The Hen Commandments (2015)

Overview

The Hen Commandments is a chicken-based religion-building party game. Players are disciples of the Holy Chicken, who has been sent to earth to redeem humankind. Her commandments appear encoded on a series of eggs and it's your job as a devout disciple to not only work out the true meaning of the message, but to convince all the other disciples that your reading is the correct and only Truth.

The Laying: The Holy Chicken lays 6 eggs, on each is written a word that together forms a sentence

The Reading: All disciples have 1 minute to select the virtue card they think best covers the commandment

The Preaching: Disciples reveal their chosen virtue card and each disciple with a unique virtue gets a further minute to explain their reading of the commandment in detail, with regard to their virtue.

The Judgement: All the other disciples become judges for the round, and vote on which disciple gave the most compelling explanation of the commandment.

The Reward: The disciple who gets the most votes is rewarded with 2 pieces of corn. Or, if the vote is split, those disciples get 1 piece of corn each.

Canonisation: Play ten rounds, each time revealing a new commandment. The disciple who has collected the most corn is made into a Saint and rewarded with the record of all 10 commandments so they can go forth and start their own sect of Heninism.

It's a simple, creative, funny group game that scales well and plays out in about 45 minutes.

The cool thing is that while each disciple is competing to have their individual opinion heard and recorded, together, you collaboratively create what is essentially a new religion in the course of a game.