Penalty wheel

Forfeits that stay fun

A forfeit works when everybody would be happy to get it. The moment somebody invents one on the spot, it is aimed at a person rather than drawn by a wheel, and the room can feel the difference. Putting the list up before anybody loses takes the sting out: the wheel decides, the wheel is the same for everybody, and the worst that can happen is a silly voice for a round.

The set the page opens with is written that way on purpose. Hop to the door and back. Answer the next question in a silly voice. Give a compliment to everybody at the table. Miss a turn. Nothing to eat, nothing to climb, nothing that singles anybody out for who they are.

Where a penalty wheel earns its place

Quizzes use it for the team that comes last, so the bottom of the table is worth playing for. Board games use it for a missed rule or a slow turn. Classrooms use it as the light end of a points system, where the forfeit is a stretch, a silly walk or reading the next answer out in a robot voice. Add your players and the wheel will pick who spins as well as what they get.

It sits beside the rest of a game night: the scoreboard for the points that decide who spins, the countdown timer for the forfeit that has to be over in thirty seconds, and the spinning wheel when what you need is a wheel of your own names or ideas rather than forfeits.

What the grown-ups set is, and is not

The second set is labelled office-party level, never rude, and that is the whole specification. It is cheekier about chores, habits, impressions and telling a story against yourself. There is nothing in it about drinking, nothing about anybody's body, nothing anybody would have to explain to a colleague the next morning, and nothing that asks somebody to do something they could be hurt doing.

It is never what the page opens on, and a link somebody sends you cannot select it: the share link carries the family set and the spin length, and stops there. Everything else, including the penalties you write yourself, stays in your own browser and is never uploaded.

Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for

The tool runs entirely in your browser. There is no account, nothing you make is uploaded, and nothing you type is sent anywhere or put into a link.

The page itself is not silent, though: it carries advertising code and a visit counter that sets no cookie, and the cookie page says exactly what each of those does.

This page remembers your settings in your browser under pph.penalty.bank, pph.penalty.custom and pph.penalty.spin, and nowhere else. Clearing your site data for papercarnival.com removes it.

Player names are kept under pph.players so every tool with players reads the same list. They stay in this browser and never reach a link.