DSISCALE, operating under the DSI4EU brand, is funded by the European Commission Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content & Technology, Net Futures, Administration and Finance, under Grant No. 780473. The contents of this document and the game are those of DSISCALE and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.

Designed by Codrina Cretu, Matt Stokes and Tom Symons at Nesta and based on 'The Thing From the Future,' by Situation Lab, an award-winning imagination game that challenges players to collaboratively and competitively describe objects from a range of alternative futures. 'Cards for the future' is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike 2.0 license and is attributed to Situation Lab. The original version of the game can be found at: http://situationlab.org.

nesta.org.uk | digitalsocial.eu | @DSI4EU

Game instructions

The objective of the game is to imagine inspiring, positive ideas for objects and concepts from the future. These are inspired by a scenario, which is shaped collectively through 'prompt cards'.

The prompt cards outline the kind of future that the thing-to-be-imagined comes from, what it is, and what it is related to. Players then imagine and write about their idea inspired by the scenario. The individual ideas are then read aloud, and players vote for the idea they find the most inspiring. The creator of the winning idea receives a token, and the person with the most tokens at the end is the overall winner.

Number of players

4 to 6 players

What do you need?

There are three types of prompt cards in this game:

• Vision cards describe the type of future in which the scenario takes place.
• Object cards describe the main 'thing' that needs to be imagined.
• Topic cards describe the topic areas, context or theme for the idea.
• If a player has an object or topic wildcard, they must choose their own object or topic for that round.

Alongside this, the group needs:

• Pawns: one per person
• Counters: one for each round to be played
• Index cards: one for each person for each round to be played
• Central board
• Pens: one per person

Rules

1. Deal each player one pawn, one index card, and two cards from each of the three categories. Set the decks aside.
2. The three players to the left of the dealer must, in turn, place one card each from one of the categories into the corresponding place on the main board, facing upwards. Players may choose any card of a category different from those already in play. After playing a card, the player must draw a fresh card of the same category from the deck. At the end of this stage there should be one Vision card, one Object card and one Topic card on the main board.
3. Once the cards are in place, the facilitators start a 3-minute timer. On the index cards, each player must write a brief and positive idea inspired by the cards on the table and give their idea a title. Players are free to write whatever they want, and should be as inventive and creative as they like.
4. When the time is up, the dealer collects the index cards from the players, shuffles them, and reads them aloud without attribution before placing them in the middle of the table, so that the players can continue to refer to them.
5. Players must now decide which of the ideas they find most inspiring (not most realistic). They then vote at the same time by placing their pawn on the index card they have chosen. The player with the highest number of pawns on their index card wins and receives one token. If two or more players have the same number of pawns on their index card, they receive one token each.
6. The cards used must now be discarded.
7. Begin the next round by rotating the dealer role to the left.

Ending the game

Once players have exhausted the deck or time for the session is up, the game is over. The winner is the player with the most victory tokens at the end of the game.