The Storyteller game mode

In Storyteller it's not the whole round that writes, only you as the host: you set a story, sentence by sentence, and your fellow players draw it. In the reveal it becomes a picture book - every page drawn by someone else.

How it goes

1. The story. Before the start you write the sentences of your story in the lobby. There's no writing round - the game starts straight with drawing.
2. Draw. Everyone gets one sentence of the story and draws it. Nobody sees what the others draw. How long they draw for, you set in the lobby under Time.
3. Watch. In the reveal the story comes in its order, sentence by sentence, each with its picture. Who wrote the sentence isn't shown - that was you, after all.

Writing the story

In the lobby, click the Storyteller card under Game Mode. Below it you see how many sentences the story has, and Change Story opens the text field. There:

• One sentence per line. At most 120 characters per sentence.
• Hand sentences out at random: just write the sentence. ColorMari gives it to anyone.
• Assign sentences: write the player's name and a colon in front, like maari: a cute fish swims. Then exactly that person draws that sentence.
• Assigned ones first, then the free ones. Lines with names have to be at the top - after a line without a name no line with a name may follow. And each name may appear only once.

An example:

maari: a cute fish swims
sharky: an orange squid takes a sunbath
a nice boat on the sea
beautiful beach weather

Sentences and players

The story can't have more sentences than there are people in the lobby - otherwise the game can't be started, and the lobby tells you: "Too many prompts for the number of players". Once someone else joins, it works.

If there are more people than sentences, the extra ones draw one of the sentences a second time. That sentence then gets two pictures.

What Storyteller is good for

• Stories with a beginning and an end: a fairy tale, a hero's journey, "a day in the life of …".
• Events and streams: you decide all the content beforehand - no surprises among the sentences.
• Presents: the story of a birthday child, drawn by all their friends.
• Classes and groups: a text from a lesson, illustrated sentence by sentence.

Tips

• Every sentence has to work on its own. Whoever draws knows only their own sentence, not the story around it. "He goes home" is hard - "The little penguin waddles home through the snow" isn't.
• Recurring characters turn the picture book into a story: if the same penguin appears in every sentence, everyone draws it differently - and that's exactly what's funny.
• Read aloud while watching. The reveal lives on the story being told. With voice output, ColorMari does the reading - more in Hosting a round on stream.