"Now we will see whos kung fu is greater!"
Have you ever started roleplaying in a restaurant with friends only to be met with strange looks fron the other diners? (especially with shouted phrases such as the classic, "HA HA! Suck natural 20, Goblin Boy!") Happy-Lucky Chinese Restaurant Game ("Happy-Lucky" from here out) continues that fine tradition by adding in the Asian flavor of outlandish (and badly filmed) martial arts movie mayhem over your pork fried rice plate.
The Premise:
Players will work in teams of two to continue the martial arts film started by the host with one narrating and the other lip-syncing and adding in expressions and sound effects. The winning team is the one that ends the game with the most chopsticks at the end of the "film."
What Ya Get:
Happy-Lucky is a short little three page HTML document and should be a quick printout regardless of your printer setup.
Cost:
Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Gratis. Free.
Appearance:
Happy-Lucky is pretty simplistic in its layout with only a white background and black text. There is a logo at the top in "psuedo-oriental" text overlaid on a image of a martial artist striking a punching pose. Still, the design is effective and easily read which is more than I can say for some webpages I've looked at.
The Game:
There are two types of people in Happy-Lucky: the Host and the players. The host is simply the guy who suggested that you go out for Chinese in the first place. Everyone else is players who should divide up into teams of two and they should face each other across the table. Each player will need a pair of chopsticks, a fortune cookie, and a glass of tea to drink. The first order of business is to come up with a name for the movie. This is done by the host telling the player to his left a category (Numbers, Descriptions, Body Parts, Creatures, Elements, Weapons, People, and Places). They must name a word in that category and then present a category to the next player. This continues until everyone has contributed a word. The host then takes the words and combines them into a title such as The Ghost Temple of 1,000 Bandits!
The player to the left of the host begins the game by saying dialog. Each player only gets "one breath" of dialog so they can't take a breath and continue talking. During this time, your teammate should be lip-syncing your words and mimicking your character's actions (facial expressions and hand gestures are just fine - there really isn't a need to have a call placed to the nice men in the clean white coats for mimicking martial arts in a public place). If your teammate forgets to do this or doesn't want to do it, you have to place a chopstick in the center of the table.
You can interrupt a player by putting one of your chopsticks in the center of the table to challenge them. The player can override this by putting in a chopstick of their own. Otherwise, the challenging player provides dialog. This collection of chopsticks is kept seperate from the "teammate screw-up" pile. This pile is used only for the end of the game and this is just some way to remove chopsticks from the players ability to use them (generally by throwing them, poking others, and dramatically waving them about knocking over drinks - so this is probably a good idea! *grin*).
The game might end when the turns get back around to the host, however, they can choose to continue the film by sending it into another round or he can decide to end the film by tossing his chopstick on the table and breaking open his fortune cookie and reading it. The fortune must be used in the end of the film. The ending can be challenged like any other dialog. However, if this happens, the game can be ended by any player by tossing a chopstick onto the table and breaking their fortune cookie just as the host can. The player who ends the game gets all the chopsticks on the table. The team with the most chopsticks is the winner and has to pick up the tip.
Overall Impression:
This game could be hilarious to play in public if you can get friends comfortable with the idea and a restaurant that won't toss you out. Familiarity with really bad martial arts movies will only enhance the experience. Replay value is questionable unless your friends really enjoyed it the first time and want to do it again. You could just as easily play it with a take-out order around your kitchen table if you are unsure how amused your local restaurant would be with this type of behavior in their establishment. Still, like most of Jared's ideas, this one is a winner even if you never play it.
MetalMan signing off.
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)