Fabrication is a party game that will reveal just how cunning and deceptive your best friends can be.

You draw a card, which gives you five different lines, one of which you attempt to include, undetected, in your cleverly improvised story. As a team, you take turns during your sixty-second story time, passing "the buck" back and forth between you. Only one of you has to say the line. The other team tries to guess both what the line was, and who said it.

When we tried it during last Sunday's Game Tasting, my team went first. Jim, Marty and I were brilliant, totally confounding Ivory and the Other Jim. Then it was their turn. The Other Jim started, turning the Buck around in his hand, saying "I think it's upside down." And then went on to continue with the story. My team heard nothing else. So convinced were we that we had detected Jim's devious "Fabrication" with his cute little upside down ploy that none of us felt the need to listen to the rest of the story. When it came time for the revelation, we all, independently, without prior consultation or psychovisual signaling, in smugness aforethought, nailed the Other Jim and his O so subtle "upside down" message. And we were all wrong!

It's wonderful fun to be sneaky, especially when everyone knows that you're supposed to be sneaky. Trying to look nonplussed when you say the line, trying to fool others, like sweet, open, believing me, into thinking they have caught you. I mean, it's not like you're lying or anything. Our party game girl Ivory absolutely loved this one!

You might be reminded of the game called Whose Line, as played on the TV game show Whose Line is it Anyway?, but you'd be wrong. Fabrication is much more subtle, and far more fun.

Each Fabrication card has five lines, one of which is a "Zinger" - worth more points, and more difficult to include without detection. In addition to the Fabrication Cards is a deck of Story Starter Help cards. As advertised, these are very useful in starting a story, when story-starting help is what you need. We didn't use them, but were oddly comforted by knowing they were available to us. A sixty-second timer keeps the game fast and fun for both the Fabricators and those who are getting Fabricated upon.

Fabrication can be played by individuals (two players) or teams. Teams don't have to be even. Play with strangers. Play with people you think could not possibly deceive you. Shine delight on some of their darker virtues.