I am here to bring news of a truly wonderful game: One Thousand Blank White Cards (1KBWC). It was originally taken (sort of) from Games Magazine, but the beauty of this game is that it’s new and different for every group that plays it. These instructions are going to be mildly confused, and it won’t sound like much fun…but try it, and you’ll see that it both makes sense and is a helluva lot of fun.
The game starts with a pile of blank index cards. You dole out a handful to everyone who’s playing (5-6 people works best), and they proceed to, in secret, make the cards that will be played with that day. What do they put on those cards? Well in short, it can be anything. They can make their own playing cards (ace through king…highly boring!), they can write smarmy messages (ex, “You have been declared Foul Knight of the Basement!”), they can give directions of some sort (“Imitate Cleopatra” “You may not speak for the rest of the game” “Go find the original Holy Grail or you shall lose all your honor and dignity” “give up that comfortable chair you are currently occupying”), they can be insults (“Oh yeah? Well YOUR mother…”), or they can affect gameplay (“The person on your left skips a turn” “This game is hereby declared DEAD”) …the cards can contain points or not, they can have words or just pictures or both…basically, you can put anything you want on these cards.
After half an hour (or whenever people feel that they’ve made enough), the cards are mixed together into a pile, and five cards are dealt to each person. (or alternatively, they’re placed in a pile to be picked up one at a time). At that point, someone in the group starts…they play one card (or maybe more) onto another person (or themself). What happens next depends on the cards, and your group. After that, another person goes. This continues until someone gets a set number of points, or all the cards are played, or the group decides that it’s done.
As you can see…there’s a bit of flexibility in this game. It’s best to get a group of people and play around a while to get a good set of standard rules. Some things my friends and I have adopted into the game:
– Gameplay proceeds in an orderly, clockwise fashion, with one player putting down one card onto someone that is not him or herself and the card being executed before the next one is played. Some may prefer more free-for-all here, but it does get a bit chaotic and hard to follow.
–An exception to the rule: there are some cards that can be played as “instants” in response to other cards (think Magic: The Gathering). Insults usually (but not always) are instants, and so are cards like “Turn this card back on its player”, but we don’t limit them…as long as it makes sense in the context, they’re allowed. Given that everyone makes their cards separately, it’s often amazing the fabulous combinations that appear!
–Instruction cards tend to be much more fun that those with just random schtuff. Though random or confusing instructions can lead to some interesting times – in one game, a card that simply stated “Insert card here!” ended up being the best card in the game.
–Inside and/or situational jokes are fabulous.
–One way we deal with points: we never put points on cards. For the most part, the game is just played for the fun of it. However, whenever someone does an exceptionally funny or high quality response or solution to a card, they are awarded a point. This is not a formal thing, it’s mostly done by means of a large gale of laughter and someone shouting out “ok that deserves a point!” Sometimes a truly great response can get a person declared the Winner of the game (the game does not necessarily have to end at that point, though it can). Conversely, annoying or stupid responses can get a point deduction for the person, or a general declaration of Loser.
–At the end of every game, we go through and save the best cards, ditching the more inane ones and the ones that are too situational to be funny at any other time. After a few games, you have a very large deck – we have well over a thousand.
Basically, the only point of the game is to make everyone laugh a lot. Change any part of it that you dislike, add thing, remove things…overall it’s great fun and highly nerdy.