I mentioned on Sunday that storytelling in board games has come a long way. That’s not entirely fair.
See, back when I was young, games, whether board or video, were all about emergent narrative. You discovered a story that was crafted around the activities you undertook and the events that happened as a result. Games like the old Ultima series had fixed storylines, sure, but most of the things that happened in the game were about you and what you did as the player. Same for games like the original Twilight Imperium or Cosmic Encounter. The “narrative” was the game, and the way you told the game afterwards determined the kind of story it was.
We can contrast that with the rise of Japanese-style storytelling in the 90s. In these, you were playing a specific character who did specific things. You didn’t craft the story, you discovered it. The story had already been formed, and you were going down the path to find out what happened next. This created a bit of a rift for some people who would gravitate towards one ‘style’ of story over the other, but honestly they were both good. Japanese-style games could have much tighter narratives because the game always knew the order of the events that would happen to you, whereas American-style games were all about giving you a big sandbox with just a hint of story attached to it.
Board games have been veering into the Japanese-style of story for awhile. I kinda blame Kickstarter, since the rise of the KS-game means that more is always considered better. And being able to have a 20-mission campaign is better than a randomized setup, right? According to Gloomhaven and its 100-mission campaign… yes!
But while the designers are pushing towards longer and more elaborate stories… many of them aren’t being written by people who can actually write. The idea is good, but the execution is often lacking. Too much of Gloomhaven is binary Left-or-Right decisions with no real indication of why one is better than the other. Oathsworn has a massive campaign, but many of the story beats are almost free of player intervention (a branching narrative that always ends up at the same place, no matter what choices you make). And so on. There are exceptions: Legacy of Dragonholt is exceptionally written, and Forgotten Waters equally so, but games like that are still the exception, and they seem to be made by people who respect the craft of writing independent of the craft of game design. Very different tasks, after all.
Anyway, I have more to say, but I’ll give the topic a rest for a bit. Still so much editing to do! I’ve reached 25K words on the current draft… only 55K to go!