Consequences — a story written blind
Everyone writes one line of a story, folds it away and passes it on. Seven lines later, each sheet holds a story none of its writers has read.
From Consequences, a parlour game.
What it shows a designer
A fixed sequence of prompts is a story's structure; the players only fill it in. It shows how much of a narrative game comes from its frame rather than its players.
Credits
- Made by
- Traditional parlour game
- This version
- Seven prompts, the Cambridge sequence
- Sources
- tolkien.soc.ucam.org/parlourgames
www.papg.com/show?1TXW=
What you need
- a sheet of paper and a pen for each player
How to play
- The prompts. Agree the seven prompts: a name, a second name, where they met, what the first said, what the second said, what happened, and what the world said about it.
- Write and fold. Everyone writes an answer to the first prompt at the top of their sheet, folds it over so it can't be seen, and passes the sheet left.
- Keep going. Answer the next prompt on the sheet you are handed, fold and pass, until all seven are done.
- Read aloud. Unfold the sheets and read the stories aloud. There is no winner.
After playing, talk about
- Which line made a story work, or broke it?
- Did the prompts decide the story more than the writers did?
- What prompt would you add?
Its blocks
How its blocks were checked against BoardGameGeek
- Consequences: partly checkable, nothing against it. no objective: not checkable. absurd: not checkable. everyone at once: not checkable.
In boardgameBuilder, Open game puts its blocks on the canvas. Changed, the same file can come back here from Propose a game.