Stadt-Land-anders Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• Gameplay
• Ending a Round and Scoring
• End of the Game
• Variants
  • Increasing the Requirement
  • Creative Play
• Appendix

Components

60 cards, of which:

• 30 category cards. The 1–4 stars on the back indicate the difficulty of the card.
• 30 double-sided prompt cards (Vorgabe-Karten): 17 green and 43 blue.

Setup

Draw 5 category cards to start. You may use all cards, or adjust the game to your preferred difficulty. For an easy game, choose only cards with 1 star. For a greater challenge, add cards with 2 or even 3 stars as you wish. (There is only 1 card with 4 stars; it presents a special challenge.)

Each player needs paper and a pen. Place the paper in landscape orientation in front of you. Create a table on it with the categories you have just chosen:

Prompt	Stadt (City)	Land (Country)	Musik (Music)	Name	Tier (Animal)	Punkte (Points)

Now take the prompt cards. There are 2 types:

• The prompts on the green cards revolve around letters.
• The prompts on the blue cards call for more creative solutions and stand for the "anders" ("different") in the title.

You may decide whether to play with only green or only blue prompts, or with a colourful mixture of prompts.

Shuffle the prompt cards and place them as a face-down stack in the middle of the table. Now the game can begin.

Gameplay

Stadt-Land-anders is played in rounds. At the start of each round, draw a random prompt card from the stack. Read it aloud, then return it to the box. Everyone writes the prompt in the first column of their table and starts the round immediately.

Try to find 1 fitting term for each category according to the prompt. Write these in your table. The following rules apply to terms:

1. Besides A, E, I, O and U, the vowels also include Ä, Ö and Ü.
2. Terms may be written in the singular or the plural.
3. Categories may be interpreted. Creative solutions are valid if they are briefly justified. Example: In the category "Berg/Gebirge" (Mountain/Mountain range), "Goldader" (gold vein) is a valid term for the prompt "Gold". It is therefore not necessary to name a mountain or mountain range.
4. Terms for different categories must differ, even if the categories are similar. Example: If both the categories "Comic" and "Film/TV" are in play, "Superman" may not be used for both categories, even though he appears in both comics and films.
5. A term that has been named once during a game may not be used a second time later on, not even by another player.

Ending a Round and Scoring

A round can end in 2 ways:

1. You have written a term for every category. Then you call out loudly "Stopp und Aus!" ("Stop and Out!").
2. You have not yet filled all categories (but at least 2), and you believe that you will not find any further solutions. Then you call out loudly "Stopp und 1!" ("Stop and 1!"). You may now not write any further terms. Instead, count silently in seconds up to 10 (tapping your finger on the table as you count). When you reach 10, you call out loudly "Stopp und Aus!" ("Stop and Out!").

In both cases, the round ends with "Aus!" ("Out!"). A term you are writing at that moment may be finished.

Now read out the terms in each category. If a player's term is not accepted, that player must cross it out. Be generous, but not arbitrary, in your judgement. Creativity, especially a convincingly explained one, should be rewarded. If you cannot agree whether a term is valid or invalid, vote on it in a form of your choice.

Then award points as follows:

• For terms that other players have also written, you receive 1 point.
• For terms that you alone have written, you receive 2 points.
• For each gap that other players have in their category column where you have written a term, you deduct 1 extra point.

Each of you then adds up the points you have scored and writes them in the "Punkte" (Points) column. And that is it: you can begin the next round with a new prompt.

End of the Game

The game ends after 5 rounds (short game), 7 rounds (normal game) or 9 rounds (long game).

After the last round, add up your points from the individual rounds. The player with the most points wins. In the event of a tie, play one more round.

Variants

In addition to choosing the difficulty of the categories and the prompts used, there are further ways to modify the game so that everyone can adapt it to their own needs:

Increasing the Requirement

Play with 6 or 7 categories instead of 5.

Play with the category "Teekesselchen" (Homonym). This category requires you to find a term with several meanings for the respective prompt (for example "Arm" (arm/poor), "Fall" (case/fall), "Kiefer" (jaw/pine) or "Schloss" (lock/castle)).

Creative Play

This variant is especially suitable for larger groups (4 players or more). After the usual scoring in each category, award additional creativity points. To do this, each player raises an index finger, and on a signal, each player points at one fellow player (not at themselves). You are rating which fellow player's terms you find especially good or creative. You then receive as points the number of fingers pointing at you. (For this, add an extra column for these points after the last category.)

Appendix

Examples of valid and invalid terms (the examples are German words, as printed):

Prompt "2", category "Stadt" (City)

• Valid terms: "Los Angeles", because it consists of two words.
• "Istanbul", because it lies on two continents.
• "Frankfurt", because there is Frankfurt am Main and Frankfurt an der Oder in Germany, and both are very well known.
• Invalid term: "Hamburg", because it consists of two syllables. That is too arbitrary!

Prompt "Lied" (Song), category "Weltall" (Outer space)

• Valid term: "Fred vom Jupiter" (a German song title).
• Invalid term: the "Star Wars-Melodie" (Star Wars theme), because it is by definition not a song.

Prompt "Tag" (Day), category "Tier" (Animal)

• Valid terms: "Hahn" (rooster) or "Lerche" (lark), because both greet the day; "Tagpfauenauge" (peacock butterfly, literally "day peacock eye").
• Invalid terms: "Schwein" (pig) or "Kuh" (cow), because they are active by day. That is too arbitrary!

Prompt "süß" (sweet), category "Fahrzeug" (Vehicle)

• Valid terms: "Rosinenbomber" (raisin bomber, the Berlin Airlift aircraft), "Eiswagen" (ice-cream van).

Prompt "Weihnachten" (Christmas), category "Schule" (School)

• Valid term: "Weihnachtsbaumschule" (Christmas tree nursery, literally "Christmas tree school").

Prompt "weich" (soft), category "Fluss/Gewässer" (River/Body of water)

• Valid term: "Weichsel" (the Vistula, a river whose name sounds like "weich").