I heard a DJ ask her listeners this question last night and I thought it might be interesting to ask it here.

What are some games you used to make up as kids (whether it was you or someone else)? Less along the lines of early programming projects (unless maybe it's a really good story to tell) and more along the lines of weird or stupid things kids come up with. Or at least something you figure was pretty unique.

The one that came to my mind was one we played I think around grade 2 that we simply called War. (I hope I haven't rambled on about this one before).

The idea was that you would draw a circle representing the world, divide it up equally amongst the players, name each section after a country, and take turns declaring war on each other. With everybody standing outside the circle, the kid whose turn it was to attack would say, "I declare war on..." [whatever country he'd choose to attack], and he'd would drop a stick on that section of the circle and take off running as fast as he could. I think if the stick didn't land in the country being attacked, the turn would end. But assuming the stick landed in the right section, the defender would pick up the stick and as soon as he had it, yell "stop," at which point the attacker had to freeze where he was. The defender would then throw it at the attacker and if he got hit then his attack failed. But if the defender missed the attacker got to redraw his borders taking a portion of the defender's land.

If we had any sense we probably should've used a ball of some sort instead.

I used to modify the games we were already playing -- one I did was basically checkers, but instead of jumping over opponents to take their pieces, you entered the same square and then you drew from a deck of cards divided between the players, whoever drew the high card wins or retains the space, the loser loses their piece, and ties are resolved by drawing again. I think also that we decided that a #2 card beat an Ace (assuming aces high) so that there wasn't a "strong card". Frankly, we could have just flipped a coin to resolve combat, but I think we also played some games with jokers that always won. It was fun for me as a kid, but probably not very compelling in terms of its gamesmanship.

Another rule modification I made was to a game called "Pin Battle Ball" which itself was a form of dodge-ball where players are benched when hit with the ball, and one player is unbenched when a teammate catches a ball; there are also two bowling pins at opposite ends of the court, and the goal is to knock over the opposing team's pins while defending your own. Knocking over one of the other team's pins also unbenches your whole team. Apparently, the addition of the bowling pin mechanic to dodgeball is not common outside of Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and maybe Iowa, so my game was a mod of an already-unique mod.

The modifications I made to the basic game was to move the boundaries from half-court (played on a basketball court) to the tip of the three-point line, so that there was about 1/3rd the length of the court in the middle where players from both teams could be, and they could simply tag you with a ball to bench you -- or they could maneuver behind you and throw you out from behind if you weren't careful. The second modification was that knocking over the other team's pin not only unbenched your team's players, but you got to stand one of your own pins back up if one had been knocked over--so to win one team had to knock over both enemy pins consecutively.

This game actually became wildly popular at the after-school program I was in at the time, and it completely replaced traditional Pin Battle Ball on gym-days. In fact, I had cause to pass through the gym late one day many years later, and the after-school kids were still playing my game, and they even played it sometimes in their regular gym classes during normal school hours. I think what made it popular was that the games lasted a lot longer than regular Pin Battle Ball, it kept more people on the field due to the benching rules, and also one team was always winning or loosing after the fist pin was toppled because there was no tie state -- but, the balance of power could shift back and forth easily, and multiple times.

Hmm. I remember playing all kind of pretend scenarios - like, we were witches brewing a potion (from flowers and stuff found in the yard, we didn't drink it, it was the ritual of the brewing that was important) to turn ourselves into falcons (which meant 'fly' around the yard by running with our arms out). Colonizing mars was another fun one - the playground equipment was the spaceship, and we had to load it up with provisions for frontier life, then blast off, dodge some asteroids, and explore while being cautious of alien monsters. And we also had elections, trade missions, wars and treaty negotiations, many of them acted out with plastic horses accessories with blocks, lincoln logs, and legos. I'm not sure I'd consider those 'games', since there was no score or victory/loss conditions.

We did have some rule modifications to monopoly (in 3 or more player games 'contracts' allowed two players to share a monopoly if one has one deed and the other had two). And I vaguely remember stealing the paper money out of one game to use it with some other game that didn't normally have money, but we wanted to turn it into a shopping activity.

I remember making so many battle card games that I surprisingly got friends to play.One was like a simplified version of the Pokemon one.Youd make a monster with a movelist, usually if the attacks were strong you had to make the HP of the monster low and vice versa.Each move had a set amount of times they could be used...I think if the monster ran out of moves they'd die.
The power of the attacks ranged from 10 to 100.Somewhere down the line the Hp and Attack power got really ridiculous like...in the thousands ridiculous lol

The one that came to my mind was one we played I think around grade 2 that we simply called War. (I hope I haven't rambled on about this one before).

The idea was that you would draw a circle representing the world, divide it up equally amongst the players, name each section after a country, and take turns declaring war on each other. With everybody standing outside the circle, the kid whose turn it was to attack would say, "I declare war on..." [whatever country he'd choose to attack], and he'd would drop a stick on that section of the circle and take off running as fast as he could. I think if the stick didn't land in the country being attacked, the turn would end. But assuming the stick landed in the right section, the defender would pick up the stick and as soon as he had it, yell "stop," at which point the attacker had to freeze where he was. The defender would then throw it at the attacker and if he got hit then his attack failed. But if the defender missed the attacker got to redraw his borders taking a portion of the defender's land.

If we had any sense we probably should've used a ball of some sort instead.

It's funny that you should mention that game. Here in Denmark we've played that game for at least 30 years. The parents of my generation claim to have played it with knives on grass.
Today we use a tennis ball. It's called "Jeg melder krig mod"(I declare war on):

http://gamlelege.mediajungle.dk/2011/06/02/land-jeg-melder-krig-mod/

We always played monopoly where you can take out loans and have debt to other players.

Pretty much...it never ends.

I remember as a kid I would have the absolutely most wildest imagination.

I was big time into sports and I am sure like most kids at some point wanted to be a professional at some sport. I used to imagine myself playing in a big game. Would go and play in that big game and act it all out. Except I would take it one step further. I FULLY 100% acted it all out. I would play every single position, the officials, and the announcers. My parents one time thought it'd be funny to show me what it looked like so they video taped me one time without me knowing it. They loved to show it to people and they all laughed and thought it was "cute."

It was a lot more than what most kids do. It got so much that I would almost seriously believe I was actually playing. I would even "lose" sometimes when playing all alone. I would even tell my friends "yea I lost the other day." I even owned every piece of football equipment and on "game day" would put it on yet I had never even played or been on a real football team.

My best friend and I had a game we would play during study hall or detention at school. We would take a sheet of paper and split it in two, then draw some terrain and place fortifications, troop placements, etc. Then we would take turns making "shots". Shots were done by standing a pencil on its tip near a unit with one finger, bearing down and toppling it so that the tip would draw a mark as it fell. Using a ruler (and with much arguing if the stroke was curved) we would determine the direction of the shot. We had a number of rules for handling things: if it was an artillery unit, the length of the stroke would be used to calculate a ballistic trajectory, and the shooter would do another mark at the point of impact to determine effective radius of the blast. It came down to learning how to control not just the direction of the mark but also its length.

At home, we played a similar sort of warfare on a larger scale by setting up plastic army men on a white bedsheet that was drawn with terrain using markers, then using rubber-bands shot from our fingertips instead of pencil marks, shooting from as near the unit as possible and trying to knock down enemy units. We used small rubber bands (the kind they use for orthodontal braces) for individual soldiers' shots, newspaper rubber bands for small artillery and tanks, and those big, fat rubber bands that could take out whole platoons for rockets, large artillery and bombs.

It was a lot of fun. Sometimes my brother and/or his brother would join in for a 3- or 4-way firefight that left thousands dead and the earth scorched. Good times.

Shots were done by standing a pencil on its tip near a unit with one finger, bearing down and toppling it so that the tip would draw a mark as it fell.

Yeah, I remember playing all kinds of different games that used that mechanic; i think we played a racing game in which you took turns moving forward via the pencil shot mechanic and had to stay in bounds of a track drawn first. Lots of study hall games like this. Also paper (American) football; the soccer/hockey game with 3 coins; the basketball game played with one coin. I remember a game that I think we invented in which a non-player referee would spin a coin, I think a quarter, at the center of the table and then two players would attempt to knock it down by spinning nickels such that they collide with the quarter. Each player can only shoot one nickel and the player who hits the quarter last while the quarter is still in motion, even wobbling around flat after it fell over, gets a point. In other words, you get a point for being the player who stopped the quarter from moving. There was actually some strategy involved...

I got lego people, and pretended It was an RPG, with my two siblings.

Every few times you hit another 'NPC' you got gold, and can buy stuff from other people, armor, weapons...

It was fun, yet it made no point what so ever, guess we were kids..