We’ve been playing Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 at our house, and it made me think of the many storytelling games I’ve enjoyed through the years. As I talked and tweeted about this sort of game, I realized what a wide-ranging subject this is. The games with which I’m familiar only scratch the topic’s surface.

Among the various styles of storytelling games are:

• Games in which creating a story is the goal. The game mechanisms provide the story elements or prompts, often on cards. I’ve reviewed Fall of Magic here, for which an elaborate set of story accoutrements are available. The players must use the depicted items in their tale. Sometimes it’s a continuing narrative started by other players. The mechanics to conclude the game vary. For example, the winner has collected (or shed) the most cards or points, or the group appoints a judge or votes on the “best story.”
• The game play is all about discovering secrets. Players often act in a collaborative manner and affect the narrative by their choices.
• Role-playing games. One player takes on the task of facilitator, and the other players take part as the story characters. The facilitator offers varying degrees of guidance, depending on the game system. However, these imaginative games draw heavily on improv acting and a “let’s pretend” attitude.

Prompted Storytelling Games

1994’s Once Upon A Time from Atlas Games was my first storytelling game experience. The rules of this card game are simple enough for children to follow, but its potential for complexity is limited only by the group’s imagination. Various fairytale story elements are illustrated on the game cards—“a wishing well,” “a questing knight,” “a talking fish,” for example. Then the players weave a story using the prompts, wresting control of the narrative from each other. Whoever manages to play all the cards in their hand to complete a satisfying story is the winner. 

Gloom (also from Atlas Games) and its many iterations and expansions is another favorite of mine. The look of the game is reminiscent of Edward Gorey’s art; the themes evoke the Addams Family cartoons and A Series of Unfortunate Events books and movies. Players takes on a macabre family, with a set of starter cards that represent each person in the family. The goal is to put them through a life of amusing tragedy before their unique, creative, and alliterative deaths (“munched by mice” or “attacked by alligators,” for example). The plot twists come from cards played on characters, either by their holder or another player. As Will Wheaton said on his TableTop site, “What makes Gloom awesome is the stories we weave to justify everything that happens.”

 Z-Man Games released the board game Tales of the Arabian Nights in 2009. This is a fairly complex game that takes several hours to play. Mechanics involve die rolls and movement around a board representing fantasy lands. Players also make narrative choices with the prompts assigned from a guidebook and must weave an awesome tale. 

A Guided, Interactive Narrative

Several different game styles involve the game “knowing” a story that the players must decern. I’ve discussed a few here, as they make wonderful gifts, in my opinion. 

The legacy feature was an important development in interactive narrative games. A legacy game is a board game that physically changes, permanently, over the course of multiple play sessions. Generally, those changes occur because the game is slowly revealing a story to the players, who make key choices that affect the future of the game world. 2011’s Risk Legacy is considered the first of this type, and the Pandemic Legacy series have brought game-based storytelling to a whole new level.

Facilitator-Lead Group Storytelling Games

In a roleplaying games (RPGs) (tabletop and live action [LARP]), players each create a fictional character and react to situations presented to them by a facilitator (many names for this role, game master being common). That game master generally has planned a story line, but twists, turns, and total derailments are common, depending on the players’ decisions. I could list any and all roleplaying games as example. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Deadlands, Ryuutama, and Monster of the Week are all favorites of mine.

Some roleplaying games, however, require the players to create a character and then tell stories in that role. Fantasy Flight Games’ The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, written by James Wallis (who also designed Once Upon a Time), was first published by Hogshead Publishing in 1998. This is a game of telling tall tales worthy of Baron Munchausen (both a fictional and real-life raconteur of impossible adventures). This is definitely a game for the quick-witted ad lib expert. Not me, unfortunately, but I like to listen. 

In Fiasco, each player takes on a character. The group then develops a wacky story about the characters utilizing choices available in the playbook. Microscope and Dawn of Worlds, other favorites of mine, also produce a group narrative, although the need to play a character while doing so is much less part of the game than Fiasco and typical RPGs.

There are so many examples of storytelling games; I’d love to hear about your favorites. Are there categories I’ve left out of this blog? Drop me a comment!

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