[Race to Glory] My first stab at this sort of thing

[Dave Graffam]

I'm calling this game "Race to Glory".

Objective: The point of this game is to tell a zany story and have a good time telling it. It's possible for all or some of the players to complete the race -- and these might be called the winners of the game -- but no one really loses.

Materials: You need 3 to 5 players. Each player needs something to write with and a couple of pieces of paper -- one for giving away at the start of the game, and one for keeping notes. You need one 6-sided die.

Setup: The first thing you must do as a group is to select a premise for this race to glory. [I'll provide a list of example premises so that players can choose or roll randomly.] The premise should be something simple, but with a lot of potential, something like "The world has ended, but you've survived."

Other example premises: "Everyone knows pixies aren't real, but you've caught one in a net in your backyard." "You've invented a time machine, but it only goes backward through history."

At this point, the players just choose a premise. There should be no discussion about the potential for this premise, or what it might lead to. You just need a place to start. Choose a premise by majority vote, if you need to. If you need a tie-breaker, you can roll a die: highest roller chooses the premise.

With your premise established, every player then has a couple of minutes to think up a secret goal for themselves based on the premise. The trick is to choose a secret goal that's not immediately obvious, because other players will be trying to knock you out of the race by guessing your secret goal before you have a chance to reach it. If your premise was "You can fly and can't be killed by bullets" then your secret goal shouldn't be something like "To become a crime-fighting superhero." (However, other players will be expecting you to choose something unusual, so sometimes it might be worth it to choose something obvious!) Your secret goal should be something you can express in a thought or two. It should be as simple and easy to understand as the premise.

Your secret goal should be lofty, ambitious, or even far-fetched. If the premise is "You've caught a pixie" then your secret goal could be something like "To be transformed into a pixie through magic, and live in the backyard garden." Or it could be "Exploit the situation and become famous as 'the guy with the captive live pixie.'"

On a small piece of paper, write down your secret goal. Make sure no one else sees what you wrote. Write your name on that piece of paper, too. (Your real name.) Then fold up the paper and wait until everyone else has finished writing their secret goals.

Once that's done, hand your folded-up secret goal to another player. If you're offered more than one other player's secret goal, you have to choose just one of them without looking at what's written on them. Each player must end up with one other player's secret goal.

The player who has your secret goal is your referee. Before play begins, read the secret goal that was handed to you. Make sure you understand it and you know who wrote it. (Their name should be written on it.) If you don't understand the goal, you and the player you'll be refereeing should take a few moments away from the group to quietly discuss it.

Remember, your secret goal is your own. Your referee's job is to verify when you've reached your goal. Your referee also determines whether another player's guess about your secret goal is correct or not. When the referee is asked to make a judgment ("Did I pass the sixth checkpoint?" "Did I guess her secret goal correctly?") the only words the referee is allowed to say are "Yes" or "No". The referee isn't allowed to make any other comments when asked those questions, and isn't allowed to say anything at all about your secret goal. Of course, your referee won't be allowed to knock you out of the race by guessing your secret goal, and you won't be able to do that to the player that you're refereeing, either.

Now every player should have a secret goal and a referee. You're ready to play.

(continued)

[Dave Graffam]

Order of play: There are six rounds to each race, like six legs to a marathon. During each round, the players will take turns telling part of a story that they create then and there. Each round, you'll want to narrate yourself to the next checkpoint in reaching your secret goal. In the sixth round, if you make it that far, you'll get to tell the last part of your story and reveal your secret goal as you pass the sixth checkpoint.

Every round is run the same way. Start with every player taking turns rolling the die. The highest roller will go first this round, and play will proceed clockwise. (In case of a tie for first, those players should re-roll.)

When it's your turn, you become the narrator. As the narrator, you have two options on your turn: try to knock another player out of the race, or advance the story.

Knocking: If you want to try to knock another player out of the race, you have to do this at the beginning of your turn. When you knock, say what you think one other player's secret goal might be. Their referee will tell you if you're right or wrong with a simple "Yes" or "No". If you're right, that player is knocked out of the race, although they need to stick around in order to referee and offer story advice. Players that are knocked out of the race are still dangerous: they may not advance the story, but they still get a turn and may knock once each turn.

You only get one guess per knock, and you only get one knock per turn. If you knock, whether right or wrong, your chance to advance the story will get pushed back to the end of the queue this turn. The other players will get a chance to narrate (choosing whether to knock or advance) before it cycles back to you. (However, you must pass through one checkpoint each round, even if your turn to advance the story gets pushed to the back of the queue.) Remember, you get just one chance to knock each round. If you do, you must advance when the order of play cycles back to you during this round.

(Here's a trick: If you're the last player to go in a turn, and no one else has knocked, make sure you knock! You'll get bumped back to the end of the queue, but that doesn't matter because you're already the last player to go this turn. Knock, and then advance!)

Advancing: When you advance, you have to tell part of the story about how you reach your secret goal. The premise gives the starting point, but the story will certainly become more complex and detailed as each player takes their turns. The most important rule here is that you can't contradict the details of the story that have been created earlier in the game.

When you advance the story, you can ask any other players for advice or guidance. Your questions -- and their answers -- may reveal something about everyone's secret goals, or might be red herrings. You can even include the characters or other situations created by the other players, so long as you have their permission and it makes sense for the story. No matter how much advice you ask for, the only parts of the story that are 'set in stone' are those that you allow to influence your narration.

You have a lot of freedom in how you go about advancing the story. In addition to asking for advice, you can introduce new ideas and twists. You're the final authority on what does and doesn't happen in the story during your turn, but (because it's too important to miss) you can't contradict the details of the story that have been created earlier in the game. You can't change the premise or your secret goal. You can't ignore what the other players have done to advance the story. The idea is that all of the players will help to create one story, and each player must find a way to reach their secret goals within that story.

You'll have to pace yourself and not give away too much information, but you have to move forward. Think of each turn you take as a short chapter in a story. In each chapter, one important thing should happen that helps you get from the premise (or your last checkpoint) to the next checkpoint. Remember, there are six checkpoints you must pass through. The sixth checkpoint is the final chapter in your story, in which you reveal your secret goal. Hopefully, you'll reveal your goal to an appreciative audience saying things like, "So that's why you did what you did at the third checkpoint!"

Pacing is very important. You can't do too much or too little before reaching your next checkpoint. "I pick up a pencil" is not a very good way to reach your checkpoint, unless that's one-sixth of the way toward your secret goal. (It might be! Every story will be different.) The temptation will be to save all of your best ideas for the last couple of checkpoints, but you might run out of time -- and going into overtime is risky.

At any time while you're advancing, the other players, including your referee, can accuse you of breaking stride. This means that you've added a twist to the story that doesn't make sense, or introduced something that contradicts something that was established earlier by another player's narration. You can be accused of breaking stride if you're doing too much or too little to reach your checkpoint. If the majority of players agree that you're breaking stride (use a die-roll to break any ties), then you have to back up your story to the point where it deviated. This could be a challenge, and you'll be wise not to venture too far from the story.

(continued)

[Dave Graffam]

Finishing the game: The race officially ends after the sixth round. By then, every player's secret goal will have been revealed. But there might be overtime.

If you got knocked out of the race early, you won't get the satisfaction of passing through the sixth checkpoint triumphantly, but you had one chance each turn to try to ruin someone else's race for glory. (If you can't beat them, join them!)

If you need more checkpoints to reach your goal, you'll have to admit that you've tripped on the finish line. (Other players will cheerfully remind you of this blunder.) There's still a way to finish your story and finish the race, but it's not as triumphant as finishing on time. If you reach the sixth checkpoint and still need to tell the rest of your story, continue the game by going into overtime and run some extra rounds. These overtime rounds are run almost exactly like regular rounds, with this exception: each round, every player that has finished the race on time (or has been knocked out) now gets one chance to try to knock each player still left in the race. For example, if there are three players in overtime, but you've already finished the race, you get three guesses during your turn -- one guess of each player's secret goal. Remember that if you're the referee for a player, you can't try to knock them.

And that's pretty much it. So, there's my first 'story game'. What do you think? Have I forgotten anything important? Is it difficult to grasp? Too dependent on each group's sensibilities? Are there enough checks and balances to keep the story going without breaking down into chaos? It is broken? Can it be fixed? Anything you'd want to add or change? Where can we go from here?

Dave Graffam
Outworld Studio

[J. Scott Timmerman]

I like it.  It even sounds like something that could be played online.  Your rules are easy to understand, but perhaps a cleaner way of determining whether a player has violated a rule would help.

Have you considered the possibility that a referee could intentionally advance the story in a particular manner aimed at sabotaging the goal of the player that they're refereeing for, without disclosing any information about the player's goal?

-Jason T.

[Dave Graffam]

Thanks for looking it over, Jason.

perhaps a cleaner way of determining whether a player has violated a rule would help.

Can you tell me which part of it is fuzzy? I'll try to clear it up.

Have you considered the possibility that a referee could intentionally advance the story in a particular manner aimed at sabotaging the goal of the player that they're refereeing for, without disclosing any information about the player's goal?

This was more a quirk of the design than anything I did intentionally, but I did consider that referees would have this opportunity, and I liked it. Your referee can't knock you out directly, but they're not exactly powerless, either. Since this power is distributed evenly among the players, I figure it will police itself. But I might want to include another 'here's a trick': Your strategy for the first couple of rounds of play might be best spent trying to sabotage the player you're refereeing, since you already know what they're working toward. Your job will be to artfully dodge your referee's attempts to do the same. Save the last three or four checkpoints for getting in position to meet your own goals.

There's also no rule against two players being referees for each other, which could be insanely back-bitey or a powerhouse combo.

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Can you tell me which part of it is fuzzy? I'll try to clear it up.

One problem is, the referee has to see how a certain turn relates to the goal, and it might cause confusion.  Disagreements might be common, and the other players can't really vote on whether the player in question has reached a checkpoint or not.  They don't know yet what the player's goal is and so don't have the basis for judging whether it's a checkpoint.

But I might want to include another 'here's a trick': Your strategy for the first couple of rounds of play might be best spent trying to sabotage the player you're refereeing, since you already know what they're working toward. Your job will be to artfully dodge your referee's attempts to do the same. Save the last three or four checkpoints for getting in position to meet your own goals.

There's also no rule against two players being referees for each other, which could be insanely back-bitey or a powerhouse combo.

Makes it more interesting, but could be potentially gamebreaking.  I could see that, if a player didn't bother choosing a particularly foolproof goal, there could be ways of derailing a player completely without obviously derailing the story.  The problem lies in arbitration.  What does it mean to derail a story?  Does it stifle creativity when players worry about going too far?  Does a vote really fix it?

-Jason T.