An imagination game to collaboratively and competitively describe objects from a range of alternative futures
This is an adapted version of the game to be played together online. Once everybody has opened the game in the browser one player presses deal and all the players should see that rounds cards. When your ready to start press the timer and write about your imagined thing from the future until the buzzer sounds. Share your things from the future. The winner is the person who has written the best story, as decided by the players. Press deal again for a new set of cards.
It is licensed under the creative commons license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 click here to view the license or click here to view the games web site.
There are four types of cards in The Thing From The Future: Society, Context, Object, and Mood. Each round, one player will generate a four-card creative prompt containing one of each kind of card. Based on this prompt, players will imagine a thing from the future.
SOCIETY cards broadly describe different kinds of possible societies. These cards contain two kinds of information. The main (top) text of each society card specifies one of four generic images of alternative futures for players to imagine: Grow, Collapse, Discipline, or Transform. Underneath that is how far ahead in the future it is from now.
Grow is a kind of future in which everything and everyone keeps climbing: population, production, consumption.
Collapse is a kind of future in which life as we know it has fallen – or is falling – apart.
Discipline is a kind of future in which things are carefully managed by concerted coordination, perhaps top-down or perhaps collaboratively.
Transform is a kind of future in which a profound historical transition has occurred, whether spiritual or technological in nature.
CONTEXT cards describe contexts, places, and topic areas. In a completed prompt, the terrain card describes where – physically or conceptually – the thing from the future might be found.
OBJECT cards describe the basic form of the thing from the future.
MOOD cards describe emotions that the thing from the future might evoke in an observer from the present.