Non-Digital: compilation of circle games

[Draknek]

I'm hoping to have a circle-games evening this Friday to celebrate my birthday.

The kind of thing I'm going for:
* played in one room
* quick to explain, playable in about 5 minutes
* playable with 4 - 14+ players
* should be new to a majority of players

Those are all guidelines, there are probably games which break all of them simultaneously and are still perfect.


Games I am thinking of using:
(sorry for the lack of rules here, if you are not familiar with them they may not all be easily google-able)

* Ninja
* Lasergun game
* Lemon Jousting
* Thigh-slapping game
* Painting the moon
* [Can't remember what we decided to call it: drawing game collab with Ed and @FlailingWithInk]
Everyone draws n (dependent on players) things on n pieces of paper based on a theme. Shuffle them about. Everyone argues about which wins. Person who wins argument gets a point, person who drew winning drawing gets a point.


Games I've just made up on the spot and want feedback on:

* Parity
Everyone points at two people. Those with an even number of hands pointed at them gain a point. First to n wins.
Original idea was people with no hands pointing at them gain a point but think odd/even will work better.

* Handshake game
Provide two small objects (dice?) to two different people -- no one should know who. Everyone mingles shaking other people's hands. If someone shakes your hand when you have a token, you pass it secretly to them. When the two people with tokens shake hands then they are the winners.
Really not sure if this will work at all. Could be more than two tokens.


I want your ideas:

* I want to hear about games you've played that fit the bill!
* I want to hear about games you've invented or are about to invent! Will playtest on Friday and report back how they go.

[Ed K]

Ninja Rules: http://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-%22Ninja%22-Slap-Game
Had some epic games of this outside the pub at #LondonIndies on Monday night. Felt like some weird ritualised gang war as we coincidentally finished a game and dispersed as a police helicopter passed over.

I thought that drawing game could be called CHALK-CHEESE-CHAINSAW, but there wasn't a consensus..
I was going to type up the rules, probably as a printable image, but you did a great job of compressing them into 2 lines of text there!

Don't think I know any others... Handshake and Party both sound like they have something going on, but seem like they'd need an extra rule or two. In Handshake, what happens if someone spots the secret exchange? Seems like something should happen... And Maybe the people with the items could be randomly assigned at the start, and they're "spies"... randomly assign others to be traitors... maybe this is straying from the simple concept too much!

[Jonathan Whiting]

These games may have proper names that I'm not aware of, I did not invent them, but have played and enjoyed them.

Counting to twenty. Players try to cooperatively count to 20. Numbers must be spoken sequentially 1-20. No repeated numbers, no skipped numbers, no two voices at the same time, no conferring of any kind, no obvious patterns. If you make a mistake, start again at 1. This is surprisingly hard.

Knot game. Players stand in a tight circle, entangle arms (the more chaotically the better) and then find hands to hold. Once every hand is held in some way players try and detangle. Players win when they are left with a ring of people (or several seperated rings). Some adjustment of hand position is allowable (don't break peoples wrists!), but no sneakily letting other people limbs through.

Interestingly I'm finding these a lot harder to explain in text than in person!

[Draknek]

Handshake and Party both sound like they have something going on, but seem like they'd need an extra rule or two. In Handshake, what happens if someone spots the secret exchange? Seems like something should happen... And Maybe the people with the items could be randomly assigned at the start, and they're "spies"... randomly assign others to be traitors... maybe this is straying from the simple concept too much!

I think people will be looking out for the exchanges, but not sure how they'd react if they spot it. If you have the token then you are halfway to winning so I guess you would try to intercept it? Though can you just follow where it is if you've seen it once?

Jonathan: both of those are nice suggestions, cheers.

[Ian Snyder]

In Handshake, what happens if someone spots the secret exchange? Seems like something should happen... And Maybe the people with the items could be randomly assigned at the start, and they're "spies"... randomly assign others to be traitors... maybe this is straying from the simple concept too much!

I'd think what would happen is that you'd saunter your way over and shake their hand, as it will increase your chance at winning. However, you'd have to be subtle about it or other people would notice. Maybe you could even trick someone else with a token into shaking your hand because they think they'll win by doing so. I'm in agreement that it needs more though, not sure what exactly.

* Parity
Everyone points at two people. Those with an even number of hands pointed at them gain a point. First to n wins.
Original idea was people with no hands pointing at them gain a point but think odd/even will work better.

Do you consider 0 an even number in this game? You should. Your biggest problem is going to be getting everyone to point at once. Consider the spacing of these rounds too, the most important part of the game will be making people agonize over essentially random variables.

I want your ideas:

* I want to hear about games you've played that fit the bill!
* I want to hear about games you've invented or are about to invent! Will playtest on Friday and report back how they go.

Standoff:
Everyone stands up and makes their hands into the shape of a gun. Start this timer. After ten seconds, there will be a gunshot sound. If someone is pointing their "gun" at you, you keel over and die (the more ridiculous, the better). This continues until only two are left standing, who each get a point. If only one is left standing, that person gets two points. If somehow everybody shoots each other at once and they all die, nobody gets points (alternately, anyone who was shot before the shooting that left everybody dead gets a point). First to n points wins.

You can also give people ten points for every one point so that mid round they can use their point to pay people not to shoot them.

I've played something like this before, but not quite in this form. If you end up playing let me know how it goes!

[Draknek]

Do you consider 0 an even number in this game? You should. Your biggest problem is going to be getting everyone to point at once. Consider the spacing of these rounds too, the most important part of the game will be making people agonize over essentially random variables.

Absolutely 0 is an even number. Hadn't really considered the timing of it.

You can also give people ten points for every one point so that mid round they can use their point to pay people not to shoot them.

Huh? Ten points per point? How does the point-transfer system work?

That sounds fun anyway, I'll give it a try probably.

[Ian Snyder]

Er, giving them ten points instead of one for winning, or twenty instead of two, I meant. Then one person could say, "I'll give you five points if you don't shoot me." People are free to distribute their points to others as they desire. The actual transferring of points would all depend on how you keep track of them to begin with. If you used something like monopoly money you could actually physically hand bills to people.

[Darien]

You should play Mao. You'll probably need about four decks for 14 people, but that's not hard. And it's a hoot.

[Draknek]

I've played Mao once, it doesn't really fit the "quick to play" guideline.

[Darien]

Oops, missed "playable in five minutes." Yeah, doesn't fit the bill.

[FuzzYspo0N]

One that we played a lot we called 'signs'. You sit in a circle and one person stands in the middle. Each person has a unique action as their own sign. For example, tipping your imaginary hat, touching both your ears, the YMCA actions, \m/ metal hands.. These kind of actions.

The game play works by the person is the middle asking one question : Do you have the sign?
The players 'pass' the sign around by performing someone else's sign ( so each person has to remember everyone else's sign ). In order to receive the sign, a player must first perform their sign, before passing it again. So : John does metal hands ( Sarah's sign ). Sarah does metal hands to catch it. Sarah does YMCA to pass it to Mary.

The idea is the person in the middle must catch the person with the sign, by looking for movement and trying to figure out who it is that has the actual sign. Seeing someone doing someone else's sign usually means quickly figuring out who that was, and calling them out. But usually, it happens that that person has thought quick enough to pass again so it ends up being super fast paced and a lot of the time hilarious.

We played by the rules that you can only make movement to distract the person in the middle if it is their sign (so they don't get unfairly distracted). But this can still be distracting... we just played it a lot and had a common group of friends where we knew each others signs well enough.

[Draknek]

That's a good one. Have a feeling I've played it with a lot of the same people who'll be there tonight but I'll keep it as backup.

Thinking I might also do some kind of "there are 10 games written on pieces of paper hidden around this room" thing at the start but not sure what kind of scoring/direction to use to encourage especially hectic searching.

[Jonathan Whiting]

That's a good one. Have a feeling I've played it with a lot of the same people who'll be there tonight but I'll keep it as backup.

Oh, it's tonight? Happy birthday! :)

[Draknek]

Cheers. :)

My birthday was actually yesterday but the party is tonight.

[Draknek]

Doing this again, more party games always welcomed :)