Storytime Scrabble

Posted on June 27th, 2004 in Amusements.

A few months ago, I was reminiscing with a friend about classic board games. Scrabble was brought up and later my mind started wondering how the game could be toned down in competitiveness and perhaps tuned up in zaniness. It was at that point that Storytime Scrabble was born.

The idea is simple - no longer is the main goal to play bizarre words (that only your English literature professor would use in everyday conversation) in order to rack up mega-points and to crush your opponents with your superior vocabulary. Now the goal is to have fun by teaming up with your opponents to create an impromptu entertaining story. Here are the rules:

  1. For each word that you create, you get to add 1 sentence to the story. The sentence MUST contain your word.
  2. When there are no more tiles left to draw, (the end is near!) you may play ALL your tiles to end the game ONLY IF you can satisfactorily END the story with your sentence(s).
  3. The winner is still the one with the most points, and gets to choose who goes first in the next round. (ie who gets to start the next story!)

So think of this as Scrabble meets Mad Libs. Mostly, I think this would be fun and innocent, however I could imagine some devious soul setting up the next person with a very difficult sentence to follow on. An interesting thing is I think words that would give you the most flexibility in sentence creation would tend to be lower scoring words. So there would be a trade-off. Do you go for points to boost your score? Or do you go for the word that allows you to pivot the story in the direction you’d like it to take?

So, if any Scrabble fans out there would like to give this one a try - I might recommend an online Scrabble server that lets people play the game long distance via the web and email.

Come on Urban Locust, I think its about time I get some revenge!

 

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6 responses

  1. Wise Fool says:

    Added on June 28th, 2004 at 3:47 pm

    Now there’s a game! That could produce some great stories. I would suggest you keep track of the story and post any good ones you come up with. Knowing you the stories will be very entertaining. Heck you might even be able to start a book that way!

  2. Katie says:

    Added on June 28th, 2004 at 3:48 pm

    I love it! A brilliant hybrid indeed.

    My grammie would always coax us sweetly into playing a game and then ruthlessly crush us with those highfalutin three-letter gazillion-point Scrabble words that nobody ever says aloud in a complete sentence.

    So how would you characterize a sentence as a satisfactory continuation of the story or not?

  3. Scott says:

    Added on June 28th, 2004 at 5:44 pm

    Ending the story: This rule is subjective. The other players should judge whether or not the proposed final sentence ends the story appropriately. And depeding on how much emphasis is put into story creation during a particular game, I would imagine other players might assist the person going out to come up with the best ending sentence(s) using the played word(s).

    Katie, I’m not sure what it is about word games, but they sure do bring out the ruthlessness in even the most sweet and innocent Grammies!

  4. Urban Locust says:

    Added on June 28th, 2004 at 10:17 pm

    Brilliant, I love this idea! I have always been a huge fan of Mad Libs, ever since I can remember, and I’ve never taken Scrabble seriously, having once started a game with the name “Jeb.” I think they hand out Scrabble dictionaries at insane asylums. So yes, I am game for such a game. The online Scrabble server seems pretty straightforward, do you know if there is a limit to the time to play a game?
    Oh yeah, did I mention that I don’t believe I’ve ever won a game of Scrabble?

  5. Scott says:

    Added on June 29th, 2004 at 1:02 am

    UCLA Burnt So: Luckily for us, players must make their move within 7 days before the game is automatically deleted. That means that we could possibly finish a game in less than a year! However, I don’t like the idea of such pressure nor the fact that one delay could wipe out a good game/story. Perhaps this week I’ll play the role of “Scrabble God” and develop my own Scrabble game server?

  6. Wise Fool says:

    Added on July 2nd, 2004 at 7:52 am

    If I read this right, Bug Cafe allows up to 30 days between turns before it deletes a game. I wonder if it has a way for outsiders to view the board…

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