Month: February 2016

Drawn Chess Final Iteration

 

Artist Statement:

The creation of this piece – Drawn Chess was driven by the idea that every action that we take leaves a footprint. Inspired by the Dadaist concept of the creation of art from audience interaction, as well as the Fluxus idea of chance and process, Drawn Chess hopes to transform an simple game of chess into an artwork by making the players record the position of their pieces using paint. As a result, a piece of art resembling a heat map of where most action on the board occurred is created from the strategy and gameplay between the players and the game. This connects to the end goal that I am trying to achieve with the creation and the process that this game follows – to comment on the idea that art is naturally formed from the audience’s  interaction with it.

Materials:

  • paint (acrylic, watercolor, ink…etc)
  • paintbrush
  • large piece of paper
  • material that can be used to represent chess pieces (wooden blocks, foam, erasers)
  • two players

Rules:

  • rules are the same as a regular game of chess, only difference:
    • dip the paintbrush into the paint and mark the path your chess piece will be taking before moving the piece.

Documentation:

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Appropriation Game Final

 

Appropriation Game.

 

Materials:

-Deck of cards

-Player pieces from Sorry! (Or altoids?), 3 for each with one being the main piece

-Monopoly Board

-Houses from monopoly (Markers?)

-Deck of Playing Cards

-6 sided die

-A coin

 

Can be played with 2-4 players, probably the more the better.

 

Rules:

  • Players start off on corners of the board, rolling to see who goes first. With 2 players they start on opposite corners, with 3 players do a coin toss to see which remaining corner the 3rd player starts in.
  • Each player draws 6 cards from the pile
  • Players role the die. Their marked piece must move the amount of spaces on the die, while the other 2 pieces can have the same amount of moves split between them
  • When a player lands on a space an opponent piece is on, the player can ask that opponent for a card(# or face card) in their hand. If the opponent has said card, they must give it to the player. If the opponent does not have the asked for card, the player may draw one from the pile
  • When a player makes a pair of cards, they place a marker on the space the bread winning piece is on.
  • If a player lands on a space owned by an opponent, the opponent may choose a card at random from the players hand to shuffle back in to the deck.
  • Landing on a ? space allows a player to draw a card
  • The game is over when one player has 6 pairs

image1-2

 

Artist Statement:

My inspiration for this game came while thinking about how the Dadaists during WWI were all trying to escape the conflicts in the world around them. They viewed the conflicts as pointless, and many time s now when I think of the conflicts going on in the world I am envious of the time when I was child and was not concerned with anything other than games or what was for dinner. This inspired me to make a game only using rules/pieces from games I played as a child, being Go Fish, Sorry!, and Monopoly.

The first iteration went decently well, but I found that people could split their moves up well enough to always avoid spaces owned by other players. This resulted in me making one piece consistently following the die, while the other two pieces could split the spaces. This ended up working very well, as during my next playtest I ran with my girlfriend, the pieces that split moves would at some point be barely passed by the opponents fixed piece. This gave a guaranteed opportunity to attack the opponent and keep the game moving.

Draw Against Humanity [Appropriation]

Before you play/ Artist Statement:

This game is a combination of two different games, “Cards Against Humanity”, and “Write and Draw”. There are a few twists to each of the game which makes this one unique and more exciting. This game is very much inspired by the Yoko Ono -esque style of having the audience getting involved with the actual process of creating the art. Additionally, it has a slight flux element to it because of the nature of the game and how it involves individual players to draw(or try to…).

Many people have played Cards Against Humanity and I’m sure that it’s been great fun, but I hope that playing it with a few twists here and there will make it more interesting for you. Although Cards Against Humanity may disappoint some players with its very horrible or offensive themes and statements, the players should try to go beyond that and think about the artistic or unartistic elements behind the white cards when playing the second part of the game.

Materials needed:

  • Cards Against Humanity Cards
  • Post it notes or something that you can stick/label the white cards from the deck
  • More post it notes (preferably large sized) for the second part of the game
  • A pencil/pen
  • Human (6,8, or 10 of them preferred)

How to Play:

Before listing out the steps of the game, here is the general flow of the game so you have an understanding of how it all goes.

  1. Divide up into two equal teams.
  2. Play 6 rounds of speed-Cards Against Humanity
  3. Put all remaining white cards into either one or two decks                                                                                         ( different difficulty levels)
  4. Play 2 rounds of Write/Draw (each team)
  5. Determine the winner

Here are the more detailed steps to playing this game. Please take note that it is important to follow all steps at all times.

  1. Grab about 80-100 white cards from Cards Against Humanity
  2. With 2-3 other members (who could play this game or not), go through each of the white cards and determine how difficult it is to draw the card.
    • If the card seems relatively easy to draw, label it with yellow
    • If the card seems not too easy to draw, label it with red
    • If the card seems nearly impossible to draw, label it purple
    • If the card is impossible to draw, place in another deck far far away
  3. On a sheet of paper, write the following…
    • ” Yellow:  Point Value : 5     Seconds to draw: 25s”
    • ” Red: Point Value: 8        Seconds to draw: 35s”
    • ” Purple: Point Value: 12    Seconds to draw: 45s”
  4. Once all cards are labeled, place them into one deck and shuffle very well.
  5. Gather all players and split into two teams.
  6. Card Czar (the one who chooses with card is best) is whoever is at the end of the table on the left hand side. If you are playing at a round or other irregular shaped table, you may choose as a group as to who goes first
  7. The next Card Czar is the person to directly across the table. If playing at irregular table, go counter clockwise.
  8. Deal 8 white cards to each of the players around the table
  9. Place the remaining cards in the middle of table
  10. Explain to all players that…
    1. players may only draw one additional white card from the middle during all 5 rounds
    2. Players must place their white card in the middle within 15 seconds of the black card being placed. Otherwise the player doesn’t get to play for the round
  11.  Like a normal CAH game, let the Card Czar choose the best card. Award one point to the team of winner.
  12. Play 5 rounds of speed-CAH
  13. After 5 rounds, place all of the remaining cards in players’ hand in the middle.
    • For easy level: Place the cards in two different decks depending on which team they’re in
    • For difficult level: Place all cards into one pile
  14. The winning team will now play Write/Draw. Because they won, they get 5 additional seconds allotted for each step.
  15. Have two post it notes next to each other and a pencil ready
  16. Ask for the winning team to get in order of who is good at drawing/interpreting. Those who are good at drawing should go 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th… Those who are good at writing should go in between them
  17. Everybody except #1 must now leave the area to where they cannot see the cards.
  18. Player #1 now chooses a white card from the deck (either their own or from the big pile) and has the allotted time written on the card to draw a visual representation of the statement.
  19. After the allotted time is over, cover the drawing with another post it note and ask for player #2 to come over. Player #2 will now have the allotted time to write what they think the player before read on the card. The post it note may be revealed when player #2 is ready.
  20. After allotted time is over, cover the drawing done by player #1 again and also cover the writing by player #2. Player #3 will now come and repeat the same process at player #1, but this time based on the statement written by player #2.
  21. Repeat steps until all players have gone.
  22. When all players have gone, all players come together and reveal the marvelous art that they have created as a group. Determine if the final drawing has anything to do with the original white card that was drawn. If it’s close, reward the team with the point value. If they have it half way there, give them half the points. If it’s horrible, don’t give them any points.
  23. Let the other team repeat the steps.
  24. Each team plays 2 times and whoever has the most points in the end wins.

Some documentation:

A player tried to write something...

A player tried to write something…

The cards labelled and ready to go

The cards labelled and ready to go

An example of a player who tried to draw....

An example of a player who tried to draw….

Chaos Mafia (Appropriate) Artist Statement [Eivind Fougner] [DRAFT]

The game I have developed is called Chaos Mafia. It is very much inspired/based on the old school party game mafia, and I have also introduced many concepts from the very similar web game “Town of Salem.”  The only physical piece we use during playtime is a deck of cards which I have written roles on. The point of Chaos Mafia is the   element of complete randomness and chance – just like in real life. The game starts by shuffling the cards, and distributing one card to each player. That card provides you with your name, role, and goal for the game. I have added many different roles so the game should run differently each time (some roles: major, veteran, jester, serial killer, investigator.) From there on the format is almost identical to mafia – town goes to sleep, something happens during the night and the next day they town tries to vote on why is guilty, and that person gets hanged. Various roles have the ability to affect some of the processes however.

One of the innovating things about the dada movement is how it was one of the first movements to not focus on making aesthetically pleasing objects. In the dada movement, the point is to rather produce works that challenge the accepted norm, and make the observer/participant ask themselves questions about the art (purpose), artist (role) and society (current relevant happenings). In order to make my game dada-like, I tried do make sure that the “art” or message didn’t lie in the designed game itself, but in the random events and combinations that make Chaos Mafia so lifelike. The combination of different cards being drawn and how the story is told by the artist leads to entirely different things happening each game. Another typical thing in the dada movement is the use of everyday objects. To encompass this – all the physical material I used was a deck of cards.card1card 2card 3

Artwork 2: Appropriate: Hunger

HUNGER is a Tabletop RPG based on the Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins.

Zip Archive of Game Material

The Zip Archive of Game Material contains the Game Manual (manual.pdf) which contains the rules and instructions for gameplay, Reference Pages (references.pdf) which contains reference material for running a game, Character Sheets (char-sheets_doublesided.pdf) which can be printed out double-sided and cut in half for use as a character sheet for Player Characters, and a sample map that could be used for gameplay (sample_map.png).

Documentation

Forthcoming after playtest. (Scheduled for the weekend of 3/5-3/6)

 

Artist’s Statement

This piece is an offshoot of a passion project of mine, The Hunger Games RPG, which is an online collaborative writing RPG. Many of the Tabletop RPG concepts (rolling for initiative, skill points, stat checks) haver been influenced by various Tabletop RPGs, notably Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and Paranoia. The idea of using various household objects (standard deck of playing cards, coins, index cards) was first and foremost inspired by George Maciunas’s Flux Kits, which was itself inspired by the appropriation pieces of the Dada artists.

League of LEGO (Artwork 2 Final)

Materials:

  • Arena board(self-made)
  • LEGO bricks

Rules:

Instead of using a chess set, I decided to use several different composition of LEGO bricks as my chess pieces. All the units in this game must stand on the grid points. Players take turns and kill the enemy’s King to win the game.

 

Pawn(1 HP)*4:

  • Movement Speed: 1 step.
  • Attack range: 0
  • Damage: 1

Basic troops. Pawns cannot move backward. However they can jump over allied pawns and walls( means actually 2 steps).

 

Captain(2 HP)*1:

  • Movement Speed: 1 or 2 steps.
  • Attack range: 0
  • Damage: 1

Leader of the pawns. They can move 1 or 2 units in each turn and can build a wall instead of “Attack”.

  • Wall(1 HP): Built by Captains. Can block the the roads and block  the attack from Canon. Exists for 1 turn.

 

Cannon(3 HP)*1:

  • Movement Speed: No limitation along one chosen direction.
  • Attack range: No limitation.
  • Damage: 1

Cannon needs to be loaded before firing(takes 1 turn). It can fire once before the next loading process.

  • Canon cannot attack enemy directly. There must be one unit between the canon and the enemy piece that is going to be attacked (no range limitation). However the accuracy is 50%, thus the player needs to pick a card from two cards(Joker and 2). If it’s Joker, then the attack is successful, otherwise the attack is failed.
  • Pawn on canon: The accuracy is 100% (no need to pick a card).

 

Horse(1 HP)*2:

  • Movement Speed: 1*2 area
  • Attack range: 0
  • Damage: 1

Knight(2 HP): Pawn rides on horse and becomes Knight.

  • Movement Speed: Along diagonals of 1*2 area
  • Attack range: 2*2 area
  • Damage: 1

 

Wizard(1 HP)*1:

  • Movement Speed: 2 steps
  • Attack range: Within 4*4 area
  • Damage: 2 dmg within 2*2 area or 1 dmg within 4*4 area

Wizard can Freeze an enemy for 1 turn instead of Attack if he crossed the river.

Player needs to pick a card from 2 and Joker. If it’s Joker, the attack is successful, otherwise the attack is failed.

Wizard can also sacrifice himself to summon a huge fireball within his attack range, which is an area splash that can destroy anything within a 2*2 area. (Fireball cannot land in the King’s area).

 

Bishop(1 HP)*2:

  • Movement Speed: Any steps diagonally (cannot cross river)
  • Attack range: 0
  • Damage: 1

 

Guard(1 HP)*2:

  • Movement Speed: 1 step along the lines or diagonally within the King’s area.
  • Attack range: 0
  • Damage: 2

 

King(1 HP)*1:

  • Movement Speed: 1 step along the lines or diagonally within the King’s area
  • Attack range: 0
  • Damage: 2

Pictures:

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Arena Board

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Arena board set up

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Pawn

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Horse

Cannon

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King

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Dinosaur (not part of this game)

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Let’s start!

 


 

Artist Statement:

Some people thought DADA movement  was an anti-war movement however its oppositions thought it was actually the cause of the WWI. Thus whenever I thought about DADA, “war” is always the first word comes up in my mind. How can I include the concept of war into a game? My answer is chess. The original idea of the game comes from Marcel Duchamp, who had made a lot of artworks about chess. Those fantastic artworks and unlimited creativity destroyed the boundary of my thinking on chess. After the studying on Marcel Duchamp and the book The Art of Chess, I believe that the chess actually does not need to stick to its earliest form. We can do as many modifications as we want to make it more interesting. That is how the idea of LEGO chess came up.

This game includes several appropriations from other games. In the first iteration I appropriated idea from Mondrian Paintings to make a puzzle, however after the playtest I found that it was not as interesting as I thought before, but I like the idea of “purity” that comes from the Mondrian Paintings.Thus I decided to use primary colors to make the arena board. The layout of the arena is inspired by the mini map in the online game League of Legends, and the playing method is inspired by Chinese chess. My favorite part of Chinese chess is the cannons. They cannot attack the enemy directly because the cannon needs a holder to support the barrel of the cannon. It is pretty interesting that it makes the game more like a real war. Thus I decided to add this weapon to the game and let the plays to be able to apply ranged attack. Meanwhile, since the ranged attack is powerful and safe, some limitations such as the “pick-a-card” mechanism is set up. This mechanism also adds unstable elements to the game to make the game more realistic .

Also I found Yoko Ono’s White Chess very fascinating that it makes the chess super complicated and full of chaos. Since the chess pieces in the League of LEGO are LEGO bricks, if you are confident enough you can use the bricks in the same color to make the game much more challenging.

Chess is such a classic game with great fun, I love playing chess while seeking for some ways to make it even more interesting. Here comes this game and I hope everyone can enjoy.

 

Artwork 2: Appropriate – FINAL

Walker Albinson

Artwork 2: Appropriate

For this assignment I created a playable game that embodied the principle of the “Gamblers ruin” theory. Gamblers ruin, according to Wikipedia, is the idea “that a gambler who raises his bet to a fixed fraction of bankroll when he wins, but does not reduce it when he loses, will eventually go broke, even if he has a positive expected value on each bet” (Wikipedia.org). I chose to base my game off of this idea for two main reasons: The first is because of how the Dada movement was largely in response to WWI and alludes to the idea that people are simply players in a losing game. The second is because of how artist Hans Arp would often incorporate an element of chance into his art, which went against the traditional idea of planning and completing a work of art. My game only requires two players, two dice, a coin, and a scoring sheet, which also incorporates the Dada practice of using readymade, or found, objects to create art.

The rules of my game are fairly simple. A scoring sheet is included which should be used as a reference for the rounds. Gamblers ruin is a two player game that requires one player with a fixed bankroll to bet on coin flips against a “house” player with an unlimited bankroll. A round consists of the player making a bet on a coin flip and then either winning or losing to the house. The player’s bet must be at least 30% of their bankroll, but can be higher if they choose. For simplicity, round bet to nearest whole dollar. After five rounds of betting, there is a dice round where both players roll a six sided die with no bet. If the two faces of the dice add up to seven, the player’s bankroll is reset to its original amount. If the faces of the dice match, the player becomes the house and the game is over. If the dice do not match or add up to seven, there is no impact and the game continues. In the event that the player loses all their money, they have lost and must publicly do the “whip, nae nae” pop culture dance.

Round Bankroll Bet Outcome
1
2
3
4
5
Dice Round
6
7
8
9
10
Dice Round
11
12
13
14
15

 

Documentation:

*I played as the house in this game.

Round Bankroll Bet Outcome
1  500  150 L
2  350  150 W
3  500  150 W
4  650  195 L
5  455  195 L
Dice Round  260  N/A 5, 1
6  260  195  W
7  455  195  L
8  260  195  L
9  65  195  L
10  LOSS

 

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Final Iteration – Artwork 2 – Diplomatic Deathmatch

 

Diplomatic Deathmatch

 

Starting Materials:

Nerf Guns

A deck of 52 playing cards

Index Cards (for rules)

 

Rules

  1. Four players sit around a table with a deck of cards and two guns
  2. Each player draws a card and does not show it to other players
    1. Diamonds = Russia
    2. Hearts = France
    3. Spades = Germany
    4. Clubs = America
  3. Each suit has its own win conditions
    1. Diamonds = Win if Germany and America are killed
    2. Hearts = Win if they’re the first to be killed or are the last to survive with Russia or America. If there are more than one French players and one is first to be killed, only they win.
    3. Spades = Win if all non-Germans are killed
    4. Clubs = Win if Germany and then Russia are killed
  4. If a player wants to reveal who they are without taking the gun, all other players must agree to reveal who they are as well.
  5. If a player wants to kill another player, they must reveal their card before taking the gun.
    1. If a player reveals their card and goes for a gun, another player may go for the gun if they plan to shoot the revealed player, and may flip their card after shooting.
  6. A player may only shoot once before returning the gun to the table.
  7. If a player shoots an ally, they lose.
    1. Russia may ignore this rule.

 

Documentation

20160224_162255 20160224_162242

 

Artist Statement

This version of the game is wholly very similar to the original game that I put out, but that’s because I was really happy with what I wound up creating. What I did change were some of the rules, adding a few more factors into how the game can evolve during play. I really liked the idea of games like Werewolf or Mafia where there’s the aspect of blind play and guesswork involved, as well as intuition and just raw luck. So, I wanted to create a more kinetic and physical version of that involving some of the objects laying around my room. From finding my old nerf guns to figuring out a good way to use a deck of cards, I was immediately drawn to warfare and decided that I wanted to adapt that in a fun way while also trying to use the Dada views of conflict. What happened was that I wound up with a game where every round a room of diplomats are trying to figure out alliances with everyone in the room before having a frantic shootout with whomever they think are their enemies. I think that my idea embraces the idea of Dadaism where ultimately most of the conflict players will be having will be ultimately futile because they’re always just as likely to kill an ally as they are their enemy and ultimately the best way to play the game is to always agree at the start to reveal who everyone is.

 

 

 

Artwork 2

Relaxing Fishing Game

 

Materials-

-Game download PC: Game File

-Game download MAC: Game File

 

-Enjoy the relaxing game by blasting the space fish with lasers and cannons.

-Build your ship by selecting the parts from the menu.

-Launch your ship

-Use the mouse to point your ship and WASD to move forward, left, back and right.

RelaxingFishing

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Artist Statement:

I made the original game that is used in this artwork. It was a game about fighting and shooting, high intensity. I wanted to make an argument with this by adding elements that would normally be relaxing or peaceful. I picked fish, and Sonatina Op 36 No 6.

The fish replace the normal enemies, so as a player you control a space fighter ship with the job of destroying these fish. While doing this the player listens to a very relaxing and wonderfully constructed piece of music.

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-Hannah Höch

I found art from the Dada movement that focused on the futility of conflict and made statements by creating satirical artworks that pointed out the issues with ongoing conflicts to be especially inspiring with the direction I took for this game.