"Once Upon A Time" is a free, build it yourself, story telling card game.
It's FREE, in that it uses only public domain images (except for some of my own photographs which are CC attribution). All you have to do if you want to play is print it and cut out the cards! It takes 21 sheets of card stock to print the full set. There are 9 cards per sheet so that's a total of 189 cards! There is also a "Back" sheet which you can print on the back side of each set of cards in order to make them look all nice and pretty.
The cards come in sheets of 9 to a page and look like this (but higher resolution):
You print that sheet, then flip it over and print the back.png on the same sheet, cut out the cards, and the end result looks like this:
How to play the game:
The cards are shuffled and 5 cards are dealt out to each player. The first player MUST start by saying "Once Upon A Time..." And then they lay down a card and begin the story with the person, place, or thing on that card. For example, they could begin with "Once Upon A Time, there was a beautiful golden fan".
The next person in the sequence has to start at the very beginning and tell the story from there again. "Once upon a time there was a beautiful golden fan..." then they lay down one of THEIR cards (on top of the previous one) and add to the story. Perhaps they might lay down a "Princess" card and continue with "... That belonged to an even MORE beautiful princess."
The play continues around the circle, with each person telling the entire story over again from the very beginning and adding one more card. Each player does not have to repeat the story EXACTLY as told before, actually, embellishing and expanding is encouraged. BUT, they have to get the right elements in the right order. If they forget any element in the story, then the game is over and you must start again. After each person plays a card, they always draw a new card so they always have five cards in their hands.
As each person adds a new element to the story, the story grows longer, more elaborate, and usualy a lot funnier. :) It doesn't matter who wins or loses, or even WHETHER anyone loses. The point of the game is the story, and the story's are incredibly fun, and different every time.
For more details on the rules of the game, please see the How To Play page.
If you print off the cards and give the game a try, please let us know how it went and any suggestions you have for changes in the rules or cards. And also, if you feel like expanding the set, PLEASE do so, and we'd love it if you shared the expansions with us.
