Appropriation Art: M.A.D. Wars

2-4 players

This game takes War (the card game) and adds some twists and new rules to it.

Materials:

• 2-4 decks of cards, evenly mixed together
• Nukes (anything to represent a counter, preferably in an atomic bomb-style shape)
• 2-4 sets of rows of 3 circles each (Places to put your dormant Nukes)

Rules:

1. Every player chooses a power (either from ALLIES or AXIS) and that skill is applied to them for the entire game.
3. Every player is evenly dealt the combined decks of cards (modified for Germany due to country effect).
4. Every player starts with 3 Nukes*.
   1. If a player’s total Nuke amount dips below 3 (modified for Italy because of country effect), Radiation Poisoning** activates.
5. Players proceed to play a “normal” game of War.
6. After a declared “war” has ended, the winning side is given 2 options he can either give the cards to the enemy and steal a Nuke from them or take the cards for himself.
7. All destroyed cards are sent to the Graveyard.
8. The game is complete when only one player is left with cards in his deck.

*Nukes allow a player to destroy all enemy cards currently on the board and allows you to regain the card you just played. They are a one time use.

Nukes can be activated at any time, including right after a “war” is over after the winner has been decided, preventing the winner from taking the spoils. But if used during a “war,” all cards on the board are destroyed.

**CHOOSE A TYPE OF RADIATION POISONING PER GAME

Fatal Radiation Poisoning (For shorter games)

Activates on a per turn basis. A player gains +1 Radiation Poisoning for every Nuke used that places their total Nuke count under 3. Players must discard the top card of their deck before every turn for every Radiation Poisoning they have.

Vengence Radiation Poisoning 2 (For longer games)

Activates on a per turn basis. A player gains +1 Radiation Poisoning for every Nuke used that places their total Nuke count under 3. The player must place an additional card on the field underneath another card depending on how much Radiation Poisoning they have, but only the first card seen counts. For example, a player has +1 Radiation Poisoning. Every turn, he draws two cards from the deck and places them face up, with the first card hidden by the second. Only the card that can be seen, aka the second card, counts. The winner then takes all the cards on the field, like in normal war.

Ex. A player has 2 Nukes. He has +1 Radiation poisoning.

Ex. A player has 0 Nukes. He has +3 Radiation poisoning.

TIPS: It is better to try out the game without using the countries to get a feel for the game first.

Allies v. Axis

ALLIES

USA– Gains 1 Nuke every 20 turns

USSR– Can negate a Nuke (once for every enemy)

Great Britain– Can activate a Nuke effect without using a Nuke once a game (Dresden)

France– Gets 2 Jokers, which essentially can be any card France wants it to be (wild card).

AXIS

Germany– Starts with 10 more cards than everyone else.

Japan– Can declare “Kamikaze War” at any time, limited to 2, which is normal “war” except the resulting cards placed will always be destroyed and sent to the Graveyard. The winning side of the “war” always steals a Nuke from the loser.

Italy– The Radiation Poisoning minimum starts at 2.

Inspiration:

My inspiration for choosing this game was because I felt I was never good at building things. I thought that I could take a card game, and turn it into something different. War has been a game I have played ever since elementary school, and so I wanted to take this game and put a spin on it. I also took inspiration from the chess board idea that involves pouring red paint on the dead chess pieces. Chess is a game mimicking war, so why can’t the dead from war also be mimicked. I wanted to make the card game War similar to this, where an aspect not included in the original game is implemented from a realistic war standpoint. I added the idea that you can use a nuke to destroy a battlefield, but your enemies also have the power to do the same.

Meaning Behind the Game:

This game has a very similar meaning to the appropriated game of chess, specifically Yoko Ono’s “White Chess” version. In Ono’s piece, you cannot tell who is friend or foe. In my piece/game, it borrows the idea of chaos between friend and foe and ends up hurting both. The reason I chose this game was that the world of Dada came into being during the time of War, where there were much chaos and destruction.  The world was filled with so much revenge reasoning, like where the enemies strike, so you strike back. Dada takes all that reason and throws it out the window. Much of WWI and its propaganda was conveyed through words, so instead Hugo Ball, the Father of Dada, at the Cabaret Voltaire decided to make poetry using, not the heinous words used to encourage the war, but pure sounds. Emmy Hennings sang a ballad then followed it with a ribald ditty. This movement had a ripple effect that spread to other places, such as New York or Paris.

I decided to take a different approach but still related to the anti-war style and have a game where the idea of War (the card game), even if the original game is childish, and shows the major repercussions war can have, especially when we enter the world of nuclear war. When a player uses a nuke, they feel the repercussions on their deck, even if they are not instant. They occur and accumulate over time (because the cards are gradually discarded. These cards are the victims of the radiation poisoning of the land, slowly being sent to the grave, simply for being there, which is the unfortunate truth of nuclear war. This may seem rather weird, where when you nuke an enemy, you get poisoned, but just imagine if everyone was fighting on the same battlefield. If you were to nuke your enemies soldiers when they went out for battle, the next time your soldiers go out to fight, they would feel the aftereffects of your decision. This is essentially how the world is now, especially with North Korea and the rest of the world on the edges of their seats.This is why I dubbed the game not “War with Nukes,” but M.A.D. Wars, aka Mutually Assured Destruction Wars.

Materials needed:
Go board
Go stones

Win condition:
Just like Renju, the player who first gets 5 or more of their stones in a row wins.

Gameplay:
In Rendrop, 2 players and 1 game master are needed preferably. The game master is in charge of making sure both players are following the rules correctly, and deciding where should a stone be placed if it lands in the middle of two intersections.

In the original game, black would always go first automatically. In the appropriated version, however, each player has to take a stone and drop it onto the board from at least 3 inches above. The player who lands their stone closer to the center goes first. If a player fails to land their stone on the board, the other player would automatically go first.

After the game starts, the dropping rule continues to be in effect. Both players have to drop the stone in order to place it on the board at all times. If a stone lands in the middle of two intersections, the game master would decide which intersection is it closest to. If a stone pushes other stones away from their original spots as it lands, the other stones would not be moved back to their previous positions. If a player fails to land the stone on board twice in a row, that player loses their turn and has to wait till the next round.

Inspiration:
When I was deciding on which game I should appropriate, the first games that came to my mind were chess and Renju. I ended up picking chess over Renju, simply because chess had already been appropriated for so many times, such as the chess sets made by Man Ray and the previous chess project made in this class using red pigment. Actually, Renju is a game as popular as Go and chess if not more in China, and every school would have a Renju club because it’s easy to learn and hard to get tired of. However, when I wrote about Renju in Games & Society last semester, not even my professor had heard about this game before. This is what motivated me to let more people know about Renju, one of my favorite Chinese board games. Renju is also easy to set up because it doesn’t involve complicated game pieces like some other broad games do, which makes it possible to appropriate it in many different ways.

For the first playtest, I limited myself to only appropriating the rules, so the player would still use the game pieces in the traditional way. I made a game where the players are making large shapes in order to acquire more territory. However, the game ended up being more like an appropriation of Go instead of Renju. It was still an enjoyable game, but the fact that it didn’t fulfill the purpose of this class became clear to me during the playtest. As a result, I decided to appropriate the game by using the pieces in a way that they were not originally designed to be used in, just like Fountain is an urinal that wasn’t originally supposed to be viewed as a piece of artwork.

The original Renju is a very strategy-based game without any elements of chance at all, but I wanted to appropriate the game in a way that changes the dynamics of the game and makes it a twitch game with more luck element involved. The twitch mechanic was also inspired by an anime called No Game No Life, because the characters once play chess appropriated as a real-time fighting game in it and the chess pieces have to try to dodge and strike to take the opponent pieces down. Therefore, instead of putting down each Go stone carefully on a flat board, I tried tossing, flinging and shoving the Go stones onto the Go board and setting up the board at different angles. At the end of experiments, I decided that dropping the stones on a flat surface would work the best. The dynamics of Renju and Rendrop are completely different as well; while players usually spend a long time contemplating and deciding where to go next in Renju, they rarely think too hard in Rendrop and just go wherever their hearts take them. Playing Rendrop might also remind the player of practicing Zen, since the stone would more likely land on where they want it to land if their hands are calm and steady.

Documentation:

Example of a finished game:

Overview

In this artwork, I chose to appropriate Settlers of Catan,  as seen through a more or less modern perspective of resource scarcity and global warming. All of the game’s pre-fabricated pieces are still in their original state, aside from a slight modification or enhancement to the pieces: The knight cards for example, are contained in paper sleeves, and some of the territory pieces laid out on the board are elevated by  being placed on top of a paper prism. A number of rules of the game remain the same, as does the victory condition. Players must win the game by gaining 10 victory points, through building settlements/cities or obtaining the special ‘longest road’ or ‘largest army’ cards.

Inspirations

The game was inspired by examples of other modified games we’ve seen in class, such as all the separate variations of chess using smell or sound of contained items within each piece, to identify their rank. Perhaps the most influential of class examples, was an appropriated version of chess where the game was played just the same, but once each piece was taken down the player must splash that piece in red paint and toss it over the board- to represent the carnage of a battle, which Chess as a medium is meant to represent. I was very much a fan of the concept that with such slight changes to the game pieces and rules, you could keep generally the same familiar style of play from the original game, yet change its meaning entirely. I chose to attempt such a thing with Settlers of Catan, in renaming its cards and pieces, as well as slightly tweaking certain rules from the original game. The changes I appropriated to the game were meant to maintain a familiar set of rules, but improve upon the present mechanics to communicate a meaning that was once entirely absent from the game.

Modified Mechanics, and what they Mean.

To represent resource scarcity, some rules were modified and altered so that the game can still function in similar fashion to its original set of rules. Mainly, the original number of resource cards is reduced to a total of 12 of each card type, and when resources are sued they are put into a discard pile and do not return to the ‘bank’, leading to actual scarcity of resources needed to win the game. To reflect the global warming aspect, the ‘thief’ mechanic is reinterpreted as the ‘natural disaster’.  When each player rolls 2d6 to determine what resources are earned this turn, if the cumulative roll is a 7, the natural disaster is moved. Natural disasters cannot be commanded, so if the die commands a natural disaster to be moved, the 2d6 are rolled again to determine tiles the disaster can land on (If there are multiple hexagons of the same value, the player that triggered the disaster chooses the placement). Should the natural disaster land on a tile adjacent to a settlement or road they control, they must either discard one of their cards or destroy a road/settlement they own next to the hexagon.  On top of that, after a total of 14 resources have been drawn (cumulative across all players), global warming is triggered, and two ten-sided dice are rolled instead of 2d6. If these future rolls amount to a number that is not present on the board, the natural disaster is moved.

These mechanics working in tandem, represent the overall reworked theme of the game, keeping it more or less the same but changing its perspective to simulate a simplified perception of global warming, its causes, and its effects: Players drain the earth of its limited resources and spend them, leading to imbalance in the ecosystem and and increasing the value of what little remains of those resources, while also triggering an increase in frequency of natural disasters and other adverse natural phenomena.

Some other minor mechanics included in the game, are elevation and charity profiteers, and oil.

Normally in the original game, players may spend their resources to buy development cards which can be a random, card from the pile of possible effects. In this version, all development cards except ‘knights’ are removed from the pile, effectively making it so that buying a development card equates to buying a ‘knight’ card.  Though ‘knights’ retain their original card effect, they have been renamed to charity profiteers, in order to give a more cohesive meaning to the card both in context of its effect and the new scope of the appropriated game.

Knight cards, transformed into Charity Profiteers.

Elevated tiles are quite literally tiles that are elevated by a small paper prism on the board. Elevated tiles cost double the amount of resources to build around, meaning players must pay more resources to build roads and settlements (but the cost of upgrading to a city, remains the same). These tiles are supposed to represent a more accurate representation of navigation in difficult terrain, that we have in certain areas of our world, linking it closer to our reality and driving the point home further while adding what I consider to be an interesting mechanic to the otherwise 2-dimensional board.

Board, with elevated tiles.

Lastly, oil, is a special attribute the desert gains after global warming has been triggered. Once global warming begins and the industrial world is kicked into full swing,  the desert tile is considered an oil tile. While the oil tile does not grant any resources, much like the desert, any players with a settlement bordering this tile gain an additional 3 victory points. The desert is always elevated. This was inserted into the game to provide another possible strategy to winning the game, as well as represent the emergent use of oil and gas emissions along with it.

Overall,

Quite a few elements of the game remain somewhat the same- intentionally. Many players are already familiar with Settlers of Catan, and the meaning conveyed through the game is supposed to be a very personal one.  If the player is detached from the mechanics and familiarity with the game, there’s a higher chance they’ll miss the point I’m trying to illustrate with this (admittedly heavy-handed,) adaptation.  The presence of the mechanics, however, are supposed to change just enough of the game to make it feel familiar, play like an interesting new game type, and reiterate an uncomfortable truth.

Overview:

“Straight Fluxx” is an appropriated game that uses material from the classic poker game “Texas Hold ’em” and the card game “Fluxx”.  The objective of the game is to be the first player to create a “straight hand combination” on the table using the “community cards”.

Materials:

• 1 deck of 52 playing cards
• 1 deck of Fluxx

Gameplay:

This game can be played with 2 to 6 players. In order to start the game, both the playing card deck and the Fluxx deck have to be shuffled.  Inside the Fluxx deck is a “Basic Rules” card which must be placed on the table at all times. Once the decks are shuffled, both decks are placed on the sides of the “Basic Rules” card on the table. Each player is then dealt 3 cards from the playing card deck and 2 playing cards or “community cards” are placed face up on the table.

When the game begins, as stated on the Fluxx “Basic Rules” card, a player draws one card from either deck and plays one card from their hand. This is subject to change as there are “new rule” cards in the Fluxx deck which changes how the game plays. For example, one “new rule” card says “Play 2” cards per turn. This adds a lot more variety to the game and can either speed things up or slow them down.

In order to win, a player must create a “straight hand combination” using the “community cards” on the table.  A “straight” means there are 5 cards in numerical order.  So, having a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 set on the table would make a “straight”. When the game begins, there are only two “community cards” on the table. Players can play poker cards from their hand to add to the “community” pile or play Fluxx cards which will change the current rules or have some other effect on the game.

Rules:

• There is a hand limit of 3 (unless a new rule changes this)
• There is a limit of 5 “community cards” on the table
• If a person plays a playing card, they add the card to the middle. The person can choose to replace a card that is face up. If a person plays a Fluxx “Action” card, the card is discarded when the effect is over. If a person plays a Fluxx “New Rule” card, the card stays in play until another card in the same category is played.
• You can only draw from one deck (i.e. if a “draw two” is in play, you can’t take one from each deck)

Documentation:

This is the paper prototype of “Straight Fluxx”. Here, I use paper cut-outs for the playing cards.

This is the final iteration of “Straight Fluxx”. Here is a completed game.

Iteration / Inspiration:

With my first iteration for this project, I had a completely different idea.  My first idea, “Lucky Chess”, used playing cards and chess. The goal of that game was to beat the other team using “Rock, Paper, Scissors” as the battle mechanic. Instead of using actual chess pieces, the playing cards were given different values to represent them. So, if some randomly drew a K from the deck, they would be the King from chess. I was really inspired by Yoko Ono’s “White Chess”. With Yoko Ono’s “White Chess”, she kept the mechanics the same but made all of the pieces white. By doing so, it made it harder to keep track of who owned which pieces. On a deeper level, her game connected with humanity in general. It made no sense for pieces on the board to go against each other since they were all the same. As humans, the conflicts we have among ourselves make no sense because we too are all the same. “Lucky Chess” was meant to be a commentary on the class structure in our society. Those with more wealth and power have special privileges that those with less do not. Also, no one gets to pick the class they belong to when they are born. I wanted to imitate this with the random drawing of the playing cards. Whatever card you had, you were stuck with it. Also, players with higher value cards like the queen were inherently stronger than lower value cards such as the pawn.

From the first play-test, it was clear that the game was a bit too complicated and could better appropriate chess if actual chess pieces were used.  Therefore, I decided to scrap the idea and eventually came up with “Straight Fluxx”. It is much simpler than “Lucky Chess”, it does not need a large group of people to play it, and it directly appropriates both decks. I believe it was a better product since I did not focus so much on the message but on the gameplay.

Artwork #2 (Appropriation): The Game of Real Life

Overview/Rules:

For this project, I appropriated The Game of Life. Using all of the game’s preexisting pieces and its board and modifying them as little as possible, I created a game that more accurately reflects the experience of going to college, beginning a career, and trying to maintain a healthy balance of happiness and income while making an effort to keep anxiety levels as low as possible. The game is based on the life of a game designer, as I wanted to make the game semi-autobiographical and something that I personally found relatable. The game uses actual pocket change as currency as opposed to fake in-game money in order to reflect the stress of a tight-budget and to make the experience feel more realistic. Players keep their coins in pill bottles to further enforce this stress. Instead of using cars as player pieces, I used the small pegs that go in the cars as the player pieces and painted them to be the primary colors as a social criticism on the concept of gender.

The board and all of the game’s components

Player pieces

I also appropriated some of the basic rules of the game Careers. In Careers, players create their own win conditions by deciding how much happiness, money, and fame (out of a total of 60) they need to win. Players can distribute these 60 points however they choose. In my game, players split 40 points between happiness and money ($1 = 10 points, 1 happiness = 1 point) but must also keep their anxiety level below 5 points in order to win the game. Winning the game is very possible, but it is definitely not easy.

The anxiety stat works to reflect actual anxiety in a number of ways. Firstly, players must pay 1¢/anxiety point per paycheck to pay for therapy and anti-anxiety medication. Players can choose at any point to skip a turn (meant to represent taking a day off of work and stepping away from stressful responsibilities) and take an anxiety card instead, which relieves anxiety and will lower the player’s anxiety level. This is meant to encourage the concept of taking care of yourself.

Examples of anxiety cards

At the start of the game, players first make their win conditions and then decide to either go to college or begin a career.

Players who go to college receive 10¢ at the start, must pay back their college loans ($3, an absurdly large sum that is difficult to obtain throughout the course of the game) before the end of the game, and choose from a college-specific set of action cards during their time in school that generally create opportunities for greater success for the player later on in the game, though the payoff is not immediate (meant to represent the importance of going college in getting a career).

Examples of college-specific action cards

Players who choose to start a career start with 20¢, must pay rent of 1¢/paycheck, and, on the whole, make less money than college grads throughout the game, but they do not need to pay the absurd cost of college, which is this path’s main appeal.

College graduate career salaries vs. non-graduate career salaries

Each turn, players spin the dial to move and will take an action card that affects either happiness, money, or anxiety. There are many positive action cards that increase the player’s happiness and income (through promotions, bonuses, and well-selling games), but there are also many negative action cards that cause the player stress, cut salaries, cause players to lose their job or make hard decisions (such as quitting their job and losing their source of income or taking on a huge amount of anxiety due to an abusive boss or an absurd workload), or lose money on increased rent, purchasing a car, etc. I modified to board so that there are no spaces besides action spaces.

Examples of positive action cards

Examples of negative action cards

I wanted player choice to be very important to the game. Players can choose to take care of their mental health or “overwork” themselves to make more money than their competitors or try to be happier than their competitors. Even though competition is highly irrelevant to winning the game, there is still a sense of competition when playing with others, which is meant to represent how we as human beings are constantly comparing ourselves to the people around us even though they have no bearing on our lives or on our success.

First Iteration:

For the first iteration of this game, I did not have the board or any of the pieces yet. I only had a paper prototype and no action cards, so everything was written on the board. Also, it was only after the first playtest of the game that I decided that the game should include separate anxiety cards that the player must consciously decide to take instead of simply having action cards that lowered anxiety mixed in with the rest of the action cards, which took no thought and was simply a matter of luck. This was one of the biggest changes I made between the paper prototype and the final version. Other than this, I did not make any major changes to the structure of the game. I did, however, make some smaller changes, such as deciding to use actual change and use its actual value as opposed to using an abstracted form of currency or using real change but changing its value. I also decided to make it harder for those who choose to start a career earlier on to make as much money as those who choose to go to college, because in the first iteration, players had a 50/50 chance to “get lucky,” which I simply don’t think is realistic.

Paper prototype

Inspiration:

I was highly inspired by Peter Thibeault’s appropriation exhibit at Gallery 360. After learning about his work and the way he employs game pieces to have a specific artistic meaning, I decided I definitely wanted to use a preexisting game and all of its pieces as the basis of my appropriated game. I decided I wanted each piece to have a very specific and thoughtful meaning in the context of the rules of the game and the statement it makes, which I think I accomplished.

I was also inspired by Yoko Ono’s White Chess, which I think makes a very powerful statement by making very small but thoughtful changes to a preexisting game and keeping all of the mechanics the same. This was my main goal in mind when creating my game— I wanted to make small changes that did not drastically change the game and its mechanics but entirely changed the game’s meaning.

Rule:

Need two or more players to play this game.

1. One player will think of a word and represent it as a row of dashes. Let’s call this person the hangman or the drawing player.
2. Other players need to guess what the word is by suggesting letters, but when these players have guessed the word they don’t speak out the word, since they want to fool the hangman in this game. Let’s call these people guessing players.
3. When guessing players suggest the correct letter, the drawing players should write it on correct position.
4. When guessing players suggest the wrong letter, the drawing player draw one element of a stick figure.
5. Once drawing player finish the body of the stick figure, the game is not over. Instead of executing the stick figure, guessing player can still guess the word. At this time, if guessing player suggest the wrong letter, they can ask drawing player to draw an element of body to decorate the stick figure. Guessing players cannot ask drawing player to draw multiple repeated parts, like to draw boots on the sneakers.
6. The game will be ended when: 1) The drawing does not match the description from guessing players. The drawing player loses and asks to tells the true answer. 2) The drawing player can give up when he feels like everyone knows the word (being “fooled” by everyone). Then he will ask or tell the true answer.

The first version of the game.

The second version of the game.

The final play test on the class.

Overview: 

This game is called Fool the Hangman, and it is basically appropriated from the Hangman game. Originally, this game will end when the drawing player finish the stick figure before the guessing players guess out the word. Therefore, it is very easy for the drawing player to think of a really tricky word to fool the guessing player and execute the stick figure. The goal of my game inverses the situation that allows guessing players to fool the drawing player. After the drawing player finish the stick figure, guessing players still have chances to guess the word as many times as they want. Every time guessing players suggest a wrong letter, they can ask the drawing player to draw an element of body to decorate the stick figure. Benefited on this rule, the guessing players do need to guess out the word, but they don’t need to speak out the correct word so that they can continuously provide wrong letters to fool the hangman.

Inspiration:

The idea is inspired by all fantastic and creative examples of the appropriation from the class. Especially, the real-life version of the Pacman game impressed me the most. It simply turned the game scene to the real world. The maze in the game was transferred to streets and buildings. The player controlled themselves by running instead of controller. The rules are similar, but the way to play it changes a lot. This example really makes me think about how to appropriate some existing games. The first game that came to my mind is the Hangman game. I was also impressed by Dada in Berlin. During that period, all artist opposed the war, military and the bureaucracy. Art works at that period also showed sarcasm to the bureaucracy. (Nowadays, I think the ways people appeal for peace are gentler, and we call it Peace and Love.) Therefore, I came up with the idea that the hangman will draw a flower held by the stick figure instead of killing him to show the idea of no killings. After trying this first version of game with my friends, I realized that the game would still end so fast, since drawing a flower only contributed serval steps more for the game.

Then I came up with the idea of drawing parts of body to decorate the stick figure. This was inspired by lots of collages I saw on the class. A sculpture called George Grosz, John Heartfield, Der wildgewordene Spiesser Heartfield impressed me a lot. Authors replaced some parts of body with light bulb, weapons and false tooth. Similarly, in my game to draw parts of element to decorate the stick figure is to create a collage on this stick figure body. Guessing players can ask the drawing player to draw anything they want. Different drawing players with various drawing styles will create their own drawing. At last, this is game will help us create collages with lots of possibilities. Therefore, I encouraged people to be the drawing player in my game.

Iteration:

On my first playing test, the rules of the game are so confused because of my poor description, so the first thing I did is to rewrite the description. I tried to play more tests with my friends, but I met the situation that they asked me to draw a pair of boots on a pair of sneakers, so I added the rule that guessing players cannot ask drawing player to draw multiple repeated parts. It seems like it’s way too easy for guessing players to win the game, since they have lots of chances to guess the word. However, guessing players often forget that their goal is to guess out the word and don’t speak out to keep the hangman drawing by suggesting wrong letters. Therefore, I think it’s also challenging to not speak out the correct answer.

Conclusion:

To conclude, this is a really cool project and I learnt a lot about appropriation and dada. I really like the idea of Marcel Duchamp that to doubt who should define what the art is. By authorities? By ourselves? I think his artwork of L.H.O.O.Q gave the answer that now it’s the art, now it isn’t. Everything could be art and art should be defined by ourselves.

Gameplay:

My first game is based on Battleship / Rush Hour / Tic Tac Toe, and it is a 1v1 game where you have to move blocks on a grid sized area to match 6 of the same symbols either horizontally or vertically (each move counts as 1 move). The amount of moves one player can make are determined by the total values of the playing cards drawn by the player (21 max like Blackjack). The player essentially players Blackjack to try to get as close to 21 as possible, so they can perform more moves. When a player gets blackjack (21), they can not only move their blocks 21 times, but move the opponent’s blocks 21 times too, to disrupt their arrangement. The goal of the game is to get 6 matching symbols first before the other player does.

Feedback:

However, based on feedback from classmates and my professor, the game wasn’t really an appropriation but more like a new game with new mechanics. It wasn’t really taking something existing and transforming it into something new. This was because I created a new playing board out of cardboard box, new playing parts out of paper, and a deck of playing cards which didn’t have much relationship to the overall gameplay at all. It was at that point that I decided to create a new game with a fresh new idea.

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.

Guess

Materials:

1. Play cards with pictures of characters
2. A dice

How to Play:

Aim: Be the first to guess who is on your card. The clues you give about each other’s character has to be valid and true, however, you can determine how much information you want to give away.

1. Shuffle the cards and have all players to pick a card without looking at it
2. Roll the dice to see who goes first (highest number goes first in the clockwise direction)
3. Roll the dice and pick an action

DICE ROLLS:

1. Skip my turn
2. Pick someone to act out an action about your character
3. Pick someone to make a sound about your character
4. Pick someone to say a word about your character
5. Ask a yes/no question to the group
6. Skip someones turn OR choose options 2-5

Appropriation:

This game was appropriated from the game “Heads Up”. I felt that the game “Heads Up” was too one dimensional and needed more depth to the game. Whenever I saw the game played, the players were very awkward, which meant that there was not enough awkwardness or players were not drawn into the game enough. I appropriated the cards to have only pictures of people and characters like Pickle Rick, Kevin Hart, and Kanye West. This game can be appropriated to accommodate for any types of personalities, accents and topics.

Authors Note:

I chose to create this game because I felt that the game “Heads Up” was way to boring and non-immersive. By adding the dice roll for different actions a new level of difficulty was added. When I play tested this game in class, everyone was enjoying the game. There were multiple comments on how dice roll number 3 was extremely hard.

The Dada movement was a cultivation of multiple cultures and ideas. Art was created by taking created art and distorting it, thereby creating new meanings and ideas. Bringing together popular personalities from movies, tv shows and celebrities was a representation of that idea. I was inspired by the Dada collage we did in class. Given pictures of art during the Dada movement we had to create a collage to represent the Paris Dada movement. Taking that same idea and applying it to the “Heads Up” game, I took a game and reinvented it with the question of how well people know the characters that build up their culture. Incorporating dice rolls into this game brought in a different popular game culture of random generated options and difficulties. The appropriation of adding portraits of popular personalities onto cards was another aspect of creating inspiration for the players to pull from.