Dragon Tower

[Mike]

As described in the podcast:

You have four players: Dragon, Jester, Wizard, Knight

The Wizard and Knight leave the room. The Dragon hides a playing card (the Prince or Princess) somewhere, ensuring that the Jester can see exactly where it is.

The Wizard and Knight return with the Knight being blindfolded. The Jester may not speak or make any noise at all. The Jester and Wizard may not move around.

Through pantomime, the Jester provides instructions to the Wizard, who in turn relays them to the Knight, who must find the card.

Awesome fun.

[Kyle]

I played four rounds of this with my three youngest boys. It was a blast.

[Zen]

For some reason, the description of this game got "All Along the Watchtower" stuck in my head...

[Mike]

I'm glad you tried it, Kyle.

It's easy and fun. Next time we may try timing the rounds if people start screwing around too much. Also, I really want to try two teams competing to each find their own card at the same time.

Or hide five cards and the first team to get three of them wins.

But even with no extra rules, the kids played almost 20 rounds of this and were still raving about it the whole way home afterwards.

[Kyle]

Questions-

The Jester is allowed to move with the Dragon when he's hiding the King right? (I named the card the King instead of Princess so as not to be sexist.)

What happens if the King is hidden in an area that the Jester and Wizard can't see from where they're standing? This occurred because the room we were in had a corner that was sectioned off from the rest of the room.

[Mike]

The Jester gets to move with the Dragon (if needed) to get exact location. And along with this, the Dragon shouldn't be trying to deceive the Jester in any way.

We also had a situation where the Jester and Wizard were blind from their usual perches, and so we allowed them to move as needed to be able to see all necessary details.

Basically, having those two not move prevents the Jester from just walking over and pointing at the card, and the Wizard from walking around saying, "Follow my voice." Both would violate the spirit of the game.

[Mike]

If you weren't sexist, you would have called it the Monarch.

Although, speaking seriously, maybe Prisoner works better.