Lost Poetry Squad

Lost Poetry Squad
Designer:	Invisible Playground
Year:	unknown
Players:	6-30. In teams of 3-5.
Stuff required:	Mirrors, headlights, florescent self-adhesive band, walkie-talkies.
Crew required:	One non playing character per team.
Preparation:	4 hours.
Time required:	ca. 20 minutes.
Place required:	Small park with a lot of benches preferably in the dark.
Activities:	collecting, memorizing, do some magic .
This is an unfinished game. It is still in the design stage, and is not playable.
This game is made available under an Attribution-Noncommercial Creative Commons licence. (What does this mean?)

The garden is full of poetry. Yet it is thoroughly hidden and has to be brought to light. With special devices Squads spread out in the garten, leaving glowing poetry lines on their trails and filling the air with conspirative whisper. Will any of the teams be able to save a complete poem?

Preparation

• Build poetry detection devices The poetry detection device is a combination of mirrors and lights that are mounted on the shoes of the players. Some players will wear mirrors, others will wear lights. Get round mirrors of ca. 20mm diameter, velcro and duct tape, headlights.
  • Apply duct tape around the outline of the mirror (mostly for security reasons to prevent injuries by the sharp edge).
  • Apply velcro band on the mirrors backs that they can be mounted on shoes. Two mountings per mirror will do.
  • Apply velcro band on the headlights that they can be mounted on shoes.

• Build poetry lines Take the poems provided or choose a lovely poems of similar length. Use florescent self-adhesive band to write single lines on it. For this you need to cut the florescent band in pieces according to the length of the poem lines, and write the poem lines on them in REVERSE WRITING (as it will be read out with a mirror).

Download Lost_Poetry.pdf

Poems for Lost Poetry Squad (do not hand out to players!)

• Install the poetry lines with self-adhesive band on the bottom side of benches. In dark the florescent band and the writing will become visible if players charge it using the headlights mounted on their shoes. After that players equipped with a mirror can place their feet under the bench in order to read the glowing line of poetry.

Each team gets a poetry expert assigned to. Each poetry expert needs a clipboard with the complete poems on it.

Before starting, build teams of about 3-5 players. Within the team, hand out 2 mirrors and a headlight (you might want to assist in mounting them on the players shoes). Hand out 2 walkie-talkies in each team and to the the poetry expert assigned to the team. Make sure that the walkie-talkies within a team are set to the same channel and that the poetry expert is using the same channel too.

Rules

Rulecard for Rulecard for Lost Poetry Squad (hand this out to players!)

The aim of the game is to find as many poem lines hidden under the benches as possible and broadcast them to the poetry expert through the walkie-talkie. Players have to use the poetry detection device for finding and reading out the poem lines. The team scores 1 point when a poem line is transmitted correctly to the poetry expert. There is a bonus point for each line that was transmitted along with other successive line in the correct order. For one line the team can cash in the point and the bonus point only once in one play session. If the team already has earned a point with a poem line, a second transmission of the line won't earn them a plain point, but could still earn them the bonus point if transmitted along with other points. The poetry expert keeps track of the points earned with transmitted lines and at the end of the game the poetry experts announce the winners. But before announcing the winners, the poetry experts recite all the poems in canon by reading out the saved lines loud but not reading out the unsaved lines.

Flickr gallery

<flickr size="t">ludocity%3Agame%3Dlostpoetrysquad</flickr>

(These are the ten most recent Flickr photos of Lost Poetry Squad. To add your own, just add the "ludocity:game=lostpoetrysquad" tag to your Flickr photos.)

Design and Play history

Lost Poetry Squad was developed by Invisible Playground at Field Office Prague during 4+4 Days in Motion Festival.

Other games from the Národní Game Set

• Tetris Smuggling
• The Lucerna Incident
• Our Friend The Golem

• The complete Národní Game Set