The strangest thing happened to me today. I woke up, nebulous images and impressions of my last dream still hanging clouding my mind as is common, except this time instead of teeth rotting away or naked unrehearsed exams, my family and I were playing a strange version of Scrabble that seems playable.
On the other hand, my unconscious self is not a game designer by a long shot, and I doubt the original variant is playable as a tabletop game, so my waking self refined it. I’ll present both versions, starting with DreamOriginal ™
DreamOriginal
Up to 4 players. Instead of each player getting their set of 7 letters and taking turns placing words, each turn a single set of 7 letters is drawn and displayed for all players. They then have a fixed time limit (say 5 or 10 minutes) to privately come up with as many different words with these letters as they can. The words have to be Scrabble legal (i.e. : can be placed on the board as in regular Scrabble, are in the dictionnary and so on).
When the time is up, each player in turn reveals the words they came up with. Each word is scored as in regular Scrabble (including x2/3 letters, x2/x3 words, Scrabble bonus), then the score is divided and split among the people who had that word on their list. So for example, if Sue and Bob both have “WSTFGL”, worth 42 points, they both score 21. If multiple players have the same word, but placed it differently so that there is a scoring difference between the two spots, it is treated as two separate words for the purpose of scoring (i.e. both players get full score). Players score for each word they came up with, but cannot double on points for the same word with multiple placements - they have to pick one.
In order to speed up play and feature more interesting words, and to prevent the usual Scrabble suspects from scoring tons of points with their intimate knowledge of every last two and three letter word in every language on Earth, words will only count if they’re either 4+ letters long or worth 20+ points.
Once scoring has been calculated for each player, the one word that scored the most points is placed on the board. If multiple words are tied for score, pick one at random (using a dice for example) and place it on the board.
Then it’s a new turn, new letters are drawn to replace the ones used and so on, until there are less than 7 letters left in the bag, at which point the game ends.
So that’s what was in my mind, clear as day, when I woke up.
But as you can see, the scoring system is kind of a bear to deal with. It might work as a computer game, but on a table ? That’s a lot of time spent scoring instead of raiding one’s vocabulary.
So here’s a streamlined version which I dubbed “1% Scrabble” because a) this variant can be played by the whole country at once and b) 1% of the players might end up with 80% of the points :
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1% Scrabble**
As previously, one set of 7 letters common to all players. No player limit.
Each turn, players have a set time to come up with their one word. When the time is up, they write it (and its position, if multiple options are available) down on a piece of paper, then all reveal. Each proposition is scored as per usual Scrabble rules including special tiles and the Scrabble bonus. The highest scoring word is placed on the board, and the player who suggested it gets all of the points. Everyone else ? Big fat zero.
If multiple players had the high scoring word (and placement !), they split the points. If multiple players had different words that tie for score, the word that will be placed on the board is picked at random and all players involved split the score.
Then a new set of letters is drawn and the game continues until there are only 6 letters or fewer left.
So what do y’all think ? And if you had the occasion to playtest either variant, how was it ?