I’m a big fan of board games. I think the industry is doing a lot of really interesting things, and one of the big changes over the last twenty years (more or less when I started playing games) is the drive towards narrative-style experiences.
A lot of older games had emergent narrative… there wasn’t really a story, but as you played you created a series of events that sort of implied a story. To take a quick example, the classic board game “Twilight Imperium” (which is now on its fourth, very successful iteration) had players trying to conquer a vast intergalactic empire, very much in the theme of Master of Orion or similar video games.
But there were no real “narrative” or “story” events. Instead, you would craft a tale based on which of players did what. So, for example, a story about how the sneaky Hacan betrayed the Jol-Nar might happen in one game, but there’s nothing fixed about either of those races or about that betrayal in the game itself.
Compare that to something like “Forgotten Waters” or “The Adventures of Robin Hood” or even “Legacy of Dragonholt,” which instead are games with fixed stories (with variable elements, sure) and the players discover the story as you go along. And originally, those were written very badly. But these days?
Well… these days they’re still often written very badly. But occasionally, like the games listed above, they are written very well.
More on this next post. I have many thoughts about board game writing!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!