Hipster The Gathering is a parlor game of philosophical conversation.

New: Hipster the Gathering has changed its name to Building a Better Conversation (or BBC). Here and there it will still be referred to by its original name, or the short name "Hipster", but the official name is now BBC.

It is inspired by the Hipster Parietal Disgorgement Aid (see the HPDA page on Wikipedia), the card game "Magic: The Gathering" (MTG on Wikipedia), Hesse's "Glass Bead Game" (GBG on Wikipedia) and various other related topics and ideas. Further discussion takes place below.

First, a description of the (extremely simple) rules. The choice of specific rules is inspired in part by the rules of the Dvorak card game (although none of the Dvorak variants are entirely compatible with this game). New (as of March 26, 2007): There is now a Dvorak MUSH online, at http://dvorakgame.co.uk/index.php/DvorakMUSH. The parallel developments for BBC are described on this wiki at MUSN.

Approximate rules of BBC

1. Each player uses an independently constructed deck of 100 or fewer cards; each card can contain any information whatsoever (typically they will include a title).
2. Players start with 5 cards in their hand, and play one card each turn, drawing one new card at the end of each turn (when the draw pile is depleted, play continues with the cards in hand).
3. A card is either played face up and remains in play for the rest of the game, or discarded, face down, to the player's personal discard pile.
4. When playing a card face up, the player must state the card's interpretation within the current game; essentially, why it is being played.
5. Every play should relate to at least one previously played card, continuing and adding to the discourse.
6. Blank cards drawn from the deck can be converted to non-blank cards on-the-fly, then played (but can not be played before being so converted).
7. Play ends either when all of the players discard in succession, or one of the players can not play because of being out of cards.

Comments

A natural question to ask is what the point of the game is.

For one thing, there are no winners and losers in the game, at least, not intrinsically. Typically it will be played in a cooperative rather than a competative spirit.

The point, in short, is to have an interesting conversation. Sharing and developing your own ideas, learning about what your table-mates are thinking about and helping them to develop their ideas, while building an interesting (if transient) co-authored "text" (the game record) is a joy in and of itself.

Example

Here is a brief example to show what a typical game might look like. (The game portrayed here never actually took place; each of the imagined players starts with 5 cards in their hand.)

A-1 : Global Judgements: "People figure easier things out first."

B-1 : Narration: "Narration is a guide to the easy elements of a story."

C-1 : Science Fiction : "A story takes place in the mind of the author, and is a machine for expressing some point."

A-2 : Blank->Documentation : "Narration tells you how a literary machine is supposed to work."

B-2 : Teleology : "The source of everything in the story is usually the author, but does every story have an author? Note that there is a difference between an author and a narrator."

C-2 : Tengen : "Tengen means 'the origin of heaven.' It is not the 'final cause,' nor does it give you the 'mandate of heaven.'"

A-3 : Beams : "The issue with tengen seems to be finding ways to connect everything to it. Tengen is the hingepin, but if the connections are broken, everything falls apart."

B-3 : Hipster The Gathering : "This is also a game of connections. The central point may shift from game to game. What do you suppose the central point is in this game instance?"

C-3 : Coherence : "The point is making things stick together well."

A-4 : Blank->Understanding : "The idea of helping the audience to understand a given work is also important."

B-4 : Blank->Mutual Understanding : "This relates to the idea of different parts of a system understanding each other and also understanding the system as a whole."

C-4 : Discard

A-5 : Discard

B-5 : Discard

Other uses

I have been using my Hipster cards as a sort of personalized I Ching. The way I do this is to think of a good question, shuffle, and deal out 5 cards. I then think about how these cards are related to the question, and try to see how they can connect into an answer. Sometimes I write down this answer on a new card.

Playing with a full deck

For the first time in my life, I am playing with a full deck! I'll share the titles of these cards with you. Before too long, I hope to have an Emacs version of this game (to be implemented, fittingly, with Arxana) and at that time I expect I'll be ready to share the full cards.

Discussion

Please feel free to adjust the above as you see fit, but I'm requesting that any major deviations should be developed separately. E.g. ideas about changing the rules, thoughts about certain strategies, or musings on the nature of the game itself, should go in this section or onto separate pages. --jcorneli

I wonder if there should be some "bonus" if the current play relates in some way to the immediately-previous play (as opposed to just some other prior play). Of course, without winners or losers, I'm not sure what form a "bonus" would take =) --akrowne Sun Dec 18 02:39:45 UTC 2005

My friends here who I introduced the game to had basically the same comment (even raised the idea of requiring a response to the previously played card). I guess the general response should be "do whatever seems to make for the best conversation." Any improvements in that regard can be appreciated by everyone!

Another point is that if patterns like "trying to say something that relates to the immediately previous card improves the game" are noticed, these could go into an FAQ. Statements of this sort could also be played at some appropriate point during a game in progress. Note that unlike the situation with Nomics, there are no rules about introducing new rules. If I was a Marxist theorist I might say that Nomics constitute a fetishization of the rule, but I am not a Marxist theorist. I don't know enough about HTG to say what it is about exactly! --jcorneli

For an interesting physical point of comparison, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_sided_football (note that this game was invented by the author of "Open Creation and its Enemies" – which is probably not a coincidence at all). --jcorneli

Dvorak, as I mentioned above, is a related game. This page: http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/index.php/Infinite_Dvorak_deck gives a particularly interesting and perhaps especially closely related Dvorak implementation.

--jcorneli

Scott McCloud? invented a similar game he calls "five card nancy": http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/nancy/nancy.html

The game "Apples to Apples" is vaguely similar as well (more similar to Scott's game than mine).

Discussions