Learning The Consequences Added: 09/19/2007

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If you have ever played the game mad libs before then chances are that you may be familiar with the Consequences game. The Consequences game is referred to as a parlor game which means that it was created and thrived in a setting of smaller gatherings and parties. Parlor games were games created in the Victorian era in the United States and also in Britain and they were games that were traditionally created by, and enjoyed by, the more literate upper class and upper middle class during one of their formal dinner parties. During the Victorian era it was widely accepted that people of means had a lot of free time to kill so the way they would occupy their time is to hold these small parties and gatherings and create parlor games to play. Aside from the Consequences games there were games like charades and blind man’s bluff. Many of the parlor games were eventually turned into board games in modern times like the game Clue for example was born from a series of parlor games. Parlor tricks were also created during this period and parlor tricks are just a series of simple slight of hand magic tricks created for the same purpose as the parlor games.

The Consequences game has a structure to it that told a short story and each player added their own idea to the story based on the structure and the resulting story was read out loud. There really was no point system in the Consequences game and there was no winner. The game was devised as a way for upper class people to occupy their time so the concept of a winner or loser was not necessary. The structure of the Consequences game went like this: a man’s name, a woman’s name, a place, some sort of short phrase or comment, another comment totally different than the first one, and then you would end it with some sort of result or outcome. Sometimes they would add an extra step and have a general response to the outcome. The way it would be played is either a piece of paper would be passed around and after one person got done adding their part to the story they would fold the paper so that the next person could not see what was written and then the next person would add their part of the story. The other way to play would to be to choose the people that would add their part of the story on their own piece of paper and then all would submit their papers to a central game host and the host would read the Consequence of the parts.

A sample round would be if the following words were given in response to the required parts: Richard, Denise, England, fly a kite, shut the door, the cows come home. So the Consequence would read Richard told Denise they would meet in England and that she can fly a kite while he shut the door and the result is the cows come home. That is basically how the Consequence game is played and this is how they would spend their time in the Victorian era. As you can see the game mad libs is directly derived from the Consequences game and the mad libs game had enjoyed a period of high popularity in the 1990’s but has since lost its place in the game playing world. You can still find versions of the Consequences game, and even mad libs, on the internet which kind of defeat the purpose of playing the game but it still gives you a chance to see how it is played.

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