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March 26, 2008

Let's play a game!

Concept!

Right now, today, as you're reading this, there are tribes deep in the Amazonian rainforest who have no contact with the outside world. This is absolutely and one hundred percent true. These tribes manage this by killing anyone unfamiliar they happen to come across.

I AM NOT A DEMON is about what would happen if you, the hapless adventurer, stumbled unwittingly into one of their camps and were instantly taken prisoner.

The only reason you have not been killed immediately is, by some spectacular stroke of luck, you are completely fluent in this tribe's obscure dialect. Unfortunately, due to a combination of stupidity, nervousness, and unthinking fear, you keep peppering your speech with strange English words from the civilized world. The tribe is assuming these words to be curses or witchcraft, and the urge to spear you to death spikes with each mention of an unfamiliar concept or object, like television, the International Space Station, or Britney Spears.

In the game, the other players provide the current target with a word he or she must explain to the tribe in order to avoid being murdered. They have one minute to give a satisfactory explanation, unless they're being really funny or awesome, in which case it's okay to run a little long. The other players then vote on the answer provided. A simple majority decides whether the player is allowed to live or has been killed for his or her stupidity, in which case that player is "out." Players that have been "killed" then become full-time 'tribespeople," and are restricted to voting on answers from then on.

Rules!

The Amazonian tribe is at a stone age tech level, and so is their language. They have no knowledge of (or words for) things like plastic, steel, internal combustion engine, radiation, December, power outlet, etc., and any attempt to explain one witchcraft word using other witchcraft words should be immediately punished with death.

The player has nothing to assist them with their explanations. Your laptop, iPod, cell phone, and whatever else were instantly smashed the moment you were captured. You're not allowed to call a friend, consult Wikipedia, or attempt to distract the natives with a flashlight or lighter. That is exactly the kind of thing that will get you killed.

The players cannot say "I don't know" or "It's magic" as part of any explanation. If you tell them you don't know what a word you just used is, they'll assume you're lying and they will kill you. And they already think the word you just used is magic. That's why they want to stab you, remember?

Players take turns, once each round. The word chosen for each player is the first word called out by another player. The clock starts immediately. This leaves plenty of room to be an asshole... Asking your friends to define "cytoplasm" or "Rosh Hashanah" when you know they don't know, for example... but if you want to take the game from Fun Territory to Asshole Territory, that's your call.

There are two ways to play: Mandatory Elimination, where the player with the least satisfactory explanation is executed every round, and Long Haul, where eliminations are not mandatory. The former might be best for parties. The latter would probably be really good for car trips or waiting in airports. I dunno, this hasn't been playtested. Not really, anyway.

Still a little confused?

Examples!

Television: "A television is a shining light in a big shell. The light tells stories with sounds and pictures. Some of stories are made-up, and some are true. Some are stories it's told before, and some are new stories. The television tells stories all day and all night, it never stops. If you wake up in the middle of the night and go to the television, it will even tell you a story then. It doesn't sleep. Where I am from, almost everybody has a television."

The International Space Station: "This is a place where very smart people live. It's higher than the trees, higher than the clouds, and higher than the sky. It floats over everything like a cloud, in a place where you can always see stars. All the tribes far away from here built it together."

Britney Spears: "Britney is a woman who sings, but then went crazy. That was probably because people were always watching her, and telling her she was fat. She shaved her head and accidentally showed everyone her vagina, and then no one wanted to hear her sing anymore, they just wanted to watch her and hope she did more stupid things. And she did. She married a worthless man, and had babies she can't take care of. Every time she does a stupid thing, everyone forgets everything else and talks about what she did. We shouldn't, but we do."

...

Yeah, this is how I spend my evenings. Thinking this nonsense up.

Seriously, someone play this and tell me how it goes.

An explanation of what I've been doing for the last two weeks, a new page of Templar, and some actual news tomorrow. G'nite!

Posted by Spike at March 26, 2008 10:33 PM

Comments

I'm a a 'First Year Mentor' at my college. Basically, I'm the guy at orientation who makes everybody play ice-breakers. Those hapless freshmen are totally playing this game come summer.

Posted by Jonked at March 26, 2008 10:39 PM
130.49.23.158

That sounds like a fantastic game. Though, personally, I would have stuck the person using the Britney Spears description on general principle. Unless they'd already said the International Space Station, which was an awesome description.

I think there needs to be some way to randomly choose the witch words. Pulling names out of a hat, or doing a random wikipedia search, or something like that.

Posted by Alan Tyson at March 26, 2008 11:12 PM
69.41.110.91

Neato!

Slap together some cover art, and make up a few pre-chosen word- cards and you have a prototype for a marketable game.

I'm just sayin' is all.

Posted by michaeljpatrick at March 27, 2008 12:47 AM
63.164.145.85

It is so good to have you back again. Great game, by the way, and I fully intend to play it soon.

Posted by CP at March 27, 2008 01:29 AM
66.108.253.13

This game sounds excellent! Reminds me of word games my family makes up- Like "dictionary"; a random word is selected from a dictionary and its entry copied and thrown into a hat. Everyone writes a definition, they're all mixed in and read aloud, and everyone tries to guess which is the dictionary entry.
I'll be bringing your game home with me this summer, though- the grandparents will love it.

Posted by SimWebb at March 27, 2008 04:46 AM
134.10.121.24

Heh...my 4 car mates are going to -hate- you for giving me this game next weekend. 6 hour trip to Vegas...*chuckles, maniacally*

Posted by coyoteweeps at March 27, 2008 04:53 AM
71.195.226.194

This is a great game idea. It's like 1000 blank white cards meets vampire tag!

Posted by Kjoenth at March 27, 2008 10:06 AM
69.202.88.60

.....

Y'know, that would rock in an advanced ESL class. Do you mind if I use that, should the opportunity arise?

Posted by Gaelan at March 27, 2008 10:32 AM
99.240.73.121

Dude, this is TOTALLY going to be our next party game!

Posted by Lynn at March 27, 2008 01:46 PM
216.170.142.201

I agree being able to draw words or something might be easier and more fair. Depends on the crowd though, just shouting things out with friends might work better and drawing might work better with family, that sort of thing. *L* Maybe at the beginning of the game you could have everyone write a few words on paper and then put them all in a hat. Then if someone wants to be an asshole with a nasty word, they have as much chance of getting stuck with it as anyone else.
Again it might depend on the crowd. Maybe it'd be a 'house rules' thing.

Posted by mel at March 27, 2008 02:47 PM
66.227.169.218

Picture? What is picture?

YOU SHALL DIE BY YOUR LIES.

*stab*

Posted by psychomelody at March 27, 2008 07:04 PM
65.190.27.236

I agree with Psycho: I would have voted for your death back at Televison for your mention of 'Pictures'. The safer word to use would have been 'Moving Paintings'.

Posted by K.C. at March 28, 2008 03:17 AM
74.215.242.54

One of my friends is an archaeologist who does a lot of fieldwork in places with human remains. Sometimes she gets stuck doing the transport from field to lab with her car, and she plays a similar game: "Let's explain the highway and things along the highway to people who died in the 18th century."

It really does help with the creepiness associated with transporting remains. I occasionally play a simpler version: "Explaining modern technology to HP Lovecraft."

Posted by Cobalt at March 28, 2008 05:56 AM
71.235.81.164

I'm an English teacher at a language school in Tbilisi Georgia, and I had 30 minutes to kill so I had my students play this. It was a huge hit. The way I played it is every round I had a wise man come down from the mountain and give them words they couldn't use any more like "something" or "like" or whatever they were leaning on too much. It was great. It killed an hour of class, got my students thinking, and they didn't speak Georgian for the full hour which is something of a small miracle. I'm thinking of writing out the rules and posting it for the other teachers, maybe.

So, reading Templar AZ has actually made my job easier.

Posted by Dan at March 30, 2008 01:26 PM
85.238.42.119

My friends and I just played this game at our almost-every-month game night! It was really fun, someone described a condom as a banana peel that you hold on your penis...

The only hitch was we had trouble deciding on what words to give the Hapless Explorer. But we will play this game again!

Posted by micmaxwell at March 31, 2008 10:36 AM
24.166.51.168

So, uh, on those rules--I notice it doesn't actually say you can't *lie*. Theoretically, if someone gives you a word you find really hard to explain without using another magic word, you could just explain something else instead. How are the tribespeople going to know the difference?

Posted by Rufus Polson at April 7, 2008 02:16 AM
70.68.123.206

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