How to Play Consequences: Rules, Variations and Tips for All Ages

Consequences is a pen-and-paper game for three or more players in which each person writes a short piece of information, folds the paper to hide what they have written, passes it to the next player, and repeats through a fixed sequence of prompts. At the end, the paper is unfolded and the assembled story is read aloud, almost always to laughter. No special equipment is needed: a sheet of plain paper and a pencil per player is all it takes, and a round can be completed in under five minutes. That combination of near-zero preparation and near-guaranteed delight is precisely why Consequences has been played at kitchen tables, school desks and railway carriages for well over a century.

The classic sequence runs as follows: (1) write a name or description for a woman or girl, fold and pass; (2) write "met" and then a name or description for a man or boy, fold and pass; (3) write where they met, fold and pass; (4) write what she said to him, fold and pass; (5) write what he said to her, fold and pass; (6) write the consequence, fold and pass; (7) write what the world said about it, fold and pass one final time. Each player then unfolds the paper they are holding and reads the whole absurd story aloud. The non-sequiturs between contributions are the entire point: the game rewards concealment, not coordination.

What Is Consequences and Where Does It Come From?

The game appears in English parlour-game guides from at least the 1880s, and its name derives from the final prompt asking players to name "the consequence." It became a particular favourite of the Surrealist movement in the early twentieth century, adopted enthusiastically by André Breton and his circle as a tool for bypassing rational thought and releasing the unconscious. The Surrealists called their own version Exquisite Corpse, after the first sentence the method happened to produce. What the Surrealists discovered through artistic intent, generations of children have stumbled upon through instinct: hiding information from one another produces results that are funnier, stranger and more surprising than anything anyone could have planned.

What Do You Need to Play?

Each player needs one sheet of A4 or similarly sized paper and something to write with. Lined paper is perfectly fine but not necessary. For younger children or anyone who finds writing slowly, a felt-tip pen makes contributions easier to fold and hide neatly. If you are playing with four or more players, a single long sheet works better than small notebook pages, since the paper must be passed around the whole group and folded multiple times. Beyond stationery, the only other requirement is a flat surface and at least three willing participants.

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How to Play Consequences Step by Step: The Classic Rules

Give every player one sheet of paper and a pencil or pen.
At the top of the sheet, each player writes a name or description for a female character, real or invented. They fold the paper forward just enough to conceal what they have written, leaving a tiny flap visible as a guide for the next player.
Papers are passed one place to the left (or clockwise, if seated in a circle).
Each player writes the word "met" followed by a name or description for a male character, folds to conceal, and passes again.
Players write the location where the two characters met, fold and pass.
Players write what she said to him (in quotation marks helps), fold and pass.
Players write what he said to her, fold and pass.
Players write the consequence: what happened as a result of the meeting, fold and pass.
Players write what the world said about it.
Each player unfolds the entire paper they now hold and reads the finished story aloud, filling in the connecting words ("met," "at," "she said," "he said," "and the consequence was," "and the world said") as they go.

Why the silliness is the point

Play researchers including Jeffrey Trawick-Smith have argued consistently that the most valuable play activities for young children combine social interaction, language use and creative decision-making. The structural concealment of Consequences guarantees that every outcome is genuinely unexpected, even for the players who contributed to it, which is why the laughter at the reveal feels spontaneous rather than performed.

What Makes the Big Reveal So Funny?

The fold-and-pass format ensures that each contribution is made in deliberate ignorance of all previous contributions. Humour in children and adults alike depends heavily on incongruity: the collision of two things that do not belong together. Every Consequences story is a machine for producing incongruity at scale. A Victorian duchess meets a cartoon robot in a supermarket freezer aisle; she tells him that his shoes need resoling; he replies that the moon is made of mild cheddar; and the consequence is that the local bus service runs three minutes early on Tuesdays. None of that could have been planned. All of it is funnier for being accidental.

Popular Variations: Exquisite Corpse, Picture Consequences and Beyond

Exquisite Corpse (written). Remove the narrative prompts entirely and ask each player simply to continue a sentence or paragraph from the last visible word. Best suited to older children and adults with a taste for the peculiar.

Picture Consequences. Replace words with drawings. Each player draws a head at the top of the paper, extends the neck lines just below the fold, and passes on. The next player draws a torso, folds, and passes. The third draws legs and feet. The resulting creature is revealed at the end. This version is ideal for pre-readers and children who find writing slow or frustrating, since drawing ability is no more necessary than writing ability.

Question and Answer. Players alternate between writing a question and writing an answer, each unaware of what the other has said. The read-aloud pairing of unconnected questions and answers produces a rhythm similar to a very confused interview.

Adjective Consequences. Add an adjective before each character name to enrich the story. This works particularly well as a vocabulary-building exercise for children who are beginning to read and write with confidence.

Why Consequences Is Genuinely Good for Children, Not Just Good Fun

Each contribution requires the child to make a small but real creative choice under mild time pressure, to follow a shared set of rules, and to anticipate the pleasure of others at the reveal. All of that calls upon executive function, perspective-taking and narrative understanding simultaneously. There is also something quietly important about the social contract the game enforces: every player must wait, must not peek, and must trust that the others are doing likewise. For children between three and six, who are still developing the capacity for deferred gratification and trust in shared rules, that small discipline, held lightly and rewarded with laughter, is genuinely worthwhile.

Language, play and the developing brain

Research by Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff consistently shows that language acquisition in young children is accelerated by playful, low-stakes verbal interaction with adults and peers. The storytelling structure of Consequences, even in its silliest form, gives children repeated, motivated practice in the grammar of narrative: character, setting, dialogue and consequence are precisely the building blocks of every story they will later encounter in books and school.

Tips for Playing with Young Children, at Parties and on Rainy Afternoons

With mixed ages, pair each younger child with an older one so that writing speed does not create frustration. The younger child whispers their idea; the older one writes it down.
At parties, the game works best with groups of between four and eight. More than eight players means the paper is folded so many times that later contributions become physically cramped.
With only two adults and one child, try a simplified three-prompt version: a character, a place, and something they found there. The resulting micro-story is still satisfying to reveal.
Read the finished stories slowly and with theatrical commitment. The funnier the reader plays it, the funnier the game feels, regardless of what is on the paper.
Keep a shoebox of finished Consequences papers. Children love returning to them weeks later and finding the stories freshly bewildering.

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Common Questions

My four-year-old cannot write yet. Can they still join in?

Absolutely. Picture Consequences removes writing entirely and replaces it with drawing, making the game accessible to children who are still pre-literate. Alternatively, any adult or older sibling at the table can act as a scribe: the child whispers their contribution, the adult writes it in the child's turn, and the fold-and-pass continues as normal. The child's authorship of the idea is what matters, not the handwriting. Many families find that the whispered-contribution method is itself a source of delight, particularly when the child becomes conspiratorial about keeping their idea secret from the rest of the table.

How many people do you actually need for a proper game of Consequences?

Three is a workable minimum, though the stories produced with three players tend to loop back to familiar contributions fairly quickly. Four to six players is the sweet spot: there are enough contributors to produce genuine surprise at the reveal, but not so many that the paper becomes unwieldy or players lose track of whose turn it is. Larger groups at parties can be split into two simultaneous circles to keep things moving. Two players can technically play a version, taking turns writing each prompt on the same sheet, but the element of concealment is inevitably weaker and the results tend to be less surprising.

Is there a way to make the game less silly and more educational for older children?

Yes, with a few small adjustments to the prompts. For children aged seven and above who are studying history or literature, replace the generic character names with prompts tied to a topic: "a historical figure," "a place from our book," "a problem they had to solve," "what they decided to do." The fold-and-pass structure remains identical, but the content nudges children towards applying knowledge rather than simply generating nonsense. The reveal still tends to produce absurdity, but absurdity laced with genuine information, which makes it easier to use the stories as a springboard for discussion afterwards.

We lost track of the rules halfway through. Is there a simple printed version we can keep to hand?

The seven classic prompts are easy to write on an index card and prop against a mug in the middle of the table: (1) her name, (2) met his name, (3) at a place, (4) she said, (5) he said, (6) the consequence was, (7) the world said. That card will see you through every session without confusion. Jaques of London, as the world's oldest games company, has always held that the best games need no more instruction than fits on a single card, and Consequences is a fine example of that principle in practice. If you enjoy the fold-and-pass format and want to explore other beautifully simple traditional games alongside it, the Jaques traditional games collection is a good place to begin.