Hosting Lesson: Now, as a host of Safe Words, it is up to you if the game includes any narrative hook or purpose. Maybe you just have a selection of words based on a theme and that's good enough for you. Let the players make a joke or two and play the game through in the basic fashion it was created. Nothing wrong with that as a narrative can make things trickier and sometimes harder to post about as the game advances and continues. I've done different variations myself and I can't say I've seen much difference in player engagement with a greater narrative focus compared to a lesser one. Thus, the only reason to make the job harder with a bigger narrative is to score style points and feel like you've accomplished a big job. However, I don't feel the need for complicating things and proving anything as a host so I'm not going to go that route. Still, I do like to have some simple reason or purpose for why players are selecting words. Having some angle for the game does give a host a little something else to work with to keep one's posts varied and interesting as the game goes on.
Thinking about this game, with its random basis being picking various songs from an old variety album, there's not much rhyme or reason behind that. It's kind of silly and pointless so perhaps the hook should be also. But what kind of narrative purpose can there be? I'll admit this might be the trickiest part for a host if you opt to include a narrative. I checked out events of music in 1990 when the CD was released. Nothing really inspired me there but it did give me a couple ideas for eliminations. I thought about if I was an record studio head or radio station manager and the other players were agents trying to bribe me to record or play something from their client. While it had potential, it didn't make sense as rounds went on and different players selected different songs and artists. All these bands are constantly swapping and changing agents? I wondered about framing it as a musical competition like American Idol or the Voice where players are covering different songs. A bit better to using as a theme. But it just wasn't quite stupid or over the top enough for me. Going back to the agent route, I wondered about me being the agent of these bands but what am I trying to do with them and the players selecting them? What if the players were singers or bands and I was trying to get them to play these songs? Perhaps a bad performance of the song ruins their career? Getting closer but not quite right. Oh! What if the players are big name performers (heck, this could even allow for some role play as any artist performing back in 1990) and I'm trying to get them to hire these artists as their opening act and things go awry from there?
Ah, now that's got pretty good and leaves things open ended for me to come up with dumb eliminations. I can sense I'll probably still be challenged with quickly figuring out a musical disaster when it is time to eliminate a player but I'll just have to do the best I can when those bomb words hit.
Now, if I'm going to be an agent at the dawn of the 90s then I'm going to be a smarmy, wild partying, cocaine fueled con man out to wheel and deal to do all I can to get all the profit I can before the clock expires on the public's appreciation of my client's music. Did a Google search on scummy music agent. Got no real results. Tried terrible music agent but again a bit of a bust. Then I decided to try wild party man and the first image is a winner!
Just call me Treize "King Gong" Khushrenada, agent to the music stars!
And with that, it's time to get this party started and have a profitable 1990!