Here follows a playtest version of Ideal Holiday. Ideal Holiday is meant as party-game which might function as an ice-breaker for non RPG folk into the RPG world. Comments on text, mechanics and feasibility more than welcome. Ideal Holiday will always be free, if I get YGAD up and running as PDF I'll add Ideal Holiday on that site somewhere.

IDEAL HOLIDAY

Ideal holiday is a party game tacked onto a conversation you could be having with your friends anyway. The crunchy definition is: “It’s about exploration of multiple story threads centered on 1 theme”. The light definition is: “It makes embellishing stories with a whole group’s imagination a game.” Pick the definition you like, the rules of the game stay the same. Good group sizes are six to eight people.

THE BASIC RULES

Ideal Holiday adds a simple structure to a conversation in which you explore a concept. In this conversation, you tell your friends about how great, intense, fantastical or horrific your experiences and fantasies about that concept are. One such concept could be ‘The Ideal Holiday’ - thus the name of the game. The structure gives a lot of room for freewheeling fantasy, but makes sure the conversation arrives at an actual ending. The basic rules consist of the few steps that the group can follow. There are three elementary rules: play each step as long as you’re having fun, it’s not mandatory for everyone to play in every step, and side conversations are not a bad thing.

1. Pick a bunch of interesting concepts. Examples: scariest haunted house, best place to have sex, coolest place for astronauts to accidentally land, most tired feeling anyone's ever had, national politics with the politicians as fantasy creatures.

2. The group decides, by consensus if possible, but just by straight vote if not, the coolest/most fun concept to explore. In case of a tie, flip a coin, or get a round of drinks to get your concept through.

3. Everyone who wants to tell a story about the concept can. These are not monologues - building on each other's stories (with a little common courtesy) is heartily encouraged. After a while, you'll have a number of cool stories, and can go on.

4. Again, by consensus, votes, or drink-getting, pick the coolest story told. Now, from this story, everyone in the group can/may pick one or more personages in that story, and embellish their actions, and make up new ones. You can even inject characters from other stories into the 'current' story.

5. Again, once everyone’s told to their heart's delight, decide with the group which additions to the Ideal Holiday (in this example) they accept as having actually happened.

6. Now everyone in the group gets to tell about something that's threatening the concept (bad weather, stupid tourists from disfavored country X, food poisoning, being kidnapped, whatever). Again, the group decides which 'threat' (or combination thereof) is the real one.

7. Finally, everyone gets to tell an outcome of the threat. This can be a heroic solution where everything turns out all right, or a bleak, horrific, dramatic end. Again, in the end the group decides which ending (or combination thereof) is the chosen ending of the story. And there the game ends. Beer, wine and soft-drinks for everyone, and cheese and chips to boot.

OPTIONAL EXPANSION RULES

The basic rules of Ideal Holiday are set up to introduce as few whistles and bells as possible to the basic aim: having a good time with your creativity and imagination and friends. If you like, you could add a few rules if they suit you:

1. After each decision round, there are 10 points up for distribution among the group; distribution is decided by the group. Generally, most points should go to the people who added to the story, but jokes that crack up the whole group, or things that otherwise impress might be worth points as well, if you like. At the end of the game, the person with the most points ‘wins’. Make sure you spend more time on the actual steps than on distributing points for them, though.

2. If you are using points, instead of getting points, you may ask the group how many points it will cost you to add an element you like to the story.

3. If you play Ideal Holiday more than once, at the end of the story, each person could ‘claim’ one fictitious personage for their own. In further games of Ideal Holiday, that person is the only one that can use the personage.

4. After step 1, introduce step 1b. In step 1b, you can decide to change the agenda of upcoming steps. For instance, if you’re exploring a political campaign, you might want to add an ‘election’ step somewhere.

5. If you play Ideal Holiday more than once, you can of course ‘chain’ each instance together – start off where the last one left off. In this case, it might be smart to reduce group size to around five people, and you might want to pick a long-term goal for multiple sessions.

6. You make up this rule.

Lol. After just having a more in-depth look at Universalis, I realised IH could be considered an Universalis - lite.

Apologies if that was readily apparent to everyone but me. :)