Exploding Garrmondo Weiner Interactive Swiss Army Penis

Happy Birthday, Robot! is a collaborative storytelling game. That's right! You don't need to roleplay or have a character or anything, we're just making up a dumb bullshit story. I think everybody can manage that.

HERE'S HOW!

First we need dice. We have infinite dice, so that's good. When you roll, treat 1 & 2 as "BLANK", 3 & 4 as "AND" and 5 & 6 as "BUT". We also need coins. We don't have those, but let's just act like we do. We also need people; at least three, not more than ten or so. Last, we need an opening sentence. Normally, the starting sentence would be "Happy Birthday, Robot!" but I think we can handle going off the rails a bit.

Our sample starting sentence: In the future, they'll be time machines.

The free word is they'll. I'll explain what that means in a minute.

SAMPLE TURN

First, roll as many dice as you want, but only three at a time. You can roll three dice, or six dice, or 24 dice, but not more than three at a time. But there any other mechanics stopping you from rolling infinite dice.

Let's say I roll 3, and get 2 ANDS and a BLANK. When you roll an AND, pass it to the player on your "right" (play proceeds clockwise, so give ANDs to the player whose turn is just before yours). Keep BLANKs for yourself.

I want more words, so I roll another 3. I get 2 BLANKs and a BUT. When you roll a BUT, pass it to the player on your "left" (the player whose turn is just after yours). I keep the BLANKs.

I roll another 3! Two ANDs and a BUT. Now the player to my "right" has 4 ANDs and the player on my "left" has 2 BUTs (hrr hrr). When you've given either of your neighbors four or more dice, you have to stop rolling. This leaves me with only three BLANKS, plus the free word: they'll. I can make a four word sentence, or a three word sentence if I don't want to use "they'll". Here's my sentence:

They'll live deep underground.

Now my neighbors can add to my sentence, starting with the player on my right. He or she can add as many words as they have dice (which you passed to them); they can use AND as a free word. Therefore, they can add five words to my sentence, if one of them is AND. If they don't use AND, they only get four words.

They'll live deep underground and fear angry Spanish bees.

Now the player on my right can add to the sentence. They can use as many words as the number of dice I passed to them, and they can use BUT as a free word. I only rolled two BUTs, so the player to my right only gets three words (or only two if he doesn't include BUT).

They'll live deep underground and fear angry Spanish bees, but desire pork.

You don't need to add your contributions to the end of the sentence, or have your contributions adjacent to each other; stick your new words in wherever you want.

They'll live deep underground, and rightfully fear angry but handsome Spanish bees.

PUNCTUATION is free.

After you and both of your neighbors have added to the sentence, the turn is over! You lose all your dice when the turn ends, so you can't save them up for some big impressive sentence later. If it was your turn, collect a coin for each BLANK you used (don't take a coin for using the free word). Your neighbors don't get coins; they need to wait for their own turns.

What good are coins? To you, nothing. But you can give them away at the beginning of someone else's turn: from then on they, they get a free word for each coin they got in this way. Let's call coins you earned yourself "Heads" and coins you got as a gift "Tails". You don't get any free words for having "Heads" coins in your possession, and you can never give away your "Tails" coins. You also don't get any coins from free words that you got from having "Tails" coins! Nobody starts the game with any coins at all.

If by some remarkable bad luck your turn would end without rolling any blanks (from handing out too many ANDs or BUTs), you can STEAL a coin from the player "to your right" (whoever had their turn just before you). Fuck yeah house rule!

WHEN DOES IT END?

Whenever someone has 10 or total coins (of either type), the current round is then the last round. Whatever players are left in the round should try to bring the story to a halfway-sensible end! In the event that "last round" is triggered at the end of the last turn of a round, there's a special added round to give players the chance to add an ending. If we end up needing a special round, the rules change a little: turns proceed in order of coin wealth, most-to-least. Everyone skips dice rolling; everyone gets X free words, where X is the total number of coins they have, plus 1 for the free word (in the example case, they'll). Nobody gets awarded coins in the special round.

Officially nobody "wins" Happy Birthday, Robot! but we can pretend whoever finishes with the most coins is the winner if that's important to you.

LET'S DO THIS

Who's in? Somebody (not necessarily a player) needs to pick a starting sentence (and the free word therein). It can be something you swiped from somewhere or something totally original, and any length. It's probably advisable to make the free word a noun, but not strictly necessary.