Hypersmurf
Moderatarrrrh...
Cthulhu's Librarian said:
Would I?!
Okay. There are two decks of cards - the large deck of 'Storytelling' or 'Once Upon a Time' cards, and the small deck of 'Ending' or 'Happily Ever After' cards.
The Storytelling cards come in five categories:
Character (King, Witch, Bird, Shepherdess...)
Place (Castle, Kitchen, Mountain, At Night...)
Aspect (Beautiful, Tiny, Happy, Hidden...)
Event (A Fight, Two People Fall In Love, Something Is Revealed, Someone Is Hurt...)
Item (Tree, Axe, Ring, Crown...)
An Ending card has a fairy tale ending: "So she swore never to do such a thing again." "And they were married at last." "And so the evildoers were thrown down a well, never to be seen again."
Each player is dealt a number of Storytelling cards, and one Ending card. One player is selected to begin (traditionally the person with the longest beard).
They start telling a story, and if they introduce an element corresponding to a card they hold in their hand, they may place the card in the central pile. They must be significant elements; if the prince is making a journey from the castle to the mountain stronghold where the giant is holding his fiancee captive, the following would be disallowed:
"As he walked along the road, the prince saw a frog in the bushes." [Frog card] "'Hello, prince,' said the frog." [This Animal Can Speak card] "'Hello, frog,' said the prince, and continued walking to the mountain."
But if the frog joined the prince in his journey and played a significant role in the story, those two cards would be just fine.
The idea is to tell a story until all your cards are played, and wrap it up with your ending card so that it all makes sense.
However...
If at any time you mention something from a card held by another player, they may play their card, and take over the telling of the story. You draw a new Storytelling card from the deck, and sit back and listen...
For example, in the above scenario, where the prince has just greeted the frog in return, another player might play his "People Meet" card. (At this point, there might be a vote as to whether a talking frog qualifies as 'people'; if it's agreed, he takes over the story; if not, he draws two cards, and you continue.)
One must be careful, when playing cards in this way, not to anticipate details. For example, if the storyteller says "The King's son", it's perfectly acceptable to play the "Prince" card. But if he says "The King's wife", then playing the "Old Woman" card will most likely be thrown out, unless it has been previously established that she is, in fact, an old woman. (Traditionally, as soon as the card has been disallowed, the storyteller will continue "The King's wife - a wise and respected old woman - entered..." while the hair-trigger player whose card was just disallowed grinds his teeth
)Certain Storytelling cards also have the special "Interrupt" feature - "This card can Interrupt a Character card", "This card can Interrupt an Item card", and so forth. So in the first example, when you play your "This Animal Can Speak", someone might hit you with an Aspect Interrupt... and as before, you draw a card, and they continue with the story.
It can be heartbreaking, when you are so close to having everything neatly wrapped up so you can play your "Happily Married" Ending card... and someone takes the story off you, and to further their own purposes ends up killing off your groom. But that's part of what makes the game fun
We've had people speak for over ten minutes without playing a single card, just getting wrapped up in the story.
We've had very traditional fairy tales; we've had memorable images that have made several repeat appearances (like the swarm of cockroaches, who eat anything, and whose Thousand Eyes See All...); we've had the downright weird (like the gelatinous cube pirate with the peg leg); we even had some bizarre story involving stockbrokers in an apartment building, that somehow worked despite the heavy fairy-tale slant on all the cards
Fantastic game... if you have the right people
Edit - the rules are available at the Atlas Games site in PDF format here.
-Hyp.
Last edited:
