Smalltown Tales

What's Smalltown about?

Unleash your creativity with Smalltown Tales, the storytelling card game where imagination drives the adventure. Players collaborate to craft epic stories filled with fascinating characters, captivating plots, and vibrant settings.

One each turn you and fellow players cook up scenes packed with imagination and creativity, weaving them into one epic tale. It's all about putting your heads together and seeing where your storytelling skills take you.

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How To Play

Choose a genre and plot structure to guide your story's flow. Then, select your character, their actions, and a setting to create your opening scene. On each turn, develop a new scene that advances the overall narrative.

As you play, collaborate with others, enhancing their plots to earn favor. In the final epilogue round, wrap up your plots and celebrate the imaginative journey you’ve crafted together.

Using the Story cards above, a player might create the following scene narrative:

Dr. Dawn has a problem. She's been trying to pay off her remaining student loans by selling aftermarket organs, aftermarket meaning the corpses contributing didn't agree to it. Dr. Dawn knows what she's doing is technically illegal, but it's not like anyone would ever complain—until they did. Dr. Dawn just got a nasty note threatening to expose her crimes if she doesn't return the liver she removed yesterday morning. She would happily do that except she has two problems. The signer of the note was incinerated this morning and the liver is already on it's way to New York City.

- An impromptu response from a member of Authortunities Hub

Smalltown Tales offers both cooperative and competitive gameplay.

In cooperative mode, players craft their own stories while enhancing or integrating shared plotlines from others.

In competitive mode, players earn Story Points by creating scenes and collaborating. Each scene's value is determined by the Story card values.

The game typically includes six scenes per player before it concludes.

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FAQs

What makes Smalltown Tales unique?

Each week our community is adding original content to Smalltown Tales.

Smalltown is a community-driven game with input from authors, artists, and educators. Each Story card is like having a storytelling guru in your pocket, guiding you and your fellow players as you create scenes and stitch together a narrative masterpiece. With five categories focusing on characters, plots, settings, and collaboration, this game turns your musing into a beautifully coherent tale—complete with enough twists to keep everyone engaged and smiling.

Do you love creating epic stories? Join our gated alorithm-free online space for sharing stories and story crafting tips using Smalltown Tales with others. Authortunities Hub

Who is this game for?

Smalltown Tales is perfect for budding novelists, storytellers, writers, teachers, students, improv enthusiasts, homeschoolers, and families. With its community input, this game enhances storytelling skills, livens up classrooms, conquers writer’s block, and adds excitement to family game nights.

What themes and genres can it cover?

Smalltown Tales is versatile, fitting virtually any theme or literary genre. Choose the standard game or dive into curated episodes tailored to specific genres like comedy, mystery, drama, horror, or romance. With 36 plot structures across 7 genres—mix and match for endless storytelling possibilities.

How does it help me create scenes and a story?

Smalltown Tales guides you through the three pillars of compelling scene creation, offering proven plot development techniques. With collaborative gameplay, it enhances everyone’s creativity and imagination, making storytelling a shared, enriching experience.

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Creating Fascinating Characters

Character cards help you explore your characters' deepest desires and fears, making them not just interesting but relatable.

These cards keep your characters fascinating in every scene

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Crafting Captivating Plots

Activity cards guide you in crafting scenes that spotlight your characters, revealing their conflicts and personalities

Activity cards highlight your character's life.

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Vibrant Settings

Setting cards offer tips to make your story world vivid and real. They're designed to spark your imagination and inspire new creative ideas, not to impose strict rules.

Setting cards bring your story world come to life.

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Enhanced Collaboration

Enhance cards introduce three important storytelling techniques—Prolonging, Expanding, and Subplot.

• Prolonging a scene with existing characters enriches its depth and significance.
• Expanding a scene introduces new characters, activities, and settings that harmonize with the initial theme.
• Subplot introduces a parallel set of activities and optional settings, potentially leading to plot twists.

These cards can be played by any player on any story, allowing everyone to contribute to and enrich each other's narratives, creating a unique and exciting story.

The Enhance cards encourage collaboration, allowing everyone to contribute to your story.

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Crafting a Cohesive Story

Plot Structure cards help you organize your narrative from start to finish, ensuring a smooth, logical flow. With 36 unique plot structures spanning 7 genres, you'll never run out of fresh story ideas.

Plot Structure cards help you organize your story from beginning to end.

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Endless Replay Possibilities

Beyond the standard game, Smalltown Tales offers ready-made episodes curated by our community of writers. From dramas to comedies, explore a wide range of genres and storylines set in Smalltown. Here are some examples:

Speculative Fiction

Bitter Suite Revenge, Dark Speculative Fiction, 1 to 4 players, Written by Angela Yuriko Smith. Based on her novel Bitter Suites.

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Best Laid Plans, Speculative Climate Fiction, 1 to 4 players, Written by Anthony St. George.

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Comedy

The Delearium Debacle, Comedy, 2 to 4 players, Written by Stephen L. Schwartz.

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Science Fiction

Neuralcom Nightmares, 1 to 4 players, Written by Stephen L. Schwartz

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Fantasy

• Seeking an Author.

Mystery

Double Dutch Death, Cooperative or Competitive, 1 to 4 players, Written by Natalie Damore

Read Double Dutch Death's Captivating Prologue!

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Romance

• Seeking an Author.

Horror

• In Process.

Create Your Own Episode

Unleash your creativity by designing your own episodes. Choose a genre, theme, and mix in your favorite characters, activities, and settings. It's your chance to tell the stories you've always wanted to explore, shaped by the unique creativity of everyone involved. Download the "Creating an Original Episode" guide for inspiration and join our community of story enthusiasts.

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Satisfying Solo Mode

Solo play in Smalltown Tales is deeply fulfilling. It offers a solid framework for improving your storytelling skills, whether you choose your own characters, theme, and genre, or explore a curated episode. Dive into scenes, explore characters' motivations, and enjoy a therapeutic storytelling experience.

Below is a one-player example using the SciFi episode, Neuralcom Nightmares.

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Storytelling Workshops

Smalltown Tales has a simple framework that’s perfect for sponsoring engaging workshops and classroom activities. It will be featured in several upcoming events focused on gamified scene creation and storytelling:

2024 Workshops Featuring Smalltown Tales:

• September: Sleuthfest, St. Petersburg, FL | Mystery Writers of America
• October: RWA Annual Conference, Austin, TX | Romance Writers Association
• October: Finding Your Best Writing Strategy (Online) | Celebrating Authors Summit
• November: Horror Storytelling Workshop, Plano, TX | Authortunities, Local Authors

Collaborative Classroom Storytelling Experience

Inspire up to 36 students to create compelling and cohesive stories through collaborative scene-building, all within a 55-minute classroom session. Download the free educators guide and student handouts. PowerPoint presentation available upon request.

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Embrace Your Passion

Smalltown Tales is easy to learn and a blast to play. Whether with family, friends, students, or solo, start crafting unforgettable tales today.

Download the free episodes, classroom material, and view the action shots below!

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