Kipling: The Seemingly Saying Something Game

Kipling (the Seemingly Saying Something Game) is a card/token voting game exploring themes of complex communication – saying one thing, but meaning another – for 2 to 8 players, ages 11 and over. The game is based Kipling’s six questions, in our case ordered as Why, What, How, for the intent and (in no particular order) Where, When and Who for the content. On each turn, one player is the Speaker, who is randomly dealt a Why, a What and a How card, which can be Good, Neutral or Bad. From these, the Speaker makes up a sentence and says it to the player on their left, the Spoken To, in the style required by the cards without showing the cards to the other players. Each other player then votes on each of the three categories, Why/What/How and chooses Good/Neutral/Bad, in clockwise order starting with the Spoken To player. During and before this phase the Speaker and Spoken To can play Jokers to double or redouble the score for that round if they choose to. Once votes are in, the Speaker reveals the cards they were dealt, and the scores are calculated; one point for each correct guess, with the potential for an extra point for the Spoken To each turn, because they will have an extra token for voting. If nobody or everybody finds the correct combination of three intent cards, the storyteller scores 0, and each of the other players scores 1 point for each individual part they got correct. Otherwise the storyteller shares the same score as whoever found the complete answer; usually a score 3 or 4. Jokers might double this to up to 4 or 8 depending on cards in play and who was the correct player. The game ends when a player scores 16 or more points, but this threshold should be increased for larger numbers of players. In either case, the player with the most points wins the game. If there is a draw, the player who spoke most is the winner.