Rules & Materials for Ceremony of Surprise

This is a self-com­mis­sioned par­ty game explor­ing per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty – the idea that games can direct­ly act on the world. For more back­ground read the blog announce­ment. For the game rules, read on.

At this time, 21st cen­tu­ry cul­ture is more pop­u­lar then ever before. Recent tran­scrip­tions of ancient infor­ma­tion net­works have pro­vid­ed more insight into those excit­ing years lead­ing up to the end of mankind. In this sim­u­la­tion you will expe­ri­ence how it was to live in those thrilling days. You will par­tic­i­pate in one of the most pop­u­lar but mis­un­der­stood rit­u­als of ancient human­i­ty: “The Sur­prise Party”.

Schol­ars still debate the pur­pose of the Sur­prise Par­ty. It is a com­plex cer­e­mo­ny in which the par­tic­i­pat­ing humans had to “sur­prise” one per­son. To con­duct this event, humans cre­at­ed a com­plex sys­tem. By fol­low­ing the instruc­tions below, you can sim­u­late this won­der­ful ceremony.

Preparations

Before you can expe­ri­ence a Sur­prise Par­ty, prepa­ra­tions have to be made.

• Recruit five to nine par­tic­i­pants who from this point onwards will be referred to as “play­ers”.
• Bring one con­sum­able item that is large enough for all the play­ers. You can choose any­thing, as long as the food is desir­able by all par­tic­i­pants. The ancient humans seemed to pre­fer sug­ar coat­ed dough dec­o­rat­ed with light bulbs.
• Every par­tic­i­pant of the cer­e­mo­ny should bring two objects from his/her home which can be of use dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny. Sim­ple dec­o­ra­tive objects such as paper flags and inflat­able rub­bers were very pop­u­lar dur­ing the 21st century. 
• Human­i­ty used to demol­ish their oxy­gen pro­duc­ing life­forms and ground them to flat sheets which they called paper. On paper humans would use a remote com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nique known as writ­ing. To organ­ise this sim­u­la­tion you will have to fol­low a sim­i­lar pro­ce­dure. Copy the infor­ma­tion in the attached files to sev­er­al sheets of paper. Use a sharp object or sim­i­lar device to divide all the sheets in nine indi­vid­ual pieces, also called cards. There are three dif­fer­ent files: ‘name cards’, ‘action cards’ and ‘vote cards’. Make sure that every par­tic­i­pant gets one name card and two vote cards (one yea and one nay). One copy of the action cards is enough for up to nine play­ers.1

Beginning the ceremony

• Explain the rules and the object of the cer­e­mo­ny (see below), then dis­trib­ute the emp­ty name cards amongst the participants.
• Each par­tic­i­pant writes its name on a name card. Put these on a pile, shuf­fle them and take out one with­out look­ing at it. Place it out of reach. This is the sur­prisee, also known sim­ply as “it”. Add the wild card. Shuf­fle the deck again and hand each par­tic­i­pant a card. 
• Shuf­fle the deck of action cards. Hand out two action cards to each participant.
• Hand a pair of vote cards out to each player.

Performing the ceremony

• Par­tic­i­pants take turns nom­i­nat­ing an ingre­di­ent and describe how it will fit in the par­ty cer­e­mo­ny. Then the par­tic­i­pants either vote for or against the inclu­sion of the ingre­di­ent. Use your vote cards, and reveal them simultaneously. 
  • If a major­i­ty vot­ed for the ingre­di­ent, every par­tic­i­pant that vot­ed for the ingre­di­ent gets an addi­tion­al action card. This ingre­di­ent is now part of the party. 
  • If it is not elect­ed, the item is dis­card­ed and can’t be nom­i­nat­ed again. In this case, all those who vot­ed against get an action card. 
  • The pro­pos­er votes too. Use the pro­poser’s vote to break ties.
• Par­tic­i­pants can play action cards when­ev­er they wish dur­ing the ceremony.
• Play­ers are not allowed to show their name cards to each oth­er, unless the use of an action card specif­i­cal­ly tells them to.
• When no more ingre­di­ents remain, or all the name cards have been torn up, the endgame begins. 

Ending the ceremony

• Stand in a circle. 
• Count back from five to zero.
• At zero, point to the par­tic­i­pant you think is the sur­prisee and shout “sur­prise!”

Dividing the cake

• If the sur­prisee guessed itself, then it gets the whole cake.
• If not, the cake is divid­ed amongst all the par­tic­i­pants who guessed the sur­prisee correctly.
• If no one guessed right, the cake is fed to a less­er life-form, as all humans used to have these around to do their both­er­some tasks.

Downloads

• Action cards (PDF)
• Name cards (PDF)
• Vote cards (PDF)
• Card backs (PDF)
• Rules cheat sheet (PDF)

Credits

Designed by: Kars Alfrink & Tim Bosje.

Test­ed by: Wilma Bakker, Hes­sel Bonenkamp, Zurai­da Buter, Car­la Ger­rit­sen, Sja­nine Hen­drikx, Joost Hout­man, Julius Hui­jnk, Wytze Kamp, Simon van der Lin­den, Jan­neke Pee­len, Richard Ram, Michael Schmidt, Matthi­js Ver­bree & Den­nis Zoete­bier, our friends at the Dutch Game Gar­den and Local Mul­ti­play­er Pic­nic attendants.

With thanks to the human infor­ma­tion net­work known as “the web” for card imagery.

The Cer­e­mo­ny of Sur­prise by Hub­bub is licensed under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Non­Com­mer­cial-Share­Alike 3.0 Unport­ed License.

1. Please note that the pro­vid­ed images were found on ancient human infor­ma­tion net­works. They are believed to be authen­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of human­i­ty as it per­formed the Sur­prise cer­e­mo­ny. [↩]