Your default player name will be some sort of strange animal and your player color will be random.
You can change that, by clicking on the name tag and colored box next to You are at the top right of your screen.
If you're using a small screen, like a phone you can find these settings within the menu on the top right of your screen.

Click on the big green button on the frontpage or use this one right here: Start New Game
You'll be sent into the lobby for your new game.
Up in the center you can see a link to your lobby. Copy it and send it to everyone you want to invite! They just have to click on the link and wait.

While people are joining, you can configure your game within the game settings. If you're not sure about them, you can also just start the game with the default settings:

1. Language: You can set this to a specific language so everyone knows in which language to write. You can also leave it unset.
2. Number of rounds: This determines how often you will pass your stories around and thus how long your stories will be in the end. I'd recommend around 40-50 rounds, which should take about 1.5 hours to write.
   I wouldn't go below 25-30 rounds, but if you have no time you can go as low as 2. The maximum number of rounds is 500.
3. Words per round: Set the maximum number of words each player may contribute per round. You may always write less.
4. Allow empty submissions: If you want to be able to skip a round if you can't think of anything, enable this setting.
5. Unlimited last round: Enable this setting to disable the Words per round-limit for the very last round.
   This is recommended, as it's sometimes impossible to finish a story with few words.
6. Private game: If you don't want your stories to appear on the scribblestories.io front page, enable this setting.
   You can always change your mind and set your finished stories to public later on.

After you're done with the settings, check if everyone has joined by looking at the player list.
The stories will be passed around in the order of the players in the list. So player 2 will always continue player 1's story and always pass his work to player 3.
If you want to change the player order, use the arrows next to the players to move them around.

If everyone is where he wants to be, you can click on a big green button again: Start Game

Note: Only the player who has created the game may change settings, move players around and start the game.
You can recognize him by the crown next to his name in the player list.

You will now see a piece of paper and the player list.

It is time to title your story. Click or tap anywhere on the paper and start typing. After you're done, click on the appropriately named button Done! at the center of the paper.
You can also use the Enter-key for submitting if you enable it within the user settings in the menu at the top right of your screen.

You can see how everyone's progressing by looking at the player list. It will right next to the paper if you're using a big screen, or below it, if you're on a small one.
Players who have submitted their contribution will have a green line below their name, everyone else will have a red one.

After everyone is done, the first round will begin. Everyone will get the story the player before them just titled.
So, look at the title, think for a bit and write the first few words of the story. When you're finished, use the Done!-Button again.

This will now repeat again and again and your stories will get bigger and weirder with every round.

After the last round of contributions has been made, you will be redirected to the finished stories.
The page will look almost the same, but you can now see the titles of each player's story in the player list and change freely between them by clicking or tapping on them.
You can now read the stories to each other, if you want, or just enjoy them each on your own. You'll also find two new green buttons below each story: Download Story and Listen to Story.

By clicking on Download Story, you can download this story as a text file.
By clicking on Listen to Story, you can use the magic of computers to listen to your story being read. You can also choose different voices to read your story.
It can take a few seconds to create the audio if youÄre listening to something for the first time, so please be patient. Some browsers also don't like playing audio with a delay, so if you don't hear anything the first time, just try again.

Note: The Speech Synthesis uses Microsoft Azure TTS. This requires your stories to be sent to Microsoft servers. If you don't want this to happen, please don't use this feature.

You will also find two new buttons on the top right of your paper.

The heart shaped button is for setting favorites. If you click it, the heart will become filled and you can always quickly find your story again via the My Favorites link in the top bar or the menu.

The button with the menu-icon is used for managing your story's privacy.
If you set your story to be private, it will not show up on the front page and people with links to other stories of this game won't be able to access it.
Only the original players can always access it freely.
You can still share the story by sharing the direct story-link, which will be generated after you've set it to private.

Stories can be set to be public again, but only by the player who originally set them to be private.

I hope you had fun!

If you're not in the mood for writing yourself at some point, you can also just browse the front page and read (or listen to) all the stories other people wrote.
It's always great to see what others can come up with.

Thank you for playing!