Fine Print

The gist

Picture a print shop where no press can see what the next one is printing. Everyone writes at the same time, each in a different story, and every round the stories change hands. You get someone else's unfinished story and see only its last few words. You add one sentence blind and pass it on. At the end, the host screen reads everything aloud from start to finish, and the group finally sees what it made. Nobody wins, and that's exactly why it's funny.

How to play

There are as many stories as players, and they're all written at once. No turns, no waiting.

1. Intro. The host screen plays a short tutorial (45 s), which the host can skip. If Detective mode is on, a second 15 s briefing about the planted word follows.
2. Writing. Each player gets one story on their phone and writes one sentence. You have 60 s, and everyone writes at the same time.
3. What you see. If the story is brand new, you get the full opening line. If someone has already written in it, you see the previous author's last 3–7 words (how many is random). Never the whole story.
4. Format. Your phone tells you what kind of document you're writing: plain prose, a group chat message, a Wikipedia paragraph, testimony in court. It doesn't tell you what the story is about. You have to guess that from the tail end.
5. Challenge. A random modifier often drops in, like "Write like a noir detective" or "Add a disaster." It sets the mood, but you don't have to follow it.
6. Rotation. Submit, and next round you're in a different story. Over the course of the game you'll visit every one of them.
7. Read-aloud. Once every story is finished, the host screen reads them out line by line, each in its own layout: the newspaper looks like a newspaper, the chat looks like a chat. The pause between lines depends on how long the text is (4–16 s).
8. The end. All the finished stories are shown, and the host decides: play again or head back to the lobby.

Formats

A story can pose as one of nine kinds of document. The format shapes what each author writes and how it all looks during the read-aloud:

Story · Group chat · Obituary · Newspaper · Instagram · Wikipedia article · Reviews · Thread · Courtroom

In a Wikipedia article, each author writes their own section. In the courtroom, each author gets a role (Judge, Witness, Prosecutor, Defense) with a hint about what to say. Group chat can come up more than once per game; the other formats can't. Formats are on by default.

Scoring

In a normal game there are no points at all. Nobody votes, nobody loses, and the leaderboard is empty on purpose. This game is about writing, not winning.

Points show up only in Detective mode:

Detective mode

A separate preset that slips a little treachery into the game.

• In every story, one random author gets a secret word to sneak into their line without anyone noticing. Only they can see it.
• Your phone won't let you submit a line without the word. Any form of it counts: if you got "fridge," "fridges" works too.
• The player is picked separately for each story. One person might get a word twice and another never, so you can't figure out the last one by elimination.
• After each of these stories is read, everyone hunts for the word: first pick the line, then tap the word in it. You have 60 s, and the answer stays on screen for 7 s. Guessing ends early once everyone has answered.
• The player who hid the word votes too, but their vote is thrown out when scoring. It's camouflage, so nobody can spot them by glancing at their phone.
• Random modifiers are off in this mode. A "write like a pirate" line would hide the planted word too well.

Turn limits

• One sentence per turn. The limit is 200 characters, or 120 for short formats (group chat, thread, Instagram comment).
• Writing timer: 60 s. Whatever you've typed is sent automatically half a second before the buzzer. If you typed nothing, the game writes "And then something happened..." for you.
• The round ends early as soon as every connected player has submitted.
• No peeking at the whole story, not on your phone and not on the host screen, until the read-aloud.
• The game doesn't wait for players who drop out. Their lines are filled in automatically, and the stories still get finished.
• The game decides how many sentences each player writes based on the number of players. With 3 players that's 3 sentences each in every story (9 rounds), with 6 it's 2 each (12 rounds), and with 10 it's one each.
• 3–10 players. A game takes about 20 minutes.

Settings

The host picks a preset or adjusts things by hand.

• Story length. Long (default): the game aims for about 9 sentences per story. Short: one sentence per author, so there are roughly as many rounds as players. Small lobbies get a few extra rounds so the game doesn't end in a minute.
• Words shown (from / up to). How many words the next author gets to see. The default is 3–7, adjustable from 1 to 10. Set it to 1–2 and the game of telephone goes into overdrive.
• Planted word. Turns on Detective mode. Off by default.

Presets: Classic (long stories, 3–7 word window), Short Stories (one sentence per author), Detective (long stories plus the planted word).

Tips

• Hand off something concrete. A name, an object or a weird detail survives the rotation far better than a vague mood. Give the next author something to grab onto.
• Land your joke in your own sentence. You won't be around to deliver the punchline.
• Don't rescue someone else's nonsense. Previous line is total chaos? Roll with it. Trying to "fix" a story kills it faster than any absurdity.
• Stay in format. Nobody writes paragraphs in a group chat or shouts in all caps in an obituary. The character limit already hints at the right shape.
• In Detective mode, hide the word mid-sentence. At the start or end of a line it sticks out. And don't build the sentence around the word: build it around the story and let the word slip in.

Winning

• In a normal game there is no winner. Everyone is a co-author, everyone has zero, and the final screen shows the finished stories instead of a leaderboard.
• In Detective mode, whoever earns the most points from guessing and hiding wins. Ties are possible; players are simply ranked by points.