Context

I've been reading role playing poems again recently – they are very short role playing games (or storytelling games, or improvisation exercises, in case you have a very narrow definition of RPG), 15 minutes or less, and because they ar so short, they can and have to explore a single, very narrow theme. Often they play with ideas that have no place in bigger games – like emotions hitting close to home, boredom, identity, body. Somehow, the following one sprang to my mind. I'm sure it needs refinement.

Talking to Strangers

A game poem for three or more friends walking through town.

One player plays the Stranger. They should play to be a person with similar interests, but possibly a different personality to themselves. The other players play a group of Friends, walking through town minding their own business. The Friends must have names different from the players. By chance, the Stranger is walking in a very similar direction as the Friends, at a very similar pace, unable to not listen to their conversations.

The game proceeds for about 8–12 minutes, until the departure point where the paths of the Stranger and the Friends would split. (They can there make the decision to hesitate shortly, or even join to go to one destination.)

If the Stranger reaches the departure point without talking to the Friends, the Stranger wins.
If a Friend asks the Stranger for some contact details, the Stranger wins.
If the Stranger talks to the Friends, the Friends win.

Notes

This is not a zero-sum game: One side winning does not mean the other loses.
The win conditions want to achieve the following: The first condition wants to motivate the Stranger to be shy and mind their own business. The third condition wants to motivate the Friends to have a conversation that is so relevant to the Stranger that they cannot but join. The second condition wants to motivate the Stranger to open up, make a good impression and make Friends, but also be a small incentive to the Friends to not be too open with the Stranger who just joined them out of no-where (because they have already won, see? Denying the Stranger the victory will be the next-best thing.)
I'm not sure about the title.

Other articles

Games, games and games

Published: Fri 07 July 2017
By Gereon A. Kaiping

In rpg.

tags: role-playing

My List of interesting Games

Actually, this is a list of lists, as BESW notes. And maybe it should actually be something else – a two-dimensional graph, with axes “I have played it this much” and “I want to play it this much”. Also, this is of course a snapshot. It …
read more
Gebärden schreiben

Published: Sun 11 December 2016
By Gereon A. Kaiping

In science.

tags: deutsch writing linguistics sign language

Wie man Gebärdensprachen schreibt

Vor ein paar Wochen habe ich in einem Seminar für Deutsch-Studenten hier an der Uni einen Gastvortrag über Gebärdensprachschriften und -notationssysteme gehalten. Falls jemand das interessant findet, kann er den Vortrag (mit verlinkten, also fehlenden Videos) hier finden.

read more
RPG Preferences

Published: Mon 03 October 2016
By Gereon A. Kaiping

In rpg.

tags: role-playing social contract metagame rewards science

What I Like

RPGs are a favourite pastime of mine, and over the time I have gained experience with various ways of running them or participating, and I have acquired some quite precise ideas of what I like in a game and what I don't like, in general – though I …
read more
Man Nehme Stattdessen 1: Paprikakuchen

Published: Tue 26 January 2016
By Gereon A. Kaiping

In man nehme stattdessen.

tags: kochen backen deutsch mannehmestattdessen paprika kuchen

Ausschreibung

Im Winter-exPuls 2015 haben wir folgenden Wettbewerb ausgeschrieben.

Wir haben dazu zwei Einsendungen bekommen, die wir euch im Folgenden vorstellen.

Sieger: Tarte Tatin aux Poivrons

Medea Menzel schickte uns folgendes Rezept für eine Tarte Tatin.

Tarte Tatin aux Poivrons

Mürbeteig: 250g Vollkornmehl 100g Butter 75g brauner Zucker 1 Ei …
read more
Correlated Characters

Published: Tue 10 November 2015
By Gereon A. Kaiping

In models for phylogeny.

tags: correlated evolution model construction ctmc typological characters universals

When constructing models that we want to use in the inference of human cultural traits, we often encounter a problem of (possible) dependency: The individual features that evolve are not necessarily independent of each other. This can be due to obvious implications – a culture living inland will hardly have any …
read more

Other articles

My List of interesting Games

Wie man Gebärdensprachen schreibt

What I Like

Ausschreibung

Sieger: Tarte Tatin aux Poivrons

Tarte Tatin aux Poivrons

blogroll

social