Extreme Ungame and other variants

Before I begin, my apologies to the wonderful woman who created the game and I offer my undying appreciation for her original impetus to create the Ungame. Please buy it.

I started playing the Ungame with friends around 1985. I was newly married and living on the West Coast, surrounded by a constellation of friends, acquaintances, and fellow Navy personnel. The group of us played many games, mostly of the strategy genre, from Dungeons and Dragons to Axis and Allies to Fortress America and Risk. The Ungame became a sort of break from strategy, a light-hearted diversion. It was during this period of time that I met my best friend who to this day remains for all intents and purposes my true brother.

For those that haven't heard of it or played it, the Ungame basically consists of a board around which you move your playing piece, two decks of cards with questions, and a six-sided die. You land on one of three types of spaces - Tell It Like It Is (take a card to answer a question), Do Your Own Thing (ask a question of someone, make a comment, or draw a card) or a Hang-Up space which sends you to another space on the board.

Many months later I got divorced (which I don't blame on the Ungame) and I emerged from that experience to participate socially with an ever-evolving group of friends. It became a time of experimenting with the limits of brutal honesty, vulnerability, trust, intimacy, and mutuality. The game which originated with questions like "Say something about America" or "When was the last time you felt afraid?" became a white-knuckle version of truth or dare where the dare was to tell the truth. This was the seed of "Extreme Ungame" which is a name I conferred only recently in retrospect.

Extreme Ungame

Do Your Own Thing - you can ask group questions where everyone but the questioner answers
People must use subsequent turns to find out the questioner's answer if they want to know
No topic is off-limits
The truth must be told, and you must agree to this to play

Modifying the Do Your Own Thing rule so that you could ask a group question where everyone but the questioner had to answer created a very tension-filled game. If someone wanted to find out what the questioner's answer was, they needed to use their next Do Your Own Thing. When you kept landing on Tell It Like It Is, it became rather entertaining.

It was a brutal, anxious, and educational experience. I don't play that way anymore, nor would I recommend it to anyone. My goal now isn't testing limits. It is getting to know people in an environment of love and respect, but I'll describe that in the Extreme Ungame II rules.

Our group didn't spend all our time playing games. We would also do what we affectionately dubbed "24-hour restaurant hopping" which involved visiting Denny's and other 24-hour restaurants all night for conversation and other diversions. It made sense to create a travel version of the Ungame because Trivial Pursuit isn't as fun for everyone and you can only play so much Cosmic Wimpout.

Ungame - Travel Version

Leave the board home, take only the cards and the die.
Each person rolls the die for their turn.
An even roll was Do Your Own Thing (an even number of words)
An odd roll was Tell It Like It Is (an odd number of words)
Hang-Ups were ditched with the board.

Not being a fan of the Hang-Ups spaces, we used the travel version even when we weren't traveling and we used it that way for years. We started giving everyone pencil and paper to write down their thoughts so they wouldn't feel the need to interrupt and wouldn't lose their inspirations between turns.

Two things have influenced the way we play the Ungame today. Maturity and religion. I don't feel the need to test those limits anymore, and now I am a Baha'i, so the last thing I would want to do is make someone uncomfortable or anxious or embarrassed. Since I often play the game with people who don't know each other well or who have a different level of tolerance for self-disclosure, we have amended the game as follows:

Extreme Ungame II

Do Your Own Thing - you can ask group questions, the questioner can choose whether to answer or the group can decide at the beginning of the game whether questioner must answer too
Topics are off-limits to the extent that anyone can refuse to answer a question (without shame)
The truth must be told, but as stated you can refuse to answer
The board is not used, so people can be sprawled around the living room
Every turn is Do Your Own Thing, you can always opt to take a card
One person reads the questions so the decks of cards can be in one place with the reader
Paper and pencil are supplied
Talk is kept to a minimum between turns, but this is flexible depending on who is playing. Those uncomfortable with self-disclosure often need some nervous chatter to stay engaged.

I have experimented with other cards, either home-made or from other games. Loaded Questions can work well. We experimented with Gender Bender and Scruples cards, but found them to be unsuitable or uninteresting. The home made versions I have made are the Baha'i version (which I am still working on) and a Spiritual Version based on the book The Little Book of Big Questions by Jonathan Robinson. I plan to expand the Baha'i version to be an Interfaith version (thanks for the idea, Jeannie). We now have what we call the Bag O' Questions which we can take with us at any time. It contains pencils, paper, and several sets of question cards.

Whenever my best friend and I get together (he is a West-Coaster and I am an East-Coaster) we often spend at least one night playing the Ungame with whoever will join us, and it will often dwindle into the wee hours as people peter out, and us hard-core Ungamers will savor the intimacy, respect, honesty and love that the game has come to represent.

In this post I have left out much of the emotional impact of my experiences playing the Ungame and concentrated on the nuts and bolts. I hope others get enjoyment out of the "house rules" we use. Perhaps some other time I'll share some of the experiences - I can think of two questions in particular that made for memorable nights. In the meantime, I think I'm going to embark on a bit of a memoir, and share a spiritual quest.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite questions. If you could hang a slogan in every house in the world, what would it be?

Think about it.

The Naming of a Blog

I promised I would write about the naming of this blog, and that I'll do.

Did you know if you search Amazon.com for the term "baby names" you'll get 9703 results? Even typing in "naming your baby" returns 126 results.

Naming your blog: 4 results
Blog names: 103 results
Neither of these sets of results deal specifically with naming your blog.

With baby names you can find books with lists of 50,000 to 100,000 names. You can find the "best" or the "very best" or the "complete" or the "perfect" or the "everything" or the "ultimate" baby naming book. You can find the "town and country" baby name book or the "wizard" that will walk you through the process.

You can find the latest trends in baby naming, such as antique names, foreign names, surnames, meaning names, or make-it-up names.

No such help with blogs.

Blog names could really use some help, too. I won't name names, but there are some real stinkers and very few creative, inspirational, or even cute blog names. Being the slightly compulsive perfectionist that I am, I needed the very best perfect ultimate everything blog name for my blog. Not too specific or limiting, not too obvious or obtuse, memorable, worthy of me.

I wanted it to reflect the idea that it is about critically thinking about life around us and peeling away layers of spin for the inner kernel of truth. I considered "Counterspin" but it is too popular and obvious.

I considered something grandiose or explicit, like "Critical Thinker's Corner" or "Critically Yours" or something else that ultimately felt too critical.

My original idea was to include an image of Rodin's "The Thinker" to signify the inspiration for my blog, namely thinking. I immediately thought of the name "Rodin's Muse." I figured something inspired Rodin to create this famous piece of art. Why not give a nod to some temporal paradox of some kind and assume it could be my blog? When I searched the web for the phrase, I was surprised to find out that he actually had a muse whose name was Camille Claudel, so I threw that name out too.

Then came the birth day of my blog. I tried a few things, but they were taken. I don't even remember what I was thinking that day, but I think I tried things based on "Thinker" and "The Thinker" but whatever I tried that day was taken already.

Update from the future - I found the scribblings where I was exploring other names. Counterspin, Reality Check, Critical Think, and Why? were some of the others.

The more I tried to avoid Rodin's Muse, the less progress I made. I didn't want to go down the road of just picking something off the cuff. So I fell back to Rodin's Muse which I pretty much wanted anyway. It does serve several purposes for me.

It pays homage to my personal inspiration from and respect for The Thinker.
It pays homage to Camille Claudel.
It includes a double meaning for the word muse, and I always love the clever use of words.
It even includes a double meaning through the pronunciation of Rodin, since it is pronounced the same as Godzilla's compatriot Rodan and had I thought longer I might have chosen "Rodan's Muse" instead.

So, it works for me. I hope to have less trouble when I end up naming my children. I'll certainly have more help. I'd love to hear blog names you think are particularly clever or memorable.

Next time, the unveiling of rules for Extreme Ungame.

Quiet times

So it looks like another lame blogger has jumped online with no intention of regular updates for his large and devoted following. :-)

I implore just a little bit more patience, dear readers. As I mentioned in the previous post, Ayyam-i-Ha is followed by the Baha'i Fast which is followed by the New Year celebration of Naw-Ruz. I kind of glossed over the whole Fast part, so let me add a few quick tidbits (if you'll pardon the pun).

During the 19 days of the Fast Baha'is forego eating and drinking from sunrise until sunset.

[Allow times for gasps of horror.]

It really isn't that bad, and only those who are able to do so are allowed to fast, but that is just the physical aspect of the Fast. The physical part is simply the outward symbol of the inward or spiritual aspect of it. It is a time of reflection, contemplation, prayer, meditation, and personal assessment. It is a time to reflect on where your life is going and what changes you can make to more closely align your will with your understanding of God's will.

Anyway, this is all part of my justification for not writing regularly in this hallowed blog. For me the fast creates its own sort of insular routine that revolves around the pillars of food, sleep, and prayer with doses of socializing, low energy, and watching the clock. After March 21st and Naw-Ruz I plan to write more regularly.

Besides, I've got a lot to say.

Ayyam-i-Ha mubarak!

Lest you think, dear readers, that I have forgotten you, I have not. It is just a very busy time of year for party-going Baha'is.

Baha'is observe Ayyam-i-Ha from February 26 to March 1, the few days before they start their Nineteen Day Fast. You can see more about Ayyam-i-Ha here and more about the Fast here. Basically it is four days (five during leap years) of festivity, charity, socializing, and gift-giving before 19 days of fasting where we forego eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset. It is a time of spiritual reconsecration and focus. It all ends with a celebration of Naw-Ruz on the first day of Spring. It has become a favorite time of year for me, especially since I became a Baha'i 18 years ago today.

So Ayyam-i-Ha mubarak, everyone! (Happy Ayyam-i-Ha!)

My next post will be about the process of naming a blog and which is more difficult, naming a blog or naming a baby.

Why did I call this Rodin's Muse?

Think about it.