How to Make up Games

Many people I know love playing games but with Christmas coming up there's plenty of time for playing games. And rather than getting bored with the same old board, how about making some up yourself?

This post offers some of my thoughts on the principles that I have found useful when making up games. Its less of a recipe book, but more like some thoughts on what things might help cook up an exciting game. 

Starting off - rolling a 'double 6', or a 'double 4' or even a '5 and a 1'

The easiest way to make up a new game is by changing one you already know. You don’t have to reinvent the whole thing - just try doing something a bit different, like adding a new rule or changing the amount of time you get to do your go.

Cater for everyone

When making up games for groups to play, try to remember that people love variety and difference. Sometimes people like competing and other times they like working together. Sometimes they like sitting and other times running around. Invent games where you cater for different tastes in the same game.

A few rules go a long way

When making up games getting the rules right is important. If you have too many rules, people will get confused. Try to start with a few simple rules and get playing, rather than creating lots of complicated ones.

Learn to trust your inner genius

When it comes to inventing things and being creative, we each have our own particular genius inside of us – a kind of creative 'boffin' with wacky hair and odd socks. Try to listen to and love your inner boffin, as she is the character who will connect two random ideas to make a stunning and elegant new game.

Yes, and…

When making up games with friends, you all need to feel happy to share your ideas. Its not very helpful if someone stands there with arms folded, saying 'no' to everything (and that includes you).

So learn the habit of saying ‘yes’ to suggestions. If someone suggests something you don't think will work or aren't in the mood for, don't just say 'no'. Find a bit of the idea that you do like and then offer your own suggestion.

For example, if someone said lets play a game where we all have to wear blue hats and you don't like blue and don't have any hats, don't just say 'No, that's boring.' Instead, you could say ‘hmm. Yes, I like the idea of doing some dressing up and why don’t we just dress up in whatever we got and in whatever colour we like?’

Boredom – a great thing to be cultivated

To make up games, sometimes you need to get bored. Learn to sit around and do absolutely nothing, avoiding all distractions such as the TV, homework and picking your nose. Once you are well and truly bored, your whole body and mind will start buzzing with energy and ideas for new games to play.

Embrace failure like a soft teddy bear

If you are going to be good at making up creative games you have to learn to accept that sometimes things don’t work out like you imagined or planned. Mistakes are a part of making up games (and life). The trick is to be curious about what happens.

So get going and try something out.

Someone's been sleeping in my bed...

You did what? You stayed in the house of a random stranger. Half way around the other side of the world? And what if they murdered you? Are you mad?

Earlier this year, as part of our tour around the north western states of New England in the USA, my wife and I couch surfed. 

Couchsurfing is not a novetly olympic sport of standing on piece of IKEA furniture going down hill.Its a way of travelling and journeying that involves becoming part of a community of travellers and hosts around the world. Whilst we travelled around New England in colourful autumn, Kajal and I were hosted by two delightful families who opened up to us in their homes and treated us with kindness and warmth.

Before we went out to New England we searched the online pages of couchsurfing.com. We noted some interesting sounding profiles of potential hosts. We contacted plenty of them and some replied with a 'sorry, not this time'. Others were not sure whilst a few were positively bubbling with enthusiasm. 

After a bit if back and forth on phone and email, we crafted and moulded our itinerary around the area to include some nights  being hosted in two different spots. 

We set off from the UK with plans to stay a night in a B&B in Concord, Massachusetts, home of Ralph Waldo Emerson and host to Henry David Thoreau. 

After our first night we headed north where we met our first couch surfing hosts on the shores of Lake Winnipesauke. We stayed a couple of nights with a delightful family  in a farmstead complete with seven horses, various chickens and a pet rat. We then moved on into the White Mountains, back to B&B territory. And then after that we spent another couple of nights couch surfing - this time in an old paper mill town on the edge of the White Mountains.

The stays we had we fabulous. We were hosted really generously and we had beds, not couches to sleep on. We met some really interesting people and had rich, warm conversation. And we were also given space and time to explore the local area by ourselves, with hints and tips by locals who know. 

Some people ask whether you have to pay anything to surf. Well no, you don't have to pay a penny. If you like to carry on doing this, then you probably ought to be curtious and kind, as there is space for references attached to your profile, so that would be hosts can hear a bit about you from others who have had the pleasure of hosting you. Every time that I have surfed, I have cooked dinner for my hosts and this seems to work wonderfully. But you definitely don't have to pay a penny to surf.

So, if you don't pay a penny to your host, then - people immediately wonder - what on earth they get from hosting you, if not money?

Well, despite the best efforts of our estimed bankers, politicians, media moguls and advertisers, it turns out that not everyone evaluates life choices on the basis of effect upon their bank balance. Some people seem to think that meeting new and interesting people, having unexpected encounters and discovering the small connections that make us part of a shared web of living can be payment enough.

Couchsurfing is not for everyone. 

If you are convinced about things, if you know precisely what life is about and have it all sussed out already then it may not be for you.  But if there is a bit of you that is still not sure, then it might provided you with some curiously intriguing clues by sleeping in some else's bed.

A Gift for Life

We often talk of life being a great journey, as if life is some great conveyor belt along which we travel or like some tourist trip on which we will see new places.

But I think that this image can only take us so far. Its also good to see that it is not you or I that is on the journey of life, but that Life is making a journey through us. I mean to say that by doing what we do and being who we are, we take Life on a journey.

Now, we all know that we can get staid and unthinking sometimes. And so it is with Life (or better 'this strange ongoing, always-only-in-the-now activity of living'). Its good to introduce Life to new places, challenges and tastes.

One of the most interesting ways to take Life on a journey is to bring another person into your home. Sharing your palace with a warm, blooded human being is guaranted to shake up Life. The journey that you will take Life on by bringing someone into your home will lead it to unexpectedly wild realms, into souks of dazzling mystery and museums of the past, present and future.

Whilst you may find it a little challenging, you could see that you are doing a great thing for Life. For Life is nothing if not curious for discovery and novelty. So let her enjoy the journey.  

Can you hear something out there?

I am sitting here with a quite lively breeze questing through the trees just outside. The garden seems to in a noisy mood today and its given me a sense of communicating out there. And this speech brings to my mind an experience I had the other day with, Anay, my 18 month-old nephew that might tickle you....

My nephew's voice is beginning to discover him at the moment and when the moods strikes, he practices making noises, babbling, languaging. On this early summer morning, whilst he was sat in my lap, I heard a delightful sound coming from him. He was repeating the noise over and over again and sensed he was getting deep pleasure in explore the various inflections and variations he could put into this one word. Each time, the same phrase, and each time, a slightly different sound.

I listened for a while, trying to figure out what word he was trying to express but couldn't quite get him. Then I just found myself repeating and discovering a pleasure in making this sound. We entered into a conversation as I walked around the house with him.

I then decided to step outside with him. There we continued making the noise together and we both became louder in our calls. And as we became bolder, I was gifted a moment of grace.

Standing there under a vaulting blue roof and framed by leaf-laden trees, a third voice joined in our dialogue. I gasped in joy as the noise Anay was making made absolute and complete sense. My nephew had not been copying a gujarati word he'd been hearing inside the house. No. He'd been mimicking the sound of a bird outside his bedroom window and what I had been hearing was a fragment of his conversation with those light wonders.

In that moment, I saw that an idea that we humans talk and the rest of the planet makes noises is just a little more than hubristic. I saw also how our own communication has its deepest roots in our relationship with such more-than-human language. From where else would our language come, if not from the birds and trees alongside whom we grew up?

We carried on for a few moments - the three of us chatting away - and then I returned inside feeling rather honoured for receiving this unexpected gift - a chance to hear the sounds of river, breeze and caw whilst talking about tea and toast at the breakfast table.

Presence and presents

Hello there

Various of you have asked Kajal and I about what we want for our wedding. I wondered whether we should think about what we might like to receive but Kajal admitted that she was not comfortable with preparing a list of things that you should buy. We discussed this some more and I also felt a little unsure. After going around in circles, we thought we'd offer you a list that would serve our purpose well. So here goes.....

1. Both of us would love to be more peaceful, enlightened and creative human beings. Any presents/presence you can give that would move us towards self-understanding and liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth will be gratefully accepted.
2. We'd love to receive any 'experience' or 'thing' that is crafted, created or inspired by you (obviously if it could contribute to achievement number 1 above that would be great).
3. The chance to spend time with you learning, discovering, playing or just kicking back over a cup of tea and home-made strawberry tart. Combining 1, 2 and 3 would be the jackpot.
4. Our deepest dreams involve having a set of towels in a variety of shades, such that when guests come over to stay we can match the towel colour to that night's sunset. Given that between us we only have three towels at the moment - cream, dull green and chocolate brown – you can help us achieve our toweling dreams by getting down to John Lewis asap for some vouchers. 
5. We'd love to walk El Camino, Hadrians Wall or some other great route. If you can give us the gift of time and knees to do it we'd love you. You could join us as well if you like.
6. We enjoy reading, and we already have too many unread books lying around. Whilst a book would be a dear present, the ability to read more efficiently would be a greater gift.

At this point I realise that several of these items involve giving us 'time' and 'space', which are really gifts of the gods. If you can have a word with your particular boss man/woman or animal in the sky and see what's possible on that front it would be great.

7. A guarantee of good weather whenever we go camping. Or, if not available, a portable, solar-powered, wind-up, ethically-sourced, vintage-effect, light-weight, Lib-Lab, vegan lamp to go in our beautiful tent.
8. Nothing. I think it was the Arabs, or Indians, or perhaps Scousers, who invented the number zero. Whoever it was, their genius transformed human society and form 2 maths lessons beyond belief. We think you could effect a similar change in us by presenting us with nothing. And remember, you don't need to give us your gift of nothing on the day of wedding itself. You can wait a little while and offer us a bigger, higher-spec, wide-screen nothing when it comes out next year or the year after.
9. Your own happiness and peace. And we're back to where we stared just from the other side. If you can offer us this gift, we're sure to derive a lifetime of joy from that.

warmest

Rupesh and Kajal