Welcome to the MPDL version of "Open Science Against Humanity"!
Yes, the title is ironic. This game is all about exploring Open Science in a fun, interactive way—celebrating its incredible potential (for humanity) while also unpacking its challenges and pitfalls. Our goal is to spark curiosity, foster learning, all to make the research game more FAIR. Are you ready to play, learn, and laugh your way through the world of Open Science?🙌
This game can be played in person or online. If you are interested in the printed game, please reach out!
You can find the original version here 
The goal of the game is to pair the white cards (prompts) and the black cards in the funniest, most provocative, or smartest way you can.
This game can be played with the physical cards and online. To learn how to play the game online, check out this section.
🧍3+ players ⏰ 5 minutes - 24 hours 🏋️ difficulty level: researcher friendly
Shuffle the deck of white cards and deal four to each player. Leave the rest of the white cards and black cards separated into face-down stacks. Determine a Reviewer: The person who is the most notorious procrastinator when it comes to publishing.
The Reviewer reveals the first black card. They read it out aloud and leave it face up on the table. Each other player chooses a white response card from their hand that fits best to the revealed black card and places their submission face down on the table. After every player has played a card, the Reviewer shuffles and then reveals all played white cards and reads out loud how they complete the prompt on the black card. The Reviewer picks the smartest, funniest and/or the card they like the most. You can also discuss all options as a group and collect votes to determine a winning card. The player with the winning card will receive 3 citation points to their h-index. Discard all played white cards in a discard pile and discard the black card back to the box. Draw new white cards until every player has 4 white cards in their hand.
Optional bonus points: After each round, when all the white cards have been revealed, each player is allowed to tell a funny, horrifying or otherwise entertaining story or fact from their own experience that matches one of the black and white card combinations on the table. Depending on how much laughter, pity or knowledge gain is spread among the group, the Reviewer may award up to 5 additional citation points to that player.
The role of the Reviewer is passed on clockwise after every turn. Play until there are no more black cards outside the box. If you run out of white cards, shuffle the discard pile and draw from those. Whoever has the most citation points at the end of the game wins!
Open Science Against Humanity is based on Cards Against Humanity, which was released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.
The NL-RSE-logo was originally created by @ctwhome and licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. We made some adjustments to the original logo to make it blend better with the aesthetic of the overall game.
The Minerva logo, which represents the Max Planck Society, is protected by copyright and may only be used for the purposes of this game. Any other use must be agreed upon with the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science e.V.
The code for generating the cards is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
All cards containing the MPDL Logo were added in preparation of the Open Science Ambassadors Meeting 2024 and cover specifics of the Max Planck Society. For the same event additional white card answers were generated via AI prompts. Attribution of the different contents can be found in the .csv files. The version used and printed for the event did not yet include the NL-RSE additions. It is available via MPG.PuRe.
The Jupyter Notebook can be used to further adapt the card game:
Questions regarding this MPDL version can be directed towards: [email protected]
Watch closely 🕵️♀️ All cards that have the NL-RSE logo on it were thought of by the community during a session on the National Research Software Day 2024.
This game was created by the GHOST Collective, Games of Horror for Open Science Training. You can find a continuously updates list of all our contributors on our website.
You can find the original version here
Previous GHOST collective games can be found here. These include physical and online card games as well as online escape rooms.
Made with ♥ and Open Science