Collectors' Objective

The Collectors’ objective is to avoid Mistakes while attempting to Guess whether other players’ Drawings are Fake or Original: the least Mistakes the more Millions they will earn. To do so they will try to learn the Artistic Manifesto by keeping a critical mindset and making opportune experiments with their drawings, testing their theories against the Gallerist feedbacks: was the drawing Fake or Original?

Gallerist' Objective

The Gallerist’s objective is to invent an Artistic Manifesto that is at the same time obscure and self-evident for the Collectors to find out. In fact, Collectors will Guess each experiment (=drawing) 2 times: the First Guess before peeking at the Artistic Manifesto, the Second Guess after peeking at the Artistic Manifesto. The Gallerist scores completely different from Collectors: during the course of the game the Gallerist needs to plan in advance their Targeted Clues to minimize the Collector’s Mistakes of the Second Guesses, while maximizing the Collectors’ Mistakes of the First Guesses:

• if too many Collectors made Mistakes during their Second Guesses, the more Millions the Gallerist will lose, because the game will end in a SCAM;
• otherwise the more Collectors made Mistakes during their First Guesses, the more Millions the Gallerist will earn because the game ends in an AUCTION.

Differences from other Game Of Induction

• The Game Master (known as the Gallerist) play by themselves as the other players and, therefore, can win or loose;
• The Secret Rule (known as Artistic Manifesto) of the Game Master can be any rule what-so-ever, because the quality of the rule is enforced by the scoring system, making complex and/or ambiguous rules sub-optimal strategies to choose for the Game Master.

Similarities with other Game Of Induction

The Strange Forgeries Of Mr. S.C.Rheber like many other Games Of Induction (Eleusis, Penultima, Zendo) is also a great tool for teaching scientific heuristic to the youngest players: the game comprises a variant called Panama Papers which is a gateway variant to introduce the youngest into the most complex aspect of the core game. For more information on the educational value of Induction games, the reader can refer to one of the earliest articles: H. Charles Romesburg, 1967, Simulating scientific inquiry with the card game Eleusis.

Further Reading

Gerardo Priore, Design Considerations Over “The Strange Forgeries Of Mr. S.C.Rheber”

-description from designer