Today at after-camp daycare, we played Life and Death and God.
Basically, it’s the Game of Life but with some alterations created by the six 8-10 year old boys that were there. I was designated writer of The List Of Stuff, aka the list in which anything we currently “possessed” (ie houses, children, pets, spouses, Gifts From God) was listed under our name so we could keep track.
God was played by the one boy who didn’t want to actually play. When I asked him how God was going to fit into the game, he said that God worked in mysterious ways so he could randomly give people News From God whenever he felt like it. We settled that if someone spun a three, they’d receive a miracle, and if they spun a seven, they’d get bad news, and at the end of every round (ie when everyone had had a turn) he could make a new rule for the world.
“Dude, you should’ve prayed more,” God told one boy as he spun a seven. “Your dog got possessed by a demon and ate your baby. You need to get an exorcism. That costs $50,000 and a life card.”
“Aww man,” the unfortunate demon dog owner said. “Not Shark Tooth Junior. She’s my only daughter.” Flips through his money “What if I don’t want to spend money to get an exorcism?”
God shrugged. “Then I guess you can keep a demon dog,” he said, “but it requires a human sacrifice every turn or it’ll eat you.”
The demon dog owner sighed and paid the money, and I crossed off both Shark Tooth Junior and Chicken Strip the dog off his List Of Stuff.
“Congratulations!” God said on another turn. “You’re pregnant!”
“But I’m a man.”
“That’s why it’s a miracle,” God pointed out. “It’s the next Jesus! Also you have to name him Jesus The Second cause I’m God and I say so.”
I was blessed with the ability to turn water into wine at one point, and started a winery as a side business. Both were added to my List Of Stuff.
At one point, not long after he’d had his first child, one of the boys’ mom came to pick him up.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to go.”
“Give me a minute, Mom,” he called back. “I’m dead. We have to read my will.”
Thus proceeded the reading in which I read through his List Of Stuff one by one and he declared who each item/ability/person/animal went to and I then transferred each thing to other Lists Of Stuff.
“Your wife,” I read. “Elizabeth.”
“I’m leaving her to,” he trailed off, tapping his chin as he considered his options. “You, Kee.”
“You can’t give Kee your wife!” another boy protested, one who had already received three of the dead boy’s children. “That’d make her gay!”
“Kee can be gay if she wants to be,” the dead boy pointed out.
“Yeah,” the boy agreed, “but she’s already got a husband.”
“She can have a husband and a wife,” God declared. “It’s called being bisexual. It’s allowed. Plus I’m God, so that makes it double allowed.”
And that was how I ended up receiving everyone’s wives in their wills, and ended up married to my original husband, Lizard, and my four wives, Elizabeth, Lizzy, Eliza, and Shark Tooth (there was a theme that God had declared we had to follow in naming our spouses, a declaration which came after one of the boys had already married Shark Tooth). I had no children of my own, but had eventually received dozens in wills, as I ultimately ended up as the last person left in after-camp.
And yeah. Life and Death and God was definitely a fun time, and I feel like we’ll be playing it again in after-camp tomorrow. It felt a little like dnd, tbh, with God being the dungeon master, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to spice up their Game of Life. You could probably add in a drinking game aspect if you’re not playing with small children, or make like God Cards or something for people to pull from if no one wants to be God.
