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Two Lines

One prompt, two answers, and the room decides which of them it would rather have said.

4–8 players · 15 min · best with six

På svenska

Two people answer the same prompt. Everybody else reads both with no names on them and picks one, and then both authors are named. 4 to 8 people, about 15 minutes.

It is the only game on this shelf where the funny thing is something a colleague actually wrote, and that turns out to be the reason to run it rather than the reason not to. A room that has spent twenty minutes on a spreadsheet will produce four sentences it is still quoting on Monday.

Nobody is put on the spot and nobody performs. You type into a box on your own screen for a minute and a half, with two prompts nobody else has seen, and then you sit and read. The person who thinks slowly is doing it in private, which is not true of any game where you have to say something out loud in turn.

Nothing anybody writes stays anonymous. Both lines go up unsigned while the room picks between them, and both names go on the second the vote closes — the one that won and the one that did not. It is a short, bounded window with a clock on it, and it is the only reason a game of this shape belongs at work at all.

The prompts are about objects, places and machines, and never about anybody at the table. That is a rule the deck was written to and is checked by a test, not a matter of good taste on the day.

A round

Two prompts eachEverybody writesThe room picksNames on

On the sheet

+1Whoever wrote it — per person who preferred their line
+2Whoever wrote it — extra, when their line took every vote cast
0Nobody — only one of the two wrote anything
0Nobody — the round is put away before it finishes
How to play Two Lines
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