How to Play Pictionary

Posted on December 31st, 2008 by Elaine

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Pictionary is a popular party game that will not only test your communication skills, but will challenge you artistically as well. The game requires two teams or more consisting of at least three players within each team.

What You Need

Pictionary set
Timer
White board or manila paper
Temporary or permanent ink markers
Pencil
Paper
Dice

Pictionary Rules and How to Play

Divide the participants into two or more teams, with three players or more in each team. Ideally, you will have an individual not affiliated with any team who will keep time and make decisions in case any confusion arise from the game.
Teams can choose to assign one person to be the Picturist, the one who will draw the clues for the team to guess. However, it’s more fun if the role of Picturist goes around the team, giving everyone a chance at providing clues.
Bring out the Pictionary board and set all the team’s game pieces on the starting point. You’ll notice that the board is made up of squares with letters assigned on it. You will also notice that there is the final square on the board. Your objective is for your team’s piece to get to the final square first.
Depending on the Pictionary set edition you got, you will see that each square on the board has a picture and a color. Each corresponds any of these:
- P: Person/Place/Animal or any noun and their related characteristics
- O: Objects or things that can be seen or touched
- A: Action, verbs or things that can be performed
- D: Difficult, or challenging words
- AP: All play, or any type of word. In the card, though, there will be an arrow pointing to which word you must use.
Each team rolls the dice. The team who gets the highest dice number gets to start first. The Picturist draws a card from the Pictionary set and will look at the corresponding color where their team piece is standing on. For example, the piece is standing on the blue square on the board means the word highlighted in the same color in the card will be what your teammates will be guessing.
The Picturist must then walk over to a board where all teams can see the drawing clearly. On the word go, the Picturist must draw clues for his team to guess. The Picturist can only draw within 60 seconds. The team must also shout out guesses at this time.
If the team guesses the word correctly within the time limit, they get to cast the dice and will advance in the number of moves the dice yields.
If the team guesses the word incorrectly, other teams are given a 30-second chance to steal by guessing what the drawings point to. If they fail, the Referee will give the word and the next team will take a turn.
If a team lands on a space that will signify AP (All Play), this means that all Picturists from every team must go in front. A card will be drawn out at random, and each Picturist will take a look at the highlighted word under All Play. All Picturists and their corresponding team must now guess the word all at the same time within the 60-second mark. The team who first guesses the word correctly will steal the turn, and the order of turns will be arranged accordingly.
Pictionary can also be played without the Pictionary set by instead basing a team’s victory by a point system. However, a separate individual, preferably the referee or someone who does not belong in any team, will have to make a list of words. These words must be written in slips of paper, folded, and mixed in a box.
Teams must then throw a dice to determine which team goes first. The Picturist must then draw a word and proceed in the same manner as explained earlier.
Pictionary without the set, however, will not have an All Play Option.
The first team who reaches 15 points, wins.
While Pictionary sets are already available with different themes such as Biblical Pictionary or Kids’ Pictionary, you can make the Pictionary words more thematical by doing the Pictionary game with no set. For example, if you’re having a Greek-themed party, you simply have to take words that relate to Greece to adjust the game to fit the party theme.