Meeting people can be awkward. We’ve all been there, you’ve asked them their name for the third time and you can’t ask again. You catch it somewhere and you have to try your hardest not to forget it. Hang on, is it that person’s name or the other person sat across the room? Okay, come up with nicknames, but don’t let them sneak out when you’re chatting to another person, as you all make awkward small talk looking for a common point of interest. And you’ve gotten their name wrong; well both of them have blonde hair.
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but meeting people can be tough at times. How many awkward ice breakers have you been involved with? All those school drama classes. But that’s what I want to call on. In this article, I’m going to explore the minigames that exist as ice-breakers already and how this could be turned into a role-playing game. A game you can only play with a group of strangers and never again once you knew them (not much of a sales pitch, I know, but still a situation to explore).
Starting with the games, one of the main purposes of the games was to learn everybody else’s name. Pointing at people and saying their name, saying your own name, the name of their cat or dog (wait, I might be slipping into drinking games here, each person being assigned a cat name and having to swap and drink and, yeah, definitely drinking game). In these games, speed and recall is the main objective, associating names with actions to reinforce them.
Stemming from this style of play is also the speed and how it lends itself to humour. Aside from the childish scenario you would usually play these types of games in, the games themselves are designed to be silly. There are two directions the games usually take, either, you work as a team to go for as long as possible, or the person who drops the game has to take a forfeit, such as going to one knee/putting a hand behind their back. In the first case, “losing” isn’t punished, the group tries again, creating a team spirit. In the second, the forfeit is usually silly and it brings a competitive edge, but still a fun one. In both cases, the outcome doesn’t matter, what matters is the bonding and the breaking of awkwardness through humour.
These games work on a surface level; you get to know everybody else’s names, maybe who’s got good reflexes or hand-eye co-ordination. But it’s still at a top level, you don’t get to know about the person as an individual (though that could get messy with a larger group). So I went into exploring games that dig a little deeper, and actually tell a little bit more about an individual.
One of the games that always stands out to me is two truths one lie. It’s a neat concept in a vacuum; you tell the person you’re next to three things about you, two being true and one being false. Their challenge is to tell you which one is false. The potential here is to find out a couple of facts about the person, but it shows more information than at first glance. This can be a good/bad thing depending on the personality of the person you’re paired with; spring something on them and they may not know what to say, and the most morbid person in the group is always outed.
This also reminded me of an experimental version of the game I saw (but have never been able to find the second time). It was a game of two truths one lie, but everything said was dark. The twist revealed at the end was that each lie was another person’s truth.
But back from that tangent. This game reveals a secondary factor about each person; what they value as a self-fact and what they think fits them. If you take two people playing the game, the first person may talk about number of siblings and animals, the next person could talk about a skill such as music or sport. This tells us what the individual values and also what they feel makes them them; how they want to define themselves. In a writing class, you can map out a character in 3 parts: x is y that wants z. The example that I got from that class was Derek was a 19-year-old student that desperately wanted to take his makeup off. In a similar way somebody picking details about themselves subconsciously does the same thing.
The basis for this RPG comes from these two elements, humour and what we say about ourselves. The game will be one session, no GM and low on resources with some prep. You probably don’t want too many players either, maybe a top end of 10 and a lower end of 3-4.
Preparing for Strangers
One of the things I dislike about the two truths one lie game is not knowing that it’s going to happen. On the spot, you’re given 3 minutes to come up with 2 things about yourself that you set out as a persona, and then also a lie that you think people will believe based on the other things you’ve said. It’s a lot to process when broken down as stated: am I showing off, do I look boring, is this too morbid, will people understand? For this, your players want to know what they’re getting themselves in for and what things they need to know about themselves.
Before the game begins, each player will need to create sheets that ask the same set of questions of them, this way everybody will be talking about the same points of their life. As a basis, I’d start with:
- Name
- Profession
- A hobby
- A CD/song they really like
- A goal they want to achieve this year/next
- A long term life goal
- A pet (if they have one) what it’s called and what type of animal. (If they don’t, maybe what they have had/what they would want, and what they would call it.)
- What you wanted to be when you were a kid.
This is just a starter of ideas that could be used based on things I’d be able to answer. For others it could be a sport they like, favourite colour, a skill, milk or water first; it depends a little bit on the group and why this meeting of people is taking place. Most people should be able to answer the questions above.
Each person gets to answer these questions in advance. This removes the on the spot panic of deciding what to say and lets the person organising the meeting choose what they think is important to know. As an example, if it was a football camp, you wouldn’t want to ask favourite sport, but you could ask favourite player. If it was a Dungeons and Dragons game, you could ask favourite class. These aren’t questions you would want to ask in a general group though.
The next step is for each person to print and cut these ideas out. There would be a template of boxes/cards that each person would fill in, print out and cut. These templates would also need to have the same formatting (font style/size). Although a little extreme, if handwritten, sets of cards could be put together based on handwriting. It also avoids the awkward moment where one player can’t read what another person has written, but this will make sense when we get to the game play.
Making Acquaintances
Each person joins the session, creates a name card/sticker and takes a seat with their cards. In the middle of the table, create a separate pile of each category. Each pile is then shuffled and one card given to each player. Each player then gets to read and reveal the cards they have in front of them. This becomes their persona to play for the game; everybody becomes a hodge-podge of everybody.Starting with the lead, read out your name and the parts of your persona, and then go around the table and let each player read out their own.
Playing a(round)
Pick a player to be lead investigator, they pick another player to become the suspect, pick one of that player’s traits. The table then gets to start asking questions about that trait. The suspect has to explain that part of their character as though it was true whether it is or not. The rest of the players then ask questions until the original asker decides that they’ve heard enough. The group votes whether they believe that the trait does belong to the person or not, the lead investigator breaking any ties.
After this, there are four different combinations of things that can happen in regards to group choice and trait truth, and here’s what happens in each scenario.
- Players vote true and it is true
The card gets ticked and left where it is
- Players vote false but it is true
The suspect gets to tick the item and trade a false trait for their true trait with another player
- Players vote true but it is false
The suspect gets to swap that trait for the true trait with another player or the middle pile
- Players vote false and it is false
The suspect puts the trait into the middle of the table and has one less trait
Once the player has done this, they become the next lead and ask another player about one of their traits and the next round begins.
The game then ends when one player has collected all of their traits and become their true selves. As soon as they take their final trait, they read out all the information about themselves, then in a clock-wise order, the rest of the table read out their persona’s, removing any fake traits and placing them into the middle, and taking their real traits from other players and the middle as they go until all players are once again themselves.
Becoming yourself
This game definitely needs to be tried and worked on and play testers may be a bit of a challenge to come by. Within the gameplay, I’ve tried to touch on team-building and humour. Every round, the table has to work as a team to investigate the suspect, put pieces of what’s said together to come to a conclusion. Each player should also get a chance to lead and put themselves forward which I feel is another aspect which you would want to know about people you’re going to be in a team with. I feel humour is important to break tension, and this comes from the juxta-position personas may take with the person playing them. You also have the acting element in which somebody has to make those around them believe that they know what they’re talking about when they may not have a clue.
If you ever get a chance to try it out and you do, let me know how it goes. If I ever find the opportunity, I’ll be sure to add some tweaks. Now back to you, you say you had a cat named Judas, where did that name come from?
AF Cowlin 