Agents

»

flickr:7269868514
intermediate.png
players.png ~7-11
time.png 10 min

Decide if someone's music suits your picture or, if you are an Agent, try to say what two sounds don't suit together. What's easier?

Preparation

You will need a double deck of Inspire cards. If you can, provide also a reference, it can be an uncut a4 printout of cards. Players should have freedom of movement.

Setup

Not all cards should be used in one round. The "sub-deck" should have even number of cards, 3 or 4 more than number of players. It should contain 3 or 4 unpaired cards and the rest of pairs. The sub-deck can be prepared beforehand by a constructor, but if everyone plays you need a following procedure:

Dealer #1: gather all the cards into pairs of the same image (you can see faces of cards but hide them before others) and put them in two-card piles face down.
Dealer #2: without the Dealer #1 present and without looking at card faces, choose piles (pairs) of cards until the amount of chosen cards exceeds the amount of participating Players by 3 or 4. Keep these piles at the table. but rearrange them in an unrevealing way. Put the rest of the cards away - they will not be taken for the sub-deck in this round. You are not allowed to look at faces of discarded cards.
Dealer #1: take piles of your choice to the subdeck until only 4 piles are left. If the amount players is odd, put one more pile to the sub-deck.
From the remaining 3 or 4 piles take one card of each to the sub-deck.

The sub-deck should now be shuffled. During this time the Dealer that is not shuffling reveals Agent(s) from 3/4 piles. There is one Agent if the amount of players is odd (reveal the face of 1 of 3 cards), and two Agents if the amount of players is even (reveal the face of 2 of 4 cards). Other two hidden cards from piles will not be looked at until the end of the game.

Cards from the sub-deck should be delt to players one each. Look at your card. You are not allowed to tell what inspiration you have on your card. Player that has a card that is revealed is taking a role of an Agent.

Gameplay instructions

All the participants are now to head out to meet each other in small non-permanent duets. The aim is different for Agents and other players (you know you are an Agent if you have a card that is the same as revealed in a setup). Each time you meet someone, you should connect musically with that person. Everyone chooses individually when to split and look for another pair.

Until you decide to withdraw, you should play something all the time (of course some rests are allowed), but you might play very quietly (for example to not let people outside of your pair hear you too well). You can play anything you want, that depends on your strategy.

Aims

Agent: While acting like a regular player, and probably even trying to pose as one, you will need to find out which two players don't have their pair in the game (i. e. they have a card equal to one that stays at the table face down). You do that by careful listening to everybody around you, and sometimes by musical provocation.

Players: You play in the hopes of recognizing a person that has the same card as you. Two players of a pair should find each other by musically interpretting their cards when playing with each other. On the other hand, you'd rather not make it too obvious or you might regret it in the end if you happen to be a person without a pair. Body language of players should not be used to signal what card one has, but can be used to show if a playing pair thinks they have a same card or not.

At any point you can withdraw from further playing. You may signal it by stopping, facing a wall or sitting down, but don't leave the playing space, as you'll need to respond with some sounds if someone comes to form a pair with you.

(Strategy advice: Withdrawing is a good thing to do if you are already sure who are you paired with. Be aware though, that if you and your supposed pair both withdraw suddenly and at the same time, that is a big informational advantage for an Agent. Do you really want to help an Agent? ;) If everyone around you is withdrawing, you'd better withdraw quickly too, because if you will be the last person playing.)

Game end

Agent is not allowed to withdraw, but when s/he has played a duet with every person in the game, s/he is allowed to end the game which is signalled by a slow crescendo (might be noisy) to a level that is impossible to ignore. You can also prolong the game at this point if there is more then one pair still playing and you need more information.

When all the music stops Players are still not allowed to talk nor to reveal their cards.

Agent(s) should now leave the room, where they count (no haste) to 10 and come back (knock three times slowly before entering). While Agents are absent, Players reveal two cards that show which two players were given cards without pairs. Now, still without speaking, Players form pairs.

When Agent(s) comes back they/he/she pick a pair of Players that according to previously conducted research don't have a card with the same image. Only then cards can be revealed to check if the guess is correct.


Variants

You can provide a theme for this game by selecting specific images for used cards. Halloween would be the first idea, but (as suggested in the comments below) countries of the world would suit great too, and probably many others.



Unless stated otherwise Content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. See licensing details