An easily portable sack game of simple deduction and memory for 2 - 5 players. Can be played nearly everywhere!

COMPONENTS - double pouch sack (one small pouch, one large pouch) - 13 identity tokens (King, Queen, etc.)

Place all the tokens into the large pouch of the sack. Players will randomly choose one token from the large pouch of the sack and place the token into the small pouch of the sack. This sets the secret objective of the game. Each player will then take two tokens from the pouch and keep these tokens secret from other players.

Players may take one of three actions during their turn.

Interrogate Another Player

Ask another player the following question - filling in BLANK for the identities desired. "Do you have BLANK or BLANK?

If the interrogated player has either of the identities that were declared, the interrogated player MUST show the turn player one of them in secret. Otherwise declare "NO."

Look at a Token in the Sack

A player may randomly chooses a token in the sack to look at in secret from the other players. Place the token back into the large pouch.

Solve

The player declares an identity and checks the token in the small pouch in secret. IF correct, that player wins!

If incorrect, that player must return the secret token back to the small pouch and return the two tokens in that player's possession back to the large pouch. That player is out of the game.

Proper Deportment

A standing game of manners, etiquette, and high society.

To be truly a lady, one must carry the principles of politeness into every circumstance, and extend the gentle courtesies of life to everyone. Some find this to be too much trouble, and so deride the idea of being polite and call it deceitfulness. - Florence Hartley, 1860

Proper Deportment is a standing, mingling party game for 4-12 people. Players are vicious young socialites at Hartley’s Manners Academy, outwardly practicing etiquette at a garden party while secretly trying to embarrass one another by bringing up painful family secrets. Players may move around during the game, but should remain easily visible to all. While this game can be played without storytelling or embodying the part, it’s more fun if everyone gets into the act.

Components

• 12 Brooches - Numbered clothespins, Ms. Hartley pin.
• Cards:
  • Scandals - Dark family secret, 3 icons. (examples: Crazy uncle, fortune founded on opium trade, last-season’s clothes)
  • Topics - Conversation prompts, 1-2 icons. (examples: Health care, popular uprisings, recent fashions)
  • Roses

Gameplay:

The most dignified player--or the last round’s winner--is Ms. Hartley, the others are students. Ms. Hartley gives each student a brooch, one SCANDAL, and three TOPICS. She may also choose a city for the round, requiring players to use their best version of that regional accent. Students clip their SCANDAL to their clothes so all can see them and keep TOPICS hidden in their hands. They stand and mingle while taking turns in the order indicated by the brooches. Players want to tell a story that invokes another player’s SCANDAL, then apologize profusely about bringing it up.

Conversations:

Taking turns, players start conversations (hold a card), or join conversations (add to someone else’s stack), by playing TOPIC cards to try and embarrass another Student. Students may instead get a new TOPIC from Ms. Hartley and may discard a TOPIC.

Matching:

TOPIC cards the students play must move the conversation toward matching someone’s SCANDAL. If the card does not, the student withdraws it and loses their turn.

Maintaining Composure:

When a conversation’s TOPICS match all the icons on a player’s SCANDAL, the player becomes “embarrassed,” and must balance the TOPIC cards on her head to “Maintain Composure.” Once she places the cards on her head, she may not touch them again unless her SCANDAL is matched again, when she adds additional cards to the stack. While balancing the cards, the student plays normally. If she drops any cards, she “loses her composure” and is out for the round.

Ms. Hartley referees the round, enforcing etiquette and handing out cards. She goes last, drawing and adding TOPIC cards to a conversation. Each round’s winner is the next Ms. Hartley.

Round end / Game End:

A player wins a round and receives a rose card by playing all her TOPICS and finishing the conversation in her hand OR when all others have lost their composure. Three ROSE cards win (two for 7+ players).

A Stitch In Time

A silly game for serious people.

You are the fates. You pluck notions, places, people from the aether and bring them together forming the now and the future that will become the past.
As you do so you hope to shape the outcome to comply with your own hopes and desires.

Components:
One three foot piece of yarn per player, each a different color.
One plastic sewing needle per player.
One sharpie per player.
A stack of blank index cards.

Setup:

Each player takes the same number of index cards. Choose a bigger number of cards for a longer game or a game with fewer players or fewer cards for a quicker game or one with more players.

Players write a motivation on the first card and the word "Motivation" on the back.
On the remaining cards players write anything. Adjectives, proper nouns, historical events, devices, locations, holidays. Nothing is out of bounds, but try not to be boring. (As long as everyone isn't, it will still work.)

Gameplay:

Everyone should hand their Motivation cards to the youngest player who will shuffle them and hand them out randomly. You could, though likely won't, get your own card back.

All players now pass the rest of their cards to the youngest player who will shuffle them. While this shuffle is happening the other players will thread their needles, the first to do so will also thread the youngest player's needle. When the shuffling and threading is done the youngest player chooses a player who will draw the top three cards from the pile that the youngest player is holding. They will review these cards and choose two to stitch together, replacing the third into the pile.

When choosing what cards to stitch together keep your motivation in mind. Each stitch is a moment. Ideas are joined to each other in any order that the players can and would like to join them. As ideas branch they might begin to occur simultaneously if they are equally distant from the initial card or another point. They can also be brought back together by being stitched into a loop at which point the events take the order that the loop creates.

As play passes the stitched story is held by whomever is available, as are the cards.

When a card is added the player adding it explains what it means to the story, this becomes true and can not be redacted only expounded upon by further additions. Each player must stop either when they run out of thread or when the last card is added.

Once the tale is complete the oldest player will recite the tale, with help form their fellows. Then each player reveals their motivation and explains why they think their desire was the one that was realized.

The consensus winner keeps the tale.

Yarn will be everywhere, a tangled mess. Needles will be rethreaded, fingers poked, feelings hurt, and the now will come into focus.