The Consequences of Using Nine Pins All the Time

All right, I admit it. I like the game of Nine Pins, what some of us call Table Skittles. My brother and I had a set when we were young, and we loved the sound of those wooden pins hitting the block. The game dates back to the 1700s, when what was an outdoor or pub game similar to lawn bowling was miniaturized for parlor play. So it’s no surprise that when I need someone to play a parlor game in the book I’m writing, Nine Pins is usually top of my mind. Vaughn and Samantha play a round or two in The Rake’s Redemption, and my widowed hero and his daughter will play a round in my August 2013 book, The Courting Campaign.

But in the book I’m currently writing, which won’t be out until December, I have a whole bunch of people ranging from 20 years of age up to 60 stuck at a country house party with rainy weather outside and feeling a bit at loose ends.  Nine Pins simply wasn’t going to work either logistically or from an interest factor.  So what should I have them do?

We’ve talked about using an electric shock as a party game, but I couldn’t see my fifty-year old marchioness unbending for such a display.  There were rhyming games, but one of my younger gentlemen was much too likely to get carried away, and then bluestocking in the group would have to take him to task. 

The game, however, that I thought would cause the most laughter, and the most havoc between the hero (the poor fellow who tumbled into the Blue John cavern) and heroine, was Consequences.

In Consequences, players take turns answering a series of questions, one question per player, and each player has no knowledge of what the others have written.  Questions involved the name and characteristic of a lady, the name and characteristic of a gentleman, how they met, what they wore, what they said, and what the consequences were.  You can imagine the results:

Wobbly Bill met skinny Alice at an ice cream parlor.  He was wearing a footman’s livery, and she was wearing an ostrich plumed hat.  He said “I have an itch under my right elbow,” and she said, “Does this outfit make me look fat?” The consequences were that they both called before the magistrate.

Ahem.

Now, I wasn’t sure how to keep previous words from you in a blog post, but I thought perhaps we might play, if you’re willing, and see how very silly we can get.  So, I’ll start:  “Pock-marked Charles met . . .”