The following games were created for the 2017 200 Word RPG Challenge. Both games were inspired by the Wikipedia page for Richard Wallace’s Jack the Ripper: “Light-hearted Friend,” a piece of pseudo-nonfiction which suggests (rather hilariously) that Jack the Ripper was actually famed mathematician and children’s author Lewis Carroll.

Jack the Ripper

In 1888, Jack the Ripper killed five prostitutes in London’s slums―and you’ve cracked the case! It was … Lewis Carroll.

No, really. Hidden anagrams in his writings prove it!

Gather three or more players. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Fill a bowl with fake dollar bills. Find a book by Carroll. Pick five sentences from the book and make a list of them.

Start the timer. Each player rearranges the letters in the sentences to form new sentences that implicate Carroll in Jack’s crimes. You must use every letter from the original sentence in the new sentence(s) and cannot use a letter more times than in the original. Once you’ve decoded a sentence, grab a dollar bill and start on another one.

When the timer goes off, pencils down! Everyone reads off their list of anagrams, and the players vote on whether each one is a true confession. Majority rules. If an anagram is voted down, its player must return a buck to the bowl.

Once everyone has shared their anagrams, start a new round. Play as many rounds as you wish. The winner is the player with the thickest bankroll at the end of the game.

Lighthearted Friend

History tells us that Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) could not have been the Whitechapel killer, because he was enjoying a summer in the country with child actress Isa Bowman at the same time as many of the murders occurred.

One player is CHARLES.

One player is ISA.

One player is ID.

ID finds a nasty piece of erotica on the internet and picks the most graphic paragraph. (Do NOT show it to ISA!) CHARLES must rearrange the letters in the paragraph to form a brief, clean, entertaining children’s story. CHARLES must use every letter in the paragraph, and cannot use a letter more times than it appears in the original.

CHARLES reads the story he wrote to ISA. ISA must try to guess a sex act that occurred in the original paragraph. If ISA is wrong, everyone switches roles and the game starts over. If ISA guesses correctly, the game must end immediately!