We’re halfway through World Book Month. Halfway through
school visits, through travel, admin, preparation and loads of exhausting fun
with kids. It’s time we gave ourselves a break and as I’m a keen game player, I thought I’d suggest a few games that should appeal to authors.
Atlas Games
This classic storytelling game was released in 1994 and
it’s still going strong - especially in my house where visitors are routinely compelled to navigate a narrative of evil step-mothers, lost princes and
talking frogs.
The players all receive one story ending card and a hand of cards depicting common fairytale elements.
The first player launches into a story ‘Once upon a time…’
The idea is to spin a tale, weaving in all the elements on your cards and
ending with your secret ending card. But the other players have their own cards and are waiting to leap in and drag the story off to their own ending.
Mention something that’s on one of their cards and they can interrupt and take
over the narrative.
The winner is the player who reaches their secret ending,
but the real fun lies in telling a good story. The best ones go on and on,
taking all sorts of twists and turns as cards are slapped down to interrupt and
players tug the narrative back and forth. It helps to have a basic knowledge of
fairytales, a quick wit and the ability to improvise.
Atlas Games
If the thought of racing multiple storytellers to your own
happy ending is too much, you may prefer Gloom. Another storytelling card game,
this one is for two to four players, with expansions that will take it up to
seven people, and the aim of the game is to make your characters as miserable
as possible. And then kill them.
The cards themselves are semi-transparent, so as you heap
tragedy upon tragedy, the earlier modifiers are still visible and their terrible
effects can still be felt. I like to play this game with my husband at the end of a
long day.
Oxford Games
This is a game for any number of book-lovers, though it works best with groups of six or more. The game consists of a set of cards, each on containing a book title, the author, and a brief description of the book.
One player is the librarian, who reads out the title, author
and blurb. Each player then writes a suitable first or last line for the book, and
the librarian writes the actual line. The librarian
collects all lines and reads them out, and everyone votes for which they think
is the real one. You score a point for guessing correctly and get a bonus point for anyone who votes for your line. A great way to show off your literary knowledge!
Formal Ferret Games
Only got a few minutes between book events? Wordsy is a
quick and elegant word game that you can play on your own, though it will also
accommodate up to 6 players, and it takes around 20 minutes to play.
Eight consonant cards are laid out in a grid. The players
compete to come up with a word that contains some of those letters. (You’re
allowed to use other letters too, though you only score the ones in the grid.)
If you’re playing on your own, the aim is to get the highest
score you can. With multiple players, the first player to write down a word
flips a timer giving everyone else 30 seconds to decide on their own words. Words
are scored according to the position of the letters in the grid plus various
bonuses. At the end of seven rounds, you add up your five best-scoring words
and see who wins.
You can even play it on twitter @wordsybot
Thanks to my friend and game designer, Rob Harper, for suggesting this one!
That's it from me. I'm off to prepare for my next set of author events. I hope all your school visits go well this month.
3 comments:
These look like fun! Thanks, Claire
This is brilliant! Thank you so much. I am going to get them for my creative writing class.
Ooh I have once upon a time. Not played that in a while.
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