What If, But Also 2018

What If, But Also is a lighthearted party game in which 4 or more players compete to spin stories out of chaos and pull creative pitches out of wacky prompts — all to win the judge’s favor.

Each round, players come up with the best possible or worst possible scenario, based on the cards in play and in their hands. Scenarios are inspired by (however loosely players want), and must reference, a phrase created by 5 cards: 2 Link Cards and 3 Story Cards. These cards change between rounds.

Each turn, one player takes on the role of judge and all other players take on the role of storytellers. The judge determines whether they want to hear the best or worst possible scenario and indicate by flipping the "What If…" card to its positive or negative side. They draw the top two cards of the Link deck and play them face up. They then play a Story card from their own hand to begin the scenario. Storytellers play Story cards from their hands to supply options for 2 of the words in the phrase. These 2 words are different for each storyteller, meaning they’ll base their scenarios off slightly different phrases.

At the end of the turn, roles shift. The player to the left of the previous judge becomes the new judge. Each turn consists of three phases: judge’s setup, storyteller’s scenarios, and judge’s choice. Play continues until every player has had a chance to be judge twice — or keep going as long as you want! The game can be ended after any judge’s choice phase.

—description from the publisher