Ben's game: tutorial

Ben's game is somewhat like telephone. Instead of relying on people to mishear things for its inaccuracy, though, Ben's game uses the much more reliable reliable mechanism of people's artistic and interpretive deficiencies. It works like this: everyone who is playing (4 or 5 are the fewest where it really works) gets a piece of paper and a pencil. My player's names are Anne, Ben, Chuck, David, and Elizabeth. They sit in a circle. Everyone writes a message on the top of their paper. This is Anne's paper:

Everyone passes their papers to the left. Ben now has Anne's paper. Now he must draw a picture which represents the message, without using letters or numbers. Plus and minus signs are OK, as are arrows and such. Afterwards, the paper looks like this:

Now Ben folds the paper so that Chuck cannot see the original message (along the dotted line above, if your browser is smart enough to show it). He gives it to Chuck. So Chuck sees the page like this:

Now Chuck must try to interpret the picture he is given. He doesn't quite get what it's supposed to be:

So now he folds the paper again and gives it to David, who draws a picture representing "People are fish" and folds the paper, and so on. The game ends when you start running out of paper, or if people recognize their own pages. At the end, everyone takes turns opening up their papers and reading all the text out loud. You are encouraged to notice the haiku-like quality of some games ("I know the pieces fit, 'cause I watched them tumble down. Punching apart Pac-Grannie's body & enjoying it! Happiness is beating a woman with a cane. Happiness equals death. Happiness equals Death. happiness = death! Happiness is plastic wedding figures.") So after this short, 5-person game, Anne's page might look like this:

So now you will want to go back and browse my archives of past games.

A few notes: The game is best played with an odd number of people, if you will run out of people before you run out of paper. That way, if each person gets each paper once, the pages will end with text, which is nice if you want to read the pages out loud. Don't make the drawings too elaborate, and keep them small. Don't make everyone pass their papers at the same time, it gets really slow. Just put the pages in a stack for the next person. Don't use pens that leak through the page. The game is more fun if it gets dirty (obviously).

The simulated page here is much, much lamer than all but a few that I have ever read. I had to choose a subject that I could easily draw in ASCII art, and I didn't have anyone handy to misunderstand my drawings.