My two best friends and I spent the summer between kindergarten and first grade collecting things. Actually, we spent the summer collecting and caching things. We buried bottle caps, bullet shells, bits of glass, and anything else that caught our eye. Our little hoards dotted the landscape, but over the years they have been overgrown and forgotten.
Hoard is a story game about the childhood urge to collect things. Four players take turns introducing items, describing them from the perspective of the child who gathered them and discussing their history before a final round that explores the notion that some of the items might be a bit more special than imagined.
As the game begins each player should find three small items to bring to the table. These can be odd knickknacks from your house or apartment, or things that caught your eye on a walk. The objects are the artifacts your young character wants to add to the hoard.
When the group meets, the players should decide where the children are hiding their hoard. Where would six, seven, and eight-year-olds hide their most valuable treasures? The players can pick a real location they know--a particular old barn or clump of bushes, for example--or work together to create an imaginary hiding place.
Each round, the players each introduce a new item. The player should describe it from the perspective of a young child, giving a grand account of where it was found, its possible origins and uses, and an overview of its most appealing traits.
After everyone has introduced an item the players go around the table and narrate another facet of the object's history. For the first item, the player to the left of the player who brought it to the table describes an episode from the artifact's history from the perspective of the item itself. A player could describe waiting on a shelf in a store, for example, or the experience of jostling around in someone's pocket or purse.
The players then introduce the next objects they chose, again describing them from the perspective of the child who found them. For the second object, the player to the right narrates a scene from the point of view of the artifact. After the third item has been introduced, the player across the table creates an episode from its history.
The tokens and knickknacks the children have gathered aren't just bits of forgotten rubbish or shiny trinkets that caught some child's magpie eye. Whether through some process of creation or the value ascribed by the children, some of the items in the hoard have magical powers. During the final round of the game, each player picks one of the items they brought to the table. The player across the table then describes some wondrous effect of the talisman. Perhaps touching it as it was being hidden in the cache sparked some bit of luck, or years later an adult dream featuring the artifact had some prophetic value.
