Home Game Expansions, Modifications, and/or Creations

[Sodboy13]

Seeing the fan-made TPIR Expansion got me thinking about the idea of DIY game show home gaming, as did a lucky find I had today.

I went into Five Below and saw they had Trivial Pursuit's "Bet You Know It" edition from a couple years back for $5. Looking it over, I had a light bulb go off, and bought two sets. That gives me 300 single-category, multiple-question cards, display holders for 8 cards (or, for my needs, 6) at a time, scoring chips, and two dice marked 1-5, with a special character instead of the "6" on each.

So, for $10, plus the Quizzard I have at home, I now have The Big Showdown.

Of course, this is far from the first time I've had an idea like this; for instance, my TPIR home game consists of the Endless Games edition referenced above, the majority of two 1986 MB sets, and that electronic doohickey, which was worth the $8 clearance price because, hey, it's a wheel and a Plinko board, and I never, ever have to put in the batteries or use these cards.

As I'm sure a bunch of us who have bought home games have thought, "Oh, this would be even better if it just had x", and many of us have the level of interest and creativity to actually put such things together, I thought it would be interesting to know what you've done with your home games, or if you've made any of your own from scratch.

[TLEberle]

I went into Five Below and saw they had Trivial Pursuit's "Bet You Know It" edition from a couple years back for $5. Looking it over, I had a light bulb go off, and bought two sets. That gives me 300 single-category, multiple-question cards, display holders for 8 cards (or, for my needs, 6) at a time, scoring chips,

I love the feel, sound and numbering of the chips from that game and keep my eye out for it while at a thrift store. I was overcome with glee when I found it on a recent trip. I took the chips, a stack of cards from various games, several cards from Skip-bo, and cobbled together a facsimile of a German game that is best described as Scattergories meets Spades.

Having access to a copier at work and lots of cardstock of my own I ran the Winner's Circle games from the Endless $25,000 Pyramid through and cut them into individual cards. (This was quite a lot of work, but not as much as I thought it might have been) I took those and a bunch of money chips from Meeple Source and created a Winner's Circle relay race game that played decently given that most of my family isn't really familiar with the finer points of the show.

[nowhammies10]

I, like many others around these parts, have taken to building software to enhance the home game content where possible.  I'm still new to it, and my forte is PowerPoint, but it works for what I need it to do.  I'm also one of, again, many others around here who does game show events at various conventions in and around my place of residence (in my case, Toronto, Canada).

A thought emerges: let's do a worldwide 24-Hour Game Show Marathon.  We've had east and west... let's bring north to the party, and if scheduling allows, we should do this thing synchronized between all of us.

[CarbonCpy]

I've been tinkering off and on with a program called Stencyl, and it's proven to be a damn handy little package.  Stencyl is supposed to be for making flash/android/iOS games, but it's been pretty good for rigging up a control program for your own buzzer system.  Especially considering that at its bare-bones, flash-a-number-on-the-screen simplest, you can whip one up in about ten minutes without knowing a single thing about Actionscript.

Which is really handy because I don't.  And it's because of Stencyl that I managed to whip up a control program for Panel Quiz Attack 25 over the course of two weeks that I wanted to share with everyone. I've also included the actual stencyl source file, if you wanted to either tinker around with it yourself or just see what kind of Byzantine mess I've managed to make with it.

if you're looking to make your own sound effects, --like NES style sound effects-- another decent little package to consider would be bxfr. It has a web interface where you can mess around with the different sliders until you get the sound you're looking for, a mixer where you can combine sounds, and it also has a standalone version you can download for local and offline use (through Adobe AIR).

[clemon79]

and cobbled together a facsimile of a German game that is best described as Scattergories meets Spades.

Was Sticht?

[TLEberle]

Was Sticht?

No, that came with Mu and More. The German name is Haste Worte, which describes the elevator pitch.

Given a category players have 30 seconds to write out as many answers as they can. They then bid how many points they'll score that round. Answers are revealed starting with the player who bid least. His answers are crossed off of the lists of anyone yet to read (so the tightrope is bidding enough to score well, but not so much that enough of your answers are nuked and you get shut out). If you make your bid you score it, if you don't, you score nothing at all for that frame.

As friendly and light as Scattergories is, Hasty Words is that evil.

[TimK2003]

Seeing the fan-made TPIR Expansion got me thinking about the idea of DIY game show home gaming, as did a lucky find I had today.

I went into Five Below and saw they had Trivial Pursuit's "Bet You Know It" edition from a couple years back for $5. Looking it over, I had a light bulb go off, and bought two sets. That gives me 300 single-category, multiple-question cards, display holders for 8 cards (or, for my needs, 6) at a time, scoring chips, and two dice marked 1-5, with a special character instead of the "6" on each.

So, for $10, plus the Quizzard I have at home, I now have The Big Showdown.

When we did GSC 8 in Cleveland 16 years ago (16 years already!?!?), that was exactly how we did The Big Showdown (Quizzard + Trivial Pursuit Cards).  We also used Trivial Pursuit cards for doing categories for The Joker's Wild, rotating categories in and out of the 5 available Joker categories, though you could play all 6 categories at a time, I guess. 

I have also tried Wipeout (Tomarken version) on a Milton Bradley "Concentration" board with decent results.  Write down the possible right & wipeout answers on a piece of paper or dry-erase board with a corresponding number and place it just above the Concentration board.  Use the back of the yellow Concentration prize cards  or print & cut out your own "$" or "Wipeout" cards and hide them behind the appropriate matching Concentration numbers.  I never had a Hot Spot Card as it was hard to shuffle it back into the remaining numbers on the board.  For the final round, I had determined how many changes one can make instead of setting a time limit since it was so easy to switch numbers (answers) on the board.

[parliboy]

Given a category players have 30 seconds to write out as many answers as they can. They then bid how many points they'll score that round. Answers are revealed starting with the player who bid least. His answers are crossed off of the lists of anyone yet to read (so the tightrope is bidding enough to score well, but not so much that enough of your answers are nuked and you get shut out). If you make your bid you score it, if you don't, you score nothing at all for that frame.

As friendly and light as Scattergories is, Hasty Words is that evil.

One of our gamers homebrewed a translated copy of that a few years back, and we play it a couple of times a year at the end of a long night or weekend still.  My proudest moment (or most shameful, depending on perspective) was leapfrogging the entire penalty track using the "Disney Characters" category by naming the entire major cast of Gargoyles.

"But MacBeth isn't a Disney... oh... crap."

[Joe Mello]

Having access to a copier at work and lots of cardstock of my own I ran the Winner's Circle games from the Endless $25,000 Pyramid through and cut them into individual cards. (This was quite a lot of work, but not as much as I thought it might have been)

Cardstock is great, because you can just go to your local office supply store and it will last longer than you can ever imagine, but I imagine business card paper would probably work just as well and require less manual labor.  In the end it's probably six of one, etc.

The slips for all my bank's transactions came in stacks with cardboard separators. I had been collecting those to use as sturdy backs for (hopefully reusable) game show hosting cards.

[knagl]

(Edit: Yeah, I didn't realize Sodboy13 already started a thread about like this -- I went ahead and reported the thread to the mods.  Would we be better off keeping this thread seperate or should it be merged with his?)

I merged them together.  For those who may have missed it since it gets merged in by creation time, you may want to browse Sodboy13's post, Reply #3, above.

[jmangin]

I've written several games in Flash and use content from unrelated games as sources for content:

• Bumper Stumpers (Vanity Chase game)
• Couch Potatoes (Remote control game for questions/Couch Up round & TV cast photos for Channel Roulette)
• Double Talk (In Other Words game)
• The Joker's Wild (Bezzerwizzer game)
• Monopoly (several crossword clue sources)
• Trivia Trap (several multiple choice question sources and Jeopardy!/TP Bet You Know It content)

[pacdude]

A thought emerges: let's do a worldwide 24-Hour Game Show Marathon.

I feel like we do that already. We plan for six months, pour money and resources and time and energy into putting together something, work with charities to get them money, grind to get press and have viewers join us from around the world. It's a charity event that we put on because we care about the charities we give money to, and the game shows that we play. If you want to organize a 24-Hour Game Show Marathon North, I can't stop you. It's not something we've copyrighted, but anyone who's using the "24-Hour Game Show Marathon" name is using it with our blessing since our blood/sweat/tears have been poured into the event.

We let the good guys at Home Game Enterprises use the name modified with "West" because they bring their own flair and sensibilities into the proceedings. I personally craft their logo to mirror what we do with it because we share a common philosophy: taking what we love and putting it to work to raise money for causes we feel strongly about. Travis, Joe and Ben took me to dinner and asked for my blessing, which I was more than happy to oblige because they showed me they could mirror the quality that we hope to accomplish (even if our microphones didn't work for 24 straight hours and no one could hear a damn word we said).

If you'd like to do a 24-Hour Game Show Marathon, e-mail me at cory@pacdudegames.com and show me you can do it without my help. We're open to growing it as long as it meets our standards.

[pacdude]

Also, I make Flash games sometimes to play at bars and stuff. Just to stay on topic.

[nowhammies10]

If you'd like to do a 24-Hour Game Show Marathon, e-mail me at cory@pacdudegames.com and show me you can do it without my help. We're open to growing it as long as it meets our standards.

Sounds great.  We'll talk.

[Sodboy13]

Also, I make Flash games sometimes to play at bars and stuff. Just to stay on topic.

That reminds me, I liked your "Drop The Bomb" game so much, I ripped it off adapted it for a multiple-player physical game using some customizable dice and the electronic Trivial Pursuit handheld.