1000 Blank White Cards
Encyclopedia
1000 Blank White Cards is a party game
played with cards in which the deck is created as part of the game. Though it has been played by adults in organized groups in several cities and college campuses, 1000 Blank White Cards is described as well-suited for children in Hoyle's Rules of Games. Since the bulk of the rules are contained on the cards (rather than existing as all-encompassing rules or in a rule book
), 1000 Blank White Cards can be considered a sort of nomic
. It can be played by any number of players and provides the opportunity for card creation and in fact actual gameplay outside the scope of a single sitting. Creating new cards during the game, dealing with previous cards' effects, is allowed, and creativity is encouraged as the most important part.
For many typical players, though, the game may be split into three logical parts: the deck creation, the play itself, and the epilogue
.
A typical group's conventions for deck creation follow:
One sample convention suggests the following:
Many players believe that having their own cards favoured during the epilogue is the true 'victory' of 1000 Blank White Cards, although the game's creator has never discarded or destroyed a card unless that action was specified within the scope of the game. Retaining and replaying those cards which seem at the moment less than perfect can help reduce a certain stagnation and tendency to over-think that can otherwise overtake the game's momentum.
One group of players in Boston (not the long-dispersed Harvard cadre) have introduced the idea of the "Suck Box":
s, to simply sheets of A7
sized paper. Cards may be created with any marking medium and need not conform to any conventions of size or content unless specified within the scope of the game. Cards have been made of a wide range of substances, and modifying the shape or composition of a card is entirely acceptable: the original Viz-Ed box still contains a card to which a tablet of zinc
has been affixed with adhesive tape; the card reads "Eat This!... In a few minutes, the ZINC will be entering your system." Many cards have been created which demanded their own modification, destruction or duplication, and many have been created which display nothing but a picture or text bearing no explicit significance whatsoever. Some have been eaten, burned and cut and folded into other shapes.
The game does tend to fall into structural conventions, of which the following is a good example:
In practice, these conventions can generate rather monotonous decks of one panel cartoons bearing point values, rules or both. As conceived, the game is far broader, as it is not inherently limited in length or scope, is radically self-modifying, and can contain references to, or actual instances of, other games or activities. The game can also encode algorithms (trivially functioning as a Turing machine
), store real-world data, and hold or refer to non-card objects.
, Wisconsin
.
He was inspired by seeing a product at a local coffeehouse: a box of 1000 blank white flash cards. He introduced "The game of 1000 blank white cards" a few days later into a mixed group including students, improv theater members and club kids. Initial play sessions were frequent and high energy, but a fire consumed the regular venue shortly after the game's introduction; the game physically survived but with the loss of their regular meeting place the majority of the original players fell out of contact with one another, and soon most had moved on to other cities.
The game started to spread as a meme
through various social networks, mostly collegiate, in the late 1990s. A former Madison resident brought the game to Harvard University and started an active playgroup which changed the size of the cards to the more standard half-index (2½" x 3½") and created the first web content representing the game. Their graduation served to further spread the game to the west coast and onto the web. Subsequently, an article in GAMES Magazine
and inclusion in the 2001 revision of Hoyle's Rules of Games established the game as an independent part of gaming culture.
The game's inventor and its original players have frequently expressed amusement at the spread of a game they regarded mostly as a brilliant but highly idiosyncratic bit of conceptual humor which provided them with an excuse to draw goofy cartoons.
Party game
Party games are games that some people play as forms of entertainment at social gatherings. Party games usually involve more than one player. There are a large number and styles of party games available and the one selected will depend on the atmosphere that is sought to be generated...
played with cards in which the deck is created as part of the game. Though it has been played by adults in organized groups in several cities and college campuses, 1000 Blank White Cards is described as well-suited for children in Hoyle's Rules of Games. Since the bulk of the rules are contained on the cards (rather than existing as all-encompassing rules or in a rule book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
), 1000 Blank White Cards can be considered a sort of nomic
Nomic
Nomic is a game created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber in which the rules of the game include mechanisms for the players to change those rules, usually beginning through a system of democratic voting...
. It can be played by any number of players and provides the opportunity for card creation and in fact actual gameplay outside the scope of a single sitting. Creating new cards during the game, dealing with previous cards' effects, is allowed, and creativity is encouraged as the most important part.
Game
The game consists of whatever the players define it as by creating and playing cards. There are no initial rules, and while there may be conventions among certain groups of players, it is in the spirit of the game to spite and denounce these conventions, as well as to adhere to them religiously.For many typical players, though, the game may be split into three logical parts: the deck creation, the play itself, and the epilogue
Epilogue
An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...
.
Deck creation
A deck of cards consists of any number of cards with no content—little, if any—but originally and nominally of a thousand blank white cards. Some time may be taken to create cards before gameplay commences, although card creation may be more dynamic if no advance preparation is made, and it is suggested that the game be simply sprung upon a group of players, who may or may not have any idea what they are being caught up in. If the game has been played before, all past cards can be used in gameplay unless the game specifies otherwise, but perhaps not until the game has allowed them into play.A typical group's conventions for deck creation follow:
Though cards are created at all times throughout the game (except the epilogue), it is necessary to start with at least some cards pre-made. Depending on the desired duration of the game a deck of 80 to 150 cards is usual, and of these approximately half will be created before the start of play. If a group doesn't already possess a partial deck they may choose to start with fewer cards and to create most of the deck during play.
Whether or not the group possesses a deck already (from previous games), they will usually want to add a few more cards, so the first phase of the game involves each player creating six or seven new cards to add to the deck. See structure of a card below.
When the deck is ready, all of the cards (including blanks) are shuffled together and each player is dealt five cards. The remainder of the deck is placed in the centre of the table.
Play
The rules of game are determined as the game is played. There exists no fixed order of play or limit to the length or scope of the game. Such parameters may be set within the game but are of course subject to alteration.One sample convention suggests the following:
Play proceeds clockwise beginning with the player on the dealer's left. On each player's turn, he/she draws a card from the central deck and then plays a card from his/her hand. Cards can be played to any player (including the person playing the card), or to the table (so that it affects everyone). Cards with lasting effects, such as awarding points or changing the game's rules, are kept on the table to remind players of those effects. Cards with no lasting effects, or cards that have been nullified, are placed in a discard pile.
Blank cards can be made into playable cards at any time simply by drawing on them (see structure of a card).
Play continues until there are no cards left in the central deck and no one can play (if they have no cards that can be played in the current situation). The "winner" is the player with the highest score of total points at the end of the game, though in most games the points don't actually matter.
Epilogue
Since the cards created in any game may be used as the beginning of a deck for a future game, many players like to reduce the deck to a collection of their favourites. The epilogue is simply an opportunity for the players to collectively decide which cards to keep and which to discard (or set aside as not-for-play).Many players believe that having their own cards favoured during the epilogue is the true 'victory' of 1000 Blank White Cards, although the game's creator has never discarded or destroyed a card unless that action was specified within the scope of the game. Retaining and replaying those cards which seem at the moment less than perfect can help reduce a certain stagnation and tendency to over-think that can otherwise overtake the game's momentum.
One group of players in Boston (not the long-dispersed Harvard cadre) have introduced the idea of the "Suck Box":
We don't like to destroy cards, even if they suck, so we have a notecard box called The Suck Box. If a player feels a card is boring and useless to gameplay, They will nominate it for admission to The Suck Box. All players present then vote (sometimes lobbying for their cases), and the card either goes into The Suck Box or gets to remain in the primary deck. Ironically, when The Suck Box was introduced, one player created a card for the express purpose of adding it to The Suck Box. However, the rest of us felt that it was too amusing a card and had to remain in the deck.
Structure of a card
At its simplest, a card is just that: a physical card, which may or may not have undergone any modifications. Its role in the game is both as itself and as whatever information it carries, which can be changed, erased or amended. The cards used vary widely in size, from the original 1½" x 3½" Vis-Ed brand flash cards, to half or full index cardIndex card
An index card consists of heavy paper stock cut to a standard size, used for recording and storing small amounts of discrete data. It was invented by Carl Linnaeus, around 1760....
s, to simply sheets of A7
ISO 216
ISO 216 specifies international standard paper sizes used in most countries in the world today. It defines the "A" and "B" series of paper sizes, including A4, the most commonly available size...
sized paper. Cards may be created with any marking medium and need not conform to any conventions of size or content unless specified within the scope of the game. Cards have been made of a wide range of substances, and modifying the shape or composition of a card is entirely acceptable: the original Viz-Ed box still contains a card to which a tablet of zinc
Zinc
Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...
has been affixed with adhesive tape; the card reads "Eat This!... In a few minutes, the ZINC will be entering your system." Many cards have been created which demanded their own modification, destruction or duplication, and many have been created which display nothing but a picture or text bearing no explicit significance whatsoever. Some have been eaten, burned and cut and folded into other shapes.
The game does tend to fall into structural conventions, of which the following is a good example:
A card consists (usually) of a title, a picture and a description of its effect. The title should uniquely identify the card. The picture can be as simple as a stick figureStick figureA stick figure is a very simple type of drawing made of lines and dots, often of the human form or other animals. In a stick figure, the head is represented by a circle, sometimes embellished with details such as eyes, mouth or crudely scratched-out hair. The arms, legs and torso are all...
, or as complex as the player likes. The description, or rule, is the part that affects the game. It can award or deny points, cause a player to miss a turn, change the direction of play, or do anything the player can think of. The rules written on cards in play make up the majority of the game's total ruleset.
In practice, these conventions can generate rather monotonous decks of one panel cartoons bearing point values, rules or both. As conceived, the game is far broader, as it is not inherently limited in length or scope, is radically self-modifying, and can contain references to, or actual instances of, other games or activities. The game can also encode algorithms (trivially functioning as a Turing machine
Turing machine
A Turing machine is a theoretical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a...
), store real-world data, and hold or refer to non-card objects.
History
The game was originally created by Nathan McQuillen Phoenix (b. 1974) of MadisonMadison, Wisconsin
Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....
, Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
.
He was inspired by seeing a product at a local coffeehouse: a box of 1000 blank white flash cards. He introduced "The game of 1000 blank white cards" a few days later into a mixed group including students, improv theater members and club kids. Initial play sessions were frequent and high energy, but a fire consumed the regular venue shortly after the game's introduction; the game physically survived but with the loss of their regular meeting place the majority of the original players fell out of contact with one another, and soon most had moved on to other cities.
The game started to spread as a meme
Meme
A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
through various social networks, mostly collegiate, in the late 1990s. A former Madison resident brought the game to Harvard University and started an active playgroup which changed the size of the cards to the more standard half-index (2½" x 3½") and created the first web content representing the game. Their graduation served to further spread the game to the west coast and onto the web. Subsequently, an article in GAMES Magazine
GAMES Magazine
Games magazine is a United States magazine devoted to games and puzzles, and is published by Games Publications, a division of Kappa Publishing Group.-History:...
and inclusion in the 2001 revision of Hoyle's Rules of Games established the game as an independent part of gaming culture.
The game's inventor and its original players have frequently expressed amusement at the spread of a game they regarded mostly as a brilliant but highly idiosyncratic bit of conceptual humor which provided them with an excuse to draw goofy cartoons.
See also
- List of games with mutable rules
- Calvinball
- DvorakDvorak (game)Dvorak is a customizable card game that begins with a deck of blank index cards. These index cards are written and drawn upon by players before or during the game...
- FluxxFluxxFluxx is a card game, played with a specially designed deck. It is different from most other card games, in that the rules and the conditions for winning are altered throughout the game, via cards played by the players.-History:...
- NomicNomicNomic is a game created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber in which the rules of the game include mechanisms for the players to change those rules, usually beginning through a system of democratic voting...
- DiscordianismDiscordianismDiscordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris , the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its holy book the Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst after a series of shared hallucinations at a...
- MaoMao (game)Mao is a card game of the Shedding family, in which the aim is to get rid of all of the cards in hand without breaking certain unspoken rules...
External links
- 1000 Blank White Cards at BoardGameGeekBoardGameGeekBoardGameGeek is a website that was founded in January 2000 by Scott Alden and Derk Solko as a resource for the board gaming hobby. The database holds reviews, articles, and session reports for over 45,000 different games, expansions, and designers. BoardGameGeek includes German-style board games,...
- Examples and Instructions
- 1000 Blank White Cards (blog with examples and rules)
- Trouser Arousal's 1000 Blank White Cards Page (one of the original sites for the game)