Mind the Lines Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Game Material
• Setup
• Game Play
  • Scribbling
  • Prophesying
• Example
• End of the Game
• Rules for 2 & 3 Players

Game Material

• Scribble Boards (Krakeltafeln): 8x
• Scribble Pens (Krakelstifte): 8x
• Oracle Cards (Orakelkarten): 240x (the upper white half contains easier concepts, the lower black half contains harder concepts)
• Additionally you need a timer (e.g. on your phone) to time when two minutes are up.

Setup

Agree on whether you want to play with the easy or the harder concepts. Shuffle the oracle cards concept-side down and set them up as a draw pile.

For your first game, it is best to take the black concepts on white background, as these are easier than the white concepts on black background.

Take one scribble board and one scribble pen each. Place your scribble boards with any side facing up in front of you.

Game Play

You play 4 rounds. Each round consists of two parts: Scribbling (drawing simultaneously) and Prophesying (guessing in turn).

Scribbling

1. Each person draws an oracle card from the pile, looks at the concept of the agreed color, and places the card face down in front of themselves.
2. Once everyone knows their concept, someone starts the timer.
3. You now have 2 minutes to depict your concepts on the scribble board.

Observe the following while scribbling:

• You may only draw on the dotted lines.
• You may stop wherever you like.
• You may lift the pen and draw several things next to one another. Wiping away and redrawing is also allowed.
• You may not scribble letters or numbers.
• You may use any side of the scribble board, and you may decide freely which side of your scribble board is the top and which is the bottom.

4. Whoever is finished turns their scribble board so that everyone can see the artwork properly. To mark which direction the artwork should be viewed from, place your pen underneath your scribble board. At the latest when the timer runs out, everyone must stop scribbling.

Then it continues with Prophesying.

Prophesying

Whoever last looked at an artwork begins. In the following rounds, the next person in clockwise order starts.

1. Collect the face-down oracle cards of all players and add the same number of cards again from the draw pile. Shuffle the oracle cards well and lay them out face up in the middle of the table.
2. In turn, each person excludes one oracle concept that they believe is not shown on any scribble board:
   • To exclude a concept, turn over the oracle card with that concept.
   • Each of you must decide alone. The others may not give tips or otherwise advise you while doing so.
   • Should your own concept get excluded in the process, you may not let this show.

After everyone has excluded one concept, there are still as many face-up oracle cards remaining as there are people playing. Now you may reveal which concept you drew.

3. Place all the face-up oracle cards that nobody drew onto a separate pile, so that you can count your error points at the end of the game.

Set aside all remaining oracle cards from this round back into the box, wipe the drawings off your scribble boards, and pass the boards on clockwise. Now you're ready for a new round.

Example

Annette, Christian, Florian, and Pia are playing with the easy concepts. After the scribbling phase, Annette begins prophesying. She turns over the concept "Motorcycle" and thereby excludes the concept the others could most easily confuse with the "Bicycle" she drew. Pia turns over "Ferris Wheel," Christian "Hornet," and Florian "Water Lily." Of the four concepts still laid out, three were correctly identified: "Bicycle," "Helicopter," and "Sailboat." Florian, however, had drawn "Ferris Wheel" and not "Pizza" — for this there is one error point. They place the "Pizza" card on a separate pile to indicate this. On this pile they collect their error points.

End of the Game

The game ends at the latest after the 4th round. You win if you have at most as many error points as there are people playing. (Example: a maximum of 5 error points if five of you are playing.)

You lose if you have collected more error points over the course of the game than there are people playing.

Rules for 2 & 3 Players

Each person draws two oracle cards and draws both concepts onto their own scribble board. Hints as to which lines belong to which concept are not allowed. With 2 players, before prophesying you shuffle in 4 more concepts; with 3 players, 6 more concepts. When prophesying, you turn over oracle cards in turn, alternating, until you have each turned over 2 cards. The game likewise ends after 4 rounds, and the remaining rules stay the same.