After many playtests, experiments, disasters and and broken cameras, we arrived at the most epic running of Scoop! at the Southbank Centre on August 1st, 2009.

Here’s a quick summary of the game:

Scoop! is a game for 3 teams of 15 players. It takes about 90 minutes to play. Each team is a rival tv news crew. The Red Team are radical lefties. The Blue Team are staunch conservatives. The Yellow Team are tabloid muck-rakers. Each team has a digital camera, a bag of props & costumes, a mobile phone, two walkie-talkies, and a tip-sheet, and an impossible deadline…

The game begins with the presentation of the rules and the tip-sheet – a list of stories that the teams will have to cover. There are two importnat principles to absorb: If you can’t make the news, fake the news – it’s a cut-throat rolling 24-hr news environment. The story must be got at any cost, even if you have to make it up. Shoddy working practices make great news stories – if you can film your opponents doing anything, that’s a bonus for you and a penalty for them.

In addition to the stories on the tipsheet, there are two politicians (one Red, one Blue) out there giving speeches and kissing babies; capture them on camera for bonus points!

Once the teams are ready, they start recording on their cameras simultaneously. There are two rounds of filming. After each round, teams return to base and watch the films they have just shot in a live 3-screen presentation, during which their news reports are scored.

The complete rulesheet for the teams can be downloaded in pdf format here