Doodlerama

This is a game I originally created to play with the children I was working with in an after-school and holiday play-scheme setting; the simpler version works best with young children, but the version here has a little more detail to it.

The basic structure of play is that everyone shares a pad of large drawing pages and takes turns pencilling in simple lines and shapes, telling the story as they go. The catch is that you have to roll a set of dice to determine what you draw and you have to follow the results of the dice as precisely as you can. Over many rounds, a shared picture and shared story emerge; you can either stick to one scene on one page, or use multiple pages to tell a story across many scenes

I like to say that playing the game relies on two fundamental player abilities: Imagination and Cheek.

Imagination is the ability to put the shapes you have drawn together into a reasonable picture that fits well into the story. The aspect of imagination is about your creativity and artistry, both in drawing and story-telling. For example, if the story so far is set in France and your roll results in one straight line plus two circles, you might draw a passable bicycle and say that the leader of the Tour de France has just ridden into the scene.

Cheek is the ability to make less do more or simply to get away with the ridiculous just because it is entertaining. If you are less artistically inclined than other players, you can simply draw as little as possible and explain away the missing parts of your doodle using cheek. For example, if you roll three circles, you could simply draw them separately on the page and say they are the footprints of a Polar bear in the snow; if anyone asks you where the fourth leg is, just say it’s only standing on three of them while it scratches its nose!

I hope you all find your own techniques and strategies for playing :-)