O2 European Book of Traditional Games

French Traditional Games

1. Puppet GameThe Guignol Puppets

• History :Created by Laurent Mourguet in Lyon in 1808• Aim :Comical or satirical play that deals with human faults and virtues, social injustice afflicting the little people• Material:Guignol hand puppets

Main characters in the Guignol theater

Guignolnaive, honest & without scruples, brave & frightful, ready to help,

seeking justice & cunningjoyful

Madelonsour-tempered,

talkativethrifty, down-to-earth

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GnafronFunny, careless, generous,

loyal, obliging,has a weakness for beaujolais

2. Board GameThe Yellow Dwarf « Le Nain

Jaune »• Classical family game • combination of a board and a card game• HistoryCirca1760, region of Lorraine

Dwarf - nickname of Nicolas Ferry- – dwarf and King Stanislas of Poland and Duke of Lorraine’s protégé,was notorious for violence and cruelty

Material: - deck of 52- A board of The Yellow Dwarf game composed of 5 compartments- 3 sorts of different shapes and

coloursRule: 3-8 players lay a suit regardless of colourAim: to get maximum chips by:• finishing one’s cards first to collect chips from

fellow players

• laying cards represented on board – to collect chips that have been placed on them

3. Indoor GameCards game  La Belote

• most popular card game in France

• Circa 1900s, growing popularity in between the wars

• Origins unknown,

maybe adopted from

the Netherlands ???

Material: a deck of 32 cards

• Number of players: two teams of two

• Aim: to score at least 82 points (out of 152)

Rules:• players take turns clockwise to play

a card of the required colour, bigger value or a trump

• player who’s played the strongest card collects the round

Values of cards• Column 1 – ordinary

cards

• Column 2 – trump cards

4. Outdoor GameLa Pétanque

type of the “boules” game, played on hard dirt or gravel, eg. in public areas, in parks

History- in Occitan dialect “planted feet”

“Boules” games can be traced back as far as Ancient Greece and Roman Empire

Pétanque was invented by Ernest Pitiot in 1910, in the town of La Ciotat near Marseilles, region of Provence, France.

Players: two teams of 1,2 or 3

Material: 6 hollow steel balls & 1 wooden cochonnet

Aim: to toss or roll steel balls as close as possible to cochonnet  while standing inside a circle with both feet on the ground

Throws: underhand or overhand2 strategies in scoring

Pointing - making one’s boule come to rest in a particular spot, usually as close as possible to the jack.

Shooting – making one’s boule directly hit an adversary’s boule with the goal of knocking it away from the jack

5. Role-play immitation game The Game Of Miming (Jeu De Mime)

History: inspired by the celebrated French mime Marcel Marceau (1923-2007)Materials: a chronometer (optional)Number of players: 4 and more, who form two teamsAim: by means of miming to make one’s own team guess the word chosen by the adversary team. Team members may ask yes/no questions to help them infer the concept that is being mimed

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You will soon. In the Book of European Games