Such a Thing?
Such a Thing? Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Credits
A game by Urs Hostettler. Graphics by Res Brandenberger.
Setup
Take the "POKER STARTER" card and the 4 blank cards for your own ideas out of the deck. Lay the starting card "SUCH A THING..." face up in the middle. Shuffle the rest of the cards well. With the text side facing down, they form the draw pile.
We present two games: the base game THE CHAIN (with a variant), and the nerve-wracking DING POKER for advanced players.
The Chain (2-8 players)
Everyone receives 9 cards from the draw pile. You should look over your hand carefully, but keep it hidden from the others.
1 additional card is revealed from the draw pile and placed next to "SUCH A THING...".
Whoever is the most short-sighted starts the game. Taking turns, players lay one card from their hand face up in the middle. This creates a chain of properties there that SUCH A THING should have as its own.
On your turn
- Either attach another card from your own supply to the chain, face up, or
- Burst the chain by asking the person who most recently laid a card what kind of strange thing that is supposed to be. That person must then name a thing to which all the cards of the chain apply.
If they cannot meet this demand, they must pick up 3 cards from the draw pile. But if they manage it, whoever asked picks up 3 cards. Remove this round's chain. Whoever was just allowed to generously fill up their own hand lays a new starting card next to "SUCH A THING..." — from the draw pile, not one of their own. Then the next person lays their own card, and play continues around the table.
Exception: whoever has only a single card left in hand never starts a chain — in this case, this privilege falls to the next person in turn order.
Goal of the game: get rid of all your cards, of course.
Variant (from 3 players)
Everyone starts with 6 cards. Every card played is immediately replaced from the draw pile.
Whoever gets caught by the question must collect the entire chain of cards. These cards are no longer needed for the rest of the game... but count as penalty points at the end.
After that, the next person opens a new chain.
Once the draw pile is used up, keep playing without drawing new cards until someone bursts the current chain. Whoever has to pick up this last chain loses the game — no matter how many or how few cards were accumulated by everyone in the previous rounds.
Ding Poker (for any number of players)
As additional equipment, your group needs a notepad, and everyone needs a small, distinctive trinket to use as a marker.
Deal 5 cards from the draw pile to everyone. These are the personal hand cards.
Whoever is the most short-sighted receives the "POKER STARTER" card and is also called by that name.
Now cards are revealed one by one from the draw pile and attached to "SUCH A THING...". After each card, starting with the POKER STARTER, players must declare whether they still want to risk another card or not.
Whoever drops out places their own marker on the most recently attached card. Play continues revealing cards from the draw pile until everyone has placed their marker.
Now it goes in reverse: whoever dropped out last must name a thing to which all the revealed properties apply, including the last one, the one their own marker is sitting on.
If this does not succeed, no points are awarded this time. Now the person who dropped out second-to-last must find a thing that fits up to their own card, and so on. If a thing is accepted, that person and everyone who dropped out before them each receive as many points as there are cards lying face up up to their marker. If nobody can find a thing that fits up to their own marker, everyone comes away empty-handed.
The "POKER STARTER" card shifts one position to the left, and a new poker round can begin.
Goal of the game: 33 points. If several players reach the goal in the same round (which is almost always the case), the winner is whoever:
- reaches the higher total score, or
- in the last round, dropped out later.
Oh yes, the personal hand cards: they serve to "patch things up" — guessing players may cover any number of the laid-out cards with their own hand cards. If the solution is accepted, the points are still awarded, but the hand cards are lost (and not replaced). If the solution is rejected, the hand cards are returned... but there are no points either.
That was already all the rules of the game. For the sake of domestic peace, though, we'd like to offer a few more explanations. You can leave these aside for now and only consult them when a dispute arises — that is, roughly after the fifth card of the first game.
What Is Such a Thing?
SUCH A THING must fulfill all the stated properties. You must also stick with whatever definition you have chosen.
The "monkey in the zoo," which "usually gets patched up again when it breaks," does not occur "far from any human civilization"! If only "monkey" were said here, the case would be exactly the opposite.
The "Matterhorn" is not "in the living room," even if it is often pictured there. — The "picture of the Matterhorn" is a completely different thing.
SUCH A THING may be anything — quite vague, like a "book," or
-
defined much more precisely, e.g. the "Koran in the Arabic language."
This "Koran" has some properties that a "book" does not have: for example, "I couldn't do anything with it on my own." Conversely, a book is "present multiple times in many households"... a Koran, rather rarely.
You may even push the precision to the extreme, and with your restriction leave only a single, generally known SUCH A THING, for instance the "Kremlin." However, in your restrictions and embellishments, you should make sure in the end that SUCH A THING is also acknowledged to exist — an "apple with horns," for example, is original, but invalid. The mere claim that "surely something like that exists somewhere" is not enough. If, however, you know of a work of art that is SUCH A THING, for instance Meret Oppenheim's fur cup, the matter looks quite different.
-
in a certain state, e.g. "a completely disintegrated, old paperback."
A "disintegrated paperback" consists of "several disconnected individual parts"; lying on the floor of a room, it would be "classified as worthless and disposed of" by a cleaner... neither of which can be said of a plain "book." On the other hand, a book "can be had in a normal supermarket," a "disintegrated paperback" hardly.
The state must directly and lastingly affect SUCH A THING; a momentary indication of time or place is not allowed. Forbidden, for example, is a "book in winter" or a "VW that is just now driving through a forest"; allowed is a "rocket in flight" or a "monkey in a zoo." And again, SUCH THINGS in the stated state must be familiar to the group. So hands off "fried clocks" or the like.
-
a thing with its natural accessories, e.g. "an antique book with seals."
An "antique book with seals" is "usually indoors, but rarely found in private households"; whereas a "book in general" can much more easily be "rented or borrowed."
A bottle of wine with its contents is allowed, as is a computer with a printer, or a necklace with a cross. — The accessory must be closely and conceptually connected to SUCH A THING. A person is not "partly made of fabric" just because you say they are wearing a shirt. On the other hand, you may specifically name a Tour de France rider. That person is generally perceived along with wheels and legs, and also with lettering. But they are hardly to be found in the living room, but rather pedaling on the Tour. A lady with a small handbag, a family with a garden gnome, a tablet with a Netflix series... none of that. Such combinations do not form a unit.
-
a part of a thing, or a manageable, ordinary quantity of related things, e.g. "the book stock of the city library."
I could not "buy the book stock of the city library with all my money," but any given "book," very well.
A pair of shoes, a stamp collection, a forest, a tomato salad are allowed. "My entire possessions" would not be allowed (which consists of an unclear pile of quite different things), nor would "all birds with red feathers" (terribly constructed, and hardly to be regarded as ONE THING).
The Cards
Cards are to be taken concretely. A schoolgirl does not "shine" through her achievements, a violinist does not serve the "cultivation" of culture, a "pig" is a pig. The I-cards each refer to the person who has to bear and justify the awkward thing! With identical cards, quite different THINGS can become possible depending on your own personal abilities and inabilities.
The texts on the cards are of course decisive, not the illustrations. Pay attention to the wording of the cards: "I could..." offers more room for imagination than a clear "...if one...". That SUCH A THING is "often" found in a particular place is a stricter requirement than "sometimes."
Consensus
In disputed cases, let resourceful members of the group argue for one minute — then the uninvolved players decide on the validity of the thing. Don't be too lenient just to reward a good idea: the cards really must all apply. But don't be too petty either... in dubio pro reo.
Special leniency is needed when playing with just two people. Stay calm. Approach the problems soberly. Sometimes a test case helps.
For truly difficult factual questions (such as whether Lady Gaga would be out of place in the stage set of William Tell or not), our test and expert team is available to you at [email protected].
Tempo
We recommend limiting the thinking time in THE CHAIN to one minute, the POKER time to 30 seconds, and the guessing and card-swapping time at the end of a POKER round to 2 minutes.
Tactics
It's quite clear — whoever drops out last in POKER carries a risk, and often also has to sacrifice their hand cards. The art, therefore, is dropping out at the right time, picking up free points, and letting the others rack their brains. If, on the other hand, the competition drops out far too early, a big coup might be worthwhile: sacrifice 2-3 hand cards in order to bring in 4-5 more points than the others — that can decide the game.
In the last round, once someone reaches the point goal, the others are forced to poker very high in order to still snatch the game with a lucky punch. But scoring more than 10 points succeeds only very rarely.
If you're playing THE CHAIN and can no longer find a solution, or no longer have a suitable card in hand, don't let it show! Either you probe your predecessor thoroughly, or... you lay down your most noncommittal card with a confident "sure, I know," hoping the bluff is swallowed and another card gets added — then you'd be rid of your worries for a round. One more thing: even if you get caught this way, you still end up with one card fewer in hand than if you had simply given up.
Acknowledgments
We thank certain parrot breeders, air hostesses, carrier-pigeon clubs, mail carriers, and nutrition consultants for their helpful information.