In a roleplaying game (or storytelling game, or party game, or whatever you want to call it), all of the real action happens in our imaginations, so you’d think you don’t need much outside your noggin. Hoo, buddy, would you be wrong!

Most “regular” roleplaying games use character sheets, and dice, and pencils and paper, and slide rules, and all that nerd stuff. Well, this game is not regular. (It’s irregular, even!) But you do need to put some stuff together for it, and since I assume you’re reading this because you want to design a PbMaS game, you’re going to be the poor chump building all the bits and pieces that other people will be playing with. So, here’s some things that we’re going to use here:

The Story Book

This is the book that has all the stories in it! But wait just a minute there, if you’re going to be making up stories while you’re playing the game, they shouldn’t be all written out ahead of time—this isn’t the Dragon Game, right?

Right! But there are some important things in here. First off, the kinds of stories that you put in the Story Book are one of the main things that will set the tone of your game, and give the players a good idea of what kind of stuff they should be shooting for, story-wise.

But we’re not writing the whole thing out, we’re just giving them the important parts, so the players have something to work with, and they’re not forced to come up with something amazing off the tops of their heads. To that end, each story in the Story Book will contain several important parts:

• The Introduction: This sets up the beginning of the story, the “once upon a time” stuff, so everyone knows where they should start off. The players should be able to read this right out of the book to kick things off.
• The Ending: What? You’re going to give away how the story ends? You bet! With the beginning and end all sorted out, the players are free to do whatever they like in the middle, without worrying about messing anything up. (This is only used in the *Narration Game**.)
• Characters: This tells the players which characters (see below) should appear in the story. If there are teams, make sure that there are some characters from each team in there! Any character not in this list can still show up in the story, and if someone really really wants to, they can play someone not on the list, but buckle up, because it’s gonna get wacky.
• Goals: These are only used in the Everyone Can Play A Character Game. Each group of characters (like, “The Good Guys”, “The Bad Guys”, “The Martians”, “The Delegation From the South Pole”, and so on) will have a particular ending that they’re shooting for. Whichever character or group of characters achieves their goal by using their last card wins! (you’ll see)
• Some Great Ideas: These are bits of business or situations or Lazzi (if you want to get fancy) that you can incorporate into the story if you don’t have any good ideas. You don’t have to use them, but they’re right there!

The Cards

This is a deck of cards that contains all the elements you’d like the players to potentially work into their stories. The standard number for a deck of Story Cards is 108 (for lots of reasons, but mostly because it’s a really nice number), but you can always make more or less, depending on your game and how industrious you’re feeling.

Each card should have text on it describing the story element to be included in the tale: “A Plate of Waffles”, “The Colossus of Rhodes”, “An Old-Timey Carriage Full of Seals”, “Relentlessness”, “The Color Yellow”, “Your Mom (Who Is A Very Nice Lady”, and so on. They can be as specific or as abstract as you like, but they should probably include a bunch of setting elements from the subject of your game, you know, because that’s why they’re there.

Pictures are really nice to have on the cards, too. I’m not gonna tell you that you’re required, because not everyone has access to amazing art, but I bet whatever you can come up with is going to be fantastic. (Or hey, if you want to use something like tarot cards, or a Lenormand deck, or loteria cards, go for it!)

Spinners

Okay, stay with me here. You know how I said that this game doesn’t use dice or anything, right? Well... kind of. Here’s the thing. The original boxed set of the game that this SRD is based on has a bunch of spinners that you put together, each with an odd number of “Yes” or “No” spaces on them. They’re really neat! Each character that you’d play in the game has their own spinner, with their own unique chances of getting a “Yes” or “No” result. Super neat, right?

I don’t know where you’d get your own spinners, but if you’re able to do that, heck yeah, go for it! I think it adds a lot to the feel of the game, but really, use whatever method of randomization you think fits. That could be rolling dice, where each character has a range that’s “Yes” or “No” for them, drawing cards to do the same, or whatever you like. The important thing is, most of them had a way bigger chance of hitting “No” than “Yes”! Like, 50-90% of the spaces were “No”—that’s a lot! But never fear, failing is all part of the fun...

Character Standees

Yeah. Okay, this is another thing. I said no character sheets, but honestly, these are kind of like the character sheets for this game. The good thing is, you don’t have to write anything on them or keep track of stuff with them!

Again, in the original game, there were cool cardboard stand-ups with drawings of the characters on the front—along with their name, just in case you weren’t familiar with everyone. Like the spinners, these seem pretty Extra, but they’re also really cool! You see, every character has a set of two to four Powers that they can use to affect the story, some which happen automatically, and some that you need to spin for. Well, these powers are all listed on the back of the standee, so you always have them right in front of you! They also have a short list of quotes that the character might say, in case you can’t think of anything.

The Narrator has their own special microphone standee with all their rules and principles and stuff on it, but we’ll talk about that in the Everybody Plays a Character Game, because that’s where those come into play.

Certificates

These are handouts that the players can fill out at the end of the game to reward (or gently rib) the other players for their performance! These could be certificates of merit, diplomas (like in the original), promotions, museum plaques, medals, funny business cards, whatever you like. Put enough on these to give them flavor, but leave plenty of room for folks to make stuff up.

Puppets (!!!!)

Yes, there are hand puppets in the original moose and squirrel game. No, they have no mechanical effect, but they are super sweet to use when you’re playing out stories with those characters. If you want to add some extra meat on those puppetly bones, go right ahead, and let us (who?) know what you come up with!

(Is That It?)

I think so! On to the games!