Morra is a finger game of the Rock/Scissors/Paper ilk, but different enough, and deep enough, to make it well-worth exploring in depth. My in depth explorations have included playing it with three to 8 players, playing it as a kind of "Mother May I" where players stand opposite each other, at shouting distance, the winners taking as many steps towards the center as the number guessed (the object being to meet the other player more than half-way), and playing it with eyes closed.
Found in the online edition of the 1911 Encyclopedia (yes, an encylopedia publisned in 1911), we learn that:
MORA, or MORRA (Ital. delay), a game, universally popular in Italy, in which one player endeavours to guess instantly the number of fingers held up by the other. Ancient Egyptian sculptors represent a game of this kind, and it was played by the Romans, who called it micare digitis, or finger-flashing. It, is known to the Chinese and to certain tribes of the Pacific Islands. There are several methods of playing mora, but in the one most common in Italy the two players, placed face to face, throw out at the same instant one or more fingers of one hand, each crying out simultaneously a number guessed to be that of his adversary's exposed fingers. A correct guess counts one; if both guess correctly or wrongly there is no score. The game, which is generally five or nine points, is played for stakes, and with extraordinary swiftness.
I strongly recommend the "extraordinary swiftness" part.
Here's an article by Dada Maheshvarananda, again providing both rationale and a good description of a few of those good old New Games. It's amazing to me to discover how New Games, after 25 years, keeps on being new. And all this time I thought we needed even newer ones.
Maheshvarananda writes:
The dominant message in the mass media, advertising and the educational system is individualistic and competitive: “First get an education, then get a job and make as much money as you can.” These institutions rarely convey a message of responsibility towards others in our human family. This materialistic attitude extends to sports, too, where the goal usually is “I win, you lose,” or perhaps, “I win, and it doesn't matter to me what happens to you.”
We need a new cooperative paradigm in our lives that promotes kindness, honesty, trust and teamwork. We need to overcome our fears—of failure, of looking bad, of getting hurt. And in the process, we need to lighten up, have fun, and realize that the best things in life are not for sale.
Adam Fletcher's article "Why play games when there's work to do?" offers us some far-too-often needed words of rationale, and a good collection of links, for those times when we try to bring a little innocent fun into our world. He writes:
When a group of people are preparing to participate in social change, there needs to be some breaking down of inhibitions before they become group participants. "There is no 'I' in T-E-A-M" and all that. Before a group can build effective solutions to the problems facing their communities, they need to trust each other and communicate.
Cooperative games also help set the tone of an action. Social change work is often hard-driven and energy-consuming. Many groups find that cooperative games offer a brisk, friendly way to couple passionate task-oriented goals with driven, group-minded teambuilding. In other words, fun and games help propel social change.
Another purpose of games is to get people to think together, as a team, so that everyone in the group has input and shares ideas. When we have input we have ownership, and when more people have ownership there is more success.
The website is devoted to what's called the Freechild Projects - "Resources for Social Change By and With Young People"
Check out the many links, and scroll down to the bottom of the article for more playworthy inspiration.
Thanksgiving is one of those food-centered, family-centered holidays. As such, it's a great opportunity to give each other the gift of fun. For a collection of silly games of the eating ilk, take a gander (or other edible bird) at this collection from Charles Rempel of the very bizarre Van Gogh-Goghs.
For similarly silly, but perhaps gentler edible fun, here's my collection of a few eating games that might prove inspiring, or at least playful enough to bring people together in some genuinely delicious ways.
I strongly believe that the healthiest play environment is one that invites everyone into play. Everyone. Regardless of age, ability, or any other distinction society might impose on us. The mission of Shane's Inspiration is to support the development of essentially needed, universally accessible “Boundless Playgrounds,” providing children with disabilities an opportunity to play side-by-side with their able-bodied peers and siblings.
I quote, at further length, from their history page: Catherine Curry-Williams and Scott Williams founded Shane’s Inspiration in April 1998 in memory of their son Shane, who passed away two weeks after birth. Had Shane lived he would have spent his life in a wheelchair. When the Williams’ discovered that he would have had no public park in which to play, they made it their mission to build Shane’s Inspiration: A Boundless Playground, where children with disabilities can play side by side with their able-bodied peers at the highest level of their ability. The goal is to enhance the emotional, physical and social development of all children, while providing an environment where compassion and acceptance can flourish. With the belief that playing in a playground is the birthright of every child, the Williams’ and co-founder, Tiffany Harris, rallied friends, family and community to help raise money to build the first Boundless Playground in the state of California.
I firmly believe that we won't really have access to "real" playgrounds, until we learn to make all of our playgrounds "boundless." Shane's Inspiration creates conceptual and equipment-specific play environment designs after identifying project priorities with stakeholders in each community. The organization also coordinates with local landscape architects, engineers and other professionals who provide local project services for a fee or on a pro-bono basis. My most heartfelt wish is that organizations like Shane's Inspiration inspire a r/evolution in the design of all playspaces.
Which gives me a welcome opportunity to once again mention David Werner's remarkable online guide to building playgrounds for the rest of us. Nothing About Us Without Us is a resource that is also profoundly inspiring, demonstrating how such playgrounds can be built anywhere, and how building them builds a more complete community.
I've been fascinated by Mancala ever since I first encountered it in R.C. Bell's book Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. It's simply so unlike any board game I had ever played. Mancala, which, according to the ELLIOT AVEDON MUSEUM AND ARCHIVE OF GAMES, is a name for its own class of "Count and Capture Games" is played today primarily in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Caribbean area. It's origins are rooted in ancient Egypt, and according to Murray can be traced to the Empire Age (about the 15th to 11th centuries BC). The game spread from Egypt to many parts of Africa and then to the Middle East. As Muslim culture spread in the early AD centuries, it carried the game with it to India, Ceylon, Malaya, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It was carried from many Black African cultures during the period of the slave trade to the Caribbean area. Until recent times, the game was unknown in the non-Islamic parts of Europe and The Americas.
I always thought of it as a kind of seed-sowing game. I imagined its origins developed on some fallow field, the pits scooped out of the earth. But whatever its origins, its strategic complexities and variations have fascinated people around the world, and its power as an exercise in logic and, well, counting, has brought it to elementary school math classes around the world. Basically, you each have the same number of stones (seeds, marbles) that you've placed in your pits. A turn consists of lifting all the stones in one of your pits and sowing them, one at a time, into adjacent pits. Everything depends on where your last stone ends up. In some games, if it ends in a pit that has stones in it, you pick up all those stones and continue sewing until you end in an empty pit. In others, if you end in a pit that has exactly three or four, you win all those stones. In yet others, you take the stones from the opposite pit.
Hans Bodlaender has developed a page of links to versions that you can play online. It's a great way to learn about a game that much of the world plays, and yet is remarkably, and enticingly foreign for the rest of us.
One of the things people love most about kickball is the way it takes them back to the time of their youth. It's hard to talk about kickball without recanting the story of that sunny day, long past, on a playground far, far away where you stood fast in the face of the big kid. Far out in left field you stood, waiting for that big red ball, falling from the sky like a meteor. At the last minute you winced and your eyes closed. A moment later it was over, ball caught, victory declared. Are long lost memories of fifth grade filling your head too? Sure you certainly can't re-live your youth, but who says the fun has to stop once you grow up? Work is underway to bring adult kickball to all corners of the globe.
In my own research on social play behavior in animals, I’ve been concerned with the notion of behaving fairly. I’ve observed that, during play, while individuals are having fun in a relatively safe environment, they learn the ground rules for acceptable behavior and social etiquette—how hard they can bite, how roughly they can interact—and how to resolve conflicts. There is a premium on playing fairly and trusting others to do so as well. Codes of social conduct regulate what is permissible, and the existence of these codes speaks to the evolution of social morality and fairness. Individuals might even generalize codes of conduct learned in play to other situations such as sharing food, grooming, or providing care.
During play it is difficult to cheat: Individuals can simply refuse to play with cheaters and choose to play with others. Play doesn’t happen if individuals choose not to engage in the activity. The sort of cooperation and egalitarianism implied by such choices are thought to be preconditions for the evolution of social morality in humans.
Like kids' games, most abstract board games are a kind of symbolic theater, where real-life drama can get pondered upon, over and over again. In some games, the imagery is more vivid. Hnefatafl is not only fun to say and inject into casual conversation, it is also a fascinating game that mirrors an often too fascinating reality.
The game of Tablut was discovered by Carl von Linné at Kvikkjokk, Sweden, in 1732. It is almost certainly the Old Norse board-game known as "Hnefatafl", mentioned in the Icelandic sagas. The word hnefatafl is a compound of hnefi (meaning fist) and tafl (ultimately from tabula and meaning board)....The game concerns the fate of a Viking king (here seen in the centre) who is attacked in his stronghold. Assisted by his men he tries to reach the safety of one of the corner squares. The task of the attackers is to seize the king before he succeeds.
This site not only describes the history and rules of the game, but also features a ready-to-play Java version.
Did you know that the stock trading game PIT was originally called Gavitt's Stock Exchange invented in Topeka, Kansas in 1903? Did you know that the original game was at least as fun as PIT and even simpler to play? Well, neither did I. But apparently someone did. Someone in halfway around the world. In Australia, no less, who saw in the game such high play value that he decided to reproduce it as faithfully as possible - well, more faithfully than possible, given that the cards are laminated thoroughly enough to take the kind of punishment that is the inevitable destiny of such a highly interactive, exciting, fast-action game.
This is the game where you try to trade cards (stocks) with other players - either one or two cards at a time - in the effort to corner the market and get all eight cards of one stock. Everybody trades simultaneously, and with enough people it really feels like your playing in the pit of a stock exchange. Though Gavitt's Stock Exchange can be played by two to six players, it's definitely a case of the more the merrier. We tried it with two, and it was kind of fun. And then with three, and it was more the kind of fun you'd call fun. But with with six it borders on pants-wetting fun. Especially if you more or less tacitly allow cheating.
There's something about playing with turn-of-the-century-looking cards that makes the game as charming to look at as it is fun to play. Fun enough to get a MajorFUN Award. The rules are a little difficult to read because of the authentically small print. They are quaint, but unnecessarily complicated. Read enough to get started, and then get started. After a while, you can read more of the rules, for fun and authenticity.
I received this from Janet, one of the participants in the Restoring Fun seminar I gave at Esalen a couple weeks ago. I was touched, strengthened in my resolve to continue this work, and found myself compelled to wave it in your virtual face.
Fun has definitely been restored! It has been a little over a week since I have returned from Esalen and I have found that fun, just as we suspected in class, is contagious, infectious and unlike a virus a spontaneous utterance of the joyful heart. When I finally returned to work last Tues, my boss said that I looked radiant, like a school girl were his words. On Wed he said that it was good to have me back, where upon I assured him that even though I would be showing up to work on time and doing my job, my head and my heart were still at Esalen. On Thursday he said that my laughter and fun were infectious and that everyone around me was happy. On Friday when I left work he said whatever Esalen was, I could have time off to go there as often as I wanted, because he was so happy to have the old Janet with her smiles and laughter back. (In all honesty my life for the last year had been very tough and I cried more than I laughed.) I assured him that Esalen was here pointing to my heart, but that I would take him up on the offer and assured him that the Janet he remembered was back to stay.
Thanksgiving is one of those food-centered, family-centered holidays. As such, it's a great opportunity to give each other the gift of fun. For a collection of silly games of the eating ilk, take a gander (or other edible bird) at 
