Rough Guide
Rough Guide is a game in which a performer acts as a tour guide leading the audience or other players through an imaginary location, improvising history, landmarks, and local customs based on audience suggestions. The guide must maintain an authoritative tone while inventing increasingly elaborate details. The game rewards confident world-building and deadpan delivery.
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Related Games
Tour Guide
Tour Guide is a character game in which a single performer leads the group through an imaginary location, improvising elaborate facts, history, and anecdotes about each stop as the tour progresses. The guide must maintain confident, authoritative delivery while inventing every detail in the moment. The game rewards deadpan commitment, world-building specificity, and the ability to sustain a comic persona under the pressure of continuous invention.
Take a Tour
Take a Tour is a game in which performers guide the audience through an imaginary location, improvising details about each room, exhibit, or landmark. The guide must maintain confident authority while inventing on the spot. The game rewards creative world-building, commitment to fictional expertise, and the ability to answer unexpected audience questions.
Ted Talks
Ted Talks is a short-form game in which a performer delivers an improvised presentation in the style of a TED Talk on an audience-suggested topic. Other players may provide slides, demonstrations, or audience participation. The game rewards confident public speaking, the ability to sound authoritative on any subject, and the comedic gap between expertise and ignorance.
Instruction Manual Die
Instruction Manual Die is a scene game in which performers consult a fictional instruction manual for guidance during a crisis, task, or unfamiliar situation, reading aloud the manual's absurd, contradictory, or incomprehensible instructions and attempting to follow them. The game creates comedy through the gap between the manual's assumed authority and its complete uselessness in the actual situation. The game rewards confident delivery of nonsensical directions and commitment to following instructions that cannot possibly help.
Rewrite History
Rewrite History is a scene game in which performers improvise alternative versions of famous historical events, exploring what might have happened if key decisions had gone differently. The audience suggests the historical moment to reimagine. The game rewards knowledge of history, confident commitment to absurd premises, and the ability to find comedy in consequential moments.
My Vacation
My Vacation is a storytelling game in which a performer recounts an imaginary holiday using audience suggestions for destinations, mishaps, and encounters. The storyteller must weave each new detail into a coherent and entertaining narrative. The game exercises spontaneous narrative construction and audience interaction.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Rough Guide. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/rough-guide
The Improv Archive. "Rough Guide." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/rough-guide.
The Improv Archive. "Rough Guide." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/rough-guide. Accessed March 17, 2026.
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