Truth-or-Dare

Latest revision as of 07:18, 27 April 2013

Truth-or-Dare, or T-or-D, is a party game we've stolen for our own through the magic of imagination. It is an easy-to-learn game with no victory conditions and no winners or losers - the goal is to have fun, be silly, get to know others, and show off, and if you leave feeling rather more sated (or digested!) than you entered, well - so much the better!

[edit] Basic Rules

In the most common variant played in the chatroom, the game is divided into Rounds. Each Round is considered to be 'the time it takes for every person playing to get at least 1 Turn.' Your 'Turn' is considered to start when someone else's spinner lands on you, and ends when you have either answered your Truth or started your dare.

To keep the game flowing and everyone getting turns in a timely manner, you are generally expected to roll for who you will be asking 'Truth-or-Dare' to, once your turn has 'ended' - thus, when you've answered a question or started your dare, since some dares may take a long time to complete! If you roll and land on your own number in the userlist, you are allowed to choose anyone playing to ask.

If you are asked a Truth you are not comfortable/interested in answering, you may request another, but after that your choice becomes an auto-Dare. If you are given a Dare that you are not comfortable/capable of performing, you may ask for another one, but likewise will be forced to take a must-answer Truth if you turn down your second Dare. Alternatively, in some versions, you can only be automatically assigned a Dare - if you pick Dare and turn down both offered Dares, you must pass your turn.

To keep the game moving speedily and ensure that all players receive turns in a timely manner, the GM (or GMs) will often run multiple 'spinners' or 'bottles' at once. If a spinner lands on a person who is already taking a turn, the player must re-roll - save for special circumstances such as Round rollover, no player may have more than one turn active at once, to prevent bottlenecking of turns. Usually, not even player's-choice asking overrides this.

In our chatroom environment, there are several things done to help improve game flow and ensure that everyone gets a fair shot. The two most common additions (besides multiple spinners) are Cooldowns and Turn limits. Cooldowns are a number of turns - generally equal to the number of spinners or bottles in play - during which you are considered to be 'on cooldown', and thus not a viable target for anyone currently spinning for the next turn. Every time any player spins, all cooldowns go down by 1.

Turn limits, on the other hand, are our last and greatest weapon against the cruel and facetious dice-gods. In their most common incarnation - everyone is limited to 2 'Turns' per 'Round'. If you have already had 2 turns, then you cannot receive any further ones until the round 'rolls over'. The only exception to cooldowns or turn-limits is if a player is allowed to choose by rolling themselves - player's-choice is generally considered to override everything else, within reason.

In the most common variant played, once there have been at least 2 '2-turn lockouts' - that is, two different players who have each had at least 2 turns - remaining turns will be rolled from between all players who have not yet received a single turn on that round, until the last person to end their turn is left with the last person who has not yet had a turn. At that point, the round 'rolls over', and all turn-counts, turn-lockouts, and cooldowns are reset.

[edit] Spin-The-Bottle: Truth or Dare Edition

Recently, a variant of Truth-or-Dare has become popular in the chat that combines the structure of Truth-or-Dare with the interaction of Spin-the-Bottle. In it, a third option - stereotypically titled 'Kiss', but more generally given as 'Asker's Choice' and usually detailed by the asker when the option is given - is added to the binary-choice "Truth or Dare?" question. If the third option is picked, the person asked must go over and do whatever the asker has requested they do, to whatever extent satisfies both parties.

Because of the loose-and-gooselike nature of T-or-D, the first variant has a habit of metastasizing into this one if the game goes on for a while, and it's generally considered to not be a big deal. All other applicable rules are more or less the same, with the added complication that players will be interacting in far more varied ways - which isn't a bad thing, by any stretch of the imagination.