String along a sixpence
| String along a sixpence | |
|---|---|
| Designer: | Pippa Johnson |
| Year: | unknown |
| Players: | unlimited |
| Stuff required: | Paper and pens |
| Crew required: | One/none |
| Preparation: | c. 1 hour |
| Time required: | As long as you like |
| Place required: | Anywhere (ideally indoors) |
| Activities: | Drawing, stories, ambient, child friendly |
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An ambient game where players can direct, but not control, the outcome of a comic strip.
Set up
You will need paper which you can stick up in a long line or column plus any pens and pencils that you like.
Draw an empty comic strip on the page and photocopy it as many times as you need. You can have one cell per page or several (the latter will make your paper last longer), but they should have no start and no end so that more sheets can be added for as long as people are playing. Cells don't have to travel across the page in a boring horizontal way - you could have them zig-zagging up/down or restarting on the left of the page like a comic book so that pages are placed one BELOW the other and not just to the right every time.
Start the ball rolling with a few scenes/characters/sentences - if you want to guide the story or create a theme/ending you can do this here.
If you have the time you could cut out thought and speech bubbles so that they can be stuck on.
Rules
People contribute to the story as follows:
- draw or write in a thought bubble (or add an annotation if no one is in the scene) in the first cell from the left which is missing text.
- move one cell to the right and insert speech or thought if there is anyone in the scene, and description if there is not.
- draw a scene with no text and add this new cell to the right (this can include character/s or not, but must include spaces for text to be added later!)
