Official Meh Forum Driving Game Rules

Welcome to the Meh forum Driving Game.

This post will serve as the official rule set for the game, though they are always subject to change over time.
—
Basics

Connect a new song to the previously played song by name, musician, musical group, or concept. Try to use the format “Artist - Song Title” when possible. Avoid repeats, and do not make two plays back to back.

To avoid repeating past songs, it’s best to always do a quick search of the current thread as well as checking in the official Driving Game Cheat Sheet before making your play.

To quickly add a post you can use the /youtube function which will search for the song if you put the artist and title after. This will sometimes result in finding user-posted lyrics videos or live versions, so you may want to pick the exact video you wish to post for the song on your own and copy/paste the URL directly to the forum. Our bots will be fetched it for you and posted inline like so:

Foo Fighters - Pretender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBjQ9tuuTJQ

Which shows up like this:
Foo Fighters - Pretender

—
Connections

As the game has been running for a while now, each play will start from the last posted song.

Your job is to connect a new song to the one previously listed using the information you know about that song, band, or performer.

Here are some examples of basic connections that can be easily made. If the last player had posted “Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal,” you could then make your post any of the following: “Micahel Bolton,” “Jackson Browne,” “Outcast - Ms. Jackson,” “Alien Ant Farm - Smooth Criminal,” “Fun Lovin Criminals,” or even another track by Michael Jackson which would be the simplest form of making a connection.

An example of a complex connection would be linking indirectly. “Prince - Same Page, Different Book,” can connect to “Led Zeppelin - Over The Hills And Far Away.” At a glance, these have no connections, but the link here would be guitarist Jimmy Page who is the guitarist for Led Zeppelin and writer of the near-minute-long instrumental introduction to the song “Over the Hills And Far Away.” In cases such as this, where the connection would require very specific knowledge of the names of individual members of the band (even if you feel they are famous in their own right), you should reply to your own post to clarify the intended connection. Clearly, “Book of Love” would be a much easier connection to make with the above Prince song, but no more or less valid, and both within the intended bounds of gameplay.

Another example of a complex connection would be connection concepts rather than exact words or phrases. If one player uses, “Manic Monday” an acceptable follow-up would be “Tuesday’s Gone With The Wind.”

Unlike other complex connections, concept connections should be clear at a glance. An example of an invalid concept connection would be linking “I can’t drive 55” to “Lady in Red” because you “thought of a red car when you heard a song about speeding and ladies like fast cars.” This isn’t so much a concept connection as an imaginary one. Getting too far in the weeds with your connection can cause frustration, so when in doubt either explain in a reply or just find a song that’s easier to link.

Everyone is welcome to join and the more players we have the more fun the games are. That said, when you’re starting out, it may be best to stick to a few direct connections via phrases or names and go back through the most recent thread for ideas on how to make good links without breaking the rules.

—
Vetos

Anyone can call a veto but the same is true of challenging a veto. If the connection isn’t clear you are free to @ the player who listed the track and ask for clarification, or if it’s been a while and they aren’t responding, you can just “play through” in which case you will skip the vetoed song and make your connection to the track prior. Try not to be too upset if you get vetoed. That track didn’t count so you can just play it again later when a clean link comes around.

Vetos should be reserved for cases in which there is no clear connection or explained connection. In the case of an explained connection still not making the link clear, you are still free to challenge and ask for the opinion of others.

It’s also good to note that you cannot veto a song after someone has made a play from it. If the follow-up player didn’t consider it to be a veto or just failed to notice the lack of connection and continued play, you’ve missed your chance to veto that song. You can still ask for clarification to see how the player’s mind was working at the time, but we will do everything possible to avoid overwriting plays as the game moves forward.

Bridges are a nice way of applying a veto but helping the last player keep their track in play. A bridge is when you find a song that is new but connects to both the previous track and the one before it, so as to make a valid play on the vetoed song while still keeping with the rule of continuing play off of the track prior.

—
Help

If you just don’t know what’s going on or feel like things have flown out of control, you are free to hit me with a message by putting “@ExtraMedium” in your message and I’ll come to take a look, but other players may get there first and are often just as helpful or at least able to provide clarification. The purpose of the game is to have fun and find more music you may have never heard of before, so share your favorites or make ‘em obscure to get others to explore something new.