Would You Rather

A fork goes up — “would you rather be invisible or be able to fly” — and chat picks a side by typing a or b. Then the floor opens: one chatter from each side takes a podium, their messages become the argument, and the vote stays open the whole time. The round isn’t won by the bigger side. It’s won by the side that moved people.

It is not the other two with a different deck

That was the real risk in building it. Two options and a room that splits is Never Have I Ever’s exact shape, and a reskin is worse than no game. Three things make it a different game, and they all follow from one observation: nobody cares about a would-you-rather split. They care about being told their answer is insane.

A champion can win from the minority by converting six people while the other side sits on a lead and loses it.

Gameplay

Both options have to be defensible

This is the deck’s first rule and the one the genre gets wrong most often. A fork where one side is obviously correct isn’t a question, it’s a poll — and a poll has no argument in it. A card that splits 95/5 has actively broken the round: two podiums open, one champion has nothing to argue against, and nobody moves.

Every fork in the deck is written so a reasonable person could take either side and mean it.

Being hypothetical also buys back what the other two Party decks have to give up. Never Have I Ever can’t ask what nobody would confess; Most Likely To can’t pin anything on a named person. Nobody is admitting to anything here and nobody is accused, so grim, absurd and humiliating are all back on the menu.

Beyond that it’s the same house code as its siblings for anything a live stage shouldn’t say outright, always in quotes and styled so the wink is visible: “spicy water”, “overserved”.

Configuration

Who writes them. By default every round comes from the deck. Switch this to Chat writes every one and the game picks a random chatter before each round and hands them 35 seconds to type the fork — it goes up with their name under it, exactly like a bought one. Alternate deck and chat runs deck, chat, deck, chat.

Four things keep it from stalling the show, which is the whole reason it is shippable:

• Only people who have actually played are eligible. Handing the pen to a lurker buys 35 seconds of dead air and nothing else.
• The pen rotates — it goes to somebody who hasn’t had it yet before it repeats, so one person can’t end up writing six rounds.
• A message that doesn’t fit leaves the window open, so somebody put on the spot gets more than one go.
• If they don’t deliver, the deck’s own card plays, on time. The round is never waiting on one person who went to make a cup of tea.

Round one is always the deck’s, even in chat mode — nobody has played yet, so nobody is eligible, and a stranger shouldn’t be asked to write a fork before the room has seen what one looks like.

Open floor keeps the debate window and the defection scoring but skips the podiums — the whole room argues in chat. For rooms where handing two strangers a live mic isn’t wanted. Just the split goes straight to the result.

Mixed spreads, it doesn’t sample. A mixed session deals one fork from each theme before it deals a second from any. It isn’t an absolute guarantee — about one session in 150 lands on nine themes and one repeat — because closing that last gap would cost a third of the deck’s life between reshuffles to fix something no room will ever notice.

Questions your room has seen are held back. The draw remembers what it dealt your room and prefers forks it hasn’t, resetting only once the deck is spent — so back-to-back sessions don’t repeat.

Podium gift. Sending it puts you on your own side’s podium — no @mention needed, because the purchase is self-serving and you’re the target. Sent mid-debate it takes the podium immediately, replacing whoever the engine rolled. You have to have voted: you can’t argue for a side you didn’t pick.

Write-a-question gift. The gifter sends it, then types this or that in chat. It needs an “or” — a submission with no fork is half a card and there’d be nothing to put on the other podium, so it’s refused and the window stays open for another go. A run-on splits on the first “or”, so “cats or dogs or neither” still becomes a playable card. Up to eight per session, added to your deck rather than swapped in for one of yours.

Layout

1. Marquee — game title and how-to hint.
2. Header band — the buyable mechanics, the round counter, and the round’s one line once the floor has opened.
3. The swing bar — the live split as a fill, with a dashed “opened here” notch marking where the room started. The gap between them is the result.
4. Two columns — the option, the lectern with that side’s champion and their argument, the crowd, and a “came across” strip naming whoever just switched.
5. Filmstrip — the night so far, one swing per round.

The game moves through Lobby → Voting → Debate → Result → Finished.

Roles, not ranks

At the end the room gets its portrait instead of a scoreboard. Each role goes to the top scorer not already holding one, so a dominant chatter takes one card rather than sweeping the board:

Achievements

There is no 50-wins avatar motif for this game — it has no wins to count, which is the point.