yuyue2husky

Game Requirements

Materials: 18 ID cards, 5 Role cards, coins, notebook, pen

Players: 5 players and 1 host

Rules

• There are 6 different identities and there are 3 cards of each identity.

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• Businessman: Gain 3 coins(active), block players gain coins from Stock(passive).

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• Detective: Pay 3 coins to see the first two cards in the deck or pay 15 coins to see a player’s Role card(active), block assassination against you(passive, can achieve only once).

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• Killer: Pay 5 coins to assassinate a player’s hidden identity after announcing the name of that identity(active). Assassination fails if your target doesn’t have that identity.

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• Thief: Steal 2 coins from a player(active), block the Steal action(passive).

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• Doctor: Pay 9 coins to revive 1 player(active), revive yourself once(passive).

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• Singer: Player sings a song(at least 20 seconds) to gain 5 coins.

• There are five Role cards: Leading Actor, Supporting Actor, two Villain cards and one Reversal.
• Winning condition:
  1. 1. The leading actor team captures all of the other players. (Happy end)
     2. The villains kill the leading actor. (Bad end)
     3. The reversal kills all the other players to win. (Reversal end)
• Before the game starts, each player gets 1 Role card and 2 ID cards.
• The role card is faced down so everyone knows only the role of him/herself. The Leading Actor card will face up. The leading actor and the supporting actor are in the same team. The two villains are in the opposite team. The reversal is on his/her own.
• One of the ID cards is faced up and people can see each other’s SHOWN ID. This is just a superficial identity of each “actor” in the “movie” so it has only the passive ability of that character.  However, usually people have different sides. The second ID card is faced down and only the owner knows his/her HIDDEN ID. That means a businessman is actually a killer or a singer is actually a doctor,etc. Players can only take the active actions on the Face-down ID cards.
• Each player also gets 2 coins as the start-up capitals.
• The game starts with the leading actor and the players take turns to proceed the game. In each turn, that player can take only one Action among the actions on the ID cards and the three other actions below:
  1. 1. Income: Gain 1 coin.
     2. Stock: Gain 2 coins.
     3. Smite: Pay 15 coins to kill one player. You have to smite someone when you have 20 coins.
• All the actions on ID cards can be challenged.
• Challenge: When you take one of the character actions – whether actively on your turn, or defensively in response to someone else’s action – that character’s action automatically succeeds unless an opponent challenges you. In this case, if you can’t (or don’t) reveal the appropriate character, your action fails and you lose 5 coins.
• If your challenge against another player fails or you are challenged by another player successfully when you have no coin, you will be out of this game.
• Also anyone is Smited or successfully assassinated will be out of the game.
• The host is the director of this movie. He/she needs to record what happens and what people say that are interesting in a note book. This record will become the script of this movie. This is the key point of the whole game, and I’m sure that this movie will be very natural and interesting.

Playtest

Several playtests had been done before the game was finalized.

1.  In the first playtest, every character has only 1 available ability. Also players only need to pay 9 coins to Smite another player. It worked however the game was a little bit boring and the Singer was too weak. Also the game ended very quickly because the villains could easily gain 9 coins and kill the leading actor.
2.  In the second playtest, passive abilities had been added. Also the cost of Smite had increased to 15 thus the leading actor could live longer and had more potential.
3. In the final playtest, character Doctor was added to the Role cards and had made the game more complicated and exciting.

Artist Statement

This is an Everyone-can-make-a-movie era. It sounds hilarious but it is true. I’m not sure about what is going on in the USA, however in China, a lot of famous singers, actors and authors have stepped into the movie area and become actors and directors.

MOST OF THEM TOTALLY SUCK.

All of their attentions and money have been paid on inviting famous actors who are terrible at acting. Of course they are good-looking and thus they have a huge market among young people. I cannot bear with those insipid story, terrible acting, boring jokes and rigid dialogues.  I always have this thought after watching those movies: If I have this amount of money, I can make a movie as well. Life is the most natural movie on this planet. Thus here comes the key  idea of this game: Everyone can make a movie and everyone can be part of a movie.

The idea of making movie based on what people have done in game is inspired by the Dada movement. This movement asserts the concept of “anti-art” and “unintentional forms of art”. That is, the rigid forms and boring stories are killing audiences’ taste. Just like our daily life, things happen randomly and are sometimes out of expectation. The main guy don’t have to defeat all the enemies; the villains may succeed and take control of the world; reversals may happen at any time. Thus in this “movie” that people have made during the game, everything happens naturally and randomly. What proceeds the story is what a normal guy thinks and does at that moment. There is no need to have a rule in life and that’s why life is art.

Since this is not a video game, I didn’t draw much inspirations from the Avant-garde videogames book. However, based on the research on avant-garde paintings, I tried to paint the cards for the game in a more “Avant-garde” way. I’m not sure what I have painted is avant-garde since there is not such a definition for avant-garde art, yet I think it is a good approach. Also I’d love to put my game in the main-stream area in the avant-garde chart because it is a normal turn-base board game.

• Several people sit around a table.
• They can have chitchat on any topics or play any board role-play games.
• However during the whole process, people cannot say the “Dead words” of  “like”, “so”, “well”, “yes” or “no”. This rule is flexible which can be set up particularly for the game you are playing. For example, people cannot say “kill”, “wolf”, or “dead” in a Werewolves game.
• Whenever a player says one of those words, other players should shout out immediately and pause the game/conversation, and that person has to be punished(sing a song/dance/do push-up) or be dead in the Werewolves game.
• If a player shout out mistakenly, that player will be punished.

In the playtest, 12 of us played the Werewolves game as the basis. After several rounds when people were perfectly familiar with the rules, we decided to apply this Dead-Word game to the original game.

The new rule was that, if one said the dead-words of “kill”, “dead” or “wolf”, his/her on-going speech would be interrupted immediately and he/she could not vote in that round. The process was really funny. People spoke incredibly slowly in a twisted way in order to avoid the punishments. All of the players were Chinese however I asked them to speak English during the whole game, and they actually did at the beginning. But when several punishments had occurred, they became more and more nervous and some of them started to speak “Chinglish”. Meanwhile the result of the game was dramatically changed because many villagers lost their voting rights during the “daytime” thus they lost the game even when they had a huge superiority.

I chose this game as my intervention work because the Werewolves  is a game about talking. When the general ways of talking are forbidden, the whole game will be influenced include both the processes and the results. The interventions will make people uncomfortable and it will be quite funny to listen to people talking slowly in a strange way while using weird vocabs.

The inspiration was drawn from the art pieces by several performance artists including “Lord Napier in Red Tape” by Eleonora Aguiari and the “Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp. Those art pieces inspired me indirectly by letting me think about what would happen when a object you are familiar with suddenly changed. That is, habits are actually more powerful then people think. If you pay attention to what happens around you, you’ll figure out that many things actually happen in the exactly same order from day to day. For example every morning I get up, brush teeth, wash face and go out. It looks normal however if one day someone tells me that I must wash face before brushing teeth, I’ll actually feel very uncomfortable. Thus I designed this Dead-word game in order to change people’s habit of talking and to see what will happen after then. Those interventions can sometimes make some people uncomfortable, but when people get the idea they may have a new thought on their daily life. No matter it is visual art, language art or performance art, creating interventions is always a good way to let people think about the existed world and how we can change it.

• Several people sit around a table.
• They can have chitchat on any topics or play any board role-play games.
• However during the whole process, people cannot say the “Dead words” of  “like”, “so”, “well”, “yes” or “no”. This rule is flexible which can be set up particularly for the game you are playing. For example, people cannot say “kill”, “wolf”, or “dead” in a Werewolves game.
• Whenever a player says one of those words, other players should shout out immediately and pause the game/conversation, and that person has to sing/dance or be dead in the Werewolves game.
• If a player shout out mistakenly, that player will be punished.

This is like a party game in which the general ways of talking are forbidden. The interventions will make people uncomfortable and it will be quite funny to listen to people talking slowly in a strange way while using weird vocabs.

Materials:

• Arena board(self-made)
• LEGO bricks
  

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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:

Arena Board

Arena board set up

Pawn

Horse

Cannon

King

Dinosaur (not part of this game)

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.

Name: Mondrian Chess

Material:

• A base board
• Pieces of Mondrian paintings (which is called “block” in this game)

(Figures above are several examples of the “easy level” of Mondrian Chess)

Rules:

• Players play rock paper scissors to decide who goes first.
• Each block of color is one chess piece in this game. They are separated and are taken down from the base board.
• In each turn, one player select one piece of block and put it at one of the corners, then the other player put another piece of block, which must has at least two sides touched the side of chessboard or the blocks already existed.
• When one player put down his/her block and the opponent has no place to put down another block, then the player who put down the last block wins the game.
• Depends on different sizes of the base board, this game can include 2-8 players.

Here are some more examples of “higher level” of the Mondrian Chess:

In this game, you don’t have to try to put the blocks in the same way as the original painting. However when you try to mess up the chessboard, it may make both of your opponent and you difficult to continue this game, so you need to decide when to start the “attack” based on the shape of blank on the board and the shape of the rest of the blocks.

Yue Yu

Material: clay

-Have a piece of clay in your hand.

-Close your eyes.

-Imagine a car/table/bottle/whatever.

-Shape the clay into the shape of what you are imagining with eyes closed.

-Ask a friend of you to guess what you have imagined.

Yue Yu

Material: clay

-Have a piece of fist-size clay in your hands.

-Imagine an animal/vehicle/leaf/bottle/whatever.

-Shape the clay into the thing you are imagining with eyes closed.

-Ask a friend to touch and guess what the thing you’ve made is with his eyes closed.

-Restore the clay into its original shape with your eyes closed.

-Make sure none of you could see the object during the whole process.

Documentation of Score Assignment

This material was chosen randomly from all the stuffs on my friend’s desk and I think clay is one of the things that people can easily inject creativity and inspiration into them.

“There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes.” That is, anyone may have his or her unique thought on an object. Even when you think it is the only way to understand something, there is still posibility that other people don’t agree with you. People only believe in what they thought the things are instead of what the things actually are. Or maybe for most of the time we cannot find out the “truth”. This point is perfectly shown in this game that, imagining is the only way to shape and figure out the what the object is when you lose your visual sense. The whole game only exists in our minds and the result, whether or not the other player can get the correct answer, doesn’t matter at all.

Each of the two players needs to be creative and realistic simultaneously. That is, the maker needs to be creative while making the works, however the works he makes should stick to reality in order to let the other player be able to get the correct answer.

Because there is no rules on what to make, I believe the process will be interesting and challenging.

Yue Yu