How to Play
Build a book, flip your drafts, read it aloud, win the room. Here is the whole game, start to finish, for 2 to 6 players.
The pieces of a story
One of each completes a book. Play the rough First Draft, then flip it into the polished Revised version.
Bring any genre to the table
A turn, start to finish
Every turn is the same six steps. Most people have it after one round.
Take one card from the Book Element deck into your hand. You draw on the first turn like every other turn.
Secretly pick a location on your die and cover it. Everyone reveals at the same time and moves their meeple. You may discuss, promise, and lie about where you are going. None of it is binding.
Do the thing your location does (listed below). If a rival landed there too, then after your own action you also choose one thing to do to them.
Put one Book Element onto your board, First Draft side up.
Take any Publisher Requests your book now qualifies for. Once claimed, they pay out every Book.
Advance the quill. At the end of the fifth turn, the Book scores and everyone reads what they wrote.
The town of Quill's Hollow
Land somewhere alone and the action is yours. Share it with a rival and you can mess with each other.
Take one Publisher Request from the visible row, then refill it.
Take one Book Element off a rival's board and place it in your matching slot, First Draft side up.
Flip one or two cards on your own board, either direction. This is how a rough draft becomes a masterpiece.
Name one genre or one element. Turn cards off the top of the deck until one matches, and take it.
Take the top card of the discard pile into your hand, then play one extra card from your hand.
Move your Writer's Block token to any other element slot, freeing the one it was on.
Everything else
A competitive storytelling card game for 2 to 6 players. Everyone is an aspiring author writing a book at the same table, and everyone is trying to write a better one. Over a game you collect the elements of a story, assemble them on your board, and read the result aloud. The author with the most acclaim at the end is the ultimate StoryCrafter.
Both halves are printed on the same face of the card. Nothing is on the back. Turning the card around changes which half is upright, and that is the whole mechanic.
The First Draft half is the rough version. It is funnier and it is worse. The Revised half is what the idea became after somebody with an editor's pen got hold of it, and it is worth a great deal more. You play a card First Draft side up. Getting it flipped to Revised, and keeping it there, is what the rest of the game is about.
You still take your own location action. Then, because you bumped into each other, you also choose one thing to do to any author who is there with you: flip one card on their board, take a card at random from their hand, or move their Writer's Block to a different slot. Choosing where to go is a bluffing game, and collisions are the point.
A token that sits on one of your element slots and blocks it. It protects the card underneath it from being stolen, but it also stops you using that slot until you move it. You move your own block at The Inn, and a rival can shove yours somewhere inconvenient if you share a location. Everyone re-rolls their block between Books.
Objective cards that sit face up in a small row. When your book matches a request, you claim it, and from then on it pays out a bonus every round for the rest of the game. Claimed Publisher Requests are yours to keep, so an early claim quietly compounds.
At the end of every round, each author presents a title and a synopsis. There are three ways to do it and no wrong one: read your cards as one connected story (the flavor text is written to run on from one card to the next), improvise it yourself, or scan the companion app and let it write the synopsis for you.
After all the readings, every author votes once for a favorite that is not their own. The votes count for real acclaim, so the best performance genuinely pays.
You earn acclaim three ways: the ideas on your board (a polished Revised idea is worth far more than a rough First Draft), the Publisher Requests you have claimed, and the votes your book wins at the reading. Add it up each round and climb the track.
After the final round, whoever has the most acclaim wins. On a tie, the author with the most claimed Publisher Requests takes it. On a further tie, share it, and argue about it later. The tension is the whole game: a rough idea on your board is fragile and low, but it is also the one your rivals will come after while you try to make it great.
No. The companion app is one of three ways to do the Book Reading, and it is free. It takes your six cards, writes a synopsis, scores it, and at the end of the game reads the winning book aloud. You can try it now.