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Story in Games · Pick Up and Deliver

• Pick Up & Deliver 820: Story in Games Transcript Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step out for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. [opening music] Well greetings, listener. It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. And by lovely I mean pretty overcast, but a nice temperature. I'm taking a walk home from the library, having just returned a few things. I'm going to stop by a couple free libraries and see what's there, because this is a podcast where I'm out walking around. I'm going to tell you what's in the free in the free library. And if I take anything. Uh, and then I am going to talk a little bit about some games. So I was having a chat with a friend of mine who teaches a class on games at DePaul, and he was talking about games where the mechanism ties to the narrative of the game. And that got me thinking, too. We were talking about what games do that well, and it got me thinking about story generally in games. So without even looking to see whether this is a subject I've covered before, I thought I would talk to you a little bit today about story in games. I thought of five different ways that I have here, five different ways that story and game interact. As we're talking about games. So let's jump into it. Let's start with the place that I see story. The most obvious place that I think story emerges in games are in games with a narrative focus. There are games where the story is the game. What you're doing in the game is navigating a set story, and the game part of it is exploring that story, trying to find your way through it, and often figure out what the story is telling you, and some of the games that will mean that the story is revealing pieces of a mystery, and your goal is to solve that mystery. An example of this would be Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, which is essentially a Sherlock Holmes story repackaged into a mystery. Although they write original stories, they don't use the actual Sherlock Holmes stories, but it functions as a mystery dispenser dispensing device. When you play Sherlock Holmes consulting detective, you are going from place to place, and then you're reading entries in a book saying, what happened there? Uh, the same thing goes for Chronicles of Crime, where the story in Chronicles of Crime emerges through interviews with witnesses, and you uncover bits of the story that way. We also see this in detective, a modern crime story where you uncover bits of the story through interviews with witnesses, through reading documents, through exploring on the internet. Even sometimes in all of these cases, these are games where the story exists, and the game involves finding ways to use the mechanisms of the game to uncover pieces of the story. Now, as a game designer, this feels an interesting challenge. How do I make the revelations of the game elements interesting? And also, how do I make it make the players feel like they have agency when the story exists in its final form already? Now, one way, of course, would be to have the story the players be able to influence what happens in the game. Something like vantage does that by having you interact with cards and your interactions with the cards. Shape what kinds of things you might find in the story. I may, it turns out I might not know where the where the Little Free Library is. I thought there was one on this route. I haven't seen it yet. Oops. So how the players interact with the game might change the order or the types of established story that they encounter. So that's one way for a game that has a narrative focus. There could also be a random emergence of a story, which I will call narrative moments. Games with narrative moments often have a variety of different elements that shape when those moments emerge and what we get from those moments. Some examples would be A Touch of Evil has event cards that you draw and item cards that you draw that I'll give you narrative elements. Uh. Betrayal at House on the Hill uses the revelation narrative elements again through these cards to give you story moments as the story goes along. The advantage to doing this, obviously, is that there's more variety. The game isn't set the same. You can replay it, of course. The more you play it, the more common it gets, right? So if you've played a lot of betrayal at House on the Hill, those cards that you draw that have events happening, well, you've seen them all before. So eventually it's oh, it's that one where the dog bites you and runs away. So that is one of the downsides to that kind of storytelling is that it loses some of its novelty through familiarity. On the plus side, like I said, the game, the games are more replayable. The. So those two are, I think, the most standard ways that people see narrative emerging in board games. There are three other ways that I see narrative emerging that I want to call out here and I think are maybe more interested. The first one is the one that got me thinking about this topic to begin with, really, was I was thinking about how to talk about Wilmot's warehouse. Wilmot's warehouse is a really interesting cooperative game where you as a group are putting a bunch of items in a warehouse, and then later you have to remember where you put those items. And so what happens is as the items come out, these are kind of cards with sort of Mondrian style abstract shapes that have vague resemblance to things, but usually have at least a couple different things you could interpret them as. So what happens is when these cards come out, you're going to place them in the warehouse. And as a group, you are going to tell a story of some sort about what's going on in that picture and why it is where it is in the warehouse. And the nice thing about that is that then when when people come to pick up items later as a group, you remember where things are because you said why they were where they were in the warehouse. It's an interesting balance to walk that I find particularly amusing. Interesting. So I was trying to think about other games that have player generated narrative moments like that. There are some small ones, like in cartographers, you get to name the land that you're in and give yourself a title. That's interesting. All right. We're at the first little free library that I was going to stop by today. We've got Jonathan Van Ness over the top. Got a book about running the Appalachian Trail. Got some travel books about Scotland. Nothing that really Charlie Wilson's War. That might be a book that Jeffrey Archer. Sins of the Jeffrey Archer. I don't think I'm going to. But that was fun. So yeah, games where the players create narrative moments that become things for other players is pretty interesting, but relatively uncommon in in board games and role playing games. This happens all the time. And I would say in role playing games is probably the most common place I've encountered it. Something like the Ben Robbins game microscope or Kingdoms, where players actually take turns telling stories, and then those stories that they've been telling are what create the story experience that the players have. I like those games, and that's an interesting opportunity for players to experience those. But generally, I would say there aren't that many player generated story moments in most games. So the last two, I think are among my favorite because when they work well, they work really, really well. The first of these is mechanical moments. Mechanical moments are what my friend was talking about when he wanted. He wanted me to think about games where the mechanisms and the story are tightly intertwined is games where moments where something happens in the game because of the mechanisms, and it creates a story that goes with it. A simple example would be a war game like risk. When a large army goes up against a small army, and the person playing the small army just has several good rolls and they kind of destroy the large army. A narrative emerges there about the resiliency of the small army against the large one. That then becomes exciting. People tell that story in dramatic and exciting ways. The betting games, hot streak and ready set Bet have that narrative built in mechanically, right? There's this mechanical narrative that emerges as you're rolling the dice and the the horses are running or the mascots are running, but a narrative emerges as those mechanics trigger that lead to hilarious stories about the incompetent hot dog or the the horse who made it almost to the finish line and then just stopped and never moved again as other horses raced past it. Uh, that sort of thing is delightful, and I really like when a game generates those narrative moments through its interactions, because the feeling of playing the game gets so robust in that experience. All right. Checking out this other little library. We've got an Anne Lamott book, some John Sanford, a John Cheever novel, the Wapshott Chronicle. Uh, looks a little probably great, but they got truly, madly guilty. A merry little bookshop looks fun. I'm gonna take that. A Merry Little Bookshop by Allie Brady. I have taken see if Jenny likes it. If she doesn't want it, I'll bring it back tomorrow. But a game where the mechanisms feel connected to the narrative that emerges in the gameplay is one of my favorites. Like in dungeon, Dungeon pets is a game that's very good at this, where there are events that happen in dungeon pets that feel like they're telling the story of dungeon pets. You have a character who you have one of the creatures who. You keep drawing poop cards for them, and so they poop a lot. And then one of the Dungeon Lords that shows up wants to buy a creature that poops a lot. And it feels like there's a hilarious connection between those two. It's mechanical as well. Like you get points for meeting the needs of that character by making that creature poop a lot. But it's also very funny just to have that connection work. It's a delight. The other game where I would say the mechanisms feel like they're really tying into the narrative is one that I talk about too much on this podcast, and that is a study in Emerald. In a study in Emerald, the mechanisms are kind of out of control. They're all over the place. They're a little confusing. So the mechanical experience of playing that game feels a little unhinged. And of course, the game is about people who inadvertently or vertently, I guess, or advertently have to interact with elder gods of the Cthulhu universe and thus find themselves slowly going mad. And so a game where the rules make you feel a little discombobulated. It's pretty entertaining that way. Another game that does that pretty well is the Rob game in the Mountains of Madness or the Mountains of Madness, which is a cooperative game about taking exploration up a mountain. But you get these cards that make you act out in ways sort of a meta game. It makes you act out among the other players and interferes with how you play the game, as a way of representing the increasing madness of your entire party. That's happening as you approach these otherworldly and terrifying artifacts and objects. And finally, I really like a game where the narrative of the game is carefully tied into the rules of the game. One I firmly agree with Richard Rado Ham when he says that the first thing a rule should rule book should do is tell me who I am, who I am, and what I'm doing in the world of the game. What is going on in the world of the game and why am I doing. I think that's really important. And I really like when a game design, when a rule book tells me that because it helps me understand everything else that happens when I'm playing Hans of Teutonia, why do I want to build these trading routes? Well, I'm a merchant in medieval Germany and I want to make the most money. Okay, these are my trading offices, right? In anachronism. Why do I want to get all these people to come live on my compound? Well, because I'm trying to save them and having more people allows my compound to function better. Okay. You know, giving a narrative purpose to what we're doing helps then explain the rules that are mostly mechanical. And it's that narrative thread that makes mechanical rules more understandable that I really, really appreciate. I love when a game understands the connection, the importance of the connection between those two things and when it dives into it. So Dungeon Petz is my favorite example from that perspective as well. Because in Dungeon Petz, the characters or the action that you're doing is intimately related to the activities of the narrative throughout the game. You are doing things to raise these creatures and sell them to Dungeon Lords. And all of the things the game has you do are tied intimately to that theme, which is part of why I think the game endures even though it's pretty old by today's popular game standards. I will say also Vlada Salvato better than anyone else I know, writes the rule book in a tone that helps you understand the rules and remember them with also with a little humor. There's a lot of board games where the rule book having humor gets in the way. Several leverages the value of narrative and story to help us understand what's happening. I know I've told the story before, but I'm telling it again here. For those of you new to the pod. My favorite rule in all of board games is a mechanical housekeeping rule from Dungeon Pets. There's a market where you can buy baby monsters that you're going to raise. They are one, two, and three years old in the market in between rounds. If there are any monsters still in the three year old pen, those monsters age out. And in the rule book, it says those monsters are sent to live. Live out a happy days on a farm. And then underneath that, it says in a completely unrelated rule, add one meat to the meat market. Now, this is a very funny way of describing a kind of dark joke, but also the narrative there is so tight and funny, darkly funny, but so tight that I've never once forgotten to do that part because I'm thinking, oh, hahaha, I remember that joke. And then oh yeah, so I got to put this meat over here. It works really well. It's very compelling. Sad, of course, but funny. And most importantly, very effective. Tie of narrative or story to game. So in that regard, friends, what stories and games do you think tie really well together? Head over to BoardGameGeek Guild 3269 and share your thoughts on that there. I'd love to hear them. You can reach me. Wombat929 is my username on boardgamegeek, or you can send me an email Brendan at rattlebox games, which I check occasionally, but I want to say thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine was. Bye bye. [ closing music ] Brought to you by Rattlebox games.