Clockwork Ghosts
| Clockwork Ghosts | |
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| Designer: | David Overend |
| Year: | unknown |
| Players: | 10-20 |
| Stuff required: | - |
| Crew required: | 1 |
| Preparation: | Nomination of two murderers in secret before the game starts |
| Time required: | Half an hour. |
| Place required: | A small area of a city, ideally with shops, cafes, etc. |
| Activities: | public domain. |
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This is a game for a busy circular route in a city. Players have to spend half an hour moving clockwise round a designated area, avoiding the murderers in their midst. If they fail to stay alive they turn into ghosts and return to the graveyard in a clockwise direction.
Summary
Clockwork Ghosts is a battle between citizens and murderers, much like Mafia. But this game moves the action into the busy streets of a city and players have to blend into the everyday life of the city to avoid being found and turned into ghosts.
Instructions for Players
The game starts at a meeting point (the Cemetery) and uses a circular route, which players have to spend time on, only moving clockwise and blending into the everyday life of the city. When the game starts, everyone is alive but amongst them are two murderers whose identities are kept secret.
The aim of the game is for all the players to make it to the end of the allocated time and returning to the graveyard without being murdered and becoming a ghost. The murderers' aim is to turn all the players into ghosts. Whenever a player is murdered they have to return to the graveyard following an anticlockwise direction.
They can only be freed by an alive person making it safely back to the cemetery, then one ghost is freed.
Things to work out...
1. How players are murdered.
2. Whether 30 minutes on the route is too much or not enough.
3. Whether there could be more characters with different roles (e.g. like in Mafia with its detectives, bouncers, policemen, etc.).
History
Designed for the Hide & Seek day at the Forest Fringe in Edinburgh, August 2009.
Tested on 26th August, and updated rules to be added shortly after.
