"In a story game, a player’s ability to affect what happens in the game is not dependent on their character’s fictional ability to do those things." - Ben Robbins
Story games are a form of roleplaying game where the narrative takes greater importance than the mechanics of the gameplay, whether those mechanics govern physical (combat) or social interactions between players. The end state for a story game, unlike more traditional roleplaying games is having experienced an engaging story, not having "won", however that may occur. I find this kind of experience extremely interesting when considering the possibilities for its use, particularly in the leadership training space.
Being quite a visual person, the question that popped into my head was: what shape do stories take and how can I take that storyscape, which exists within the realm of language, and see it grow in front of me?
Being quite a visual person, the question that popped into my head was: what shape do stories take and how can I take that storyscape, which exists within the realm of language, and see it grow in front of me?
Case Study - Microscope
Microscope is a story game by Ben Robbins where you create a history with your friends. I think it's a great place to start looking at how stories take shape, because of the mechanics it uses to visualise the fractal (non-chronological) formation of a history. Microscope uses index cards to represent different lengths of time during the history that you are making. |
The different lengths of history, in order of increasing specificity are periods, events and scenes. Their titles are rather self explanatory. Periods are relatively large chunks of time that can span anywhere between several months to hundreds of years. Events occur within periods and scenes occur within events, with each subsequent tier of history becoming (generally) smaller in scope, both in space and time. You, as players create these chunks of history by deciding what you want them to be, and obviously, you cannot create an event or scene, without the associated period or event, respectively, present on the table.
Period: Chaos reigns across the planet as magic users go mad.
Event: A mass, simultaneous assassination plot is executed across the world, targeting members of the ancient line of dragon-kings.
Scene: An assassin known as Tarn hides in the chambers of the Crown-Prince, awaiting his return. He has been ordered to make the death look like a suicide, from the Prince's grief over the death of his best friend.
Another way you can influence the history is by highlighting a person, object or idea as a legacy. Legacies can be called upon at any time during the history being created, even in periods before the legacy itself was supposedly created.
Legacy: The assassin Tarn, altered by the outburst of magic from the Prince, is now unable to die.
So, what Microscope does is setup a great way to visually organise different periods within the timeline of events for a narrative, as well as setting up themes (legacies) to span across these events. I have played Microscope a few times and the greatest problem that I find we have is trying to create periods, that top level historical chunk. I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, my friends and I are not used to this kind of improv and so some kind of tool may be useful to help us with determining the what during our turn. Secondly, we struggle to find ways to connect these whats together across the history, which brings me to my next case study.
Case Study - Writer's Dice
Writer's Dice are set of six-sided dice created by Daniel Solis. If you'd like an explanation of how they work, I think Daniel's explanation (in the video below) is best. As to how it helps... the words on each side of the dice are connectors helping you to connect one event or set of events to the next or one character to another. |
This is something I plan to playtest at the next one of my gaming sessions. Play Microscope with some Writer's Dice and possibly have some cards that can be drawn from a deck to help spark creativity and I'll tell you how it all went afterwards.
In the meantime, I have a question for you. What do stories look like for you?
In the meantime, I have a question for you. What do stories look like for you?