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Free
Games
These are rules for some of my favorite activity games. Sure,
my game closet is full of treasured boardgames and strange dice,
but sometimes you just wanna play something interactive without
a lot of setup and hoopla. The following are shareware party games
for various sized-groups, requiring little or no equipment. While
some of these may be suitable for children, others are inappropriate
either due to subject matter or the complexity level of the game.
Enjoy!
SARDINES
This is a hide-and-seek game, with a twist. You need a large area
with defined boundaries, like a park, a street, or a big house.
This game works best with twelve or more players. One person, preferably
someone who knows the area, is "it," and gets a head start
to go hide while everyone else waits around the corner. When time
is up, everyone else goes and hunts the it.
If you find the "it," you don't jump up and down saying
"gotcha!" or chase the it back home or anything. You join
the it in hiding, and wait for others to find you both. Slowly,
the hunters transform into hiders, crouching silently in a small
area--like sardines! Meanwhile, the hunting party slowly notices
their numbers are thinning, and tries to figure out in what area
people are vanishing. It's perfectly legal for a hunter to pretend
not to find the hiding group if another hunter is too close, then
double back later to join the concealed clump. The game ends when
only one hunter is left, or the final hunters get desperate and
surrender.
I've had some great games of sardines, with a haunted house or
ALIENS mood. "Who's next, man? Who's gonna be next?!?"
I tried to get a group to play on Tom Sawyer's Island in Disneyland,
but everyone chickened out. If you have any good games of sardines,
or can recommend any places to play, let us know!
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VILLAGERS AND ASSASSINS
This is a social game for twenty to twenty-five players, plus a
moderator who referees. You need a large enough area for everyone
to gather in a circle so everyone can hear and see everyone else.
It is also recommended you have a deck of cards to assign the roles
(described below), but scraps of paper or coins will also work.
The moderator secretly assigns each player a role. Most of the
players will be villagers. But three or four or five players will
be assassins (or Mafia, or werewolves, or whatever you want to call
them), and one villager is the guardian angel (or the stool pigeon,
or the clairvoyant). The easiest way to assign roles is for the
moderator to prepare a stack of cards with (assuming 20 players)
seventeen red cards, including the ace of diamonds, and three black
cards. Red cards are villagers, black cards are assassins, and the
ace of diamonds is the guardian angel. All players keep their roles
to themselves, for now.
The assassins want to kill all the villagers. The villagers want
to kill all the assassins. The assassins are outnumbered, but pretend
to be villagers.
The game consists of nights and days, with the moderator setting
the tempo. To begin, the moderator says "it's night, all the
villagers go to sleep, close your eyes." All players close
their eyes. The moderator says "at midnight, the assassins
meet. Assassins, convene," and the assassins open their eyes.
Now the assassins know who they can (supposedly) trust. The moderator
says "assassins, choose a victim."
The assassins must choose a villager to die. But the assassins
can't speak, or else the sleeping villagers will hear them. The
assassins must communicate in points and pantomime, without making
too much noise. Every night, the assassins MUST choose a victim,
and each assassin must vote. The moderator helps the assassins through
any silent arguments by urging them to come to a decision. Once
the doomed villager is chosen, the moderator tells the assassins
to go back to their homes and close their eyes.
Then the moderator says "at dawn, the guardian angel gets
a glimmer of inspiration. Guardian angel, open your eyes."
The guardian angel points to any other player, and the moderator
will show, by thumbs up or down, whether that player is a trustworthy
villager or a scheming assassin.
Then the guardian angel closes their eyes and the moderator says
"it's now day, everyone wakes up, and discovers that, in the
night, _____ was murdered!" The assassins' victim is out of
the game. The villagers must kill (call it exile, if you're not
bloodthirsty) one person, and through debate and vote must choose
someone to oust. The villagers are trying to kill the assassins.
But of course, the assassins are all pretending to be innocent villagers.
The moderator calls for a vote, and the chosen person reveals their
identity and is out of the game. Then another night phase begins,
with another meeting of the assassins.
People out of the game are welcome to wander off, but the fascinating
thing is watching the interactions once you know who's an assassin.
The guardian angel slowly gains vital knowledge, but if he or she
is too obvious with what they know, they are signing their own death
warrant. Then again, if they take too long to guide the villagers,
the angel might be killed at random (by assassins or villagers).
The villagers will try to second- and third-guess the assassins,
to figure out why certain villagers are chosen to die (Were they
sitting close to an assassin? Were their guesses correct? Were their
guesses way off base but they want us to think they were correct?)
The assassins will certainly kill the angel if they can, but if
they try to protect each other too much run the risk of endangering
themselves (Dan was an assassin? Let's see, who voted NOT to kill
Dan?).
The game ends when only villagers or only assassins are left. If
you can (and if the crowd is up for it), play a second game right
after the first, to see how interactions change and if people who
were excellent liars the first time around are trusted the second
time...
After you play, I'd be interested in hearing how it went!
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UNNAMED SENTENCE-PICTURE
GAME, "ICONIC TELEPHONE" IS CLOSE
Several people around a table, each with a blank sheet of paper
and a pencil. Don't give out any instructions, just tell everyone
to write down something that happened to them earlier that day (or
yesterday). Fold paper, pass to left.
Everyone looks at the sentence, and draws a picture depicting the
action on the sentence. Be reassuring when everyone complains they
can't draw. After everyone is done, they fold the paper so the next
person can see the drawing but not the original sentence, and passes
the paper to the left.
Now everyone looks at the picture, and writes a sentence describing
what they think they see. Then fold the paper, pass, and the next
person draws a picture.
Go around until the papers have gone five or seven steps, so you
end with a sentence after two or three pictures. (If playing with
fewer than five people, stop before everyone gets their own paper
back!) Then get the papers back to their originators, have everyone
unfold their papers and read the (de)evolution of their original
sentence. Then go around the table and each person showcases their
sheet. The illustrators are welcome to explain their depictions,
and the writers can explain what they thought they saw. Then take
the papers home and put them on your fridge.
Although a humorous comparison between the accuracy of the written
word and the vagueness of pictorial communication (which is probably
why our ancestors invented writing), this game also points out similarities
in the way we draw. Look at the pictures on a given sheet and compare
the layouts, and I'm sure you'll see common layouts.
People usually want to play this a second time, but usually write
and draw sillier, more vague things on the second go in an attempt
to force the humor. The first game is always best, and I recommend
you resist the urge to repeat it. But if the hordes demand it, go
ahead.
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ROMANCE NOVEL RACE/RELAY
This game is played in a bookstore or a book section of a grocery
store. In the basic game, each player takes a copy of the same cheesy
romance/Jackie Collins-esque trashy novel. On "go" everyone
begins skimming through the book, and the winner is the first one
to find a sex scene. If someone yells "got it!" it must
be confirmed that it is really a sex scene, or leading up to a sex
scene that happens between chapters. Teaser scenes do not count.
In the relay, two teams compete. Each team member has a d involves
everyone
We came up with this game in a truck stop.
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JOTTO
Remember the game Mastermind, really big in the 70's with that
sinister guy on the box (re-released with a sleek, rounded look
a few years ago, BTW)? Well, this one's sort of mastermind with
words. It's designed for two players, but can work with more (see
variants, below).
Both players need a piece of paper and something to write with.
Each player thinks of a five-letter word, with no repeated letters.
You can allow or forbid proper nouns or slang words if you like,
but you can't make up words, it has to be something the other player
has heard of.
You each write your word on the top of your sheet for reference,
and to prove you don't change words mid-game. Keep your paper hidden
from your opponent! Writing the letters of the alphabet at the bottom
of the page might aid your deductive reasoning.
Your goal is to guess your opponent's word, before your word is
guessed. Taking turns, players guess five letter words that have
no repeated letters. When your opponent guesses, you tell him/her
the number of letters that their guessed word shares with your word.
It doesn't matter if the letters are in the proper space or not.
Example: my word is NACHO. Here's what my opponent's sheet might
look like after 4 turns.
SPANK-2
HANKY-3
HANDY-3
CANDY-3
Note that, although my word contains an H, my opponent might make
a false conclusion from HANDY and CANDY having the same letters
and assume A, N, and Y are in my word. Having the alphabet at the
bottom of your sheet helps as you eliminate letters, or suspect
them as possibilities. You can write down your opponent's guesses,
but you don't have to.
AT ANY TIME, either player may ask their opponent to confirm all
previously-guessed words and the number of shared letters. This
does not count as a guess. It REALLY sucks when you base your entire
line of reasoning on a mistake your opponent made ("Oops, sorry.
FROGS has TWO letters right, not just one"). Check your word
as you tell your opponent the number of right letters. You'd be
surprised how difficult five letters can be!
TO WIN: Guess your opponent's word. This is not a separate mechanic
from the normal guess, and if you happen to stumble across your
foe's word mid-game, lucky you. Having all five letters doesn't
count, you must get the proper word. So if you know my word has
A, C, E, N, and O, and you guess OCEAN, I'll say 5, but if my word
is CANOE, you haven't won yet. For fairness, if the player who went
first wins, the second player may cause a tie if they can solve
the first player's word on their next turn (so both players have
an equal number of guesses).
VARIATIONS: You can try four- or six- letter words, but five seems
to work best. For more than two players, have A guess B's word,
B guesses C, and C guesses A. You can also set up a point system,
where more guesses are bad (like golf), and the lowest score is
the best. Add a 2-point penalty for every mistake you made in answering
an opponent's guess.
I don't know why this is called Jotto, since you couldn't use that
word in the game (repeated letters!). But for two years of high-school
math, we played it after we finished our homework.
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