Fun Fiction

The first Action Project for a brand new term has arrived. Here, in the course named Game Changers, we've looked at all kind of games and their multiple aspects and functions. What kind of games? Tabletop games, like Scrabble, Uno, and in general, any game you may play on a "family night" of sorts. During this class, we've learned about what makes a game, whether it's how you win, how you move, how you stay relevant in the game, just about anything and everything you could think about from a design point of view. Some other things we learned revolved around skill vs probability, and which works best for what kind of game. A regular 6 sided die is called a d6 whilst other may be called a d4 or a d12. Sometimes, a game should only have strategy elements and other times, randomness adds to the fun. The project itself was to find a situation where we compare 2 titles and see which one is more optimal for a specific situation. Initially, as a (video) gamer, there are likenesses in all games that I am interested in, as all games have the desire to be fun. Some challenging aspects about this project include finding the right games that would suffice the situation, but luckily, I found an exact match for what I was thinking of.

My situation was a book club wanting to draw people in by showing them that reading can be fun, and what's more fun than a game? As it's a simple club, the ideal pricing would be set for lower budget and for an ambiguous amount of in simultaneous play. So the book club has a couple of options on how they can show others the fun of fiction and stories through a game that accommodates any amount of people for about 5 minutes per round of gameplay.

Between all the word and story based games out there, 2 came across as very fitting for this scenario. One game is the famous Mad Libs, and the other is the one and only Bring Your Own Book. This is a reference sheet in presentation format so you know what each game is all about, as well as my general thoughts about them.

Both of these word oriented games can attract all kinds of audiences, even if they don't read books as a hobby, or anything of the sort, often. It's rather self-explanatory, but Mad Libs is all about creating and making a story, and then to read such a narrative brings you the excitement that an author would get when reviewing their own works. And Bring Your Own Book shows off what these stories have. One is the process, the other is exposure.

Initially, Bring Your Own Book is far more appropriate for a book club considering that a book club would be about exposure to different stories so they may be discussed upon rather than an encouragement of writing your own stories. While Mad Libs may be a bit more fun to the non-reader, I'm sure the challenge of using someone else's book to find randomized phrases would bring further joy to the participants as it's an actual exercise of skill. That's why Bring Your Own Book would be the best low budget, quick, multiplayer for a book club looking for more members.