Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a lady that took a 30 hours trip to get to Tampere in Finland. She went to visit her daughter and son-in-law.
The young couple love to play games and at every Monday night they open their house to everyone who likes to share some playing experience.
That was how the lady got to know the game “Once Upon a Time”.
She immediately got fascinated with the game.
The first story telling person surprised her deeply. He created a long, detailed and unexpected scenario for the game. The lady realized that imagination skills and creativity were strongly being mobilized.
The game continued and it got clear that each player was asked to collaborate at the started story but also move it to a personal goal. The story has to keep coherence but each player contributes to a new and unexpected direction. This means, being together acting as a team and being separated on your own at the same time. “This is an interesting living exercise; flexibility to others and also looking for your own interest”. This was the ladies thought.
But very soon she also got to sense that the most real and most interesting aspect of the game is that even it demands some competition and strategy skills the real fun and what makes everyone laugh spontaneously is to share everyone’s imagination on creating a common authorized weird story.
After two weeks in Finland, the lady went home to her country. Some days later she remembered that her husband was studying English together with some friends. “Why don’t invite them to play? It may be a funny language learning experiential opportunity”.
In a very short time she got 8 people together. This people are not used to play games but got curious to know what it was about.
Guess what? They had a wonderful night together, lots, lots of laughs and fun.
The need to find words in a foreign language to be able to understand and continue the story got to be an urge and a very interesting motivation without affecting the spontaneity that everyone was living to each other. Even the ones with less English skills did not feel giving up and everyone had the best time together. This group of friends decided to translate the wording of the beautiful cards into Portuguese, their native language. In very short future the rules book that already exists at the internet, will be followed by an available cards translation in one more language. If you get interested just ask me or Tapani about it.
The lady got very happy with all this new experiences and is looking forward to find new fellows to share the joy creating new stories, practicing and developing her imaginative abilities.


Irmgard Birmoser de Matos Ferreira (Medi)
irmgardbmf@gmail.com