ISOSAD: Underwater Gaming HowTo

ISOSAD: Underwater Gaming HowTo

In order to help interested Dork Divers expand their funation by becoming ISOSAD members, it seemed a good idea to document some of the games we've been playing. I'll fill in a few of the games we've developed or played, and I'll include a template in this post for anyone who wants to add newly-developed concepts to the list.

To use the template, use the quote button to reply to and quote this post, then delete everything from the top to the "start of template" line and everything from the "end of template" line to the bottom. Then just replace the CAPITALIZED_PARTS with whatever should go there. You'll end up with an entry with the same formatting as the others, which should make for a nice reference thread.

-----------START-OF-TEMPLATE-----------

Name: NAME_OF_THE_GAME

Description:

BASIC_DESCRIPTION_OF_WHAT_THE_GAME_IS

Requirements:

• FIRST_REQUIREMENT
• NEXT_REQUIREMENT
• EACH_STARTS_WITH_THE_STAR_THING
• USE_AS_MANY_AS_YOU_NEED
  

Preparations:

SURFACE_PREPARATIONS_BEFORE_YOU_CAN_PLAY

Gameplay:

HOW_TO_ACTUALLY_PLAY_THE_GAME

Comments:

GENERAL_COMMENTS

------------END-OF-TEMPLATE------------

Name: ScubUNO

Description:

ScubUNO was the game from which ISOSAD was born. Chances are, you are familiar with UNO on the surface. It is quite similar underwater, with only a few sticking points.

Requirements:

• UNO H20 plastic cards (available at Target and online at KB Toys
• Card management apparatus (see below)
  

Preparations:

Color can be difficult to discern at depth. For a normal, shallow game, this may not be an issue. In order to avoid any potential issues, some divers mark the color on the face of each card (the inital, RGYB, is enough). Having a way to manage the cards, on the other hand, is something best not left to luck.

Two primary methods of card management have been used. The first is to punch holes in the two non-labelled corners of each card. Snap rings (i.e. binder clips, i.e. those ring things you use to hold index cards together) are then used to hold the piles -- large rings for draw and discard piles, and smaller rings for each player's hand. This method works well even with significant water movement, but it is somewhat cumbersome.

The other method of card management is a "draw/discard box". You simply set the draw pile in a small open-ended plastic box. You draw from the top of the deck, and you discard to the bottom (with a divider of some sort between the two halves). With little water movement, the box contains the cards quite handily, and it can be passed from player to player. Drawing and discarding in the box method are easier, which precludes the need for each player to have a ring to hold their cards while they draw or discard. No holes are needed for this method, but it is somewhat less secure and therefore could make card loss more likely in some conditions.

Gameplay:

Dealing and playing work just as they do surface-side. (Shuffling is rather more difficult underwater, which can be a good reason to carry several pre-shuffled decks down with you.) The only two adjustments are to communication:

• Instead of shouting, "UNO!", you signal uno by holding up your index finger and thrusting your hand forward to arm's length. (Basically, like a big, megalomaniac cheer of "I'M NUMBER ***ONE***!!!")
• To choose the color when playing a wild, point to the color on the card. If you have big gloves, point to the color and slide your finger toward that color's closest corner. (If you're going to be playing in poor light, you'd have written the initials of the colors on the face of the wilds, right? )

The main idea is that with the signals, you want to be exaggerated -- practically *flamboyant* -- as everyone will understand them better that way... and it's really fun to be so over the top.

One side note is that UNO H2O cards have two special cards substituting for a pair of Draw Four Wilds. You can either play them by the rules in the package, or you can relabel them as the wilds they would have been surface-side. Either way, you should probably note them to any new players... or carry a slate to answer their "What in the world does this one mean?!?" look.

Comments:

ScubUNO works out quite well for groups of two to four. If you have a larger group, the game will likely last longer, but if you're shallow enough and warm enough, that can be fine. Having more than one pre-shuffled deck is very useful, especially with a larger group, as when you exhaust the draw pile, you can just slide the next deck into play. You'll obviously have a goodie bag to hold all the used and unused decks.

Well, that about sums it up for the fun game of ScubUNO.

Name: QuickWar

Description:

QuickWar is a special variant of the card game War which is well-suited for underwater play due to its much shorter play than plain old War.

Requirements:

• Standard plastic playing cards (available at Target and elsewhere)
• Discard container (small goodie bag, box, or whatever)
  

Preparations:

No significant surface preparations are required, other than pre-shuffling the deck for convenience.

Gameplay:

To begin, the deck is fully dealt to the players. (If you are concerned about a non-equal deal, given your number of players, just cut the deck and have the high-card deal or whatever, but it doesn't really matter.) Once the cards are all dealt, play proceeds in turns. For each turn, every player flips over the top card from their deck. Now, for the main difference between QuickWar and regular war: The player with the highest card returns their card to the bottom of their deck, but all other players' cards are *discarded* into the discard container -- they are not *won* by the player with the highest card, they are merely *lost* to the discard pile. (You can play with jokers, if you wish. Just call them zeroes... or extra aces... or whatever, but do it ahead of time. )

As in regular War, if there is a tie for the highest card turned, there is a "war" between those players. (If there is a tie that is not the highest card, the tied players merely discard without a war.) Instead of turning three face down and then a fourth face up, the players simply flip their next four cards (since there's nowhere to make those nice long piles). The high card showing then wins and the losing player discards all the cards in contention (or if there is still a tie for high card, the war continues with another four cards).

If any player in the war has fewer than four cards, his last available card is his played card, and that card remains his played card until the turn is over. (The other player(s) still play all four cards, if they have them. It's *Quick*War, after all.) If two or more players have both played their last card (either by virtue of having only one card remaining or by virtue of a war, it doesn't matter), and they are tied for high card showing, the tied players lose the turn and must discard.

Once a player has discarded his last card(s), that player is out. If all players but one are out, the last player with cards remaining wins the game. If *all* players are out (because the last turn ended with a no-cards-left tie), the game is a draw and nobody wins.

Comments:

So, QuickWar is basically like regular war, with the losing cards being discarded. Unlike normal War, where the cards keep getting recycled, you don't need a rebreather to play. (In fact, it goes rather quickly, hence the name.) There are rounds with no winner (where the game ended in a tie-and-discard), but there is usually a winner (or at least often enough to make it fun). The gameplay instructions here are a lot longer than it took to work out the game, but only because they had to be thorough to cover everything in detail.

With very little preparation, simple play, and fairly short game length, QuickWar is a nice game to have in your ISOSAD bag.

Name: Yahtzee!

Description:

Just about everyone's played Yahtzee surface-side at one point or another, but it's actually quite easy to play underwater as well.

Requirements:

• Five dice of different colors
• Clear-sided shaking case (Pelican 1010, OtterBox 1000, or similar, rated for depth)
• Writing equipment (50-sheet DuraRite pads are only $4-5 each, or use slates)
  

Preparations:

You must first procure five dice of different colors -- since you can't actually hold some dice and only roll the others, you roll them all and only use certain colors (see gameplay). The dice go in the sealed case (as you can only roll dice in air -- they just don't work in the viscosity of water).

On your writing surface (a pad is much better than a slate, especially if you want to play more than one game), make a Yahtzee scoring grid. (You may have to look at a scoring pad, or you can figure it out from the rules.) Alternately, you can print a pre-made letter-sized scoring sheet, laminate it, and use grease/marking pencils. (If you don't want to print and laminate it yourself, just PM me.)

Gameplay:

Play works just as it does in surface-side Yahtzee, so we won't cover scoring here, only procedures.

For the first roll of a player's turn, he simply shakes the dice box. He then chooses which dice he's going to keep and jots down their values (or, if you trust your memories, you just remember them). This is where the colors come in.

Let's say you have red, white, blue, black, and grey dice. If he has kept the values from three dice, when he shakes the dice box, he will only use the first two dice -- red and white. It doesn't matter what color were the dice that he kept; only the number of dice matter. This makes playing much easier than it would be if you tried to remember which die had which value. To roll one die, you'd always use the red die only. To roll four, you'd always use the red, white, blue, and black dice.

So, after each roll, the player states which dice he is keeping (or still keeping) and then shakes the dice box. The only difference, then, between surface-side Yahtzee and underwater Yahtzee is how you keep or roll the dice.

Comments:

You have to think just a bit harder than in surface-side Yahtzee, as you have to keep track of which dice values you're keeping, but it shortly becomes perfectly natural. The hardest part is still adding up your scores at the end. Just be sure that whatever dice box you're using is capable of the depth at which you're going to be playing (for example, the Pelican i1010 basically cannot handle any depth, while the plain 1010 is rated for all the way to 50' or so -- the OtterBox 1000 is rated for 100').

If you like Yahtzee surface-side, it can work just as well underwater... and it's fun to shake the box, too.

Name: Go Fish!

Description:

What better underwater card game than Go Fish, eh? There are only a few details to work out to make it quite easily playable.

Requirements:

• Standard plastic playing cards
• Card management device (bag, box, rings, anything)
  

Preparations:

The main preparations for Go Fish come with the fishing pile. If you use a draw box (see ScubUNO), the only preparation is to shuffle. If you want a messy pile-o'-cards (to be more true to the spirit of the surface-side game), you can toss a deck into an opaque goodie bag, which may mean you don't even need to shuffle.

On the other hand, if you're playing in moving water, you may end up wanting to go all-out with a snap ring system (see ScubUNO again). If you go that way, you'll need to punch holes in the two non-numbered corners of each card, and you'll need the rings.

Gameplay:

Everyone should know how to play Go Fish surface-side, so the only question about playing it underwater is how to ask the questions. For one (ace) through ten, simple digit signalling works perfectly. We like to use one-handed numbers (pdf), as it's good practice (for ten, you use five sideways, as you probably figured out), That still leaves jack, queen, and king.

Actually, those are quite simple, too. We just call them face cards one through three. For jack, point to your face and then signal "one". For queen, point to your face and signal "two". For king, yep, point to your face and signal "three".

So, it's your turn, and you want to ask someone "Do you have any sevens?" You simply point to them and signal "seven". They then either hand you a seven or say "Go Fish!" (which they do by pointing toward the fishing pile... or maybe at a nearby fish, assuming there are some nearby). Play then continues just as in surface-side Go Fish.

Comments:

Go Fish is a fun, simple game, but it also happens to be a great way to practice your one-handed numbers without it being homework. While "educational games" are often quite far removed from fun, the fact that Go Fish just happens to be a good training program in no way makes it less fun.

Perhaps Go Fish should be included in OW classes?

Incidentally, I found my ISOSAD HowTo file. Unfortunately, I had typed in a few games directly on the thread, so I'll have to remember them and rewrite their entries, but at least I had a backup of ScubUNO, QuickWar, Yahtzee, and Go Fish.

The new [thread=194534]ISOSAD: Underwater Gaming HowTo[/thread] is up now.

I saw some little travel games that consisted of a metal board and magnetic pieces. There was the typical checkers, tic tac toe, chess, and a few others.

One of these days, I'll actually purchase one and try it out underwater.

I'd think the magnets would help keep everything together, but I could still see loosing pieces being an issue.

Name: Connect Four

Description:

Just like normal Connect Four, but a bit less buoyant.

Requirements:

• Connect Four
• Coins or washers
• Hot glue
  

Preparations:

Thankfully, Connect Four is pretty much just a bunch of plastic, so it's already waterproof. The only problem is that the pieces don't tend to sink as well as they ought, but that is easily remedied. Simply take your stack of "checkers" and, using a hot glue gun, glue a coin to each -- a penny will do nicely, but you can use a different denomination for each color, if you want to get fancy. Stainless steel washers would also work, if you want to go that route.

Gameplay:

Connect Four works the same underwater as it does on the surface. The only note is to be careful when resetting the game, as it can be even more fun chasing checkers underwater as it is at the kitchen table.

Comments:

With a few cents in coins and glue, Connect Four makes for a perfectly enjoyable underwater game, perfect for taking up those slack spaces between card games.

Just wanted to bring this little gem back to the top- we keep talking about ScubaUNO but some folks don't know what we're talking about. Dorky.

Lol...of course it's dorky...that's because we're dorks! Or nerds, at least.

Ecky and I just passed our AOW...sooner or later, we'll have to have some Scubuno games to celebrate...