LACMA Games

For the first play date of our second year as a club, we met at LACMA after a morning's adventure at the La Brea Tar Pits.

We played Who Took the Apple? The first two rounds were not successful, but with a little practice a strategy emerged and players began taking the apple.

Then we played Secret Spot, another game that was showcased at last year's SF Come Out and Play festival. Two teams are each assigned a zone; a team has 10 minutes to snap a photo and return to the start line. Teams text the photos to each other; now you have 10 minutes to perfectly re-create the photo the opposing team took. Here is the photo Willa's team took:

Actually this is the photo my team took, winning the game.

The photo we took was of a message someone had written in dust with a fingertip at the top of several flights of stairs. Our gambit was that the other team wouldn't find, or wouldn't care to climb to, the top of the stairs where the message was written. Then when we switched, we imagined first where they would probably have gone and found their tableau easily on the roof of the Page Museum at La Brea Tar Pits. As you do.

Then some friends of Greg's wandered by and joined us for a quick round of Pairs. Since the Play Folk was kind of an unofficial celebration of Greg's birthday (he is lifetime after all), this was especially welcome. We played Pairs, a new classic pub game from games mastermind James Ernest (@cheapassjames).

As we were playing, they were trying to clear the whole patio because the museum was closing for the anniversary of LACMA's 50th anniversary. Just as we were really getting their people-moving personnel really grumpy at us, Greg ended the game by pairing up on onions, which he had done so many times during the game that we all burst out laughing. It was one of those great party game moments. Of course: how could it end any other way? Greg is the king of onions. We should give him one with birthday candles stuck in it.

One final note on this game: a bit of Play Folk magic happened, like it used to in the old days when we would find traffic cones we needed to make Circle Rules Football goals. The woman we asked to take our group photo was with a fellow... whose shirt had a picture of an apple on it. An apple with a pot on its head, a near perfect representation of the game we had gathered to play. So we put him in the picture.

And that was it for Play Folk April. How was your April? Are you excited to play Full Contact Catan with us in May?