Modifiable playing Feild: The World’s a Stage
I had a hard time coming up with the ideas for this game but when I finally had a concrete idea I stuck with it. I am very proud of this game and can’t wait to playtest it!!!
Here are the rules:
The World’s a Stage
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
- William Shakespeare
Rules
Setup
- Place the board on a flat surface.
- Each player chooses a character card.
- Each player, using a sheet of paper and pencil, records 100 points.
- The player wearing the most color goes first.
Game Play
- Draw a ‘Back Drop’ card and place the back drop where indicated on the board.
- Then each player will draw a prop card and place their prop card where they wish as indicated by the circle shaped spaces labeled: upper right, upper center, upper left, center right, center, center left, right, left, lower right, lower center, and lower left, respectively.
-After each player has placed his/her prop card each player will proceed to draw 1 ‘Script Card’, 1 ‘Emotion Card’, and 1 ‘Stage Direction Card’.
-Starting with the first player each player will act out their scene as directed by the cards they drew. Players do not have to actually act out their scene physically, but they must act out their scene when reciting the line using their voice, if you do not the other actors can vote to dock you 5 points for ruining the performance.
-If one of the props get in the way of a player they can lose 10 points if the prop cannot be used in the context of that player’s scene, exe. A rock in the house cannot be used as a chair.
-Players will follow these rules through out game play.
Objective
The objective of this game is to be the player with the most points at the end of the game! (The game is over when you run out of script cards).
Cast Cards:
Each player will choose a cast card to represent them on the board.
Prop Cards:
- Prop cards each have a picture of a prop that can be placed on stage, while some of them can be used, others become obstacles for the cast to trip on, so be careful where you decide to put your Props!
- Prop cards are light blue
Script Cards:
- Script cards have one line on them and none of them are the same, it depends on how well you say your lines if you can keep your points, impress your fellow cast members!
- Script cards are red
Emotion Cards:
- Emotion cards contain an emotion, accent, or idea which you have to attempt to use while reciting your line from the script card, hopefully your fellow cast members will be impressed enough not to dock points.
- If a fellow cast member is trying to use the emotion card even a little bit other players may not dock points!!!
- Emotion cards are purple
Stage Direction cards:
- Stage direction cards contain the choreography which you have to use on stage. This is where it gets tricky, hopefully there will be no props in your path that you might trip over!
- Stage direction cards are green
Order of events:
Entire Cast-
1. Each player draws 1 prop card
2. Each plays their prop card
Individual player scenes-
3. Draw 1 script card
4. Draw 1 emotion card
5. Draw 1 stage direction card
6. Act out your lines
7. Move your player token to the spaces mentioned on the stage direction card.
8. Subtract the correct amount of points
9. The next player begins his/her scene.
I did most of the images on a computer with no internetaction so I’ll try to get them uploaded sometime this week! I will bring my camera to class to get some phtographs of people playing my game, I hope you don’t mind, I really want to see peoples reactions and be able to post them in my blog so if someone in my group doesn’t want me posting pictures of them please let me know!
March 9, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Fun game! The point system really didn’t work out so well, as we’ve seen in other voting games, no one is willing to be the bad guy and take points from someone else. If you want to keep the point system, maybe you should go the other way, people are more likely to give points out as deserved per turn, then they are to take away. Over all very entertaining! I liked how people had to act out the emotion on the card. Other then the score issue I can’t realy think of anything else that went skrewy. Good Job!
March 10, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Elizabeth,
Interesting idea! Do you have a list of the prop cards and the backdrops? I’m interested in how they work together. It doesn’t look like the cards were shuffled very well, but one way to find out is to view the card list!
Stephanie’s comments about scoring sounds good. You might even try experimenting with other methods such as giving each player a limited number of points to give each turn and to vote on the other players’ performances. With larger teams though, this can be a bit hard to remember.
You might also want to clarify better in your rules how the props are used. Perhaps give an example of two players making use of props (or failing to use them!). Failure to use a prop can result in point deduction.
Lastly, I think it would be great to include the name of the character, play, act, and scene where the quotes come from! This would help put the quotes into context.
Devin Monnens
March 13, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Hey, guys! Don’t know where else to put this to get a hold of you, so I’ll just comment in your most recent blogs:
Sorry about not showing up to the group meeting today. I was held up longer than was planned, and didn’t get to the school until around 2. On top of that, I didn’t remember exactly where we were supposed to meet–I tried Columbine Hall, but couldn’t find anyone.
If you could give me an update on what you two (Kaila and Elizabeth, if we’re still sticking to three people to a group) decided, that’d be awesome. Just let me know what I can do to help with the game design process, and I’ll gladly take care of it! Just email me at smorgan3@uccs.edu
Sorry again about the absence!
And while I’m at it, I’ll leave my comment on your game, too!
Overall, I really enjoyed this game (having a bit of an interest in theatre myself). Using cards to assign different lines, emotions, and directions was a neat idea, and made for some really amusing acts! As was corrected in the game, the point system didn’t work too well (kinda hard to do so where judgment is required). I think the game worked nicely even without the point system, anyway.
One (sorta picky) suggestion I have is to use something to make the prop cards stand up. There seemed to be some issues with knowing what place is what on the board, and picking up the cards to see what the spot was posed sort of an issue because cards would be stacked on each other (also made it hard to see some props). Maybe using some sort of device to hold the cards upright on the board would help ease this.
March 17, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Your game was fun! I like that it left the play mostly up to the imagination of the people playing it (and thus lead to the invention of Zombie kitties ^_^).
One thing you might want to consider more is how to incorporate the backdrops just a little bit more. Perhaps a requirement would be to use that in the scene… or only certain props would go with certain backdrops.
Overall it was quite entertaining, especially with our group playing it…
P.S <- I guess this is a letter now… I always want to call you Lizzy… does that make me weird?
…
…..
I guess so…
March 19, 2009 at 12:37 am
I really enjoyed playing your game. I liked the aspect of having props (as a former props master for musicals and plays, hehe) and a backdrop to kind of make the situation have another dimension to its game play.
The only thing I suggested was more interaction with the backdrop, because when we played it, the backdrop was just kind of there for commentary, not really a part of the actual game play. Maybe if you could some how incorporate that into how you act out your scene, it would open up more creative responses from the players.
Overall tho, great job!