Turning the Table on the Exhibitor

[mjbrown111]

Year: 1998
Location: Gen Con Milwaukee
Story:
My wife & I attended Gen Con together (as we have every even numbered year since 1990) and we decided this would be the year we would try some "demo" games, so we found a game called something like "Dirty Rotten Bastards" that was in its playtesting phase at Gen Con. The basic premise of the game was that you were a gangster moving around a city amassing wealth. The winning conditions were either to have the most money at the end of the game or to collect three secret cards which could be played instantly for the win. Unfortunately there was no mechanic for trading or revealing other people's cards, so this latter condition was highly unlikely of occurring.

The exhibitor/gamemaster laid out the rules, but then told us this was a new concept in gaming - essentially cheating was encouraged, while getting caught cheating (a rather subjective benchmark) entailed a penalty. The players were myself, my wife, two guys about 18-19 years old and a man and his 7-8 year old son playing as a team. It rather quickly became evident that the exhibitor favored the two guys as they, shall we say, more closely embraced the cheating aspect of the game. The exhibitor repeatedly pulled them aside for "advise on the rules" and somehow catching them at cheating was extremely elusive for the other players. As time went on, it was clear who was amassing the most wealth, and the little boy was becoming very disappointed, while the rest if us were getting a bit bored.

It was about this time that stealing a few bucks and fudging my dice rolls just didn't seem enough to me, and I started peeking at people's cards. I figured out that my wife, the dad and I each had one of the secret cards. I tapped my wife on the shoulder and got her to pass me hers, then I tapped the little boy on the shoulder and handed him both of ours. At that moment, I thought the look on the little boy's face was priceless... but no, it was actually the look on the exhbitor's face that was priceless when, on his next turn, the boy said "OK, I guess I'll play these now." and laid the win out on the table. The two guys started hemming and hawing about "we caught you cheating 'cuz we know you didn't have those last turn..." as the rest of us packed up and moved on. Needless to say, we have yet to see this game hit the shelves, but we nonethless credit the designer with an original, if flawed, idea.