Everyone Has A Space Ship

This is a journaling game about a little ship in a big universe. You will need a deck of cards, a notebook, a pencil, and a coin to play. 

The coin is your ship. It's a cozy vessel sent to explore the wonders of space. Give it a name, and spend a few moments describing its crew. What are their roles? What are their cherished memories? What favorite items do they keep in their cabins, and how do they pass their spare time? 

Imagine the ship flying through the room, cautiously navigating the strange planet and scanning the massive physical formations it encounters. As the ship moves from one point to another note what the voyagers see and draw a card to set the tone for their experiences. 

Diamonds represent moments of comfort and safety inside the ship, such as a shared cup of tea as the crew regards a rock formation towering in the viewscreen or someone writing a poem about their experiences. 

Hearts represent moments of connection between the crew, like a member supporting who feels homesick on the long journey or a meal enjoyed after emergency repairs. 

  

Clubs note an unusual feature discovered as the ship explores the world, such as ancient ruins or a strange pulse of radiation. 

Spades mark unusual actions the ship needs to take. Perhaps the ship needs to evade a sudden plasma eruption or the crew needs to rush to repair an essential system.

Friends can alternate drawing cards and describing the voyage.  Play until it's time to move on to another world.

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Gliti

Gliti is an abstract strategy game for two players.  The goal is to create a row of five pieces of your color.  You will need a checkerboard and twelve pieces per player.

The first player places one of their pieces in any square, and placement alternates until the second player decides to introduce movement.  Players choose between movement or placement after that point.    

Movement allows a player to move one of their pieces to any unoccupied neighboring square.  The player also has the option to shift a row of up to three pieces one square orthogonally or diagonally along the line of the row as long as no piece blocks the movement.  The row must include a piece of the moving player’s color.

For example, in the picture below white has decided to move the row to the right. 

	⚈	⚆	⚈

    

		⚈	⚆	⚈

Players cannot move a group of pieces back into a position that would recreate the board on the previous turn.  In the example above, black could not immediately shift all three pieces to the left.  Black could, however, move the two leftmost pieces to the left.

If the players place all of their pieces without a movement turn, the second player takes another turn after placing their last piece.

After the last piece has been placed on the board, players continue to move either single pieces or rows.

The first player to create a row of five pieces of their color wins.

I would love to hear your questions and comments.  You can reach me at shae.davidson@gmail.com

The game is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

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Retro: Find the Thimble

Find the Thimble is one of my favorite games. It evolved in the cabins and parlors of the nineteenth century.

One player takes a thimble or other small item and hides it in a room while the other players wait outside.  The hider can put the thimble anywhere in the room that can be seen without moving anything.  Players may have to contort themselves to see the thimble when they begin their search, but they won't have to open or move anything.

Players sit down after finding the thimble.  They don't have to sit down immediately after they spot it, however, which adds an odd element of strategy to the hunt.  They can misdirect other hunters by moving to another part of the room to sit down, even plopping down far from other players to create conflicting clues regarding the thimble's location.

The last person to spot the thimble becomes the hider in the next round.

The first time I played Find the Thimble was during a holiday event at a nineteenth-century house museum.  We played in a large empty bedroom, and I imagined that we would play a round or two before moving to other historic games and holiday activities.  

I was delightfully wrong.  The kids loved the game, and spent more than an hour playing.  They tucked the thimble on the wainscotting right next to the door, letting players pass by without a thought.  They twisted themselves to perch the thimble inside the chimney, taking full advantage of a location you could see without moving anything if you were determined and imaginative.  The next afternoon two of the families came back with friends, asking if they could play again.

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Bloody Murder

Bloody Murder is a story game for two or more players. You will need a deck of cards to play; a flashlight is optional. 

Players take the roles of people discussing a gruesome crime that occurred years ago, sharing elements of the story and uncanny rumors. The murderer was never caught, although they may have been identified. Decide who you are--kids at a slumber party, older people reflecting on community history, or college students learning about their new home, for example--and where you have gathered to recount the grisly tale. Spend some time discussing your characters, and how they feel before the conversation turns to the crime. 

Play centers around a count from one o’clock to midnight. The first player begins the count and draws a card. The suit determines which aspect of the story they will describe: 

Spades: The crime itself 

Hearts: The victim(s) or their background 

Diamonds: The killer 

Clubs: The failed investigation 

If a player draws a face card, the bit of lore has a strange or supernatural aspect. 

Narrate your part of the tale in character. Use the flashlight to heighten the mood. Little kids could hold it under their chins, or older characters could use eerie shadows to make the group more aware of how late and lonely the hour has become. 

Play moves around the table with each player continuing the count up to midnight. On the twelfth turn the player proclaims, “Twelve o’clock midnight–-bloody murder,” as they draw their card. Rather than adding a new aspect to the story, the player counts clockwise around the table until they reach the number drawn (jacks count as 11, queens as 12, and kings as 13).. That person’s character has been snatched by the lurking killer. The player narrates their final fate. 

Bloody Murder was inspired by a very shrieky version of tag popular in early grade school. Scott Malthouse’s English Eerie and Matthijs Holter’s A Trip to the Moon helped shape the game. Bloody Murder is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 .

 

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The Finicky Traveler

 

This is an auto-based reworking of a Victorian parlor game.  The driver secretly picks a letter.  As the group passes towns, streets, or local features, the passengers ask if the finicky traveler can visit them.  The traveler cannot visit locations that have the chosen letter in their name.  Passengers work to figure out the mystery letter guiding the traveler.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

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Card Table Engine

Discuss safety, genre, and tone, and then describe your character.  

Roll 1d6 when the story is in doubt.  Things go well on a roll of four or higher, otherwise there is a complication, twist, or failure.   Add one to the roll if skills, background, or circumstances favor the character; subtract one from the roll if the situation is particularly dire.  

Give your character a more developed story and deeper connections to the world as they advance. 

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0