A Fun Storytelling Game Using a Rock

This is a fun storytelling game that you can use when hiking (or even when you have a few extra minutes in a classroom).

I was hiking with some friends and a ten year old boy. Towards the end of the hike, the boy was becoming bored and exhausted. He needed a distraction, fast.

I looked around and found a flat, purple stone:

One side was smooth and the other side had a bumpy line. I told the boy that we were going to make up a story, and I asked him to pick a character: human, knight, magician, creature. He picked an otter.

Great! So I started making up a story about a family of otters living in a river. One day the otters woke up to a booming, crashing sound. A crew of construction men were digging into the river! The young otter swam over to see what was going on, and suddenly he was surrounded by a net.

I asked the boy to tell me what the otter was going to do next. The boy said he was going to bite out of the net. Then I had him flip the rock. If the rock landed with the smooth side up, his strategy was successful. If it landed with the bumpy side up, he was unsuccessful. Luckily for this otter, he was successful and escaped.

It was a simplified Choose Your Own Adventures/Dungeons and Dragons type of activity. We continued with the otter story until it reached a suitable ending, and then we switched. I picked a character, and the boy was in charge of making up the story. We went back and forth like that for five rounds. The time flew by, and we reached the end of the trail ahead of the other adults.

I was having just as much fun as the boy. I found it enlightening to be met with a series of unsuccessful flips. Having our character fail upped the stakes, and forced him into deeper and deeper trouble. It also made me stretch my mind and think of different pathways for the story to go.

Ways you can use this game:

-On a hiking trail, or when you're waiting in a line and need a fun distraction.

-In a classroom when you have five extra minutes.

-As a writing prompt activity.

-When you're plotting your next story. I can see myself using this when I'm planning act 2. I would flip the rock at every choice and brainstorm the results. Then I would go back to where I started and try another round and see if I could get more interesting results. I think this would be good way to make outlining fun! I'm definitely going to try it!

A Storytelling Stone

PS: I kept the stone.