Round Robin Returns to Write Warz: One Story, Six Accomplices

Hey, storytellers! Friday's five-player Round Robin test started with a crew member singing a song nobody recognized. Someone spotted a pile of skulls on the island. Then somebody hit a wrong note and one of our writers added, “Prepare the cannon.” Poor Bobby. He was about to find out what kind of story his friends were writing.

We're rebuilding Round Robin for the week before Thanksgiving. In this mode, each person gets up to 100 characters per turn to carry on a story the whole table is writing together.

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Three rounds to make it make sense

The first round of Friday's test. KetchupMan adds the cannon line while 8bit and rose wait for their turns.

The game gives you a starting sentence. In the first round, players take turns adding to it. With six people at the table, round two splits the group into three pairs writing at different, randomly assigned spots. In round three, all six can write at once. The line above your spot tells you what just happened. The one below tells you what you somehow have to explain.

Every contribution stays. There's no vote to knock out the best bad idea and no minigame between you and the next line. A full table can write 18 contributions across those three rounds. Our target is a finished story in under six minutes. How long it takes someone to read it aloud with a straight face is out of our hands.

When three birds say you're up

Three writers get the same “You're up!” cue as the third round begins.

At the start of our five-player game's third round, three Robin portraits popped up together. Once the banner cleared, MKB was adding a song near the top of the page while 8bit was explaining the missing lyrics several lines down. They could read each other's words as they appeared.

With 41 seconds on the clock, MKB and 8bit are writing on different lines of the same page.

That gave us a good test for the shared screen. Can you look up from your phone, spot your name on the TV, and read the lines around it before the timer runs down? We're working on the placement of those tags and on shorter starting sentences. We'd like to leave the first writer some room to surprise everyone.

Yes, Robin is a bird

The Thanksgiving menu preview we shared on October 29. Look for the Round Robin button above the campfire.

Rose tried different expressions and brighter plumage so each player could recognize their own Robin from the couch. There's a less practical reason we're exploring a Robin Hood costume. Once somebody said the name, we wanted to see a bird guarding a nest of stolen money in Sherwood Forest.

What we're testing before Thanksgiving

In Friday's playtest, typing felt laggy, a writing marker landed slightly off its spot, and a five-player game hit a snag. We're trying a clearer handoff that shows the next writer's name, counts down “3, 2, 1, write!” and points them straight to their line. We also want the round number and your remaining characters to be easy to find from the couch.

On phones, one of our tests is to drop the connection mid-sentence, then rejoin and see what's left of the line. We're also trying it while waiting for a turn. You shouldn't miss the moment you become responsible for the plot.

And then we had to read it

The finished story scrolls across the theater screen. This is the moment Bobby learns his place in the crew's musical number.

When the writing stopped, the theater played the whole thing back in order. The line after “Prepare the cannon” reads, “Bobby was positioned in front of the cannon and he accepted his fate.” We started with one person forgetting the words to a song. We ended up owing Bobby an apology.

Only the host needs to own Write Warz. Up to five friends can join free from a phone or computer browser, for six people including the host. We're aiming to have the rebuilt mode ready the week before Thanksgiving. What opening sentence would you give a roomful of people who have 100 characters apiece to make it worse? Drop it in our Discord.

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