Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Storytelling Games

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Storytelling Games · Pick Up and Deliver

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  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorders.
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  I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  Well, good afternoon listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  It's pretty breezy and a little cloudy, but generally it's very comfortable.
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  So it's a reasonably good April day.
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  You could be raining and it's not raining, so I'm happy.
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  In my board games and literature class today, my students played some games that were focused
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  on storytelling, so I thought it would be interesting to talk a little bit about games
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  focused on storytelling.
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  I thought it'd start with my experience in role-playing games, tabletop role-playing
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  games, and then talk a little bit about the storytelling games that I have played and
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  what I think of them.
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  So start with, I've been playing role-playing games often on since I was in 10th grade.
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  In 10th grade, a buddy of mine, his cousin moved to our town and his cousin brought role-playing
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  game books with him and invited us to play them with him, and that's how I started playing
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  Dungeons and Dragons.
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  In that group, we played Dungeons and Dragons pretty regularly for several years.
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  And then in college, I not only did I play Dungeons and Dragons, but I also played the Star Wars
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  role-playing game, and it was after that that I started into other role-playing games as
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  well.
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  Since then, I haven't played very many in-person role-playing games since college.
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  I played a couple here in there in grad school, but no regular groups.
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  But I do have one friend who is a very established and committed game master, and he has several
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  times invited me to join him in online sort of Zoom-based games, meeting weekly or bi-weekly.
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  And so over the years, I have played in three relatively long campaigns with him, or two
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  relatively long ones, and one that was slightly shorter.
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  The first long one was a game of continuum.
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  Continuum is a time-travel role-playing game that's really good.
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  There's some really complex sort of crunchy stuff in it, but very entertaining game about
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  being a time traveler.
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  And then for a short while, that game went for a while, but then it sort of dissolved.
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  Then for a short while, we were playing a game of gum shoe using Star Wars dice and the
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  Warhammer 40,000 setting.
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  It was a very complicated homebrew that was pretty fun, but that game only lasted about a
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  year, I think, maybe a little less than a year.
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  The continuum game went maybe three or four years.
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  And then most recently, with that same group I've been participating in a game of amber,
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  the Diceless Role-Playing Game, based on the Rogers and the Las Vegas novels.
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  And we've been playing that game for three years or so.
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  And that one is interesting, I'm playing it with my GM, I'm his name is Rolfe, and a couple
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  of his friends that live in the Seattle area.
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  And then one friend who lives, I believe in Florida and me, I live in Chicago.
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  So we've got three different time zones represented in the game.
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  We usually start about nine o'clock central time, and I log off about midnight, but they usually
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  play at least one or two hours beyond when I play.
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  So that's kind of the arc of my role-playing experience.
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  I've also played a little bit of paranoia as well.
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  So those are the games that I've played as tabletop role-playing games.
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  So other than the online play in Zoom or before that Skype, previous to that, I would,
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  I have, or alongside that, I have played some short form role-playing games in a couple
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  different forms.
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  So I wanted to talk about those four different role-playing games or storytelling focus games
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  that I've played, actually five, and what they're like.
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  I'm going to start with the most gamified ones and work my way toward the least gamified
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  ones.
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  So I would say the most gamified one is that I've played is once upon a time.
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  Once upon a time is a storytelling card game in which you are telling a story collaboratively,
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  but you're trying to work in in a germane way the elements of your cards that you have.
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  So in the game you have a bunch of cards, and those cards have different fairy tale elements
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  on them.
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  And when it's your turn, you add to the story that's being told in a way that blends the
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  elements you have on your cards into the story.
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  And you score those cards when you blend them into the story.
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  And the goal is to use up all your cards.
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  That's kind of it.
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  I played this game a few times.
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  I remember thinking it was fine, but ultimately I think the game element, the ability to
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  wander the way that you win, got in the way of the storytelling that the desire to get
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  your cards in made sense, but also drove you to tell your story quickly in a way that fit
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  the rules, but also got your hands, cards out of your hands.
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  So like ultimately I played it a few times, but I haven't played it in a long time.
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  And part because I don't like the mechanism that drives the storytelling.
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  The next one that is maybe a more effective way of gamifying the different pieces that
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  you might have is death machine, which is a storytelling game of creative assassination.
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  This is a game I played a few times when it came out.
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  It has since left my collection some time ago, but the premise is that we live in a world
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  where everyone can use this machine that's relatively easy to access and it will tell
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  you how you're going to die.
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  I think as it doesn't tell you when and it tells you sort of the way that the oracle of
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  delifier would tell you things.
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  It sometimes is straightforward, but usually it's a skew in a way that's misleading.
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  For example, one of the examples they give in the rules booklet is for example you might
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  get a card that says boating accident as the way that you die and then you end up dying
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  when a car towing a boat, the boat comes off the trailer and crashes into your car and
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  kills you.
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  So that's the sort of thing that the machine could do.
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  And the premise is that we are hitmen who have been hired to kill someone and we know what
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  the machine said about how that person will die and so we have to come up with an assassination
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  that will make their card come true because if you try to kill someone and you disregard
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  what the card says, you will just fail to kill them.
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  It won't work.
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  The destiny of the universe will get in the way.
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  So that is a sort of storytelling game that I've played and I thought it was fun, but
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  I don't know, almost nobody else did.
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  So again, that went, that left my collection some time ago.
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  I have two other games that come in boxes that have a kind of gamified element.
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  One of them I believe I talked about here on the podcast some time ago.
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  This is Alice is missing.
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  Alice is missing is a storytelling game, which is about a bunch of high schoolers who have
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  discovered that their friend Alice is missing.
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  The weird part or interesting part about this game is when you play it, you play it silently.
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  So everybody has each other's phones and you play by texting one another from your phones
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  and that's the way that you communicate for the game.
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  So the idea is that you are telling things about what's happening, you're sharing information
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  about what's going on.
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  In the game, you each have information about Alice, some things that are well known, some
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  things that you suspect, some things that are hidden and over the course of the game you're
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  going to reveal some of those to other players and you're going to converse with other
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  players about them and so on and so on.
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  This game is pretty interesting, it's a little weird and I played it once but I don't think
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  I need to play it again.
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  I don't really like the texting angle of it because you really don't spend that much
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  time actually talking to each other instead you spend your time trying to text, which
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  just doesn't feel the same.
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  There also was like sort of at the climax, there was this weird ding-monger where it felt
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  like we wanted to make stuff happen and the game doesn't really have an engine to do that
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  very well and so the end of the game was for us, not great.
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  But that's Alice is missing a game that comes in a box and doesn't have a GM.
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  A better storytelling game, one that's come out in two different editions now is Fiasco.
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  Fiasco originally was a game that came in a book and then you could download these or buy
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  these play sets that had information and rolling tables and then the more recent edition
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  of Fiasco uses cards to manage everything and the play sets come in little decks of cards.
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  The nice thing about the play sets in the new edition is that they're a little bit more
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  carefully managed.
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  The downside is it's harder to share your own play sets because they're cards and you have
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  to figure out, you have to actually make the cards, either make them or print them or buy
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  them.
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  So the form factor is a little harder to do home-brew stuff with.
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  It's a little less of a role-playing game and more of a tabletop storytelling game.
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  If you haven't played Fiasco, the premise is that you are telling a story similar to Fiasco
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  movies.
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  A Fiasco movie is something like Fargo is probably the best example of it.
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  It's like a bunch of well-meaning dimwits who maybe make some bad choices but then they have
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  also bad luck and the bad choices plus the bad luck lead to terrible outcomes for everybody.
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  The way that Fiasco works, I really like the setup system where you use these cards to
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  establish relationships between the different players without even having established the
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  characters yet.
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  Your characters emerge out of the relationships with the other players.
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  Works really well and provides for a great element of interactivity that makes for good storytelling.
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  The game also has a really good system of nudging the story.
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  I like the way that everybody works together to tell the tale and the tales are interactive
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  in that on your turn you get to tell part of the story and you can either set up the scene
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  that you're going to tell in which case the other players get to collaborate and decide does
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  the scene end good for your character or badly for your character or you can say I want the
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  scene between these two characters and the other players set up what the scene is and then
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  you get to decide whether it ends well or ends badly for your character.
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  So you get some guidance but not or some control but not 100% control.
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  I like that mix of different elements that makes for the story in Fiasco.
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  Fiasco is great.
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  And then so Fiasco and once upon a time the storytelling game and death machine are all
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  games where the cards sort of drive the storytelling elements.
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  I did want to talk about analysis missing.
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  I did want to talk about two more games that are more role-playing, centric.
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  They do have some mechanism system but it's very much about telling stories.
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  This is a quiet year and microscope.
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  A quiet year and microscope are both indie RPGs and you acquire them by purchasing a PDF.
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  I mean they do have printed books as well but I've always just had the I bought the PDFs
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  and what you get or what you do in these games is there's a system that interacts and
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  a mechanism that the players collaborate around that results in storytelling opportunities.
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  In microscope you're working together to establish some ideas about a place and then
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  you are telling stories about that place at varying degrees of zoomed in or zoomed out
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  of focus so it might be the story of a town and at some points you're telling a story about
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  the geological evolution of the ground under the town for the 100,000 years.
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  In other points you might be telling the story of an afternoon between two people in the
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  town.
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  The idea is that over time you have come up with a series of summaries of what's going
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  on in the town and you sort of play out, you fill in different gaps between these elements
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  as you play.
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  It's a collaborative storytelling game because no player has individual ownership of
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  particular characters or particular plot points.
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  Instead you're all working together to tell the story.
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  It's very collaborative.
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  The other story, the other game that has a similar feel to that is a quiet year.
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  In a quiet year you're all collaborating on a map and the map includes time-based elements
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  and you're telling stories about what's going on in your community over the course of
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  a year and the premise is it's supposed to apocalypse a community where there has been
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  some terrible times.
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  You've reached a point of relative peace and prosperity but in a year something bad is
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  coming again.
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  So what you're doing is you're telling the story of the year in between one calamity
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  and another.
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  It's a really interesting game while worth trying.
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  So I don't play these games as much as I would like to.
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  I introduce them to students but myself I don't get to play them but I wish I would.
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  So maybe I'm going to make some effort in the next year to play some more storytelling
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  focused games.
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  I think that would be a lot of fun and I would like to do that.
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  So long those lines.
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  What storytelling games do you like?
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  Head over to Board Game Geek, Guild 3269 and share the games that you like to play over
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  there.
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  I'd love to hear what they are.
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  In the meantime thanks for joining me on my walk today.
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  I hope your next walk.
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  is as pleasant as mine was.
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  Bye bye.
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  [Music]
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  Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.
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  [Music]
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  (gentle music)