Sure, let me get one together!

Sounds good to me. I'd just like to repeat my earlier request, for a standardised scoring system for every dash in the round.

yay!

Like Balderdash, but with books! I made it up! Let's see if it works!

Full credit goes to AlternateTorg for the following (extremely well-written) rules, which I have shamelessly swiped and updated to fit this game.

• The purpose of this game is to guess the real openings of books while fooling others with your made-up openings.
  
• An opening can comprise anything from the first sentence only to the first few paragraphs. Whatever works best for your selection.
  
• We will be playing with one dasher at at time (thanks, Kitoba!)
  
• A single round is played as follows:
  
  • IF YOU ARE THE DASHER: Choose two books: Something where the opening won't be easily recognizable. More obscure is better, but not necessary. (Do you know the openings to Who Moved My Cheese? or The Five People You Meet in Heaven off the top of your head?) Provide a very brief summary of the book. For example, a player might post: "My books are Moby Dick, a novel about a hunt for a giant whale; and The Hunt for Red October, a novel about a hunt for a rogue Soviet submarine."
    
  • IF YOU ARE A PLAYER: Create openings for the dasher's books: Make up an opening for each book and PM them to the dasher. For example, you might PM the dasher with, "Moby Dick: I knew the whale would be trouble the day I shot the albatross. The Hunt for Red October: The sea gets real cold at twenty fathoms deep."
    
    • DO NOT LOOK UP THE ACTUAL OPENINGS OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BOOKS. THAT IS CHEATING!
      
    • When you make up fake openings, remember that you're trying to convince others that your opening is the real one. Do your best to make it believable. Other players may correct your spelling and grammar if they're nice, but they're under no obligation to do so, so proofread your answers! Since the real definition is supposed to be copied from the actual source, bad spelling/grammar = obvious fake.
      
    • If you already know the opening of someone's book, make up a fake opening anyway. You'll get your chance to shine when it's time to start guessing.
  • DASHER: Post openings for your books: After you have received fake openings for your books from all active players, post the openings to the game thread, with the real ones placed randomly in the list. (see the example below) Do not sort by book; they should be all mixed together. Assign a number or letter to each opening to make it easy for players to send in their guesses. Don't include the other players' names next to their openings!
    
  • PLAYER: Guess the openings: Read the list and try to guess which openings are the real ones. PM your guess to the dasher. BONUS POINT: Guess who submitted each opening. If you get at least half of them right, you get 1 point.
    
  • DASHER: Post results for your books: Once all the active players have guessed, post the guesses, the real answer, and how people scored. (I will use this to tally the scores.)
    
    • Player A selects the correct opening of one of your books = +2 points for Player A
    • Player A selects Player B's opening of one of your books = +1 point for Player B
    • Nobody guesses the correct opening of one of your books = +3 points for you
• Points are tallied up and the next round begins.
  
• I (inspiration) will keep score, chivvy people along, and keep a list of active players so we can take turns being the dasher. (Turns are based on order in the list of active players, not by who is leading or who won the last round.)
  
• Please try to be timely with submitting openings as a player and tallying results if you're the dasher. If you're going to sit a round out, let us know so the dasher doesn't wait for your entry.

Here's an example list of openings as they might appear in the game:



In this example, only the player who posted the list knows that #2 is the real opening for Moby Dick and #9 is the real opening for The Hunt for Red October; the rest are supplied by other players.

Sound good? Any questions?

I'll be the first dasher, and my books will be:

The Cat Who Went to Heaven (children's book) - a series of jataka tales (stories from the Buddha's previous lives) as recalled by a Japanese artist commissioned to do a painting for a Buddhist temple

Memoirs of a Geisha (contemporary novel) - in pre-WWII Japan, a girl from a poor fishing village is sold into servitude and ultimately becomes one of the most popular geishas in the country

So far we have Llefser, kitoba, and CCC. Anyone else? C'mon, it's fun!

Also Stan Cold.

Last call for new players! Otherwise I'll post all the openings on Monday.

Players: CCC, Llefser, kitoba, Stan Cold

Books:
The Cat Who Went to Heaven
Memoirs of a Geisha

Openings:

1. I never really appreciated what I did - not until the day I almost got shot, and came close to losing it, and everything else, too.

2. One evening in the spring of 1936, when I was a boy of fourteen, my father took me to a dance performance in Kyoto.

3. In a small shack at the edge of the village, an old man was quietly sweeping.

4. This is the story of a Great Cat.

5. It was her startling blue eyes that made people remember her. Not her fine silk robes, or delicate jasmine perfume. Not her skill on the shamisen nor even her performance as a courtesan. No, it was her eyes. They were absolutely unheard of in all of Japan.

6. In the West you say "A cat can look at a king," but here in Japan we say "A cat may contemplate the Buddha." Nonetheless, a cat is not a holy animal.

7. The make-up feels a bit sticky.

8. Most of my childhood is long forgotten, but I will always remember the day that my father sold me.

9. Once upon a time, far away in Japan, a poor young artist sat alone in his little house, waiting for his dinner.

10. Let me tell you a story.

Just realized I kind of buried this in the rules: you can get 1 bonus point if you correctly identify at least half of the fake openings' writers.

(Let's see if this is a nice compromise between people who liked the writer-ID-bonus and those who didn't. I aim to please! But I usually miss.)

Waiting for Stan's guesses on who wrote what (I know he's been having technical difficulties lately). Either way, I'll post the results tomorrow morning.

1. I never really appreciated what I did - not until the day I almost got shot, and came close to losing it, and everything else, too. - written by CCC.

2. One evening in the spring of 1936, when I was a boy of fourteen, my father took me to a dance performance in Kyoto. - Memoirs of a Geisha. Guessed correctly by Llefser and CCC. (I foolishly thought more people would be tricked by this, since they'd have read the book and known it was narrated by the titular geisha herself--but that they'd forget the "translator's note" at the beginning.)

3. In a small shack at the edge of the village, an old man was quietly sweeping. - written by Llefser. Guessed as TCWWTH by CCC.

4. This is the story of a Great Cat. - written by Stan Cold.

5. It was her startling blue eyes that made people remember her. Not her fine silk robes, or delicate jasmine perfume. Not her skill on the shamisen nor even her performance as a courtesan. No, it was her eyes. They were absolutely unheard of in all of Japan. - written by kitoba.

6. In the West you say "A cat can look at a king," but here in Japan we say "A cat may contemplate the Buddha." Nonetheless, a cat is not a holy animal. - written by kitoba.

7. The make-up feels a bit sticky. - written by Stan Cold.

8. Most of my childhood is long forgotten, but I will always remember the day that my father sold me. - written by Llefser. Guessed as MoaG by Stan Cold and kitoba.

9. Once upon a time, far away in Japan, a poor young artist sat alone in his little house, waiting for his dinner. - The Cat Who Went to Heaven. Guessed correctly by Stan Cold and Llefser.

10. Let me tell you a story. - written by CCC. Guessed as TCWWTH by kitoba.

--

CCC chose one real opening (2) and tricked one person into guessing his (1) for a total of 3.

Llefser chose both real openings (4), tricked three people into guessing his (3), and identified every author correctly (1) for a total of 8.

kitoba indentified 3/6 authors correctly (1) for a total of 1.

Stan Cold chose one real opening (2) for a total of 2.

--

Order of Dashers: inspiration, CCC, Llefser, kitoba, Stan Cold

Scoreboard:
Llefser 8
CCC 3
Stan Cold 2
kitoba 1
inspiration 0

You're up next, CCC!

Woo-hoo! I'm coming second!

...Llefser has a huge lead, though. Nonetheless. All the more challenge.

(I think I only got the correct answer for "Memoirs of a Geisha" because I haven't read it. I had no idea it was supposed to be in first person. And that didn't look like something that anyone here would write... not that I was particularly good at guessing that, either... I believe I did just slightly worse than random chance could be expected to do)

--------------

For this round, I have selected two books by two very well-known authors. They are:

Risk, by Dick Francis. An amateur jockey, who earns his bread and butter as an accountant, wins the Cheltenham Gold Cup and is then promptly kidnapped, knocked out with ether, tied up, and locked in the sail locker of a small boat, which heads out to sea. It takes him some time to figure out why.

Why Didn't They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie. Bobby Jones, son of the Vicar of a small seaside town on the coast of Wales, happens to find a stranger lying at the bottom of a cliff on the golf course. The man wakes up for a moment, says "Why didn't they ask Evans?" and promptly dies from the injuries sustained falling down said cliff. But the fall was no accident, and before too long the very same murderers are seeking to end Bobby's life as well; and he needs to find out who they are and why they're trying to kill him, before they succeed.

CCC sure does seem to like books about jockeys.

An admission: I have read both the books that inspiration used, but did not remember the opening sentences to either of them (hardly a surprise for "The Cat Who Went To Heaven," since I read it nearly thirty years ago). And I completely forgot about that "translator's note." I remembered Geisha as beginning more or less like my fake entry, except there was mention of rowboats and fishing. So had anybody written an opening somewhat like mine, only with mentions of fishing or rowboats, I would have been fooled.

I've read them both too --but it didn't seem to help me any. :o

Memoirs seems to have THREE openings (apparently it's the converse of the Return of the King movie.) It begins with the translator's note, then "begins" again with the geisha having tea with a friend of hers. Then it finally kicks off with "In our little fishing village of Yoroido, I lived in what I called a 'tipsy house.'"

The more you know! *SHOOTING STAR*