Tell Us a Story storytelling card game

Card deck, playing-card sized.  Artwork by Martha Schnee.  Produced by local Josh Rubin!

WHAT IS tell us a story?  

tell us a story? is a deck of storytelling prompts for children to play with the adults who care for them.  

tell us a story? is a tool for making up stories more than it is a game.   It is designed to provide participants with prompts that generate the basic architecture of a fantastical story. The story will be emergent and collaborative--randomized drawings from the deck invite participants to nudge their stories forward in exciting and unexpected directions.  

The tell us a story deck contains 101 cards (100 playable cards and one card for the rules).   The cards are the size of standard playing cards, and they cover a range of themes and situations: Meeting characters, doing actions, creating events, laying out scenes and background context. 

The Rules:

One participant serves as the "dealer" or "narrator." They draw the cards and choose which ones to play. They also get to decide when the story should end. The other participants provide the ideas that explain the relevance of the cards that the dealer plays. The cards can be played in any order, at the discretion of the dealer. If a card does not seem relevant, it can be discarded. Relevance can be decided by the dealer, but the dealer can also play a card and challenge the other participants to make it relevant. They often do, through sheer imaginative will!

That's all there is to it!

Somewhere between the participants and the cards a story takes shape.