Ribbon Fair
A party card game for 3 to 8 players. Each round, a ribbon goes up on the table and everyone else pins one secret entry to it. The judge — a rotating player, Judge Marigold, or the whole crowd — awards the ribbon. First stall to the ribbon target wins the fair.
What you need
Two decks of painted cards, every one different:
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Ribbons name the category the table is judging ("Most Squeaky", "Least Suspicious").
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Entries are the things players pin to that ribbon ("A rubber duck", "A grumpy goose").
The base pack is 150 ribbons and 500 entries. Two themed packs can be mixed in, and never played alone:
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Barnyard & Kitchen — 40 ribbons and 120 entries
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Starlight Midway — 40 ribbons and 120 entries
Setup
Shuffle the ribbons and the entries from the base pack, plus any themed pack the table turned on. Deal 7 entries to each stall. Turn the top ribbon face up. That ribbon is what this round is about.
How many ribbons win the fair depends on how many stalls sat down at the start:
The target does not change if someone leaves later.
Judging styles
Pick one before the fair opens. Every style plays with 3 to 8 stalls.
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Rotating Judge. One stall wears the rosette. That stall does not pin an entry. When the others have pinned, the judge picks a winner. The rosette then passes clockwise to the next stall still at the table.
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AI Judge. There is no seat judge. Judge Marigold awards the ribbon. A taste-based judging voice is not available yet, so Marigold picks an entry at random and the log says "Judge Marigold picks at random."
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Crowd Favourite. There is no seat judge. Every stall votes for one entry that is not its own. Most votes takes the ribbon. If two or more entries tie for the most votes, Judge Marigold picks one of them at random, and it takes the ribbon. If nobody votes, the ribbon is set aside.
At three stalls the judge chooses between two entries, and a crowd of three splits its votes one each about one round in four, so Judge Marigold breaks that tie.
A round
1.
Pin. Everyone who owes an entry chooses one card from their hand. It goes facedown and cannot be taken back. The rotating judge waits this step out (Hold the rosette).
2.
Shuffle. The entries are laid out face up in a random order. Nobody can see who played which card.
3.
Award. The judge picks one card, Judge Marigold picks at random, or the crowd votes. The winning stall takes the ribbon, and the award panel shows the ribbon, the winning entry, who won it and how many ribbons they now hold. The authors of every entry are shown on the table behind it.
4.
Next. Each stall presses Next ribbon when it has seen the award. When every stall still at the fair is ready, the entries go to the discard, each stall that pinned a card draws back to 7 if the deck allows, and a new ribbon is turned. If the award makes someone reach the target, the button reads Finish the fair, and the fair is crowned instead.
Under the ribbon, every stall has a column with its ribbon count and the ribbons it has won so far. Hover over a ribbon, or press and hold it, to read it full size. The table frames the stalls it is waiting on in gold: entrants who have not pinned, the rotating judge while picking, voters still out, and stalls that have not pressed Next ribbon. Your own column says "Your move" when it is up to you.
One entry on the table wins at once, with no vote and no pick. No entries at all (everyone sat the round out) sets the ribbon aside.
Timers
Each phase has a clock. The defaults are 45 seconds to pin and 30 seconds to judge or vote. Either clock can be set to 20–90 seconds, or turned off.
Off does not mean forever. The clock waits five minutes, then the same timeout rules apply.
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When entry time runs out, stalls that have not pinned sit the round out.
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When judging time runs out, a random entry wins.
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When vote time runs out, stalls that have not voted abstain, and the votes already cast are counted.
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When the award panel's time runs out (the judging clock again), the fair moves on without the stalls that have not pressed Next ribbon.
The host stamps the clock when the phase opens. The hourglass on the table shows the sand running down.
Fresh hand
Once per fair, before you pin a card, you may discard your whole hand and draw 7 new entries. You still have to pin one of the new cards this round. A stall that has already pinned, or already taken a fresh hand, cannot take another.
Leaving
A stall may leave while it has not yet pinned or voted this round. Its ribbons stay on the standings. Cards it had not played go back to its hand and out of the round.
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If the rotating judge leaves during entry or judging, the entries go back, the ribbon is set aside, and the rosette passes on.
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If the last required entry was the one that left, the round is judged with whoever did pin.
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If the last missing vote was the one that left, the votes already cast are counted.
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AI Judge continues while at least two stalls remain. Rotating Judge and Crowd Favourite continue while at least three remain. Fewer than that crowns the fair with whoever has the most ribbons.
Winning
At the end of a round, if any stall has reached the target, the fair ends. The stall with the most ribbons wins. If two or more stalls are tied for the most, they share the win. A fair that runs out of ribbons, or closes with nobody holding one, ends with no winner.
Achievements
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Blue Ribbon — win the fair.
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Fresh Start — win after taking your one fresh hand.