This week my team and I have decided to take our game for project 1 in a completely different direction, so finding appropriate similar games for this critical play was a bit of a challenge. With that said, for this critical play I chose to play a game called True or False Storytime, a game with seemingly no original creator.
True or False Storytime is another drinking game where players begin by writing down a few nouns on pieces of paper and then take turns choosing a random piece of paper before rolling a dice. The rules are if the dice lands on an even number, then you must tell a true story related to that noun, if it lands on an odd number then the story must be false. Afterwards the other players guess if the story told was true or false (they can’t ask questions). If they guess correctly, the person who told the story has to take a drink, if they guess incorrectly they have to take a drink. While playing this for this week’s critical play, I choose to sub out drinking for a workout of the winners choice (i.e. pushups, jumping jacks etc). The objective, workout the least!
I believe the themes of the game were both learning things about your fellow players as well as social deception. If you want to avoid punishment you have to be able to tell true stories as if they were lies, and false stories as if they were nothing but the truth, it takes some skill. When it comes to the mechanics of the games, you have the dice role, which leads to the dynamic of whether or not you’re telling a true or false story, as well as the noun cards. I honestly found the noun card to be the most interesting mechanic of this game. When compared to a game like 2 Truths and 1 Lie, the addition of required themes for the stories added an extra challenge to making/telling stories. While both games offer their players fun in regards to the competitive, expression, and challenge types, I think True or False Storytime is more fun for the challenge type.
I think it might be better to allow winners to give any kind of dare, as that adds to the competitive fun. Although this could lead to a little bit of abuse if the dares are super outrageous or in anyway harmful. Maybe the players can agree upon a set of limits for the dares? Another fun thing to mod might be allowing other players to ask questions, with a limit to counter abuse of too many, that way the storyteller has to add layers to their lie if the story is false! Lastly, I think the required materials to play were intentionally easy to acquire as this is a game that a group of people should be able to start with ease. In fact, if you don’t have a dice you can swap it for a coin instead!
