A few years ago I wanted to use game design to address some of the issues I mentioned in my post about the “folding / sentence / drawing game”. The biggest issues with that game are the number of people required to play and the creative energy needed to get a round started. This design was my first crack as solving those issues. In this game I wanted to incorporate the idea of having an identifiable character through various “frames” of the game (since that's something I find challenging in my drawing and wanted more practice with), I thought that a drafting mechanic would be an easier starting point than something creatively intensive, and figured a Mad-Libs style framework might be a good skeleton to build around.
The rules of This Magical Fish!
- Setup: Each player starts with a board with a Mad-Libs style sentence with blanks: "This magical [creature] has [adjective] [body part] and [adjective] [body part], wears a(n) [adjective] [clothing] and holds a(n) [adjective] [object]."
- Create the pools of words: Each player puts 2 “creature” words, 6 “adjective” words, 3 “body part” words, 2 “clothing” words, and 2 “object” words into the appropriate pools (either write new ones on slips of paper, or pick ones created in a previous round of the game).
- Take turns (counterclockwise) picking words from the pool and putting them in your sentence (you can fill in your blanks in any order, but you have to use words of the right type).
- Copy that sentence to the top of a page, then draw that, in a pose a human could do, on the top third of the page. Draw a line across the page underneath it.
- Then the player to your left swaps three of your words with words from the pool. Write “Transformed by a magic spell,” and then write the rest of your sentence. Draw that in the middle third of the page.
- Then the player to your right swaps two of your words with words from the pool. Write “Transformed by another spell,” and then the rest of your sentence. Draw that on the bottom third of the page.
Some examples of what a page looks like after you're done:
Post-mortem Analysis
While the rules flowed smoothly enough and the game wasn't terrible to play, it wasn't nearly as compelling as the folding / sentence game. I think there are a few reasons for that. First, I think you can't dismiss the “party atmosphere” that having a lot of players brings to a game. Second, I think I was successful in incorporating the idea of the consistent character between frames, but I think that ends up being more work than it is fun, especially since the “magic spell” aspect feels very arbitrary. Third, the drafting mechanic isn't very compelling: Because there's not a huge difference between things like “different adjectives” or “different objects” you don't really get very invested in caring about being able to use one word rather than another, so the choices and opportunity costs don't seem like they matter very much.
Fourth, and most importantly, I don't think the “change the other player's sentence” steps feel very meaningful. There's no sense that you're expressing yourself via the words you choose to swap, it ends up feeling very pro forma. There's also not a sense that you're lobbing an artistic challenge at the other player – there's no tension about whether they'll be able to do it, or much mystery about what they'll come up with. Nobody is on the edge of their seat wondering how someone will depict an electric scarf rather than an electric vest. From the receiving end it doesn't feel any different from having some of the words randomly replaced.
Overall Assessment
We haven't really played this since the day I created it. While the game works at prompting you to draw somewhat silly pictures (which is always at least a little bit fun) my conclusion is that the game didn't have staying power because it wasn't bringing enough to the table beyond just the intrinsic fun of drawing. Overall I consider this a failed design, but I think I learned from it. The next drawing game I designed was much better.