taking part in a game, “Players”, but that term has a specific meaning already in an RPG. In an attempt to avoid confusion, I have attempted to use the terms “Participants” and “Contestants” to describe those characters taking part in the game-show throughout this article.

The Key Elements

The game show format that I created for my game features seven elements that, to the best of my knowledge, are original and unique.

Differentiated Scoring

Trivia-knowledge questions are ranked in terms of difficulty from 1 to 10 and that ranking is the score that is awarded for correctly answering the question. It is also the score that is lost for failing to provide a correct answer.

Deflection

Contestants in later rounds have the option of sacrificing a small part of their points score to “deflect” a question they do not feel confident of answering to a competitor, who must then answer the question or suffer the consequences of failing to do so.

Inter-participant interactions

This encourages interactions between competitors as a feature of the game. A key strategic element is the competitor “selling” themselves to their rivals, whether that is as someone who is trustworthy, or someone who is not to be messed with.

Participant Knockout

Contestants who run out of points are eliminated from the game.

Audience Directions

In some game segments, the audience determines which competitor will be presented with a given question. A key strategic element is the competitor establishing a rapport with the audience.

Audience Answers which may be false

In some game segments, the audience offers answers to the question which may or may not be accurate, depending on whether the audience members selected support or dislike the competitor who is attempting to answer the question.

Combination of pre-recorded and live game-show segments

Early stages of the game show are pre-recorded with a slight delay to broadcast. Later segments are broadcast live. This permits real-time interaction between the viewing audience and the ongoing game.

The Setting

The RPG campaign is set in the year 2056, in a world in which the British Empire has become the dominant political force over more than half the world. Individual nations have Kings (or equivalent, including Presidents and Prime Ministers) who are subordinate to the Emperor or Empress. Imperial Decree and Common Law form a foundation to the legal and social systems of all nations; in all areas in which no decree overrides the prerogatives of the national ruler, each nation is free to impose its own laws and governmental structures. Politics is broadly modeled on that of Britain, with local variations – political parties, free elections, a civil service, a peerage nominated by the crown or elected independently who serve as a reality check to the legislation of the primarily-elected lower house, and so on.

The key point here is the date, with all the technological baggage that it carries. While it’s not impossible for a game show to remain popular for 38 years, it doesn’t happen very often. How many game shows currently air with original episodes that were also on the air in 1980? There are a couple – some of whom had popular runs, faded away, and have been rejuvenated after a long hiatus – but it’s fair to say that almost all currently-successful game shows started far more recently.

That meant that either nostalgia would be a major part of the game show (if I were to appropriate an existing format) or that it would be a new show that was not currently on the air, and which would therefore require original and novel features.

Commentaries on the Key Elements

Having made the decision to go with an original game-show format, it was then necessary to devise one. I started by reviewing all the game shows currently airing in Australia and asking how my game show would differentiate itself from them. What would make it different enough to stand out?

Differentiated Scoring

The first thing that I noticed was that in almost every show out there, correct answers scored the same number of points, regardless of the difficulty of the question. The only exception was a show called “Pointless” which tests obscure knowledge; the goal in which is to give an answer which is both correct and which none of 100 people surveyed in advance had given. “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” also differentiates between difficulties of question but only in an attempt to sequence them in order of increasing difficulty as the prize money earned by a correct answer increases.

Deflection

Every game show that I looked at either permitted people to confer or asked questions to individual competitors. “Family Feud” permits rival teams an attempt to “steal” the points earned by their opposition if that opposition fail to give all the correct responses to a general question that had earlier been provided by a public survey.

The exact opposite of the person who was asked the question having to answer it is for them to have someone else answer it. It was that thought that led to the eponymous element of the new game-show that I was devising, Deflection.

Inter-participant interactions

That gave the concept, as a development tool, of attempting to find a way to do the exact opposite of what most or all game shows that I had seen did. Most game shows have the host / quiz-master interacting with each competitor or competitor group, but limited or no interaction between rivals. Doing the opposite of that – encouraging interactions, even baiting participants into interacting, brought a social element to the game show which permitted roleplaying. I took this as a signal that I was on the right track!

Audience Directions

The audience applauds. Contestants may be drawn from the studio audience. The only game show of which I am aware where there was any sort of interaction between a contestant and the audience was a show that was popular in Australia a while back called “Deal Or No Deal“. Specifically, I was not aware of any game show in which the determination of which contestant was asked a particular question was determined by the audience members voting in the space between one question being asked and the next. In more modern times, this could be done over the internet if the show was being broadcast live to air; otherwise, it would need to be done by the studio audience, who could indicate their choice by viewing the question being shown on an overhead screen (where contestants couldn’t see it) and a bank of colored buttons in the armrests of their chairs. The host would then be signaled the majority tally of who the audience wanted to answer the question.

This opened up important new avenues of interaction within the game-show, and new strategic and tactical considerations. Being perceived as the underdog, or simply being popular, could lead to the audience sending easy answers to one participant; being disliked by the audience could lead to difficult ones. Since the studio audience would serve as surrogate representatives of the broader viewing audience, this would create a sense of engagement between the audience and the show, an interactivity that I thought would greatly add to its popularity. In a more technologically-adept era, and with a live broadcast of those segments of the show affected, that engagement could be made more direct and immediate, a notion that I derived from the system of voting used by the Eurovision Song Contest.

Audience Answers which may be false

That, in turn, opened up the possibility of audience members voting on answers which would then be given to the contestants during the segments (see below) when the questions were especially difficult. Once again, this could be in the form of a multiple choice presented to a studio audience or some kind of official twitter-like feed from a broader audience pool once the technology permitted. One or two of the individual responses would be chosen at random and presented to the studio contestant.

This idea added a further dimension to the interactivity between the audience and the game show, and between the audience and the game show contestant.

Combination of pre-recorded and live game-show segments

Given the obvious advantages in terms of audience engagement and participation, I couldn’t see why – in the mooted 2056 era – the show would not be broadcast live. And then I had some second thoughts – there were obvious segments in which the foundations for each contest were laid, before audiences had the opportunity to get to know all the participants, when it would be patently unfair for that audience to be making game-changing decisions. I therefore decided that part of the show would be pre-recorded (with minimal delay and no interaction outside the studio audience), and the rest presented live. A further factor influencing this decision was the thought that this would increase the pressure on the contestants, making for a more vicariously-thrilling outcome.

Besides – once again – that sort of thing simply wasn’t being done, and so it marked another point of difference between Deflection and everything else out there.

Number Of Participants

In an ordinary show, with regular contestants, I would expect four players to be normal. For plot reasons, I wanted this to be a celebrity edition, which entailed an extra round, more questions, and more participants. After some thought, and bearing in mind that the number of potential interactions increased exponentially with each additional contestant, I settled on six.

Anticipated show length

That should give a show of 25 minutes (leaving room for adverts) for the regular show and 45-48 minutes (leaving room for adverts) for a celebrity version. That would translate to one and one-and-a-half hours broadcast time, respectively. I took my cue for those lengths from the Australian version of Family Feud, which is typically a fast-paced half hour but which has celebrity versions that are sometimes a slightly more languid hour in length.

The Segments

The regular game would have three segments, separated by ad breaks. The celebrity edition has a fourth segment.

Introductions Segment

In the introductions segment, contestants are asked questions – first, one each in succession, and then semi-randomly – the sequence is random except that no player gets two questions in a row, and the points score available to each player has to total the same at the end of the round if they answer all questions correctly.

Before each contestant is given their first question, they are introduced to the audience. All contestants start with a points score of 20. Questions asked in this round are

• 60% very easy (difficulty 1-3 out of ten) and
• 40% moderately easy (difficulty 4-5 out of ten).

Players are not permitted to deflect these easy questions, which exist to establish a baseline score, i.e. a set of starting conditions.

The host regularly comments on the state of the score, especially when the leader-board changes or might change dramatically.

Celebrity-only Segment (in two parts)

The celebrity round-2 introduces both studio-audience directed questions and deflections. It costs a contestant 1 point to deflect a question to the player coming last other than themselves, and three points to deflect one to the current leader other than themselves. Tactically, this gives whoever is coming last the chance to build up their score. However, no contestant can be asked two questions in a row – if you have just answered a question (right or wrong), you are immune from having the next question Deflected to you.

Complicating this is the audience attitude toward the contestant. Celebrity contestants can include publicly-elected or -appointed officials, artists, musicians, actors, models, you name it. All they need is some sort of name recognition.

The producers go out of their way to match contestants with rivals or with individuals with whom they (are believed to) have a public disagreement or relationship of some kind, or some controversial opinion with which another contestant is likely to disagree. In each part of this two-part segment, the host will raise the issue as a question is directed at a contestant and discuss it with them. Celebrities appearing on the show know this and usually prepare accordingly.

One reason for prerecording the early segments, including this one, is so that the reactions of the other celebrities can be monitored and appropriate footage inserted, and so that these interviews can be edited for length and language.

The mix of questions in this round is:

• 20% very easy (difficulty 1-3 out of ten),
• 40% moderately easy (difficulty 4-5 out of ten), and
• 40% moderately difficult (6-7 out of ten).

It is normal for one or two contestants to end up in points trouble by the end of this round, while a third takes a strong lead.

Deflection Segment

This is round two in the regular game and round three in the celebrity edition. This is the first live segment of the show.

This round is played the same way as the previous one, but the mix of questions is harder, and a randomly-chosen answer from a member of the audience is given before the contestant chooses whether or not to deflect. They are given only a second or two to make this decision.

This is the round in which the game becomes very tactical, and it may be preferable for a contestant to deflect an answer they know to a rival who they think doesn’t. It’s normal for whoever is leading at the start of the round not to be by it’s end, and this can be when contestants get knocked out (i.e. have their score reduced to zero).

The mix of questions in this round is:

• 10% very easy (difficulty 1-3 out of ten),
• 30% moderately easy (difficulty 4-5 out of ten),
• 30% moderately difficult (6-7 out of ten), and
• 30% difficult (8-9 out of ten).

In addition, it’s traditional for the round to contain 1-3 difficulty-ten questions in the latter half as forewarning of what’s to come.

Double-Deflection Segment

This is the final round of the game show. At the start of the round, each contestant in the celebrity edition announces which charity or cause they are playing to raise money for, while the contestants in the regular game are asked what they will do with the money if they win. In addition, there are hot-line numbers set up for the celebrity edition which permit the viewing public to contribute to the celebrity cause.

Questions are, basically, whatever’s left to be asked, and can include trick questions.

In this round, Deflection costs are doubled, correct answers score double points, and incorrect answers cost double points. Questions can be Deflected twice and two answers are chosen at random from the audience. These can be the same, or different. Contestants also get twice as long to think about their answers. Contestants still can’t be asked two questions in a row but a second question in sequence can be deflected to a given contestant.

Because of the points available, any Contestant still in the game can still win, or crash out. It’s normal for very tactical play to occur, and for there to be several changes of the lead.

In this round, Contestants are not told how many points a question is worth until after they have attempted to answer it, adding yet another tactical layer to the mix.

Prize-money

At the end of the game show, contestants earn a fixed amount for every point in their final score, with the winner getting +50% for every point they scored. The remainder of a fixed prize pool is then divided equally amongst all the contestants.

Celebrity editions generally have a much larger prize pool.

I won’t quote the exact numbers from the example game here because they would be misleading, taking into account another 38 years of inflation. To give readers some idea of how big an impact that has, I worked back from 1980 US dollars to modern currency. It’s roughly 5-fold.

While the host explains all of this, and gives the amounts won, a giant-sized novelty check is produced off-stage and presented to the winner at the end of the show.

Celebrity-specific procedures

Another of the tactics that the show uses to keep itself interesting is not to tell the players who they are up against until filming starts, even to the point of getting additional celebrities into the studio audience as red herrings and deliberately casting celebrities with “histories”.

Tactics

Contestants are encouraged to “talk their way around the question”, even if they know the answer.

It’s quite common for players to use this time to try and charm the audience, or paint themselves as the bad guy or girl if they are confident of their abilities and want to put the other contestants off. Sometimes, this is all bluff.

There are other tactics: snappy answers to get more questions in, or taking your time to get less, trying to prune the field, being friendly or ruthless, attempting to send other players down the garden path by offering a red herring in your dialogue, trying to charm the audience, singling out the weakest player or the strongest…

Rumors

It’s rumored that the quiz cards have multiple questions on them, and the producers are reputed to manipulate the difficulty to make for a more interesting game. That wasn’t the case in the version that I ran (too much work), but you may choose otherwise if that’s important to your
plot.

Host

The host should have a current affairs background and be used to interviewing people who don’t want to give answers to difficult questions.

The host and quiz-master of the in-2056 version is Stuart DeBrassie, who also hosts the most-watched public affairs program in the Empire [‘IBC Tonight’]. Stuart uses his knowledge to quickly get to the heart of who players are.

“Stuart” was deliberately modeled on David Frost, who had that sort of reputation as an interviewer – able and willing to ask the hard questions and skilled at getting an actual answer. There was also some touch of Andrew Denton (who has developed a similar reputation in Australia) in the way I played the character and wrote the ‘script’.

When you use this Game-show format in your RPGs, you will need to create a host of your own, possibly based on mine. The host is responsible for a lot of the interaction and tone of the show; the tone that I was striving for was a touch on the serious side, but someone who was strong enough to keep control over potentially heated tempers. You might want a more folksy, lighter touch, or a more charming host, or a fire-starter like Jerry Springer, or someone with stronger social credentials like Oprah Winfrey.

Whoever you choose as the model upon which your host is based will have a profound impact on the tone of the game-show.

Participants

The next thing that you’ll need are participants – six for the celebrity edition, four for the regular.

The Celebrities that I chose for the 2056-based game were:

• Recently-disgraced politician Marcel Thurman Greene, who “allegedly” contracted with the Circus Of Crime to assassinate Shock Jock and thorn in his side, Howard Eskin. The PCs failed to get sufficient proof of his involvement when they took down the Circus (in their 3rd adventure), so he is on the reelection trail;
• NOPD Chief Of Police Oscar Raven;
• Sir Alice Cooper, semi-retired shock rocker, actor, golfing celebrity, restaurateur, and vintage automobile restorer/customizer, 107 years old and still going strong, knighted for his social services in combating celebrity alcoholism;
• “Princess”, a somewhat prissy fashion model and Cooper’s great-granddaughter;
• Mosul Panesar, Sikh and Comedian, who pokes fun at tradition-for-the-sake-of-tradition and racial bias; and
• Alison Cash, an all-too-serious and opinionated (but very popular) actress with whom Mosul has had several public disagreements about whether or not his comedy is inappropriate, and who has publicly criticized Cooper for being unwilling to mix entertainment and politics, i.e. to utilize the stage given him by his fame.

Of these, everyone except “Sir Alice” is completely fictional.

You will almost certainly want different participants; these were not chosen at random. More on that, shortly. It’s very important that you have a clear idea of who these people are, their experiences and expertise levels, their personalities, and – preferably – to have some way of distinguishing between them when delivering dialogue between them.

It should also be noted that there’s an extra! The “corrupt politician” was never intended to survive through the entire game-show as a Contestant, and in fact I incorporated an “extra question” to make sure that his score would have the right value at the right time to enable his “exit” to follow my script. His appearance was the entire point of the plot sequence (in campaign terms), everything else was an added bonus.

Gathering Questions

I gathered my questions, first, by looking up trivia quizzes through Google, and second, with an old fashioned web-crawl through Wikipedia, plus one or two items that I already knew. My goal was to have five questions for each difficulty rating (1 to 10); achieving that required subsequent rephrasing some questions to contain multiple choice answers or hints. I still needed to gather about 60 questions to get the required target.

Participant- specific questions

I also scratched a few because I wasn’t confident of the answers supplied, and made sure that there was one question targeting a known expertise of each contestant.

In an non-celebrity game, these would be based on pre-game questionnaires.

Rating Questions

This was mostly done by ‘feel’ and by how difficult they would be for the average person in the game setting to answer. I took into account how recent the events were, whether or not they were likely to be taught in school, and how specific the required information was.

Allocation to segments

Before allocating the questions to segments, I sorted them by difficulty and then randomized the sequence within each difficulty score.

Randomizing the Sequence

Once questions were allocated into a particular segment of the game show, I randomized them within that segment. However, to space out the interval between the various dialogue segments, I was quite willing to “override” that randomness when necessary.

Planning Interactions & Personality Conflicts

You don’t get an interesting “show” by accident. Normally, I was have assigned each character a “character arc” within the broader context of the story, but this time around, I did something a little different, planning a “narrative arc” for each of the points of conflict instead, and using that as my guideline to the “in-game-show” situation.

I also had a couple of plot developments that I wanted to deliberately insert. The first was the corrupt politician, present because he had been an outspoken critic of the PC group, and was the spearhead of a political movement that I wanted the PCs to become aware of; the second was to cement the relationship between traditional law-enforcement and the PCs; the third was to make the PCs aware of how much their fame had grown in the course of the campaign (you can never hint at that too strongly or too often); and, lastly, I wanted to plant the philosophical issue of celebrities influencing opinions, rightly or wrongly, and the “baggage” that comes with fame.

With those in mind, take another quick look over the contestants listed above, and the reasons for their inclusion should be fairly clear.

In Part 2

In the second half of this article, I will talk about how I wrote the “script” for the show, how I kept it dynamically-responsive to what the PC did, how I extended the narrative to include the other Players, and will wrap up by sharing the excerpts from the actual adventure.