In the card game gin, the players try to "meld" their hands and assemble cards in related groups (see link).

The white cards idea (also linked) together with my discovery of the random image generators (more links!) gave me an idea for a game which has seemed better and better as time passed: Random Image Gin (RIG).

Some codester writes code to generate 9 pages, each with 6 random images on it. Homey don't code, or this would already be done. The pages are printed and each image becomes a card. This makes a 52 card deck, but because of the nature of RIG, much larger decks would be even more fun and probably work better.

Play gin using the RIG deck. The Calvinball aspect: related groups can be decided on the spot. Categories might include "folks on vacation", "powerpoint slide", "nature view", "blurry crap", etc. When all cards in your hand of 10 fall into some category of more than 2 cards, declare RIG. There might be some squabbling when inevitably someone says: "all of these cards are mostly white!" or some such lame category. But such is life.

I could not think of any way to play this directly on computers - which would be ideal because the RI generator would provide a very large deck. Plus no spotted owls would die. Unfortunately the players could see each others cards.
-- bungston, Dec 12 2003

Rules of Gin http://www.pbs.org/...sents/gingame/play/
[bungston, Oct 06 2004]

Random images http://diddly.com/random/
Many people's photgraphs in here. [bungston, Oct 06 2004]

Random images http://chimpen.com/randomimage/
Lots of pictures of things in here. [bungston, Oct 06 2004]

(?) Blank White Cards http://www.halfbake...ank_20white_20cards
Inspiration! [bungston, Oct 06 2004]

I have to admit that I was not too hot on this idea until paragraph number four, when, quite to my surprise, there was a reference to Calvinball!

Bun for that and for reminding me of how my college buddies and I would often sit down with a deck of cards and a case of beer and attempt to make up new drinking games on the spot... Often with painfully confusing results
-- luecke, Dec 12 2003


oops, wrong idea, sorry!
-- po, Dec 12 2003


You can't drink your gin and play it too.
-- FarmerJohn, Dec 12 2003


It occurred to me today that a slight tweak of the Google Image searcher could be used to form a Tarot-like arrangement, from which fortunes could be divined. Some permutation of the initial question could be used as the search string - for example, the middle 4 characters + a random digit. The images would be displayed not in rows, but in the tarot cross. Professional augurs would help provide rules to interpret these patterns.
-- bungston, Apr 17 2006


I have never lost my fondness for this idea. Only sympathy for the spotted owl has prevented me from printing up an oodle of cards to play. New since 2003 - iPADS!

This game could easily be played with a series of ipads. They would not even need to be linked. You could just all sit together, mumbling and drinking. The cards would be shown on your pad. You could discard and get one new. The new cards would be random google images. On achieving GIN you would show your ipad to competitors. Maybe there could be an option for labelling your successful hand and uploading it to game central where one could visit and view RIG allstars.
-- bungston, May 17 2013



random, halfbakery