Segues

A creative game from Equinox 73

Segues by Dean Howard (Shrdlu)

Teams work together to find connections between apparently unrelated things.

Fakelore

A Fictionary variant using lesser-known folk tales from around the world, by NeilFred Picciotto (Renfield) and Lisa Eckstein (Mooncalf).

Each page of Summary Cards (PDF) is to be cut into six cards for one round of play. In each round, the title of a real folk tale is printed at the top of each card; one card has the real summary for that title. Twenty different folk tales are provided, one on each page.

Instructions (PDF) to be printed one per person.

Exquisite Fruit

A creative game by Todd McClary (T McAy), presented at Equinox 71 by Debbie Goldstein

Players write trivia questions in “exquisite corpse” fashion, with each player contributing words while only able to see the last word contributed.

Full instructions, including a link to a printable sheet.

Personal Perfection

 Creative game from Equinox 70, by Vynce Montgomery: handout and instructions for presenter. Based on Personal Perfection from Equinox 45 by Henri Picciotto and Barbara Selfridge.

Sagas of the Noo Moon

From Equinox 69, a mixer leading to a creative game: Sagas of the Noo Moon, by Henri Picciotto (Hot)

Each participant was given part of a palindrome, and was instructed to find the other parts.
This was designed for 52 players, and divided them into ten teams.

The teams were then asked to write Noo Moon Sagas inspired by their palindromes, following specific instructions.

Instructions
(To be studied and read by the presenter.  It would be helpful to have a helper to manage the timer.)

The palindromes
(Broken up into fragments. For a smaller gathering, delete the shorter palindromes, re-sequence the remaining fragments in alphabetical order, and copy/paste them into a word processor.)

The fragments
(In alphabetical order, so that the palindromes are not given to people consecutively. The presenter will need to cut the pages into four 2.5 inches high slips.)

The worksheet
(This is where the teams will write their sagas. The instructions are summarized at the top. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a tad too small. It would help to print on legal-size sheets if possible.)

The resulting stories 
(when we played the game in Berkeley.)

Nominate!

A creative game from Equinox 68, by Ann Daniels and Jon Zingman (Iolanthe and Plaid): Nominate!

This game is in memory and honor of Bárbara Selfridge, Banterweight, who loved pass and fold games and loved politics.

Instructions
Names and Offices
Forms

License Plate Stories

A creative game from Equinox 66: License Plate Stories, by NeilFred Picciotto (Renfield)

Nearly Chess

Nearly Chess, a creative game by Henri Picciotto (Hot) from Equinox 64.

Obviously, this can be adapted to any theme by changing the list of starting words.

Equinox Primary

Creative Game from Equinox 62: "Equinox Primary" by Henri Picciotto and Sally Picciotto (Hot and Alice)

This was inspired by a Tumblr meme. It was played in groups of eight or so.

Each group got this handout.

Here are some of the best entries.

Like a What?

"Like a What?" a creative game from Equinox 61, by Dan Bennett

This is a Dylan-theme-based game that is played like a madlib. A host (preferably someone with at least a passing familiarity with Bob Dylan's most famous works) asks players to supply the indicated words without revealing anything about the "story." One twist different from typical madlibs is that some rhymes are required. The host should be flexible about these: allow loose rhymes, or relax the part-of-speech constraint, or suggest players replace hard-to-rhyme words. Once the work is complete, the host reads (or performs) it back to the rest of the players.

Constrained Nursery Rhymes

Creative game from Equinox 60: Constrained Nursery Rhymes by Erica Klarreich (Slairch)

A version of this was played at Equinox 2.

Your Latin Roots Are Showing

Creative game from Equinox 58 -- "Your Latin Roots Are Showing" by Ann Daniels and Jon Zingman (Iolanthe and Plaid)

Heinzsight

A creative game from Equinox 57, by Jill Tallmer.

Players sit at tables of approximately eight. Each person has a paper, accordion-folded in 8 and then unfolded (or a paper printed with seven equidistant lines) Each person writes a dramatic last line of a story at the bottom and passes to the left. Second person writes a dramatic and entirely unrelated first line of a story at the top and passes to the left. After last and first lines are filled in, subsequent writers can choose to fill in any intervening line, so as to get the story to make sense. When all 8 lines are written, the person who started by finishing the story gets it back, and slaps on an appropriate title to the story.

Note that everyone can see the whole story as far as it has been written up to that point. This is not a "pass and fold" game.

For this Equinox, there was an additional requirement that every story plus title add up to 57 words, which meant that the person writing the title had to count the words, and edit as needed. It was helpful that each person indicated how many words they used in their line.

When stories are complete, go around the table declaiming them. Share the best/worst with the whole assembly if there's time.

Tables with a number of players other than 8 can easily adapt.

Three stories written this way:

THE CHURL FROM IPANEMA
When he staggered into the bar, all conversation stopped.
"Please, a drink," the burned man gasped.
But the bartender ignored him.
Suddenly, the man burst into a song:
"Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Tequlia!"
Best. Song. Ever!
But inside, he was deeply concerned about the devastating earthquake in Brazil.
"Someone's got to rebuild Rio," he muttered.

CEDRIC AND LUCY
What happens in the dirt stays in the dirt
"I hate parties" Cedric grumbled
But then he saw her in the blooming daffodils
Daffodils never party
They just lie around
"You call that a garden?" She sneered
"No, I call that a--hey, will you marry me?"
She turned to him and said "Yes."


The next one rhymes:

CRAP!
the princess awoke to sun streaming in
and a funny feeling at her chin
she said "Oh crap--not again!"
she plugged in the electric razor--but then...
footsteps approaching. "here comes the queen!"
"but my thin beard remains unclean!"
"Oh crap" she said as she went to the can
and that's when the problems began

Separated at Birth

A creative game from Equinox 55: Separated at Birth by Rick Rubenstein (Rubrick).

A pass-and-fold guessing game. Players started with a well-known quote or proverb, then applied a randomly-chosen transformation (such as "Change a letter in up to three words" or "Replace two words with words that rhyme with them") and passed the resulting new phrase along. After seven modifications, the remaining player(s) tried to guess the original phrase.

The transformations are listed in this file. They were cut out and enclosed in an envelope. One player in each group was responsible for drawing a transformation from the envelope for each turn.

It boggles the imagination

A creative game from Equinox 53: "It boggles the imagination" by Ann Daniels (Iolanthe) and Jon Zingman (Plaid).

Who Wants Jelly Donuts?

A creative game presented by Erica Klarreich (Slairch) at Equinox 51.

"I chose 5 short and relatively obscure sentences from well-known works of fiction. For each sentence, I told participants the first letter of each word in the sentence, in order (so for example if one of the sentences were 'Who wants jelly donuts?', the players would get WWJD). It was the job of each table to construct a sentence whose words started with those letters, and that sounded as if it could have come out of the book in question. Their goal was to fool the participants at the other tables into thinking their sentence was the real one. After all tables had turned in all 5 of their made-up sentences, I read the sentences (including the real one) out loud in random order and players voted on which was the real sentence.

In general, a lot of people guessed right about the Austen and Orwell sentences, but in the other three cases many people were fooled."

The sentences, should you want to take a stab at guessing.

The answers.

Scene of the Crime

Creative game: Scene of the Crime, by NeilFred Picciotto (Renfield) from Equinox 48.

The Silver Book of Literature

A creative game from Equinox 47: The Silver Book of Literature, by Jon Zingman (Plaid):

• instructions 
• our creations

Quiz-Show Telegraph

A creative game from Equinox 46: Quiz-Show Telegraph (pdf), by Dwight Freund (Dandr) -- write a question / write a possible answer to it / write a possible question that yields that answer / etc.

Personal Perfection

A creative game from Equinox 45: Personal Perfection (pdf) by Henri Picciotto (Hot) and Barbara Selfridge (Banterweight)