Get a Bingo Card

[ysabetwordsmith]

Most bingo fests have a signup post where you can request a card and a moderator will make one for you. allbingo works differently than that. Here we don't have moderator-generated cards; you have several other options instead ...


Use the Bingo Card Generator

magibrain has programmed an excellent bingo card generator designed to make cards of the type used in creative bingo fests. It produces a card in 1x1, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, or 7x7 sizes.  Choose from Free Space, Wild Card, normal prompt, or customized text for the center square.  The card image may be set to transparent, or your choice of background and text colors.  You get the image and the code for your card. There are different ways to load prompts into the card too. If you're not sure what to do, first try this generator using one or more of the premade lists.

1) Type your own prompts into the blank box at the top of the page. You need at least 24 prompts to make a card using just one list. Ideally, use a list of 30+ prompts to allow for some variety in what will appear on a card. Then click the "Create a bingo card" button.

This bingo card generator is relatively new, and magibrain is accepting submissions of prompt lists that might appeal to a wide audience of creative folks. If some of your favorite prompt categories are not available yet, consider making and submitting something. As of 1/15/14, there is a donation button at the bottom of the generator page; if you find this tool useful, please consider tipping the codewriter.

2) Select one or more premade lists from the menu box. You can choose a single list for a thematic card, or mix and match several lists. Even though they say "fiction-writing," most these prompts generalize well to poetry, artwork, or other creative efforts.  Some are optimized for different purposes such as art or music.  Among the choices are:

Historical Fiction-Writing Prompts
* Aarne-Thompson fairytale classification (with numbers & examples)
* Georges Polti's 19th-century list of 36 dramatic situations
* Robert Plutchik's 1980 list of emotions

Hurt/Comfort Bingo community prompts:
* H/C Bingo, round one (2010)
* H/C Bingo, round two (2011)
* H/C Bingo, round three (2012)
* H/C Bingo, round four (2013)

Tarot Cards:
* Rider-Waite-Smith (major arcana)
* Rider-Waite-Smith (complete deck)
* Wildwood Tarot -- Matthews, Ryan, & Worthington (major arcana)
* Wildwood Tarot -- Matthews, Ryan, & Worthington (complete deck)

TV Tropes
* Horror Tropes (fetched 8 January 2014)

Worlds Without End speculative genre classifications
* Fantasy subgenres
* Horror subgenres
* Science Fiction subgenres

Ysabetwordsmith's miscellaneous prompts
* Art Media
* Asexuality & Demisexuality
* Characterization Tropes
* Childhood Experiences
* Chromatic Characters
* Death
* Desperate Situations
* Emotions
* End of the World
* Ethnic Groups
* Famous Movie Quotes
* Food
* Genres
* Gentle Fiction (No Sex, Violence, or Foul Language)
* Governments
* Handicaps
* Holidays
* Kinks
* Motif Tropes
* Music
* Negative Coping Techniques
* People with Disabilities
* Plot Tropes
* Poetic Forms
* Poetic Terms & Techniques
* Positive Coping Techniques
* Themes
* Time Periods
* Types of Family
* Setting Tropes
* Sex & Romance
* Superpowers
* Swadesh Basic List
* Worldbuilding

Life, Lifestyle and Living Resources
* Little actions for self-care
* Little housekeeping tasks

(If you like the lifestyle category, see also Goal-Fish, a customizable activity selector ideal for motivating yourself or deciding what your characters are doing in their downtime.)

Whatever list(s) you select, those prompts will appear in the blank box at the top of the page, where you can then make edits if you wish to delete, add, or rephrase anything. Once you're satisfied with the prompts in the box, click the "Create a bingo card" button.


This Word Bingo Generator will let you use Excel files and export your card(s) in PDF format.


Prompt Tools by annariel 

Visit the main page for a guide to the options.

"Prompt Me" generates a single random prompt.  This can be useful in general, or if you're playing the kind of fest that allows you to put anything at all in the central space of your bingo card.

"Bingo Cards" is a simple generator for creative bingo that offers a menu of several prompt lists for you to pick which one to use.  It then creates a bingo card for you, complete with image and code.  These are the current prompt lists:

* General Prompts
* Primeval Denial Tags
* Christmas Prompts
* Prompts from non-specific Dr. Who TV Titles
* Prompts from non-specific Dr. Who Book Titles
* All non-specific Dr. Who based prompts
* Use all prompt lists
* Use all non-seasonal, non-fandom specific prompts
* Use all non-seasonal prompts

"All Singing and Dancing" is a multi-fandom, multi-prompt generator.  It lets you generate characters, pairings, and prompts from various fandoms and prompt lists in assorted formats.  You may interpret pairings as you wish: romantic, friendly, or any other configuration.

1) Select the type of prompt you want, single prompt, X meets Y at Z or a bingo card.
2) Select whether you want a character or pairing included in your prompt and, if so, which list of characters they should be drawn from.
3) Select which lists of prompts you want to use.

Prompt type selection currently offers three options: single prompt, X meets Y at Z, or a bingo card.

Character selection offers several character combination choices, a big batch of premade character lists, and the option to input your own character lists.  There are separate blocks for List 1 and List 2 for making the three-part prompts.

Prompt list selection offers a big batch of premade lists, but no way to edit or add your own.  This is a checkbox section so you can include as many lists as you wish.  These are the current options:

* General Prompts
* Christmas/Winter Poem Prompts
* Place Prompts
* Prompts from Doctor Who TV Titles
* Prompts from Doctor Who Book Titles
* Characters in List 1 (probably only makes sense with bingo card prompts)
* Characters in List 2 (probably only makes sense with bingo card prompts)
* Pairings of Characters in lists 1 and 2 (probably only makes sense with bingo card prompts)
* Fandom Tropes
* Urban Dead Prompts
* Urban Dead Suburb Names
* DHPD Prompts
* Autumn Poem Prompts
* Kerry's Kink List (some of these definitely require warnings)

"All Singing and Dancing" is open to submissions for new character or prompt lists.  Contact annariel  or LiveJournal user Lsellersfic for details.


Other Online Generators for Bingo Cards

The following generators are not associated with creative bingo fests, but are based on the game of bingo as used in gambling and education. Some are random generators that use your terms. Some have numbers, words, or graphics already in them. Some give you a picture of the card grid and/or the code, blank or filled. There may be sizes other than the basic 5x5. It varies. Here are some options ...

Bingo Baker -- type right in the squares of the 5x5 grid; the center free space toggles on or off.
Bingo Board Creator -- choose images from an extensive set of lists and make text to go with them; 3x3 or 4x4 cards; supports French, German, Spanish, and some other foreign languages.
Bingo Card Template -- uses your prompts to fill a 5x5 card to print out; you can make multiple cards at once.
DLTK's Custom Bingo Cards -- the default is pictures, but you can substitute words; choose 3x3, 4x4, or 5x5 sizes.
Print Bingo Cards -- standard numbered bingo cards, custom bingo cards based on a template of word lists, custom bingo cards with your own word or phrase lists, blank bingo cards.


Other Resources

alexconall has posted a set of notes for a spreadsheet tool that randomly generates character demographics.  Race, gender, sexual orientation, and neurodiversity are represented.  This may be useful to folks playing the ladiesbingo  fest or aiming for achievements like Chromatic Characters or Gender Blender.


Create Your Own Card by Hand

You can make a bingo card yourself by drawing or printing out a blank template. This lets you make any size or shape of grid, and choose where the prompts go. The small grids are good for certain types of extras popular in some fests, like the "postage stamp" where four prompts in a square all go into a single fill, so you could use a 2x2 grid as a setup. Then you fill the grid with whatever prompts you want.

Placement is less random, unless you use a random number generator or something like that to decide what goes in which square. Therefore you won't get prompts that squick you or lines you can't complete, but you also lose out on the fun surprises.

Here are some images for bingo cards and blank grids of various types ...

B&W 2x2 grid completely blank
B&W 2x2 grid (set of six per page)
B&W 3x3 grid completely blank
B&W 4x4 grid completely blank
B&W 5x5 bingo grid with central star
B&W 5x5 bingo grid with free space
B&W 5x5 grid completely blank
B&W 6x6 grid completely blank
B&W 9x9 grid (subdivided into 3x3 blocks)

Color 3x3 grid
Color 4x4 bingo grids (set of two per page)
Color 5x5 bingo grid with central free space


Create a Card to Accommodate Low or No Vision

This post has suggestions for making large-print, Braille, and found item bingo cards.


Borrow a Card from Another Fest

There are many creative bingo fests, past and present, that offer cards for people to play.  Each bingo community has its own rules.  A majority of them have rounds, a specific calendar period when players may request cards and call bingo; and amnesty when late bingo claims or non-bingo fills may be posted. Some fests post public cards that anyone can play, especially during amnesty. In allbingo, you can play a card from any other suitable fest.

One drawback to the round/amnesty approach is that many of the fests run on a similar schedule, leading to a feast-or-famine effect. Plus some really great fests run once but never repeat. allbingo provides a place to use or reuse cards and prompts from fests that are defunct or currently closed. You can always generate or play a card here, which relieves the doldrum season from creative bingo.

Understand that it takes a lot of time and energy to build prompt lists and manage a community. If you take people's work without giving anything back, that's rude and frustrating. Therefore, we encourage players to respect the open period of currently active fests. If you request a card from an open bingo fest, please post your bingo claims to their community first, and then link to that claim post from allbingo. Whenever you use a prompt list or bingo card from someone else's source, it's nice to provide credit.

On the other hoof, most fests require players to post all their fills in order to qualify for a bingo. A few of them acknowledge that people may be using bingo cards to produce original work suitable for sale, rather than fanworks shared for free. It's really annoying to have a bingo that you can't call because one or more of its fills haven't sold yet, and worse when you've got several bingo lines on a nearly-full card! So if you've got a bingo that you can't call on its original community for that reason, you can claim it here. We do recommend that at least one of the fills be posted online in a venue visible to the public, so that people can see your work.  One purpose of a bingo fest is to enjoy each other's creativity. The primary purpose of allbingo is to boost creativity, though, so in the end this is up to you.

Here are some bingo fests to explore:

cottoncandy_bingo
darkfantasybingo
genprompt_bingo
hc_bingo
kink_bingo
ladiesbingo
longfic_bingo 
origfic_bingo
trope_bingo

Over on LiveJournal:

Art Bingo
Carliff Bingo
Cliche Bingo
Color Bingo
Crossover Bingo
Dark Bingo
French Bingo
German Bingo
Hawaii Five-O Bingo
Heroes Bingo
Hollywood Reruns Bingo
Horror Bingo
Hurt/Comfort Bingo
Kiss Bingo
Kpop Cliché Bingo
Kradingo
Lovebingo
Love_Bingo
Music Bingo
My Chemical Romance Bingo
NCIS Bingo
Once Upon a Bingo
Podfic Bingo
Sanctuary Bingo
Schmoop Bingo
Smut Bingo
Star Trek BingoSupernatural Coda Bingo


Creator Bingo

This game is also known as author bingo, ego bingo, and various other names.  It focuses on themes or motifs that appear frequently in your work.  somniesperus has a Telanu Fic Bingo. ysabetwordsmith has a Wordsmith Bingo Card along with a call for audience prompts. This should be more fun now that allbingo offers a place to share Creator Bingo activities with a wider audience than just your own blog.

Here's how to play the game ...

1) Choose a bingo template, such as by using examples from above categories.

2) Identify a list of things often featured in your work, preferably at least 30. These can be character types, plot twists, settings, favorite words, catchphrases, artistic media, sizes, or whatever you find inspiring.

3) Put the prompts into the template to create a bingo card. Use the bingo card generator by magibrain or whichever other method you like.

4) Play your Creator Bingo card just like any other card. Create fills based on the prompts until you reach a bingo. You may also aim for extras or achievements if you wish.

5) Call BINGO! in allbingo by using the posting template. After you make your first bingo, you can keep using the same card if you wish. Creator Bingo is especially suited to playing for blackout (25 fills, each using a different prompt) or all-in-one (25 prompts all in one fill).


Browse Some Prompt Lists

Most bingo fests post a list of prompts that they use, and many other lists would make terrific prompts. To find non-bingo lists, try searching things like "50 best" or "101 ways." For shorter lists, consider "top 10" or the like, if you plan to combine several lists to make a card. If you borrow prompts from someone else's list, you may want to regroup or rephrase some of them; that's okay.

Here are some prompt lists from bingo fests ...

Cottoncandy prompts
Darkfantasy prompts
Genprompt list
Hurt/Comfort prompts
Kink prompts (wiki)
Ladiesbingo prompts
Origfic bingo rules (prompts are linked via Google spreadsheet: Gen, Romance, Kink)
Trope prompts

The bingo card generator by magibrain has a bunch of prompt lists already loaded into its database. Click on a list title in the menu box to see the individual prompts loaded into the big empty box at the top of the page, where you can then edit them.

rainbowlists is the prompt archive for the related posting community rainbowfic. They specialize in thematic lists of prompts grouped by a color metaphor, but the type of prompt varies widely -- single words, catchphrases, song titles, etc. The goal is to complete a whole color list by creating original works to fill the slots. This approach works great for some people and projects, but not all. You can play on their community or borrow some of the prompts for other uses.

TV Tropes is a massive database of motifs across all kinds of cultural material.

Wikipedia has a list of lists of lists.



Special thanks to all the folks who have created code, graphics, prompt lists, and other bingo goodies for everyone to enjoy.