In Cartoon Chicken, players write captions and dialogue for two randomly juxtaposed cartoon panels.
What You Need
- Many sheets of note-paper.
- One pencil per player.
- A four-minute timer.
Setup
Cut a few 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheets of paper into fourths, and give two of the resulting pieces of paper to each player. On each of your two pieces, draw a single-panel cartoon. Shuffle everyone’s cartoons into a face-down pile. Give each player a healthy supply of blank note-paper.
Generating the Prompt
At the beginning of each round, the current Judge draws two cartoons from the pile and places them side-by-side on the table to create a two-panel comic. The Judge picks the order of the two panels.
Writing the Entries
You now have four minutes to write as many entries as you’d like. Write each one on a separate piece of paper. Use <brackets> to indicate stage directions or other information for the reader. Use <1> and <2> to refer to the different cartoon panels. When the timer runs out, you’re allowed to finish the entry you’re working on, but you’re not allowed to start another one. Shuffle everyone’s entries into a face-down pile.
Judging the Entries
The Judge selects one player to read all the entries aloud. After hearing them all, the Judge picks two favorites, and the respective creators receive one point each. If the same player created both of the chosen entries, that player gets both points. Use the two cartoon panels to track the points. After each player has been the Judge once, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins.
Acknowledgments
- Game Design—Mike Petty, James Kyle, Kory Heath, Chris Welsh, John Cooper, Gina Mai Denn, Jacob Davenport, Dave Chalker