Otogidama 2013

In Otogidama, players tell stories one sentence at a time with added constraints of a color (unique to each player) and the positions of tokens on the board. While most of play is building up an interesting story, there's also a strategic component to which aspect of the story you focus on, as that affects scoring at the end.

Each scenario has four keywords; for example, the first scenario is "The Dragon's Cave" and some keywords are "Dragon", "Dangerous Traps", and "Treasure". Each keyword starts with two "shadows", or black stones. Each turn a player pulls a jewel from a bag and uses the color of the jewel plus a keyword to tell part of the story. The keyword they choose to use determines where they place the jewel, and the color of the jewel determines the next player.

For example, if you pick a red jewel and then choose the "Treasure" keyword, you might say "there's a legend that there's a giant ruby at the bottom of this cave". Over the course of the game you'll build on elements introduced by the other players.

You get points by getting rid of shadows, but also for each stone of your color on the board at the end of the game. You remove stones from the board by adding stones to keywords that already have three stones on them, so as the game progresses you'll have a choice between getting rid of shadows to get points directly or removing jewels belonging to other players to reduce their points. You'll have to balance both of these aspects to come out ahead.

Besides scenario-based competitive play, rules for non-competitive "free play" are also included.

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