One of the best things about my job
is that I get to see new games come in. While RPG’s aren’t a big seller in the
market, I keep an ear and eye out for interesting ones. This week is the return
of a staple in the D&D world, Ravenloft for 5th edition. I’ve
got my copy reserved already and hoping that I can snag it to read over the
weekend. There’s some hope it’ll live up to hype and the pedigree. We’ll find
out soon enough. There’s a story or two contained within the adventure, but
it’s someone else’s story. The characters are following a script of sorts and
may not have total freedom to act. Fifteen odd years ago, this style of gaming
was almost your only option, but something interesting happened to change that
landscape. Story telling games began to make an appearance.
I should define what I mean by
story-telling – the narrative, not the mechanics are what drives the game.
Players get more input to what’s going on and even direct how events unfold.
This goes beyond rolling dice and figuring out hit or miss, save or failure. The
GM hands narrative control to someone else, letting them become both actor and
director at the same time. Recent entries such as Dungeon World, Apocalypse
World, and Fate are all good examples of this. In the case of the first two,
the GM doesn’t even roll dice. His job is to make things interesting should
things go pear shape. It becomes a collaborative effort between the people at
the table, letting them craft their own slice of the world beyond what the GM
might have set up. These games make the fiction the star of the show and that
drives the action. Three cardinal rules which come from these style of games
are: Make failure interesting, play to find out what happens, and begin/end
with fiction.
A step beyond that are games that
can be run as a single session to tell a short, very self-contained story.
Often there’s no dice rolling or GM. The randomness comes from the players and
the “rules” are more like guidelines. Examples include Once Upon A Time,
Kingdoms, Microscope, and Fiasco. I own all of these, but have yet to play the
first one yet. OUTA is a card game where everyone has a hand and tries to get
rid of them by telling story that includes elements on the cards. These can be
things such as water, large, small, castle, knights, etc… Many of the themes
adhere closely to fairy tales and the Brothers Grimm. A few of the sessions
that I’ve watched, the game’s pretty light-hearted and played for laughs. With
the right [or wrong] set of people, it could get very dark quickly. Not that
it’s a bad thing, but you do have to know your audience.
Kingdoms and Microscope fall into
the world building category; either building a history between two major events
or exploring a specific instance in time. Each presents a different way of
telling a story and can be used in conjunction with one another to drill down
or expand. They’re great for world building, to bring players into the world
and give them greater investment in what’s going on. Sure they know the beginning
and the end, but how you get there is the fun part. One of my ideas is to use
Microscope to explore the fall of humanity due to the apocalypse and what
emerges afterwards. It’s suggested that a timeline of 100-200 years between
events be laid out, which in my mind is a good stretch for a PA scenario.
Kingdom focuses on a community along with a cast of characters who act to show how the kingdom feels, how they will act, and what the consequences to the action. They confront issues [called Crossroads] which shape things
to come. It’s not as strong of a game like Microscope, but that’s more of a
preference on my part than it being a bad game.
As I wrote this, I remembered
another game in the story telling genre. The Quiet Year can be played with a
deck of playing cards and a pamphlet which explains what each card means.
Better still, you can get a set of cards that are specifically made for the
game and has the text on them. The premise is that you’re playing a village
that’s has a year before Doom comes to visit. Players make a map on the 8.5x11
sheet of paper adding 2 features each. You start in the spring and play through
the seasons. Sometime in Winter, the Doom will appear, signaling the end of the
game. Each season has 13 cards which are shuffled, drawn randomly, and then you
have two choices. One is picked and based on the village you created, adding
villagers and places or destroying them as dictated by the card. There’s some
discussion and interaction with everyone giving input. As the seasons progress,
things get worse and the events get darker. By the time winter hits, the
village is on the fast track to destruction and things are failing. When the
Doom shows up, it’s almost a mercy killing.
Last game is best described as Fargo
meets Pulp Fiction with a side of Reservoir Dogs thrown in. You know those
movies and stories that just scream about going sideways and terrible things
are going to happen due to the cluelessness and ineptitude of the characters?
That’s the premise of Fiasco. You roll a number of dice to set up the scenario
[like a bank robbery], the actors [thieves, hostages, cops], and relationships
[hated rival, love interest, daughter]. Mix together and then start the role
play. At the end of scenes, white or black markers are awarded, which tie into
the ending. If you’re lucky, your character might walk away with the loot and
the girl. Or wind up dead in the gutter, left to take the fall, or slumping
away to try again tomorrow. As long as you get too attached to the character,
there’s a lot of fun to had in seeing just hard they’ll fail. A full session
can be run in an evening and the sheet amount of scenarios [called playsets]
out there is astounding.
So if you’re looking for games that
tell stories, check out the links below and head to your local game store to
pick up a copy.
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