Camp game "Torrents"

Surely few members of the community have been developing non-virtual games. For this reason, I decided to share with you a piece of my many years of experience, using an example of one game that is somehow connected with the subject of Habrahabr.

It just so happened that I do a lot of non-formal education. Work in children's and teenage camps requires the ability to present the necessary information so that people are interested in receiving it, and they want more and more. Usually, children need to be taught what is connected with the theme of the camp, and the theme of the camp is related to what the sponsors of the camp want ... Nobody will tolerate dry information in the camps, for this reason information is usually delivered through various events, including games. Very often counselors simply adapt existing games, but I prefer to come up with my own. And so I wanted to create a game that would teach the guys something from IT-shnoy subjects. So the game "Torrents" appeared. The game is very simple and requires nothing but sheets of paper, pencils and a few printed pictures.



For one camp, you usually have to dozens of different games, ranging from large long games to the entire camp and ending with small short toys for one squad of ~ 20 people. This is exactly the game the Torrents game is.
I realized that even many of my friends don’t even imagine how the torrent system works. Therefore, I decided to visually show their work at the most superficial level.

For the most impatient:

The game will consist in the fact that players exchange a picture through a system of torrents. There are participants who have some pieces of the picture, and people can draw the details that they don’t have enough from the people who are sitting next to them (let's call them neighbors ). Although no one initially had a full image, at the end after the exchange everyone will have a full picture.

Getting ready for the game

Required Materials:

• A4 sheets of paper (by number of participants)
• Pencils (by the number of participants)
• Washing gum (according to the number of participants)
• The prepared material that we will “distribute” (picture)

How to seat players

To start the game, participants need to be seated in the correct figure - in a figure imitating the appearance of a torrent network ... That is, the devil knows how. In fact, this is the most difficult moment: players must be a closed network, where each communicates with each through N players and each has at least two neighbors. For example, the easiest option would be a circle.



Or for further convenience, its deformed shape is a star.



It is important for the participant to know who his neighbors are . This must be remembered when seating participants. This is already bad:



Although playing in this form will be more interesting, the players in the center will probably get confused who is their neighbor and who is not. Therefore, for the first time, we will seat the players simply in the shape of a star. We will give each a piece of paper, a pencil and an eraser.

What should players do

Each participant of the game is at the same time not only “downloading” but also “distributing”. It is very important that the players are aware of this and keep their leaflet in sight. The only thing that is allowed for the players in this game is to redraw what they see from the neighbors on the sheets to their sheet.

Also, several people in the group have a piece of the drawing that was originally distributed to them. You can also draw from it. It is from these initially handed out pieces that the final picture is formed for all players. We’ll put people with these things on the ends of the stars to make it easier.

What should be the "distributed" picture

It is unlikely that all the participants in the game are great artists. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the image is not too complex, and, if possible, consist of simple lines . These should be more sketchy drawings than works of art.

I advise something like this: the

_{picture is not mine.}

Well, of course, we don’t need a picture, from which we can immediately understand which one it is. So let's make a collage:


_{all the pictures are taken from google.com}

And then you need to divide the resulting image by the number of those people who will initially have a piece of the file for distribution



Everyone should get only one piece of the overall picture ... And here you are most likely to make a mistake: the simplest thing would be to cut the picture along the lines. But this is the wrong approach, because after receiving the triangle, the participant in the game will not know where on the sheet he should be. If he starts to draw it in the wrong place, and other participants "download" this incorrect version, then that’s it, the game is a bitch. Therefore, we will make there so that the bifurcated pieces of the collage immediately talk about where they are:

Game purpose

You will be surprised, but people do not always strive to win. When announcing the rules of the game, we can say that the winner is the one who first has the full picture in his hands ... or vice versa - the last one who does not have the picture becomes a bluff. It does not matter. Because the main thing is that people enjoy the process itself, and usually the players understand this ... Yes, and in the real world there are no good and bad guys in torrents - all are equal.
^{Yes, I did host games in which there were no winners or losers, but people still liked to play them. They did not beat me or burn me.}

Possible improvements

In order not to have to wait, you can make the game more entertaining by dividing the picture at once into all the players. That is, everyone can immediately start distributing, and therefore downloading ... Ideally, this is a good solution, but usually you never know how many people will be in the group, and therefore it is difficult to prepare for this version of the game.
If you like the game and the participants want to play it again, you can complicate it by creating more complex torrent network schemes, breaking connections between specific participants at different times, disconnecting / enabling users, and generally making more and more complications.

Conclusion

Well, now the curtain of creating non-computer games has opened slightly before you, and I, in turn, seem to flood a little on Habrahabr. Do not judge strictly, I will be glad of any reaction. And good luck when you play this.

PS Yes, explaining the rules of the game to players briefly and clearly is a separate art. Of course, the players themselves do not need to know everything described in this article.

UPD.I read the comments. All offer to somehow facilitate the drawing, because not all Picasso and Van Gogh. This is not necessary at all - yes, the drawings will be clumsy, but this will only add fun to the game! Drop computer accuracy, people play the game for fun, and after the game is over they will be happy to look at the squalor that they have, than be proud of how they copied the images exactly in pixels and cells.
We making fun here, not printings.