About Socks and Puppets.

So what exactly is this thing I've been asked to read?

Ah, if you want to know about how the game works, you should read the Rules.

So where exactly did this idea come from then?

A long time ago, way back in the dark ages, I played a few games of Steve Jackson's Killer with the Cambridge University Assassins Guild. It was fun while it lasted, but after a few games I quit playing. There were plenty of fun things to do in the game, but my main problem was that, inevitably, the game was best played by hiding indoors and not doing anything, or by spending ridiculous amounts of time waiting for something to happen. The bits of the game I liked most involved surprising people by doing completely outlandish things, or by sending them interesting "presents" in the post.

Two years later, and I find myself on a car journey from Candlestone to Cambridge after a very long day. My friend driving is as tired as I am, and at 11pm the conversation had mostly devolved into making your mom jokes (thanks XKCD and complaining about things we hated. In those sleep deprived moments I made a joke about how if you removed everything I hated from killer, you'd end up with a game about sending people persents, and Nick's comment that "well that would work" led us to have a full ruleset in twenty minutes.

An hour a week?

Well, that's more of a lower bound, you're welcome to spend every waking moment playing, but I would at least suggest taking time out to eat and sleep.

Won't this end up costing quite a bit, even with your guidelines?

Maybe, it's a bit of a trial. I don't expect people to spend more than a pound or so on materials for each gift, which works out at about three pounds a week, which is about the same cost as some university societies.

How about scoring? How about just doing one big secret santa round, how about my idea?

This is a trial game, I want to see how it goes. One big round would be fun, it'd be like the world's biggest secret santa... but I've done secret santa before, I want to see how this goes.

Scoring was in my old rules, but I decided that the competetive aspect wasn't adding much to the game. Worse, no-one could write proper reports under the old rules until they got three presents, which was holding the game up a lot. With these rules, you don't actually need to wait for the post to start a new round. Hey, if this is successful I'm sure we'll do it again with new rules.

What's with the bonus games?

I like bonus games