Game Design Friday

You Have to Lock the Entry!

With more than 2,390,992 articles in English (and counting), a certain wiki has become the largest encyclopedia in the world, though not without its fair share of controversy [citation required]. With anyone capable of editing its entries, authors with disparate senses of objectivity may engage in "edit wars," where an article's content enters a state of flux. In certain cases, the admins of the site have even stepped in and locked these entries, preventing further edits.

As one particularly vehement wiki editor, your task is to reign over others with your objective opinion, getting your voice into as many entries as possible. Beware other users, however, who will delete your edits and replace them with their own. Too many changes to an article and it becomes eligible for lockdown, but as long as your content dominates when lockdown goes into effect, you don't really care.

Players:

Three to five

Materials:

One deck of playing cards per player, each with unique backs.

Setting Up:

Each player should have his/her own deck of cards, and should shuffle the deck after removing any Jokers.

Once the decks are shuffled, each player should begin by drawing five cards and putting them in his/her hand. Once all players have done so, they should count down to signal the start of play.

How to Play:

The object of You Have to Lock the Entry! is to have the most contributions in as many locked entries as possible by the end of the game. This will mean creating new entries, adding content to existing entries, and deleting other user's contributions.

There is no turn structure. Once the game begins, players play cards as quickly as possible. Players should always try and have a maximum of five cards in their hands, drawing a new card from their decks for every card played. The game ends once all players are out of cards.