This variation was published in
Omni back in the '80's. It is an ideal way to pass the time on long
road trips. The rules are simple, but the game itself can be played, quite literally, for years.
- The first player proposes the name of a real or fictional person. (It must be a person. This doesn't mean they have to be human.)
- The second person posits a second name, related to the first by either sharing a word in common (Tiger Woods to Woody Harrelson), the same profession (Neils Bohr to Werner Heisenberg), or a pun (General Tso to Ron Jeremy1)
- Keep going round. No repetition of names is allowed.
- If the connection seems too tenuous, the other players can challenge. If you're bluffing, you pay a penalty to be determined by the other players. It's up to you if you define the penalty ahead of time or just make it up if you go along. If you are not bluffing, the challenger pays the (frequently "obscenely biological") penalty.
The game never really ends. It just stops temporarily when you get to your destination. This game has kept /me and
Noteponymous sane over a total of 9000+ miles of roadtrippin' in the last decade.
Well, as sane as we get, which isn't very. The beauty of the game is trying to find connections so slim, so
groanalicious, that the other players can't find the connection.
1 -- You're not really going to challenge that one, are you?If you can't figure it out, /msg me.