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Stories Adapted to Board Games · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as
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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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  The temperature is in the high 70s.
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  So I've taken off my sweater.
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  I'm just wearing a t-shirt.
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  I'm going to follow that walk home and I want to talk to you about board games.
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  I teach a class called Board Games and Literature in which we explore how board games tell stories
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  and talk about storytelling in different literary forms and how board games can operate
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  as a literary form and how they generate different story elements and so on.
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  It's a fun class and we have a good time playing different games and exploring different
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  things that happen in the stories and so on.
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  Today was the last day of the semester so it was nice to hear from the students what
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  worked and what didn't work.
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  There was a fair amount of interesting conversation about what we're doing and what's going
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  on and generally I enjoyed myself.
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  One of the projects that I have the students do is imagine an adaptation of a story into
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  a board game.
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  Now this semester I had a problem where I did not specify that it could not be a story
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  from a game.
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  It had to be a story from a linear narrative medium like a book or a film or a television
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  show because I want them to think about how to adapt the story into game elements and if
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  you're adapting a game it's already in, it's already being told with game elements so
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  that part doesn't work.
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  But that's a note for future versions of this class.
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  But I wanted to talk today about the idea of adapting stories into board games and where
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  I've seen success and where I've seen things come up short as we think about how those
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  adaptations work.
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  So one of the things I asked my students to think about which is the same approach I would
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  take where I'd given a property and asked to adapt it is to first identify the key elements
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  from that story that make that story unique or interesting or compelling for the audience.
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  Because I think that the board game adaptations that are successful in adapting a story from
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  one medium to another, the trans-mediated adaptations to use Paul Booth language from game
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  play are the ways that the designer captures the feeling of the story in the play of the
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  game.
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  So an interesting challenge and I think there are two ways that designers approach the task.
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  One way is to adapt the experience of the story such that you get to live the story.
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  The advantage of that is that it buys entirely very strongly into the nostalgia and the pleasure
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  that people have of that story.
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  If you are a fan of a story and when you play the game you get to act out the story, that's
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  really fun.
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  Very engaging really fits kind of what you want when you go to play a game that's based
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  on a story.
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  At the same time there is very little room for surprise.
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  If you're adapting a story then you know what happens and the evolution of the story beats
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  are limited because it's not fun to visit your favorite story and have it end wrong.
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  I will use an example here, two versions of this kind of adaptation, one, a couple that
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  I think work well and then one that doesn't.
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  I will say the two that I think work well but within limits are the jaws board game and
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  the goonies never say die.
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  Both jaws and goonies never say die capture the feeling of the source movies with jaws.
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  The feeling the movie is in two parts right the first half is the shark hunting people in
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  amity and the decision being made by the town about how to hunt the shark and then the second
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  half is a battle between the shark and the people on the boat.
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  This is perfectly captured in the game.
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  The first half of the game the shark is playing a hidden movement game where it's moving around
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  trying to eat people and the players are trying to find the shark and hunt it enough that
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  they can then move on to the second half of the battle.
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  Unlike the movie of course the shark can win and that's part of what makes the game interesting
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  is the shark could win or the shark might not win.
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  And unlike the but like the movie they capture a lot of the feeling of it.
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  The graphic design in the game draws on the graphic design from the movie.
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  They use the same font they use for the credits in the movie to do the font design of the cards
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  and other things in the game.
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  The game takes the movie takes place in the 70s and a lot of the style of the game the
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  visual style matches 1970s aesthetics.
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  Of course the second half of the game where the humans in the shark are battling.
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  It captures that idea of the humans are doing everything they can to fight the shark
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  but the shark seems preternaturally or almost supernaturally powerful and their odds of defeating
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  it continue to go down as the shark challenges them in various ways.
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  It's a really good adaptation of what happens in the movie and the book but it also leaves
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  room open for the shark to win it leaves tension there in a way that the movie had tension.
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  Although I think anybody watching it knows the shark isn't going to win at the end but
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  in the game the shark could.
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  So that's a really good example of taking these precise elements from the movie that make
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  the movie enjoyable to watch that represent the sort of key elements of the story and bringing
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  them into the story of the game.
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  I will point to another adaptation that I think doesn't succeed that well and this is
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  back to the future and adventure in time.
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  Pretty sure I have the subtitle right there.
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  Back to the future and adventure in time is by a pair of designers that I really like.
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  Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback.
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  It was a really interesting multi-use card game that has the theme of the back to the
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  future story but very quickly loses the essence of the story in favor of the interesting
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  game mechanisms.
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  They are really interesting game mechanisms.
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  In back to the future and adventure in time you are moving back and forth between 1955
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  1985 and 2015 and in those jumps you are playing different cards that give you different,
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  they're solving different problems or puzzles and if you succeed in solving the right ones
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  then you get some points and you're trying to complete a group of different problems
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  that will sort of solve the time paradox that is at the heart of particularly the second
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  movie I think.
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  Although I'm trying to remember if you get to go back to 1855 or not or if it's just
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  55/85/85/2015.
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  It might be 1885/55/2015.
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  You might not go to the 1980s as I think about it.
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  But either way, at the heart of the game is not telling the story of back to the future.
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  It's playing this really interesting and frankly well designed multi-use card puzzle game
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  with the back to the future theme on it.
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  And I think that's why ultimately a lot of the reviews of the game were not very good
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  because what people wanted was something like what happens in jaws.
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  I will say though the game that comes closest to that as far as I'm concerned is the back
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  to the future game made by FUNCO that's not the dice game.
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  So there's three back to the future games that I'm aware of.
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  The dice game is a pretty close adaptation of the back to the future story.
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  You're trying to complete the story beats through various cooperative mechanisms while
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  trying to keep BIF at bay.
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  It works pretty well but it doesn't really capture that feeling the way that I would say
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  jaws does.
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  So that is one approach to adapting a story is having the players engage with the story
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  itself and try to replicate it in various ways.
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  And again this is this can succeed well and can miss sometimes.
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  You can also do this where you're adapting a game story but kind of filing the serial numbers
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  off.
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  A good example of this would be the Slasher movie game last Friday in which you're basically
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  playing Friday the 13th of the game in which you're basically playing Friday the 13th
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  of the game.
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  And in that one players are one player is the Mask Killer, it's Jason.
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  And the other players are the camp counselors.
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  And the whole thing is during the day games played in four phases.
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  During the day the Mask Killer is dangerous and during the night the Mask Killer is dangerous
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  and the camp counselors are not.
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  And during the day the camp counselors are hunting the Mask Killer.
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  So there's this back and forth that works pretty well.
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  But there is another approach to adapting a story into board game form.
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  And this is to take the setting of the story and make a board game from it without necessarily
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  adapting the story itself.
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  A couple examples of this that I would point to, there's the Red Rising board game.
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  There is the recently released not Stormlight Archive, the Brandon Sanderson one about eating
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  metal and doing magic for some reason not remembering the name of right now.
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  And there's the Jeff Kengelstein's The Expans board game which is a card-driven game in the
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  style of Twilight's struggle but it takes place in the Expans universe.
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  And then there is Game of Thrones the board game.
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  In each of these the world of the story is constructed as an environment in which to play
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  a game that evokes the kinds of events that the stories enact but doesn't lock players
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  into reenacting the narrative of those stories.
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  And I think that engaging with this kind of world building adaptation is an interesting
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  follow up to the kinds of storytelling that are done in the direct adaptation.
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  I think usually these are better adaptations if people are interested in the world building
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  of the worlds they're exploring.
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  For example a Game of Thrones works really well because the world building of the different
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  families and the different characters fits the kind of game that you're playing, the
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  area control troops on a map game.
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  But you aren't locked into the individual story arc of the Rise and Fall of House Baratheon
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  and the Rise and Fall of House Stark and the way that those particular plot elements
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  play out in the novels or the TV show Game of Thrones.
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  Instead the setup works really well.
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  It captures those feelings of allegiance to story but then allows for players to sort
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  of think through or play out the different possibilities within the storyline.
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  I would say games that do that well are games that set up that world really well.
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  I think the Expans is one that didn't work so well for me but it might just be how well
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  do you know the world?
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  Like I thought the Expans was an interesting game but the events were less compelling to
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  me maybe than some of the things that happen in the other world building story type situations.
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  And then another approach or another one that works I think really well is what you'd
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  call the story with the serial numbers filed off.
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  You're telling a story that's very similar to the kinds of stories being told in these
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  bigger narratives but without the specific narratives.
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  A great example would be a touch of evil which I often describe to people as Johnny Depp's
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  Sleepy Hollow game movie as a board game.
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  Or another example would be Obsession which is kind of like playing Pride and Prejudice
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  as a board game.
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  It evokes the story, the type of story that's told in these narratives but without the direct
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  licensing.
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  And again I think how well this works depends on how good a job the designers do of building
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  the world that people are playing in.
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  Now I will fully point to the fact that Paul Booth and a number of other game scholars
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  have explored this territory before.
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  I'm kind of walking the same path they did but I think it's interesting to think through
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  it yourself and kind of echo the kinds of knowledge that other people have explored
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  when you're thinking through how these ideas function.
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  I will put some links to other people who have written about this sort of thing in the
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  show notes but hopefully you found a meditation on this concept interesting and I'd love to
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  hear your thoughts on it.
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  You can share those thoughts over on board game geek and guild 3269 where I'd be happy to
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  hear them.
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  You can reach out to me on board game geek.
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  Wombat 929 is my username there.
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  I'd love to hear from you.
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  You can also send me a direct mail message by email to the email address branded in AdWrattlebox
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  games.
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  Well thanks for joining me on my walk today.
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  I hope your next walk is as follows in this line walk.
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  Bye bye.
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