Week 3

The folk game my group and I created is called Samurais and Ninjas. When we were coming up with ideas for our game, we wanted to make something simple that anyone can pick up. With the six elements of game design that our game focused around, make our game a folk game. It is also simple to teach, has minimal equipment, is modified by house rules, and the are negotiations for who will have what role. The elements that we keep in mind were action, rules, goals, objects, play space, and players. The action in our game is the act of the samurai trying to tag everyone but the ninja, and the ninja tries to get the samurai.  The rules for this game are:

•  Minimum of 5 players
  • 1 ninja and 1 samurai if under 10 players
  • If 10 or more players = 1 ninja and 2 samurai
    • Keep ninja to samurai ratio 1:2
    • Keep samurai to people ratio 1:5
• Samurai are chosen randomly for the first round
  • Every round after; new samurai will be chosen by the previous samurai
• Once the samurai is chosen. They will close their eyes and the others will point to who they want the ninja(s) to be.
  • If more than 1 ninja are needed, there will be multiple rounds for selecting multiple ninjas
• Once the ninja is chosen, the samurai will open their eyes and count down from 5 to begin the round. 
• The role of the samurai is to get everyone but the ninja out.
  • If they tag the ninja, samurai lose and the game is over
• The role of the ninja is to tag the samurai from the back to get them out
  • The ninja can only tag the samurai from the back
  • If all the samurai are taken out by the ninja the game ends with the samurai losing
• The goal of all the other people is to survive
  • If everyone but the ninja is taken out by the samurai, then samurai win

The goals are also listed in the copy past of the rules for our game. Next, the play space for the game is recommended for an outside setting, but in some cases, an indoor setting can work if the area is big enough where people are not running into each other. Also, the last element which was the players, we wanted anyone to be able to play the game and not be limited by some kind of skill gap or luck.