Pitch Tag 2013: The Epic Conclusion!

Well, it's been an epic session this year, but all good things must come to an end. Yes, this concludes the Pitch Tag between Fred Hicks and I. You can see all of our previous Pitch Tag updates here. This year we came up with about 60 pitches in about two months. We hope you've enjoyed it! Now, on with the show.

Daniel:
THIS SIDE UP

You and the other players are stacking shipping containers on a busy dock. Your warehouse space is very small, but very tall for some reason. Oh well! Time to get stacking.

Each player has a set of d6s in their own color. At the start of the game, roll all your dice. On your turn, pick one to place in the central area called the "Warehouse." You may place a die on its own or on top of another die, but only if your die's result equal to or higher than the result you're covering. Thus, towers start forming across the warehouse.

If a tower falls, the player who knocked it over loses and everyone else wins.

Otherwise, the game ends when all players have placed their dice in the warehouse. Your score is based on two factors. First, how many of your dice are visible when the warehouse is viewed from above (ie, any dice at the top of a tower or sitting by themselves around the warehouse.) Second, the height of the tallest tower capped by one of your dice. Multiply these two numbers for your final score.

For example, if you have five dice visible and your tallest tower is nine dice tall, you'd score 45 points.

Your Turn:
BALSAMIC


Fred:
BALSAMIC

The adjective “balsamic” comes from the Italian descriptor “balsam,” which means “to cure.” This is part of the product’s legacy as a disinfectant, medicine and digestive aid."

The production process for artisan-quality vinegar is extremely secretive. Italy’s Modena and Reggio Emilia monitor and regulate the process, but do not publish explicit instructions for creating the product, instead using vague descriptions of moving “some amount” of product from one cask to another in their official guidelines.

Source: http://www.robbinsfamilyfarm.com/10-interesting-facts-about-balsamic-vinegar/

This is a deduction card game of keeping your family recipe for balsamic vinegar a secret from the other players. A game of intrigue. A game of immortality.

Over the centuries the families that have been creating artisanal balsamics have all been working towards a goal: creating the elixir of life, a vinegar that grants those who imbibe it youthful immortality. It was a secret known before, but lost some number of centuries back. The time of its rediscovery is upon us ... The problem is that each family only knows some of the recipe that will do that.

Each player has a secret combination of cards, indicated on a hidden piece of paper, matching a subset of the cards in their hand. This combination is the family recipe. The rest of the cards in the hand act as decoys.

A series of gambits plays out whereby the players get peeks at parts of each others' hands; whose hand gets examined by whom when is a part of the strategy; at the end of reach round players vote on which cards they think were decoys. If two or more players are right about a bluff card, the player who holds that bluff must discard it (thereby revealing that it was in fact a decoy). Over time, subtractively, a player's hand might be rendered devoid of bluffs. It's then on the other players to deduce what cards that player holds and devise a partial or total notion of each others' recipes.

At the end of the game, the player able to name the most "true" cards wins (one point per card). If that player names any decoy card, their tally is reduced (so there's disincentive to simply name all the cards you saw from a given player).

Your Turn:
Gods of Economy


Daniel:
GODS OF ECONOMY

It's the dawn of the 20th century and the birth of modern economy. The greatest minds of the world's universities are debating the course for generations to come. Who will win the minds of a new era? Find out in this fast, fierce dexterity game.

Each player is scholar trying to mail papers to different universities. The first to mail all his papers wins.

To setup, each player gets a hand of five playing cards. All players simultaneously play one card at a time from his hand and places it down in front of himself into one of four stacks, one for each suit in front of each player. Each card played to a suit must be of a higher rank than the previous one played. You may draw one card from the deck at a time. The game ends when one player has run out of cards in his hand.

The player with the most cards played in front of himself wins. Every card left in hand cancels one card played. Thus, a tension between maximizing score and not getting stuck with a bunch of cards in hand.

Your Turn:
ART OF CORE


Fred:
ART OF CORE

A competitive doodling game in the vein of Pictionary. Players get a topic to draw and a style they must draw it in. The style is named "_____core" (e.g., hardcore, etc), and the more ridiculous the better. "Draw an Elephant" ... "in the NOODLECORE style". Players try to guess what the player is drawing as the clock ticks down. If they guess correctly, that player's team gets a point. The host of the game (not a player on either team) then hears a case made from each team for and against whether the illustration did in fact embody the essentials of the ____core art style. If the "for" team sways the host, they score an extra point.

Your Turn:
DIGGING STRANGE EARTH


Daniel:
DIGGING STRANGE EARTH

This is a chit-pull game where the players are dwarven miners who DUG TOO DEEP and find STRANGE THINGS. This game comes with three numbered bags and an assortment of Gem tokens placed in bag III, more in bag III, and most in bag I. Gem tokens feature various bits of information, like point value, magical effects, and so on, most conditional based the bag from which the gem was found.

Bag I represents the surface mines. Bag II represents the cavernous undercontinent of monsters and creatures. Bag III represents the ethereal netherrealms from which few ever return to tell the tale.

On your turn, you pull Bag I. You can pull again from Bag I, or pull from Bag II. You can pull again from Bag II or pull from Bag III.

When each tokens' effects are resolved, they're placed in one higher bag than the one in which they came. A Token from Bag I goes to Bag II and so on. A token from Bag III becomes an overall victory point condition. When a certain number of tokens emerge from Bag III, the game ends.

Generally, tokens in Bag III grant higher rewards, but may also result in explosions, curses, monsters, and so on. Players are trying to achieve their own objectives while also accommodating the objectives emerging from Bag III.


Your Turn:
TRAINING BAY


Fred:
TRAINING BAY

You're all pirate ship captains without crews. Nobody with any experience wants to work with you! So you've got to train up a new crew yourself. Problem is, you've got a limited amount of time before you have to set sail, because the royal navy has learned of your port's location and are on the way to arrest the lot of you. How good will your crew be by the time you set sail?

This is sort of a worker placement game, where you're moving your recruits around to various limited-slot places around the bay (board) so they can level up (increasing their value) as pirates. Some slots aren't even available to you unless you've gotten your guy leveled up to a given minimum, so the options expand the further game play goes.

An on-board turn "timer" represents the approach of the royal navy. Certain unlockable-with-a-trained-recruit slots on the board can cause the Navy to accelerate its approach, but that's really only desirable if you think you've got the edge with the best-trained crew. So the length of the game can vary by a few turns, giving added pressure.

Optionally, you can also give a bonus for "setting sail" early; this removes you from training your crew further, but the point bonus might be worth it.

Your Turn:
MOON ATTIC


Daniel:
MOON ATTIC

This is a fancifully themed game inspired by the Pixar short La Luna.

Long ago, the moon was much closer to earth. On the brightest night of the month, the villagers would send rowboats out to the middle of the sea equiped with ladders, brooms and satchels. Crews row out to the middle of the sea and hoist a ladder to the moon and sweep up as much starlight as possible on a single night. For two weeks each night, the moon would get dimmer and dimmer until the night was pitch black. Then the moon would start collecting starlight again, starting the process all over again in another two weeks.

Players crew row boats with their meeples, sending them out to sea so they can collect starlight from the moon's surface. Players bid colored starlight to get their meeples in the best position on the best rowboats with the best equipment. The game components include a large circular "moon" board that will have a random amount of plastic gems in various colors. The board is divided into crescents so it looks like the moon is gradually going through its phases while players harvest the gems.

Once auctions have been settled, harvesting proceeds as follows:

Each player takes x turns, each time collecting y starlights, to a maximum capacity of z.
X is determined by how many meeples you've sent out to sea.
Y is determined by the quality of their equipment.
Z is determined by the size of the boat.

After returning with a haul of starlight, players may buy items that either improve the village or improve their harvesting ability. Each item you buy costs a certain combination of starlights. These items can include street lights, lamps, artwork, etc, which grant the most victory points. Other items improve your X, Y, or Z values but grant fewer victory points.

The game lasts a set number of months/rounds. At the end, victory is determined by the quality of life that each player has created for the village. (Most Victory Points, basically)

Your Turn:
FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLEBEE


Fred:
FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLEBEE

A tile placement game like Tsuro, each player controls a bumblebee that's trying to make a tour of as many flowers in the field as possible. Flight routes between the flowers are fickle, though, and change as players put down tiles. Once you've managed to create a path from where you are to a flower you need to collect a token from, you can fly your bumblebee there and collect it. Tiles can be replaced, though, and you might find yourself stuck on that flower for a while after the other players make their moves. (Basic sequence of play is place a tile, move your bee, collect pollen token if you haven't visited that flower before.) Play ends when the board is full of tiles. Player with the most/highest value pollen tokens wins.

Your Turn:
NOODLE NIGHT


Daniel:
NOODLE NIGHT

This is a string-laying game in the same family as String Railway. Each player has a supply of shoe laces in their own color, each set containing strings of different lengths. The game also comes with a large looped string to designate the legal playing area and a very long black string to show how far away you must be from the playing area when you take your turn. Once that distance is determined, toss this string into the play area.

On your turn, take one of your strings, position yourself the legal distance from the play area, and toss your string into the play area. That's it!

At the end of the game, you will score one point for each player's string that is on top of yours. You will lose one point for each string that touches the edge of the play area or the black string. Thus, you want to cover as much surface area as you can to maximize your potential score from other players, but you also want to avoid the penalty zones.

Pitch Tag 2013 Vol. 3!

Welcome once again to Pitch Tag, the creative exercise where Fred Hicks and I will take turns tossing absurd titles at each other, then respond with somewhat sensible game ideas using that title. We keep doing this until we plotz. This year's Pitch Tag session is documented in the first and second installment. Today's installment includes streetwise ballerinas, Incan foot messengers, breakfast cereals and spicy mobsters.


Daniel:
TATTUTU

It's STEP UP, the deck building game! You're playing out the archetypal "teacher saves a class of troubled urban youth" fantasy, this time by teaching a group of rabble-rousing hoodlums to dance ballet. Each player is a teacher with his own "classroom" of cards, which begin with your standard set of suboptimal cards. In time you acquire dance lessons to win acclaim from the dance world, but must still fend off the dangers of the streets like gangs, drugs, and so on.

Your Turn:
DOILY


Fred:
DOILY

DOILY capitalizes on the popularity of Downton Abbey. (I don't watch it, so I'm extrapolating wildly.) It's a crumbling-empire game where each player takes on the role of a "Dowager Countess" bent on making sure that her family's historic and wildly expensive to maintain home isn't lost to said wild expenses. Or rather, most importantly, that every other player's homes are lost first, making hers the last one standing (for at least a few months more).

Each turn actions must be taken to keep the estate solvent. If all actions could be taken, there might even be a chance of keeping the whole thing afloat. But you can only take a few, and you have to keep moving around the various tasks to keep them from being vulnerable. The other players are maneuvering, using windows of opportunity to "place a doily" on some unsightly task you haven't had the chance to address recently (tasks left undone after two turns become targetable). They're just helping you keep up appearances, dear. Of course you dare not disturb the doily, so you're locked out from doing that task for one more turn. Did you build up enough of a buffer to survive the enforced neglect?

Your Turn:
CEREAL MONOGAMIST


Daniel:
CEREAL MONOGAMIST

Each player has a hand of Cereal cards featuring various fictional brands. Sugar Shock. Fiber Blast. Etc. Each card has nutritional information noting the vitamins and calories available from the featured cereal. (Each card is uniquely numbered.) To set up, each player is dealt a hand of three cards. Simultaneously, each player reveals one card from her hand and places it face-up in front of herself as a "serving" to the other players.

Thereafter, play is as follows: Each player reveals one card from her hand and places it face-up in front of her as a *second* serving. Each player only has room for two servings, so if there is ever more than two after this reveal, the oldest serving becomes "soggy" and must be discarded.

Whoever played the card with the most calories takes first turn. She may take one of another player's face-up cards or a card from the top of the deck. Then she may place it in her private collection, or into her hand, or discard it to make a space for a *third* serving in an opponent's tableau. (In other words, there are six possible moves in your turn.) (There cannot be more than three servings per player.)

Whoever played the next highest calorie cereal gets next turn, and so on, until all have had a turn. Any remaining face-up cards are discarded.

The game ends when the deck runs out. At the end of the game, check who has the most of each vitamin in his collection. (Ties are okay.) The scoring player wins the sum of calories from cereals with that vitamin in his collection. No other vitamins are scored.

Thus, you're trying to win dominance over one or two suits, but in vying for first pick, you potentially serve a high value card to the other players. Going second or third gives you opportunity to take more calories, but they may not be of a vitamin you actually want. Throughout this, you're also trying not to run out of cards in your hand, so you periodically need a "breather" round to replenish your supply.

Your Turn:
CHASQUI (The Incan relay running messengers)


Fred:
CHASQUI

Players run a network of chasquis, Incan relay running messengers, in a cooperative effort to make sure that the Inca Empire's goods and messages are delivered quickly as possible, so as not to do a disservice to the Sapa Inca, ruler of the empire.

The board is a networked map of routes covering the empire. Each route has its own travel times and challenges. Each round unforeseen events can show up to complicate things (rope bridges breaking down, outlaws along roads, cattle hazards, inclement weather) along certain routes on the board. Other times the gods smile.

Each player has a small number of meeples representing their chasquis. The board is divided evenly in all cases depending on the number of players. Within a given part of the network, a player places one meeple at each of their controlled tambos (relay stations), and has a limited budget of spares that he may place at some of his tambos in order to double up. Then play starts

Each round starts with an event draw and a number of messages or packages originating at various tambos (relay stations) around the board. If an available (upright) chasqui meeple is at that tambo, it is available to take the item to its destination (also indicated on the card). Each individual meeple only runs from one tambo to the next on his turn; the card are small (half sized, like Timestream), so they move along on the board with the meeple. At the end of the turn, any laid-down meeples stand up. Any meeples that ran a message or item on their turn are then laid down. (They must rest.) Only upright meeples may pick up a relay on the next turn.

On the following turn, the cards at that tambo are picked up by upright meeples there and carried off to the next stop along the route, etc.

Messages and items are scored for the players upon reaching their destination. If a card cannot travel in a turn, a marker is put on it, reducing its value. If it already has a marker, the card is put into the "disfavor" pile. If "disfavor" grows too great, the players lose the game. Otherwise they're trying to get the score pile to a certain total for a victory.

The challenge comes as the pace of the game picks up and more messages and items are put into the system than the chasquis can easily handle. Additionally chasquis operate under certain limits: a single chasqui can carry multiple messages in his quipu (see Wikipedia), but only one or two objects in his quëpi (again, Wikipedia) depending on size, so if you get an object pile up you could need multiple meeples to process it.

A limited number of rested chasquis that are not running messages may be redeployed from tambo to tambo *without* laying down after their travels. You can also make a "sacrifice move"

Can you organize your network of chasquis such that all messages and objects are delivered as fast as possible? Or will you face the displeasure of the Sapa Inca?

(With the right mind designing it this could be a hell of a eurogame.)

Your Turn:
WRECKED ANGLE
(say it out loud, fast)


Daniel:
WRECKED ANGLE

This is a co-op dexterity-based abstract puzzler that features lots of wooden blocks in various shapes and colors. Players are trying to build the tallest structure after three rounds of play. "Structure" here is used very loosely, as it can be a very finely crafted tower or a big wreck, but it must be kept within the bounds of a very small circular board.

Start a timer for 30sec and BEGIN! Roll dice to determine the quantity blocks you may use from the supply. Then you must take one block and place it on the board or on top of another block. You may only use one hand at a time and hold one block at a time. Once you have used all of those blocks, the next player rolls to add more blocks to the structure. Once he's done, the next player does the same, and so on... until the timer runs out, or all players have completed a turn, or any blocks fall outside of the board (even just a corner).

If the timer runs out before all players have had a turn, the group takes a point penalty card for each player who did not complete a turn.

At the start of the next round, the next player who would have had a turn in the prior round goes first. The game continues as described above until all blocks are gone from the supply. At this point, players use any blocks that are already on the board to add even more height to the structure.

After three rounds, the team's score is one point for each block in the height of the structure, minus any penalties incurred.

Your Turn:
QUINOA CORPS


Fred:
QUINOA CORPS

In the dark distant future, vegan fights vegan in a war for control of the planet's most humane crops! This is a comedy miniatures battle game, where you play members of the Quinoa Corps, hunting down rogue carnivores, and battle those members of the traitorous ovo-lacto splinter factions. Your troops are armed with a variety of weapons. Nonlethal weapons, of course, and as such each battle resembles a very, very healthy food fight. Captured troops from the opposition get a very stern talking to and a steady diet of granola -- and quinoa, of course. It is a superfood! They will be converted!

Your Turn:
RELATION CHIPS


Daniel:
RELATION CHIPS

This is more of a puzzle challenge game for one or more players. Each member of a very large family is featured on a cardboard chip. One side shows just the relative's face, the other shows his or her parents. At the beginning of the game draw two chips at random. Your goal is to find the shortest path long the family tree between these two relatives. To set up the game, set all the chips face-upon the table in any order. On your turn, you can pick up any chip and look at its under side. You may take notes if you wish. At any point in the game, you may announce a number and then pass any remaining turns. Play continues until all players have done so. No one may announce a number that has already been announced. This number is your prediction of the shortest path between the two relatives. If you are closest to this number without going over, you win. If there is a tie for predictions, the player who took the fewest turns wins.

Your Turn:
FRAMED


Fred:
FRAMED

This is like a version of Hearts with one or more Queen of Spades in the mix, only you want to take the tricks ... so long as there's not a "frame" in there, indicating that you've been set up. Cards represent various valuable art-pieces (suits are sculptures, paintings, artifacts, etc) sought by the thieves (players). Cards are played, tricks are taken, points are scored, with the high score indicating the winner.

But if a "frame" card goes down on the "job" (trick), the points of the trick count *against* the total of the person who wins it. Once a a "frame job" has been taken, everyone passes their hand to the left, and play continues; essentially, whenever someone gets set up, the whole scenario changes, and the assets you thought you had are now in someone else's hands.

The deck has 79 cards (a prime number), so there's always some number of cards not in play no matter how many players you've got going. Breakdown probably goes like: 3 frame cards, and 4 suits of 19 cards each; or 4 frame cards, and 5 suits of 15 cards each. Cards would be ranked 1 through X (10?), plus "face" cards ranging from minor work through masterpiece, or something along those lines.

Your Turn:
FREE COUNTRY


Daniel:
FREE COUNTRY

In the heady days at the turn of the last century, several experimental communes and artist retreats dotted the North American countryside. One of these was called FREE COUNTRY and you're going to help it run!

This is sort of a classroom exercise more than a strategy game. The community of FREE COUNTRY is a blank slate at the start of the class. No laws, no responsibilities, but still plenty of needs for its citizens. These needs include food, shelter, the basic stuff -- All represented by a deck of cards, one drawn on each game-day. Citizens of FREE COUNTRY are represented by cards showing their picture, a description of skills and family relations.

The players must decide how to deal with these challenges as best they can. If any solutions call for prerequisites, the teacher should remind the players of that. For example, if the citizens need food, that food must be grown at home after a long wait, hunted from nearby forests, or purchased from neighboring towns. Citizens may be assigned to various tasks, but eventually the demands will outweigh supply.

The teacher should describe to the players the consequences of their decisions, even as new challenges come forward in the following days. These may serve as an entertaining simulation of the challenges of the democratic process and civil discourse. Fun.

Your Turn:
FLATUS QUO


Fred:
FLATUS QUO

Each of the countries of Flatland like their geography the way they've decided it's always been. Thing is, none of them can agree on what the original geography was in the first place.

This is a competitive geometry-placement game where players take turns putting down abstract shapes representing the geography of Flatland. Each player has a card that shows the ideal layout of the geography, with points scored for particular objectives. ("All red areas must touch each other, gain 1 point for each red area that shares a border with another") These objectives are kept secret. Each player has a small number of coins they can spend to change pieces already placed on the board. To spend it, they must declare "that's not how it's always been!" and pursue the flatus quo by revealing one of their objectives and spending one coin per shape altered or replaced to satisfy the revealed objective. Each change made must be something that takes a piece from *not* satisfying the objective, to a state of *definitely* satisfying the objective. (This may also satisfy other still-hidden objectives, but that's just a fringe benefit.) Other players may bid coin to increase the paying player's cost, but even if outspent the player still gets to make one single change. Play continues until the board's full of stuff and nobody wants to spend any more coins to change things.

Your turn:
PEEKS AND VALETS


Daniel:
PEEKS AND VALETS

The seedy underworld of valet parking holds many riches... if you know where to look.

This is a game that puts honest work up against sneaky double-dealing. There is a line of cars waiting to be picked up by a valet. There is also a line of meeples, several of each color, each color representing one player's team of valets.

Turn order is decided by whichever meeple is at the head of the line. On your turn, one of your valet meeples picks up the first car and drives it to the parking lot. This is represented by simply by keeping the card face-up in front of you.

It takes a certain amount of time to reach the parking lot and run back home, represented by how far back in line your meeple is placed. Players may take a turn out of order of the line to play an action card, that will rearranged the meeple order or the car order.

Once all cars have been parked, they must be returned to their owners in a speedy fashion. Then it's a race again to deliver the cars on your turn and not keep owners waiting too long. The car's value minus time spent waiting equals points earned.

Your Turn:
SPICE RACKET


Fred:
SPICE RACKET

In the not too distant future, all organized crime tries to go legit by moving into the boutique spice shop trade. Old habits die hard, though, and as soon as territorial disputes arise, mob instincts rule!

Each player represents the interests of the head of one of the Spice Families. Play Don Cinnamoni, or the deadly Pepper Patrón, etc. Each family starts out with one particular spice monopoly, and options to buy additional monopolies over the course of the game.

Cards go out on the table representing popular restaurants. Each has a variety of dishes it might want to serve its demanding clientele, and the spices needed for each dish. Players leverage their monopolies to extort the biggest payment out of those restaurants. Money equals score at the end of the game, but you'll need to spend it to claim more territory (monopolies) from the "free" spices at play (there's a list, represented by a board, and you'll place markers as you expand your exclusive territory out from your first monopoly).

The order in which a restaurant will pay out in order to fund a particular recipe depends on card order (of the recipes attached to a restaurant) and ingredient order (most needed to least needed) on each recipe card itself. Many dishes can still be served so long as the first few ingredients can be bought by the restaurant. But any given restaurant only has so much money to spread around.

If one of the restaurants is doing particular well for those *other* families, you can employ tactics to put the squeeze on them and force them out of business. New restaurants spring up all the time, after all. It's like fashion.

Your Turn:
THIS SIDE UP

Pitch Tag 2013 Continues!

Hello again! Here's the second installment of our Pitch Tag report. A long time ago, Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions and I decided to shake each other out of our game design ruts with a little creative exercise. One person "tags" the other with an absurd title, to which the recipient must reply with a sensible pitch for a game with that title, then tag back with a new absurd title. We do this until we stop. So far we haven't! Here's what we've pitched since our last update.

Daniel:
CREATIVE BRIEFS

This is a game about art requests getting lost in translation between a series of middle managers. It's best played by email. Each player has an assigned "receiver," such that all players are effectively around a virtual table. Each player writes a 500-word description of a random image from Wikipedia. Each player emails the description to their receiver. Upon receipt of a description, a player must cut that description by half, down to 250 words, then pass that on to their reciever. Upon receipt of that description, a player must cut the description down to 125 words, and pass it on to their reciever. Upon receipt of a description below 125 words, each player must draw whatever is being described to the best of their ability and comprehension. Laughter ensues.

Your turn:
HOT BUTTERED ROLLS


Fred:
HOT BUTTERED ROLLS

This is a set-building dice-rolling game where you can't use your hands around a theme of hungry eaters and slippery food.

Players must use an assortment of difficult tools -- slick plastic chopsticks, their elbows, a single spoon, chin-and-neck, etc, as randomly indicated by a spinner -- to roll your dice.

Game play starts with six dice in the middle of the table, rotated to show each of the six numbers.

You only get one attempt per turn; if you can't manage to pick up a die, it stays as you've found it. Collisions with other untouched dice and cause those dice to change facing is counted as a legitimate reroll of those other dice!

If the dice showing build a set of 3 or more (3 sixes, etc) you can move them -- carefully -- to your side of the board (your "plate") using something other than your hands to move them (somewhat easier since you don't pick them up, you just slide them).

If dice in one of your sets gets jostled by you or someone else's play and it breaks the set, any dice on your plate no longer making a legitimate set go back to the middle of the board (the "hot zone")! (This also applies to dice that tumble onto your plate and don't fit an existing set, or dice that land outside the hot zone but don't land on anyone's plate.)

Any time the hot zone has fewer than 6 dice in it, new dice are added in to bring it back up, but must be put down on a facing that doesn't automatically create a set.

First player to get (and keep) ten dice in legitimate sets on their plate, wins!

Your turn:
FANCY-PANTS


Daniel:
FANCY-PANTS

This is an old school silly kids game. Each player wears a skirt of velcro strips dangling around their waist, like a grass skirt. Each player is armed with a bucket full of colorful soft fuzzy balls. The goal of the game is to have as many of your balls stuck onto an opponent's skirt as possible before the clock runs out. Play may occur indoors or outdoors. Running, jumping and throwing are encouraged. You just can't intentionally remove a ball from your skirt. Once it's stuck, it's stuck.

Your Turn:
WHERE'S MY MOUNTAIN?


Fred:
WHERE'S MY MOUNTAIN?

Card game for at least 4 players. Players are old, near-sighted mountain hermits who came down from their mountains to forage, only to lose their way back. Each player has an identifiable, unique, "my mountain" card which they pass to the player across from them. There's a duplicate of this card which is put face up in front of the player so it's clear whose mountain is whose to everyone else.

Multiple rounds of card-passing take place before play formally begins. You can't ever pass someone their own mountain, so by the end of all the passing, nobody should actually know if their mountain is still with the player across from them -- could be with any of the other players.

Other cards in the game have abilities and point values on them. On your turn, you play a card for its ability. The ability is most commonly "take and reveal one card from the player to your [left or right]". Some cards have "telescopic" or "prescription glasses" cards that let you reach further out than to your immediate left or right to take a card. Others let you take and reveal two, or very rarely three cards.

The player who you target gets the card you played in his score pile. You get whatever card or cards you took and revealed. If you reveal someone else's mountain, you score no points for that, and it's put in the middle. If you reveal yours, you get a big point bonus.

If someone has no cards when you target them, you instead target the next person one space further around the table form you in that direction, and so on. That said, the original person you targeted is the one who gets the card you played.

A player with no cards in his hand, on his turn, may play one of the cards from his score pile instead, or pass.

When everyone's mountains are revealed, the game ends and points are scored.

Your turn:
DON'T THROW THAT NOODLE!


Daniel:
DON'T THROW THAT NOODLE

Emphasis on "THAT." This is a dexterity throwing game in which each player has a handful of rubber "noodles" of various lengths and colors. Each player on their turn will choose one noodle to throw into a central play area. If her noodle touches another noodle of the same color, she scores one point for each noodle in that contiguous group. Play until each player has only two noodles left in hand. Each player scores one bonus point for each shorter noodle in an opponent's hand. Thus, players may reasonably groan and say "Don't throw THAT noodle!"

Your Turn:
CHAIR


Fred:
CHAIR

(Capture, Hide, Advance, Infect, Run)

This is a two-player strategy game of zombie plague and uninfected survivors, utilizing a bit of the Battleship and Escape From the Aliens in Outer Space vibe. Everyone is on the same map, but not everyone has the same view of that map. One side plays the survivors, one side the zombies.

C H A I R is the phase order:

Capture: Zombies capture any revealed human in an adjacent space on the board.

Hide: Humans who did not run (see below) last turn may hide, making them undetectable by nearby zombies. A hidden human is signified by a flipped-over token. If a human is already hiding by the time this phase begins, flip them over; they must run this turn (see blow).

Advance: Zombies move. The zombie player announces the coordinates of each space that a zombie moves into. If that space or an adjacent space to the zombie contains a human who is not hidden, the human player must reveal one of those unhidden humans by announcing his location.

Infect: Captured humans are turned into zombies.

Run: Humans move. The human player may move any number of human tokens. If a human was hiding before they moved, they are no longer hiding. If a human token moves more than one space, the human player must announce one of the spaces his token moved through (he makes noise).

Play ends when over half the humans are infected (zombies win), or when over half of the humans make it to one of the exits on the far side of the board uninfected (humans win).

Humans move a little faster than the zombies and can hide and start out with more tokens than the zombies do. Zombies start in the middle of the board; humans start on the far side of the board from the exit options.

Your Turn:
THE GREAT RATSBY


Daniel:
THE GREAT RATSBY

In the rat race of the 1920s, only one rat can be king. Will it be you? Players are rats in the Gilded Age, scouring city alleys for the best garbage while avoiding the cats and exterminators that lurk below the glittering lights. All players are trying to secure the most cheese, bread and scratch for themselves, but in doing so they must make some amount of noise which will attract some kind of danger.

Each player plays a card from her hand simultaneously. The Noise number on this card determines how many cards you're going to draw and keep that turn from the tableau or deck. For each noise card higher than yours, you may draw one extra card, but you must only keep as many cards as your noise card. Any unchosen cards are placed in the tableau.

Any Dangers must be resolved as soon as they're drawn, then discarded. Dangers force players who have made the most/least noise this turn/game to keep fewer cards when they draw next. Thus, making the least noise gives you the best selection and is the safest, but also forces you to give other people more reasonable options. Being the noisiest makes you the most prone to danger, but allows you to theoretically keep all of the cards you've drawn, so long as a danger isn't revealed.

Your Turn:
WEDDING KELLS


Fred:
WEDDING KELLS

Set in Kells, Ireland, this is a game about your wedding day (with some commentary on the insanity of the wedding industry), and how things don't always quite go the way they're planned. Each player plays a couple set to get married in Kells on the same day as the other couples. Each couple has a different set of "must-haves" and "nice-to-haves" that differ from what the other couples want, with some degree of overlap. Multiple rounds of planning occur, as players negotiate with each other to get the best possible location, officiant, decoration, cake, photographer, and so on, to suit their must-haves and nice-to-haves; failing to get a must-have will decrease your score, while getting a nice-to-have will boost it. All objectives have their own point value as well. (I say "point value", but it's probably called something thematically appropriate, like "impressions" or "memories" or whatever.) Once all the components of the wedding have been acquired, the Big Day arrives, some random events befall some of the elements of the schedule, backup plans are put into play for resources that suddenly leave the table (sorry, your photographer is dog-sick! but he's sent a friend...). The resulting ceremony and following party are then scored.

You can double the player count supported by turning each player into a two-person team, each half of the couple responsible for arranging for half of the couple's objectives, each getting an additional "nice to have" that isn't revealed to anyone -- including their partner!

Your Turn:
HURRY UP AND LEAF


Daniel:
HURRY UP AND LEAF

A timed card-dropping dexterity game inspired by Smash Up. Players are trees in a forest, competing to spread their own offspring along the forest floor.  Each player is armed with a deck of seed cards and leaf cards.

Each seed card card has a number, representing the amount of leaf litter it needs to be fertilized. Each seed card also notes how many points will be awarded to the first, second, and third-place player who fertilized that seed. Each Leaf Card has a varying number of leaves on it. Each player's deck is color-coded so ou can tell which card belongs to which player.

Each player arranges their seed cards on the ground as they prefer. Start a 60sec timer to start play. Players may hold a deck in one hand and one card in the other at a time. Players must raise their arms up as high as possible, like a tree. Players must be at least three feet away from each other. Players must stay rooted in place, like a tree. Players may only release cards from their free hand, one at a time.

At the end of play, check if any seeds have leaves on them. any seed with over its required number of leaves will award points. The highest reward goes to the player who dropped the most leaves on it. Second reward goes to the player who dropped the second most leaves. Third goes to the third, and so on.

Another twist, all cards are double-sided, some of which are identical while others have slight variation. So a card can never fall face-down, but it may not land on the face you wanted. Some leaves give penalties to the high scorers or bonuses to the middle scorers.

Your Turn:
CONTRACTS


Fred:
CONTRACTS

This is a long-form social boardgame inspired by Diplomacy and "competence porn" shows like Leverage. Players represent various grifters, hackers, and thieves, all hired for a job. Each player is given a contract listing their requirements for succeeding at the Job. There's a fixed number of turns during which players must try to fulfill their requirements (represented abstractly with heist-thematic tokens, cards, actions, which can be traded amongst the players under specific conditions).

If you fill all the requirements, you get your part of the Job done, and get away with it. If you fill only a majority, but not all, your part of the Job is successful, but you end up caught. If you fail to fill a majority, your part of the Job fails, which causes problems for everyone: everyone else has to pull off one more requirement than usual to succeed. If enough people fail their parts of the Job, the whole Job fails (because success would require filling more requirements than folks are contracted to fill), and nobody wins. Otherwise, the whole Job is a success despite a few hiccups. If the Job is a success, then the winners are those who got away with it. If nobody got away with it, then the person who filled the most requirements turns evidence on the rest, and wins.

Your Turn:
CAT, MAN, DO!


Daniel:
CAT, MAN, DO!

This is a simple game of match-3 in which opponents are trying to create a row of tiles featuring two characters and an action that would result in sentences like "CAT, MAN, DO!"

Players acquire tiles through a 7 Wonders style drafting mechanism. Drafts result in each player having six tiles in two rows.

Each tile features a categorical icon. Creating a row with two matching icons allows keep one of those tiles in your collection. Creating a row with three matching icons lets you keep two of those tiles. If a row exactly matches one of the pre-written goals on your secret cards, you can discard that card and keep all three tiles. Each tile is worth different amounts of points, scored at the end of the game which lasts three rounds.

Your Turn:
CEASEFIRE


Fred:
CEASEFIRE

Kind of a grim game about the moments of calm in the middle of war. To blunt that a bit, it's given a fantasy overskin, blended with World War II visuals, so it's a little Warhammer 1944. Players represent a variety of despicable battlefield scavengers -- rat-folk, goblins, imps, orcs, what-have-you -- who must venture out onto a map during a short cease-fire to try to gather up resources (matched sets that follow a 1-3-6-10-15 scoring pattern). You get a certain number of draws from the card deck depending on where you land on the map during your move. Seeded into the card deck are three "event" cards signifying the resumption of hostilities. If you're caught outside of a "sheltered" space on the map when one of the cards comes up, you lose a certain number of points (signified by a penalty card). The number of points lost increases the later into the game it is, and the number of spaces that are considered sheltered decreases with each new phase.

Your Turn:
INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE


Daniel:
INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE

It's a reality game show competition two people go on their first date... A race around the world! Each player has a date with a randomly selected partner for a one-week race around the globe. Throughout the trip, you're trying to achieve three key goals: Develop a connection with your partner, Win challenges and prizes, and Win the race.

Each round, players are dealt a hand of cards. Cards feature Challenges or a variety of suits including Hearts, Muscles, Brains, Money, and Footsteps. On the first turn, each player must choose one to keep, then pass the remaining hand to the left. Thereafter, keeping a card is optional. You can keep a card or just pass it on and wait for the next hand to come around. When everyone passes, the round is over and each player builds his or her itinerary for the day.

An itinerary is your personal tableau of cards. If you kept a Challenge card, place it in front of you. Each Challenge shows a certain required combination of suits required to accomplish it and a reward if it is accomplished. To pursue a challenge, simply place other cards onto it. When the requirement is met, win the noted reward.

All other cards may be sorted two separate piles. One pile begins with your partner card, the burgeoning romantic connection to your partner. Any cards with the partner's preferred suits in this pile will help develop this romance.

The second pile represents your current budget. Any cards in this pile only count as the amount of money shown on the card. Money can be spent for various effects, like drafting extra cards, moving cards between piles, speeding up the rotation of drafting, and so on.

At the end of the game, points are earned for money saved, romance developed, plus a graduated scoring scale for having fewer total cards in your tableau than your opponents.

Your Turn:
LOOMSDAY


Fred:
LOOMSDAY

It's a huge showdown among the titans of knitting, done up in the style of a professional wrestling show-down! Who shall reign supreme?

Garments, blankets, and other knittery objectives go down on the table in a tableau. Players employ various gambits to get the necessary combination of stitches and other techniques needed to create a garment. The first to do so successfully claims the item from the tableau and scores its points. A new item is dealt to the tableau. Pacing is such that the person who claims an item is likely to have the least number of cards in their hand, so the others have a chance to catch up and claim items of their own. There's a luck component, but also an efficiency component here: some objectives should be skipped in the interests of creating other lower-scoring objectives requiring fewer stitch and technique cards, making it possible to do rapid combos that will score better for you. Play continues until all players have at least two items in front of them, or the objective deck runs out.

Your Turn:
TRICKY-STICKY


Daniel:
TRICKY-STICKY

Easy! It's a live-action "Hey! That's my fish!" with a "Floor is lava"  cover a floor with sticky notes, adhesive side up. On your turn, you may take one step onto at least one sticky note. As turns proceed, fewer and fewer sticky notes are going to be available for stepping. Your goal is to make your opponent fall over, probably when they try to take a really *big* step over to a distant sticky note.

Your Turn:
BOAT


Fred:
BOAT

The box art features a variety of aquatic life fleeing before the looming bow of a gigantic (to them) speedboat; sinister looking speedboat driver at the helm. Anthropomorphized, all their mouths are open, and they're shouting, in unison, the name of the game: BOAT!!!

The board is an underwater scene. Each player controls a variety of different meeples that are moved around the board as they attempt to gather up items from the board or perform certain activities in various locations. You might send the fish to nibble at the coral field. You might have your crab gather up coins from the sunken pirate ship. That sort of thing. All of this is "on the clock", though, as at semi-regular intervals a BOAT event comes up , with a particular route it must traverse across the board. (Players can see where the routes *might* be by looking at the board.) When the event comes up and the route is defined, a big boat piece is placed on the board and pushed in a straight line through the route. Any meeples in its way either get pushed to the side or pushed off the board. If pushed to the side, they end up wherever they end up, and must use their moves to get back to where they need to be. If pushed off the board, those meeples are out of commission for a turn, then return one of their starting location options.

The game is a pretty simple "gather these resources/your points most efficiently" game, with the BOAT as the big chaos factor that you can only sort of plan around.

Your Turn:
DISCO DISCOMBOBULATION


Daniel:
DISCO DISCOMBOBULATION

It's the height of the disco craze and you're going to milk the fad for all it's worth before everything collapses. Each player is a slimy opportunist peddling Music, Fashion, Media and Vice. At first, the Music is the most valuable commodity of all, but in time Fashion, then Media rise while the others fall in value. Eventually Vice trumps everything, only to descend into diminishing returns itself. Throughout it all, players can invest and trigger cultural touchstones that will temporarily spike or dip the value of various goods. (Ex: SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER brings music and fashion to middle America, raising their value tremendously.) Play lasts from 1970 through 1979. At the end of the game, players may lose points for owning commodities whose value has dipped into the negatives. (You don't want to be Disco Stu in 1980.)

Your Turn:
SPACE CHIPS


Fred:
SPACE CHIPS

Board is a set of concentric rings representing stable orbital paths around a central star. Poker chips styled as planets and planetoids are placed into these tracks, and move on a set/automated rate in orbit around the star each turn. Between these rings are other objects which you're trying to pull into the orbit of a planet you control. On your turn, before movement, you may place one of your chips on top of an existing planet. Doing so increases the gravity of that planet (equivalent to the height of the stack). Then the planets move on their set track, and capture any nearby objects within a range as indicated by current gravity. (So the higher the stack of chips, the further out a planet can reach to capture.) Points are scored for captured objects according to whose chip is currently showing on the top of the capturing planet's stack. Each track's planet has a different maximum gravity. You can still place another chip on top of it, but that causes a collapse, and the stack is cleared after movement and capture. New capturable objects are put onto the board after each round. Play continues until all players' chips have been utilized.

Your Turn:
TATTUTU

Pitch Tag 2013 Begins

It's been over a year since Fred Hicks and I have played Pitch Tag. If you haven't seen this before, one player will will tag the other with an absurd title, to which the other player must respond with a reasonable game pitch for that title. Then that player tags back with her own absurd title. This goes back and forth until everybody plotz. Here's the ongoing thread!


Fred:
Your turn:
POTTY BREAK



Daniel:
POTTY BREAK
"We villagers are sick of adventurers walking into our homes uninvited and breaking all our pots. Here, go to this shed where we've kept all our throwaway pots. Have at it, hero."

This game is a tile-removal/mine-sweeper game with a few twists. There is a grid of face-down tile stacks, each stack containing two tiles. Each tile's face depicts treasure, hearts and other goodies. It also has a small monster icon with a number.

In play, you can flip two tiles, either the top tile of two separate stacks or all tiles in one stack. Whenever you flip the bottom tile of a stack, sum the Monster stats. If your hearts are greater than the monster sum, you earn the winnings from both tiles. If not, you can ask for help from another player or players until your total hearts are greater than the monster sum, but you must negotiate and share the winnings with the other players. If no one comes to your aide, you earn nothing.

Your turn:
ROYALTY FREE


Fred:
ROYALTY FREE

This is both game and commentary.

Players are self-publishers who are trying to make good on the promise of self-publishing as the avenue to better revenues than traditional publishing. They're in a race against the game, an automated deck that represents the earnings of an author who's been published by one of the big six/five/whatever. The traditional author deck acts as a timer: every now and again, a new book comes up out of it, and begins earning royalties for the traditional author. Players employ a variety of cards (strategies) from their own hands to try to out-earn the traditional author using new-school publication and marketing methods -- ebooks, print on demand, social media, etc -- while still writing enough words each turn to create new works.

At the end of the day, the winners are those who produce enough revenue in eight quarters to pay for their cost of living over that time. More than one player can win, more than one player can lose. Even the game's automated traditional publishing author can lose -- not every book in his deck is a surefire hit.

Your turn:
CLOSURE EYES


Daniel:
CLOSURE EYES

The Eye of Akhen is said to grant its bearer's wishes for an unknown amount of time, then disappear again without a trace.

This is a deck-building game similar to Ascension, but with a legacy mechanic built into the endgame. You gather your meager resources to build a reliable crew of detectives, archeologists, and regular ol' muscle. (Equivalent to Ascension's heroes and constructs.) Together you can visit exotic locations, following the clues that will bring you ever close to the eye's whereabouts. (Equivalent to Ascension's monsters.)

Each Crew card has a special wish they want granted, below that is a special effect and a checkbox. Each Location card has a special effect and several checkboxes as well. All cards have stars and Ankh symbols in various quantities. The winner is whoever earns the most stars. The winner may fill in as many checkboxes on her deck as she has Ankhs.

As each game is played, the crew get their wishes granted. Most of these wishes involve bringing closure to the various crew member's lives. Generally stuff like "Win a million dollars" or "Get back at my old boss." The Location checkboxes are a little more abstract, representing the growth of that city as a more valuable information source.

Your Turn:
CAT'S LADLE


Fred:
CAT'S LADLE

This is a do-it-yourself dexterity game that scores a bit like Zombie Dice. It requires a five small floating objects, called "fish", and a ladle, which you fill most of the way with water.

Players are cats. They are trying to get the fish without getting wet. They HATE getting wet.

Each player takes a turn holding the ladle with one hand, and trying to extract fish with a minimum of dampness with the other (no tools!). If water sloshes out of the ladle, your turn is over and you score no points. If you dip your hand into the water, your turn is over and you score no points. Each fish you extract without spilling water or submerging your hand scores a point. You may choose to end your turn and score your points at any time, or once you've extracted all fish.

First player to ten points wins, tho everyone gets a chance to finish their last turn.

Your turn:
SCREECHER CREATURE


Daniel:
SCREECHER CREATURE

When they're not guarding tombs and devouring heroes, the slimy, horned and bestial residents of your local dungeon have other ways to pass the time.

This is a party game that mashes up Apples to Apples, Dixit and Charades. Each player is given a handful of descriptions like "When a magic missile hits your thorax" or "An attack of opportunity against your spleen." Each turn, each player gives one card to this turn's performer.

The performer shuffles them a bit, then looks at them all face-up so everyone can see them. The performer will perform (through sounds and gestures) one of the events in the lineup. Each non-performing player secretly votes on which card she believes the performer is enacting.

Once votes are cast, the performer reveals which event he was enacting. If less than all players voted correctly, the performer and each correctly voting player earns 1pt. If all or no players voted correctly, no one earns points.

Your Turn:
BACK SEAT SWORD


Fred:
BACK SEAT SWORD

Everybody's got ideas of how a fight's supposed to be fought. Right ideas? Well, that remains to be seen. Thing is, there's only one guy here who's actually swinging the sword -- and everyone else is seeing fit to tell him how to do it.

Back Seat Sword is a kind of fantasy-genre reskin mash-up of Robo Rally and Jared Sorensen's Parseley system.

The board is a map filled with monsters and treasure and traps. There's one Swordsman placed onto that map, which everyone must collectively control, without communicating to one another about what move they're going to have the Swordsman make.

Each player has a small handful of cards containing various moves they can have the Swordsman take. Move forward one or two or three, turn right, turn left, attack, etc. Each round has a different player owning the "first move". All players choose one move to have the Swordsman make, and put that card in front of them, face down. The player with the first move reveals his card first, and the Swordsman takes that move; then reveal-and-move passes clockwise until all face-down cards are revealed and played out. When the round ends, board actions take place (new treasures, monsters, traps, according to an event deck).

If the Swordsman moves onto a treasure as part of your play, you get that treasure as gold.

If the Swordsman attacks while adjacent to a monster, you claim that monster as experience.

Before you reveal your card on your turn in a round, if you wish to change your chosen action instead to another action you did NOT put face down, you may -- but you have to pay the cost (gold or experience) in order to use the card you actually want, as indicated on that card. Thus it's often most desirable to put face down a high-cost card, and retain the option of purchasing a switch to a lower-cost card.

If the Swordsman moves onto a trap -- or tries to move onto or *through* a monster -- you lose gold or experience as specified. If you don't have it to lose, the Swordsman loses a hit point.

When the Swordsman moves onto a trap, the trap gets used up and removed from the board, and the Swordsman is placed into the space where the trap was. If the Swordsman tries to move onto or through a monster, his movement is halted. Walls halt movement, but don't do anything bad to the Swordsman.

When the Swordsman runs out of hit points, endgame is triggered, the round plays out, and scores are tallied. Gold and experience tally up in some sort of non-linear fashion: maybe there are suits and you score bonuses for building sets of the same suit.

Your Turn:
MECHATOMB


Daniel:
MECHATOMB

Rival teams of astro-archeologists plumb the depths of a long-dead civilization, looking for valuable pieces of alien technology.

This is a press-your-luck trading game. Each player begins with one crew members. Each player selects one card per crew member from his hand and places it face down. All cards are revealed simultaneously. The number on the cards are compared and arranged in sequential order, the highest number faces the most danger from a random encounter, followed by second-place, and third-place. If any crew member is overwhelmed, he is taken out of the running for this turn.

Any remaining crew members get first dibs on this turn's rewards, again starting with the highest number and proceeding down.

After each turn, players may trade freely with each other perhaps piecing together a valuable device or selling off junk for straight credits, which in turn can be spent on modifiers, crew members, and special powers.

Your Turn:
CROW FUNDING


Fred:
CROW FUNDING

In the world of Crow Funding, how much you can eat depends on how well you perch!

Worker placement game. The board is a park or similar field, dotted with trees and other perches. Each player has a number of crow meeples that they place around the board.

The board's divided up into various kinds of areas, each of which has a different deck of cards associated with it; each deck produces different behaviors for those areas. The farmer's field regularly dispenses grain in varying amounts, for example, while the city park has particular times of the day when folks stroll through, dropping breadcrumbs and other bits of food, so its deck is more feast-or-famine. Other areas with other deck-behaviors exist as well.

Each area has one or more perches (trees, telephone poles, etc). Some perches are better than others; some perches only pay out when a particular symbol shows up on the card revealed for the area. (A crow occupying the ground will only get dropped crumbs, while a crow operating from a high perch might be able to snatch a whole sandwich right out of a pedestrian's hand, etc.) When the payout event is triggered after each player has placed their crows for the turn, the card or cards are revealed for each area, and the payouts are resolved in a numbered order of perch priority.

Your Turn:
UP YOUR NOSE


Daniel:
UP YOUR NOSE

This is a competitive card game wherein each player plays cards featuring objects of various sizes, strangeness and danger. Each object is a unique combination of these three attributes. The goal of the game is to get the biggest, strangest, most dangerous collection of objects up your nose. Each card you play builds up your tableau, representing your nose. You must play cards face-down to increase the size of your nostrils before you can play objects of a certain size. Players can play offensive Pepper cards to try to make another player sneeze out cards from his tableau. When one player's nose is full, each other player gets one last turn. The winner is whoever has the lowest summed rating in their nose. (Knizia style.)

Your Turn:
BAMBOO FOR YOU


Fred:
BAMBOO FOR YOU

A bluffing card game just a little bit inspired by Cockroach Poker. You're all a bunch of selfish pandas trying to get the best bamboo shoots to eat. Players have a very limited hand size (3); one of the players has 4 cards in his hand, and that's the player whose turn it is to pass one of his cards.

He can pass a good bamboo card or a bad bamboo card to any other player, saying "bamboo for you!" That player may either accept the card (and thus become the passing player), or refuse it.

If the player refuses it, the card is flipped over, revealing good bamboo or bad bamboo. If it's good bamboo it's kept in front of the refusing player. If it's bad bamboo it's put in front of the passing player.

Regardless, if the game does not end after the refusal (see below), the refusing player then draws a card from the remaining deck (and thus has 4 cards in her hand), and then starts a new turn as the passing player.

Play continues until one of two things happens:
• One player gets three cards in front of him. If this happens, that player outright loses, and cannot score.
• The total number of cards in front of all players is equal to two times the number of players in the game.

Each player still in the game (which is everyone but the person who has three cards in front of him, if any) reveals her hand of three cards, scoring the values as indicated on those cards (good bamboo is positive, bad bamboo is negative).

Highest point total indicates the most delicious meal was had by that panda -- the winner!

Your turn:
VEX MACHINE


Daniel:
VEX MACHINE

This game is loosely based on Sid Sackson's Sleuth. The players are supervillains competing to build a machine that can annoy an otherwise impervious superhero. Each supervillain wants to claim the glory for himself, so will spy on colleagues to get an edge.

Each card in the deck represents a unique combination of "energy wave (four types)," "frequency (three types)," and "amplitude (three types)." One card kept face-down while the remaining cards are dealt to the rest of the group. The face-down card is the hero's weakness.

On a turn, the active player may ask one opponent to state how many cards of a particular wave, frequency, or amplitude he has in his hand. The active player (and everyone else) takes notes in whatever manner they see fit.

After a certain point, one player will be confident enough to announce her guess and may do so, but if she's wrong, she's out of the game. Play continues until there is a correct guess.

Your Turn:
MICE DICE


Fred:
MICE DICE

This is a little like Zombie Dice.

You've got a bunch of custom dice, some mice meeples, and a scoring system tracker (maybe a small board with a track on it that you run one of your mice meeples around). You've also got a bag that all the dice go into, that you can't see into.

Dice represent cheeses, and are colored white, "american" yellow, cheddar orange, and blue (or "bleu"). Each color die has a different pip distribution on its sides, but the same total number of pips on each die (I *think* five total). The more vivid the color, the more lopsided the distribution: white has five sides with one pip on each; bleu has one side with five pips on it. Yellow probably has three sides with 2 pips; orange has one side with 2 pips and one side with 3 pips. Which distributions go with which dice may vary after playtesting.

Each die has a cat on one of its sides. Every side that doesn't have a cat or pips is blank.

You use your mice meeples to track your "hit points". You lose a mouse whenever you roll a cat. If you run out of mice, you can no longer go on a "cheese run" (see below) yourself, but you may still be passed dice (also below). How many meeples a player gets will need playtesting -- might be a sliding scale, with more players meaning fewer meeples per player.

At the start of a round, any dice left out on the board (if any) are swept and put back into the bag. Then the bag is shaken and dice equal to twice the number of players are put out in the middle of the scoring board (quantity may need testing). These represent the "morsels" that you can try to claim.

Each round, each player who still has mice meeples in front of him goes on a "cheese run". When making your run, you may select one or more dice from the morsels, up to the number of mice you still have (so if you have three mice, you may select up to three dice), and roll them. Score points for each pip you get on the roll; lose a mouse for each cat you roll. Dice that roll pips or cats are taken out of play and are NOT put back in the bag (they go back in the game box).

Any *blanks* you are passed to the left. *That* player rolls them, scoring pips and losing mice to cats and passing, and so on, until there are no dice left to pass around, or the dice come back to the person whose cheese run it is. Leftover dice at that point are placed back into the morsel pile in the center of the board, and the next player does their cheese run.

Once everyone has done a cheese run, the round ends. Players recover one lost mouse at the end of the round, so even a player who has run out of all his mice starts the next round with one mouse. The player with the least number of mice in front of him is the first player to start the next round.

Play continues until the dice supply runs dry, and highest score wins.

Your Turn:
GUITAR HER



Daniel:
GUITAR HER

You're auditioning for the band, but you gotta find the right guitar and quick! In this game, players bid on cards that depict the bodies and necks of various guitars. You also bid on song requests to make a set list.. Mixing and matching the different components lets you play different song requests better or faster. For example, if you have a heavy metal song, you want to get a big sharp Axe. A country song? Get the acoustic guitar. A hipster love ballad? Get the ukulele. The musician who completes the most songs and has best audience applause wins!

Your Turn:
POTATO CASTLE


Fred:
POTATO CASTLE

It's a miniatures battle game made kid-friendly with a crossover into the Mister Potato Head line, by Hasbro. You've got a big, modular plastic castle playset and two small skirmish-sized armies (maybe six or ten each) of small plastic Mr Potato Heads. One side's MPHes are red potatoes; others are brown potatoes.

Castle playset comes complete with sword-carrying arms and armor (helm, really) plug-ins, as well as some "advanced" pieces that you can upgrade your MPHes into by achieving certain objectives during play (claim the Staff of Power, and you can exchange the Helmet for the Wizard Hat on one of your dudes). Simple rock-paper-scissors resolution gets colored by some additional options depending on what your dude has plugged in (sword, spear, helmet, shield, magic).

When you win (score a hit) on a target, it loses parts of what's plugged in (think Mechaton), opening up the vast potential of Monty Python and the Holy Grail references by players. You can start play in battlefield mode (both armies outside the castle, wrestling for control) or siege mode (one army inside the castle, the other army trying to get inside). Second playset may be combined to give a bigger battlefield and castle vs castle action.

Your turn:
CREATIVE BRIEFS

Even More Pitch Tag with Fred and Daniel

This is the third installment of the ongoing Pitch Tag game between Fred and me. Fred inadvertently takes me way out of my comfort zone, into the world of improv rap battles. It is a scary place. I kinda felt like I was phoning in for a while there. Thankfully I recovered with Two Fast, which eventually became Bombs, Away! There is also some strong potential in Scooter Rebooter and What's Your Excuse?! I'd also love to test out Monkey Gonna Getcha!


Fred:
Spice Trade
Euro boardgame with a Ticket to Ride/Puerto Rico hybrid feel. You're building up a successful mercantile business back at your home country, while building routes around the world for your ships to ply their trade. Occasional misfortune can befall you -- ships lost at sea, cargo that rots in transit, etc. Much of the "resource management" aspect of the game comes from using your limited number of actions each turn to split your attention between developing your business at home and keeping your routes and ships healthy abroad. (I feel like that was a bit of a boring answer, but that sort of game felt like the strongly correct fit for the title!)

Your next challenge:
Nomnomnominee


Daniel:
Nomnomnominee
Who will be the next President of the United States? A wide array of hopeful candidates make for a challenging field, but only one will win. Candidate Ham Sandwich? Candidate Bean Burrito? Candidate Quinoa Salad? Candidate Meatball? Pairs of players work as a team to push their candidate to the top of the straw polls, coach them for televised debates, and keep them fresh during the long campaign season. Play honorably to win the loyalty of your constituents or create a scandal for a rival candidate. The race is on! (Oh man, I love the absurdity of chaotic electoral campaign all swarming around inanimate dishes of food. Ha!)

Your next challenge:
Expedition: Mariana


Fred:
Expedition: Mariana
A near future sci fi larp scenario oriented on creating submarine drama in the deepest reaches of the sea. Intended to be played in the hallway of a convention center: long and narrow. You divide it off into sections with masking tape, each representing a room on the submersible vehicle being lowered into the Mariana Trench. A saboteur is on board, and at various points during the scenario, a section of the sub will collapse/flood/whatever, turning it into a deadly hazard zone for those inside, potentially separating allies from each other, or trapping you in the same room with the saboteur. (Plus... what's that sound coming from outside the hull?) Over time, the space gets more and more claustrophobic, as survivors crowd into the few remaining spaces: they're fixed dimensions, and at some point there's only going to be one room left.

Your next challenge:
My I


Daniel:
My I
The game that puts you in the thick of the illicit identity theft trade. You and the other hackers go on phishing expeditions, trying to score new personal data to trade in the black market. The data has a short life expectancy and quickly loses its value. Will you use the ID to score quick cash for yourself or risk putting it out on the open market? In the former, you risk tipping off the cops but at least you can get better gear for future phishing. In the latter, you lose time and money, but make yourself known to high-level crime syndicates, who offer some protection from authorities.

[Honestly, I wouldn't play this game. The theme makes me feel squicky, but that's just where the title took me.]

Your next challenge:
Beholder Bowler


Fred:
Beholder Bowler
A game played with your spare D&D minis. Take a bunch of Beholder miniatures and get rolling! (You can substitute other irregular spheres if you don't have the Beholder minis handy -- the lumpier, the better.) Lay out a battle mat on the floor, and place up to 40 different miniatures at various locations on the map (each player places one mini, round robin style, until they're all placed). At the beginning of your turn, select one monster on the board and move it according to that monster's D&D movement rules. Then step back to an agreed upon launch distance, and roll your Beholder, scoring points for any miniature you knock prone with your throw. You score one point for a human or smaller sized target; two points for a Large; three for a Huge; and so on. Special bonus points exist for particularly difficult to capsize miniatures (rat swarms, etc) if you should happen to pull it off. (Fictional history factoid: Originally a game played by the folks at the WotC office after hours, became an actual published game when it caught on throughout the company.)

Your next challenge:
Scooter Rebooter


Daniel:
Scooter Rebooter
A fast-moving racing card game for up to 5 players, set in a race between automated scooters. The game begins with scooter tokens lined up in a row at the starting line of the game board. Players each have a small handful of cards: Left, Right, Up, Down, and Reboot, with some customized powers on the cards for each player's unique scooter. These cards also have numbers on the corner.

The goal of the game is not just to win the race, but to score victory points in unique ways like "Collide with a scooter: 1VP." "Spend a whole turn in the lead." "Spend a whole turn trailing behind." Etc.

Players each take their turn simultaneously. On your turn, play one card from your hand. Cards are resolved according to their number, lowest to highest. UP: Move your scooter one length forward. LEFT: Move your scooter one width to the left. RIGHT: Move your scooter one width to the right. DOWN: Move your scooter one length backward. REBOOT: Remove all damage tokens. Special powers on cards include dealing damage like "LEFT: Spikes: On a collision, the target scooter moves DOWN." or "RIGHT: Shield: Ignore collisions from this side." or "DOWN: Lasers: All scooters ahead of you move LEFT or RIGHT, if there is an open space."

The game ends when the lead scooter gets three lengths ahead of the pack or when the trailing scooter gets three lengths behind the pack. The scooter with the most victory points wins!

Also, random events occur if three players play the same card. I think. Okay, time to move on.

Your next challenge:
Rainbow Princess Power


Fred:
Rainbow Princess Power
A LARP scenario with some "magical girl" anime flair. Queen Spectra must marry off her seven daughters if she's to retain her magic for the next thousand years. But her daughters have other ideas. You play the Queen, one of the princesses (Rouge, Bergamot, Goldie, Emerald, Azure, Indigeaux, Violet), or one of the suitors. But whose side are you on? Will you work to ensure all the marriages take place, or will you disrupt at least one of them in the hopes of claiming the Queen's power for your own? And what happens if nobody gets married?

Your next challenge:
Textually Transmitted Disease


Daniel:
Textually Transmitted Disease
A mashup of tag, pyramid schemes and Hit a Dude. To begin, text one or more contacts the following message:

TAG! You're it. Step 1: Forward this text. Step 2: In one hour, tell me how many people followed these instructions.

Add up all the numbers you get in the next hour. That is your score. Share it with the world and compete on a global leaderboard for the high score.

Your next challenge:
Library of Clouds


Fred:
Library of Clouds
Everyone plays zephyr librarians working at the Library of Clouds. A variety of patrons, ranging from storm gods to wind spirits to weather scientists, come through the door (are drawn from a deck) looking for a particular kind of cloud or combination of clouds. Each round the librarians attempt to address one or more patron inquiries, round robin, with clouds (cards) they have in their section (hand) of the library. Satisfied patrons go into each player's score deck as appropriate, and are scored somewhat Alhambra style, according to their type and number in each player's score pile (runs, 3-of-a-kind, etc), whenever a "time to score!" card is drawn from the deck of inquiries. (Kind of derivative; this game needs something that takes advantage of the cloud notion beyond simple color. I'm grappling with the notion of cloud cards having a kind of "freshness" to them, with them dissipating -- or turning into different clouds -- the longer they sit around unused.)

Your next challenge:
Food Court Reporter


Daniel:
Food Court Reporter
A casual game for snarky players in a mall food court. The players quietly observe their surroundings and pitch Onion-style headlines like "Local Man Surprised by Velocity of Ketchup Dispenser" or "Clerk Just Wants You to Pick Something Dammit." The other players then identify the subject of the headline. No points are scored and there are no winners, this is simply a fun activity to pass the time.

Your next challenge:
Rainy Day Robots


Fred:
Rainy Day Robots
A game played at home with the kids when the planned outdoors activity can't happen. Explore the recycling bin (wash those cans and cups), and construct "robots" out of the pieces-parts found there. Lightweight miniatures battles rules are used to govern the last-robot-standing brawl that happens after robots are constructed; household furniture is the terrain. As pieces get blasted off of opponents, the attacker must collect them into his/her own recycling receptacle. Winner determined, if necessary, both by who's left standing at the end and how full your bin is. Once the rain's over, take the recycling out to the curb.

Your next challenge:
Time-Traveler Radio


Daniel:
Time Traveler Radio
A weirdo nomic game about warnings from the future transmitted between two or more friends. Each day, a player sends a message to the other players from 24 hours in the future. He warns the others not to do something or else it will lead to utmost DOOM! When the other players survive the day, the next player sends a new warning, from the new divergent timeline where following the last warning led to utmost DOOM! She warns the other players not to do something else. The game continues for a full round. If all the players survive, they win!

Your next challenge:
Piso Mojado


Fred:
Piso Mojado
Spanish for "wet floor". This is basically Robo Rally with a twist. Instead of Robots, you have goofy people who don't read wet floor signs. You don't program them as you do in RR; you program their environment, which interacts with the goofs as they walk through the area on a predetermined course (Goofikins walks from west to east, and tries to line up with door 2 on the east wall). Each player has an alternative destination they're trying to guide the goofs to through a series of floor hazards and obstacles. If you get a goof to your destination, you score their points. If the goof gets to its destination, it leaves the board and nobody scores.

Your next challenge:
Two Fast


Daniel:
Two Fast
There is a bomb with a lit fuse between all the players. On your turn, pass or roll a d6. If you roll, score the result as points. On every player's turn, record each die result. The game ends when all players pass or if the bomb goes off. The bomb goes off if any player rolls 2nd 6, 3rd 5, 4th 3, 5th 2, or 6th 1. If the bomb goes off, the game ends and both players lose. If the game ends without the bomb going off, the player with most points wins.

Your next challenge:
Big Street Draw


Fred:
Big Street Draw
A game of city planning played with ordinary playing cards. Players take turn drawing cards from the deck, then using those cards to build a street map on the table in front of them (each person gets a map). Players start with empty hands, and can't draw if their hand contains five cards. Players may lay down any number of cards from their hand on each turn as they care to, so long as the placements are legal. The first card played is the player's starting intersection. You can branch off of each edge of an intersection -- cards always in the same orientation, so you have a clean grid -- by matching the intersection's suit or its value. (So if I had the Ace of Hearts as my intersection, I could branch off with hearts or aces.) Your streets can build out the same way, continuing in a straight line, connecting by suit or value. (So maybe I branch from my Ace of Hearts with a Nine of Hearts, followed by a Nine of Clubs.) After a street is two cards long past the intersection, the next card (third past the intersection or more) can be treated as a new intersection, with branches going off from there. If you end up with a full hand (five cards) and can't place any of those cards, your map is done, and you can't draw any further. Otherwise, the game ends when the last card is drawn from the deck and everyone has placed what they can from their hands. You get 3 points for each intersection, and one point for each road segment that isn't an intersection, plus an extra point for any connection made by value instead of suit (since there's only 4 of each value in a deck). You can use a double deck for larger player counts (in which case you get a 2 point bonus instead of one point if you connect an identical card in sequence).

Your next challenge:
The Big Scram


Daniel:
The Big Scram
A game to play with magnets of various strengths. Each player has three magnets. The game is played on a small circular mat with five concentric rings and small key nodes scattered around. The game is played in several rounds, with each player getting a chance to take the first turn.

On your turn, place a magnet on a ring. That completes your turn. Each turn will cause magnets to scatter and move around the board in barely predictable ways. Continue taking turns until no player has magnets left to place. That completes the round, now you all score points based on the location of each of your magnets.

The center circle is worth five points. Each subsequent concentric ring is worth one point less. If your magnet is off the board, that is also worth five points. If your magnet is on a large node, you score double that ring's normal value. If your magnet is on a small node, you score double that ring's normal value.

At the end of the round, all players pick up their magnets and start with a clean board. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins.

Your next challenge:
The Wellfield Experiment


Daniel:
The Wellfield Experiment
A competitive version of minesweeper. The board is a map of the "Wellfield", a vast area that hides abundant desired liquid resources -- reservoirs of water and oil mainly, though some other rarer things might be found here too. Some of the reservoirs, though, contain eldritch horrors from beyond the scope of history. Seemingly identical to oil at first when inert, once they "wake up" they can start wreaking havoc. Players take turns exploring the board, sinking their wells in various locations, trying to suss out the reservoirs below. Sometimes they'll dud out, hitting only rock -- no points. Other times they'll find a reservoir, and score points based on the type of liquid found and the size of the reservoir (which gets revealed after the tap is made). Oil scores particularly well, but comes with the risk of slumbering horror -- a random chance that any currently tapped oil reservoir will turn out to be the flesh of an ancient horror, causing it to invert its point value and corrupt (halve) the value of any adjacent reservoirs. Game ends when the board is fully explored or when three horrors have awakened, whichever comes first.

Your next challenge:
What's Your Excuse?!


Daniel:
What's Your Excuse?!
It's the reverse of the drinking game "I never..." Each player draws a card with a statement written out like this: "I never 1) sky-dived 2) from a zeppelin 3) with a rabid wolverine." or "I never 1) drove 2) a monster truck 3) in the circus."

The youngest player takes the first turn and states an excuse for why they never did the thing that's on their card without actually stating what's on the card. Towards this end, the excuse always begins with the word "Because..." and can only describe one excuse. For example, "Because I'm afraid of heights." or "Because I never got my driver's license." But a excuses like "Because I'm afraid of heights and blimps and rabies." or "Because I never got my driver's license and I'm afraid of clowns." would be illegal because they list more than one excuse.

The other players each guess what the "I never..." statement is. The more elements they guess correctly, the more points that you both get, as noted on the card. So if they guess "You never sky-dived from a zeppelin with a mad dog." then you'd both get three points. One point for sky-diving, two points for the detail about the zepellin. They got the last detail incorrect, so you don't get those points.

When every player has had a turn, the game is over and the player with the most points wins.

Your next challenge:
Bookmarks


Fred:
Bookmarks
So, your team has, like, 10 minutes between meetings and there's nothing really productive that's going to happen in that timeframe. So you play Bookmarks. One guy is the caller, and he determines the topic. Everyone else scrambles through their bookmarks only (including stuff like delicious and other bookmarking services if that's their preference) to find a relevant bookmark that matches the topic. No search engines allowed -- this is a test of your personal preparedness with your own collection of bookmarks. Person who produces a judged-as-relevant bookmark first is the next caller. Keep score if you like, but not strictly necessary!

Your next challenge:
Amazing Grease


Daniel:
Amazing Grease
Oink! A game about corralling greased pigs into their pen, for 2-4 players. The game board is an 8x8 grid depicting a muddy pit and one pen at each corner for each player. Each player has three six-sided dice. The game also comes with about twenty little plastic pigs in three colors. To set up the game, drop the pigs onto the board from about two feet. If any pigs fall off the board, put them back onto the board along the edge as close to their original location as possible.

On your turn, you can roll one die and place it on any square of the board. If any pigs are on that square, they move away from your die in a straight orthogonal line as many spaces as your die result. If a running pig hits the edge of the board, they change direction and continue moving in an orthogonal line. If a pig hits one of your dice that's already on the board, that pig sticks to your die. Place that pig on your die.

Thereafter, on your turn, you can either roll a new die and place it on the board, re-roll an existing die that is already on the board, or move a die with a pig on it. A die with a pig on it can only move one space at a time in any direction. When that die reaches a pen, you can drop the pig and count it as one of your own.

The goal is to get as many pigs as you can into your pen. You get one point per pig and +3 points for each set of three different colors of pig. The game is over when there is only one pig left on the board.

Your next challenge:
The Summit


Fred:
The Summit
Short and sweet on this one: The Summit is a Fiasco playset. It's backstabbing corporate politics meets the deadly climb up K2. Ostensibly a team-building exercise. A summit at the summit! But not everyone on this mandatory climb is a dedicated climber (and the self-professed dedicated climbers have a few screws loose). Then there's the bitterness and rivalry over how the Stevens deal went down last month...

Your next challenge:
Monkey Gonna Getcha!


Daniel:
Monkey Gonna Getcha!
A playground game for two teams and an unlimited number of players. One team are the monkeys, the other team are bananamongers. The field has two endzones, like a football field. Monkeys should have a backpack or satchel. You also need lots of bananas, but nerfballs or other random items are fine, too. The bananamongers want to deliver their bananas from one endzone to the other. The only thing in their way is all the monkeys.

When the game begins, bananamongers may start at either endzone and the monkeys start in a group at the center of the field.

At the whistle, bananamongers may move around the field freely, under the following restrictions: Bananamongers may carry as many bananas as they can. Once both feet are outside the endzone, bananamongers may not walk, run or jump while carrying bananas. Bananamongers may throw their bananas at fellow bananamongers, though. Thus, bananamongers can form special formations or relay lines to deliver their bananas across the field.

Meanwhile, the monkeys will try steal and intercept the bananas. Monkeys may run around freely, as long as they keep their arms raised above their shoulders at all times, like a crazy monkey. Monkeys can only lower their arms if they stand still. Monkeys can intercept bananas mid-air or gather them from the ground. Monkeys keep their bananas in their satchels and cannot give them to any other monkeys.

At the final whistle, the bananamongers score one point for every banana they delivered. The monkeys only score points from the individual monkey who gathered the most bananas; one point per banana.

Your next challenge:
Crash the Kobayashi


Fred:
Crash the Kobayashi
An anime-inflected, maybe jeepform game, where the players are part of an elite suicide squad that has infiltrated the enemy's starship (the Kobayashi) and are doing the only thing possible to destroy it: crash it, destroying the ship and everyone on board. As game play progresses, each character experiences at least one flashback that delves into their reasons for accepting the mission. Flashbacks are punctuated by "real time" present-moment scenes where the characters die, share a moment of gallows humor, try to save the life of someone other than themselves, plot a course that avoids endangering major population centers, etc. The scenario ends right at the moment of the crash.

Your next challenge:
Dance Commander VS Lyrical Gangster


Daniel:
Dance Commander VS Lyrical Gangster
A deeply embarrassing and awkward game for anyone but the most extroverted player. Okay, here we go. It's basically your classic improv game for two performers. The audience tosses out a handful of subjects. The Lyrical Gangster raps about each subject as best they can. The Dance Commander interprets the rap into modern dance. At the sound of the buzzer, the players switch roles. Continue until the players die of embarrassment. (Can you tell I find improv a little painful to watch?)

Your next challenge:
All the Tea in China


Fred:
All the Tea in China
Abstract-ish board game. Players take on the roles of great dragons, each associated with a particular type of tea (White, Green, Black to start; may also include Oolong), in distantly historical times before the introduction of tea. Ostensibly the board is a map of China, and the dragons are teaching the people of the benefits of tea. This won't always teach the people in each region to go for *their* color of tea (which scores most points), but it's a benefit to get them making any color of tea a part of their life (scores fewer points). Territories can contain more than one color, but only gain one color per turn. Places where your color has taken hold provide you a bonus to your efforts for spreading into neighboring territory. A final scoring bonus is tallied when all the territories on the map have at least one color of tea in them (signifying endgame), based on a color count (which does go only to the player with that colored dragon).

Your next challenge:
New Sex


Daniel:
New Sex
A wordplay game to idly pass the time. Each player takes turns creating a euphemistic phrase for a sexual maneuver, each one more absurd than the last. Common themes include "reverse," "French," "cowboy," and "swirl." Bonus points if you can explain the etymology or technicalities of the maneuver.

Your next challenge:
Crime Brûlée

Fred:
Crime Brûlée
Master Chefs... Master Villains! Crime Brûlée is the card game of gourmet misdeeds. Players are master chefs (TV stars, big names in restaurants, etc) who know the only way to get ahead is to crush the competition through illicit misdeeds. Drawing from the recipe deck, they get a card that gives a recipe for an outlandish, food-related criminal caper, which they can pull off only if they have the right cards in their hands. Once any of the players completes five recipes, the game ends, and everyone is scored for the recipes they completed (and docked for the ones they didn't).

Your next challenge:
What Are You, Some Kind Of Wizard?


Daniel:
What Are You, Some Kind Of Wizard?
A fantasy variant of Werewolf/Mafia/Resistance for 5-10 players. The play is basically like standard Resistance (short-form, non-elimination Mafia). Students of magic compete against each other in various school events, but some students are secretly agents of evil magic. At the beginning of the game, the players get a unique pair of voting cards with "spell" effects. When you vote, the spell effect is also triggered, usually revealing some small amount of information about player roles or advancing a particular victory condition. After each round, the unique cards are replaced with standard voting cards, then the voting cards are returned to each player. This means players can only use a spell once, but won't necessarily risk revealing their role.

Your next challenge:
Tick-Tock


Fred:
Tick Tock
Competitive hide-and-go-seek, like Marco Polo only where everyone's hiding AND seeking. Each side is divided into Tickers and Tockers. The tockers run somewhere and hide, as do the tickers, then everyone closes their eyes. The tickers shout "tick" and, after a moment, the tockers shout "tock". Then play begins. The tickers open their eyes and take five quick steps (about a second). Then they shout "tick" and close their eyes. When they do this, the tockers can try to make a grab, eyes still shut, to see if they can nab a ticker. If they do, the ticker is 'out'. Then the tockers take their turn, following the same procedure, shouting "tock", with the tickers making a grab. Play ends when all the tickers or tockers are 'out'.

Your next challenge:
Cat Skills


Daniel:
Cat Skills
You've heard the expression "herding cats." Well, those cat-herders were the real deal in the old west. In this game, you play the tough hombres on horseback wrangling herds of tabbies, gingers, and calicos across the great plains to the Catskill Mountains. It'll take seven weeks to reach your destination. You and the other players will co-operate to keep the herd focused and moving. Offer treats, dangle toys and pick up any strays on your way to the mountains. Loose ideas for mechanics: Roll a bunch of dice on a table, each die represents one cat. Group the dice into sets of matching results. The highest set makes the most progress, the lower sets move at a slower pace. The trick is getting the whole herd to stay relatively intact, slowing down the fast cats and speeding up the slow cats. If any dice fall off the table, those are strays. You can bring them back into the herd, but you'll lose time doing so. If you don't bring them back on the same turn they strayed, they're lost from the herd.

Your next challenge:
Tuki... Taku... Tay!