Jim’s Rant
My new and final game called “Jim’s Rant”, is appropriated from Cards Against Humanity and the classic “last word is the first word of new sentence” game. The goal of this game is to construct sentences, and create a funny / crazy / silly rant with the given cards.
Materials
- Cards Against Humanity deck (Black and white cards)
- One deck of playing cards
- Blu-Tac
- Blackboard
Gameplay
This game takes 4+ players, and each player must draw and always have 10 white Cards Against Humanity cards (cards with nouns on them) with them. The cards can be used to add onto a sentence during the game (each player can only add in 1 white card for their turn). A black Cards Against Humanity card is used to start a sentence with a topic (For example, a black card could say “Everything I know about teaching I learned from _____ “). So with the black card as the starting point for each sentence, players fill in that blank space with their white noun cards to create a funny sentence.
With that said, a sentence is prolonged / continued with a deck of playing cards. Numbers 2-5 representing the word “or”, numbers 6-10 representing the word “and”, and King Jack Queen Ace cards representing full stop. The Joker card ends the current sentence and the whole game, and whoever drew the Joker card has to read out loud the whole rant. So after a player adds their white card to the sentence, they have to draw a playing card to see how the sentence will continue. When it’s a full stop, a new black card is drawn to start a new sentence with a new topic. If other cards like and, or are drawn, then the sentence / same topic continues. Game ends when a player draws the joker card or when players run out of full stop cards (K, Q, J).
All sentences are constructed on the blackboard, so we use blu-tac to stick the cards on.
Documentation
- Translation shown on the board
- Playing cards stuck on the board with blu-tac
- Black cards representing start of a new sentence (added after getting a full stop)
- Playing cards representing “and”, “or”, or “full stop”
- White cards representing nouns that players put on to add to a sentence
So on the gameplay on Friday, we constructed a short rant with the cards. I think the game went well, people seemed to enjoy it and have a laugh. The overall rant we constructed translates to:
“Trust me I’m, running naked through a mall, pissing and shitting everywhere or a stray pube, and living in a trashcan, and taking a man’s eyes and balls out and putting his eyes where his balls go and then his balls in the eye holes. Bullshit, and GoGurt, or an m16 assault rifle was invented in Nazi Germany. It says here you robbed the black power ranger, why’d you do that? The Romans used Hot cheese, and opposable thumbs, and sperm whales, and cheating in the special olympics, or estrogen and a sassy black woman as toothpaste”.
Improvements
Based on the playtest on Friday, I believe everyone had fun. Gameplay was simple to understand, fun and went pretty smoothly. However, at times people were not sure of what was being put down by other players, hence not really following the overall rant. I think that could be fixed by either reading out loud whenever a new card is placed down on the board, or just have the person read out their own cards that they put down. Furthermore, I feel like that the “or” cards are quite unnecessary as they disrupt the flow of sentences, so for next time I might just make the cards numbered 2-10 as just “and”. Finally, a better way to save time is to have the blu-tac already stuck on to the cards before inviting players to join, rather than just sticking blu-tac on the cards during the game.
Inspiration
My piece was inspired by many of the appropriation examples shown in class. I really liked the idea of physically altering two existing objects and creating something new with those two artefacts. I feel like I can very much reflect my appropriation piece on the Dada movement in Berlin because of many of the political ideologies and social criticisms behind that movement at that time. With my piece, you can actually create sentences that can very heavily criticise certain current political ideologies or social norms which can be rather controversial. So my game is pretty much criticism about all kinds of things. It’s that controversy that my game provides, which really reflects on the movement at that time in Berlin, because the Dada movement in Berlin was criticising the war, the treatment of soldiers with PTSD and soldiers with disabilities etc. m
My piece was also inspired by many of Yoko Ono’s works in the past, such as staging public protests against the Vietnam War, her Cut Piece in 1964 where she confronted issues of class, gender and cultural identity, again, all works of criticism just like my appropriation piece. Finally, I also really liked her Wish Tree piece in 1981, where people were invited to write down a wish and hang the paper on the tree. The tree eventually got filled with wishes, and was sent to the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland to promote peace. I liked that sentence building aspect of her piece, thus that played a huge part in the inspiration for my piece too.
Overall, my piece can be described as a piece of criticism, that was inspired by many of the political and social works from the Dada movement in Berlin, and also Yoko Ono’s works.