Measuring the experience

I've been poking around at "story-games" recently. This is a relatively new, relatively indie sub-category of role playing games that have popped up. In a nut shell, the crux of these games is about leveling up or churning stats, but instead focus on the creation of a good story, often without a game master running things. In a way, these are more like improv tools or things to break writer's block than games.

And that's what I'm finding appealing about them.

For the most part, board and card games are about following rules to "win the game." The thematic experience is usually there more to explain why you are doing things, but usually have very little "feel" of doing those things. It's about some combination of luck and the skill in finding efficiencies with in the rules. While those can be great experiences, or awful, to me there seems to be very little to walk away from the table aside from, "here's that great move that I pulled off to win the game."

I'm at the point now where I feel like I want something more than just following the path to the greatest amount of points. I'd like there to be some other attachment to the "narrative" of the game; I want the experience to more of an experience than just a race. These games are more about cerebral machinations, while I'm looking for more emotional and narrative connections.

*****

One of the more talked about games from the last year or so is Train. It's a game with a trick ending, a game that the designer claims to have an emotional appeal to those who played it, and even deciding not to play it is playing it. A lot of her discussions on the game seem like far-reaching "artistic vision" kind of stuff to me, but hey, everyone has to have a world view of their own stuff, I guess. There is nothing about the actual game system itself that stirs the emotions...just the tacked on theme of one of the most painful events of human history. Then again, it's kind of nebulous what the game actually is, given that she apparently she refuses to release the rules and the card data for review. In other words, the theme needs to be experienced for the emotional impact. Her other projects are also about emotionally heart breaking themes of human doing other humans wrong in grand ways. I'd be interested in seeing if she could capture the same type of emotional responses by not themeing a game around some terrible historical tragedy.

On the other hand...

I do think that they are good art pieces; and probably better than most mass produced games, from what little one can discern about them from afar. They get people talking about things in constructive ways.

Why I bring this up is the one unique thing I've found about Train from a rules standpoint is this: apparently the games doesn't describe a win condition. There is no mention of an ultimate goal with which you are striving for. Which is pretty powerful stuff. Here's why:

Without a known win condition, the player is left to determine his own experience with the game. It's not about optimizing moves better than the other players, it's about optimizing your turns in such a way to gain the best experience that you, yourself have created as a goal. And I can change that goal on a whim. It's about the experience.

Story games seem offer this kind of open-ended structure from a different angle; it's about the story that's created, the travel on the road, the experience of getting the end. The winning is in the creation of a story that is uniquely yours.

*****

Of course, with all that said, the one game that has really struck a chord in me is Fiasco. It's a game where the initial setup of the game is creating the relationship between the other player...then you fill in the blanks about your character. After that, you take turns creating a twisted little story of desperate people doing things that they shouldn't be doing, and things spiral out of control.

From a design standpoint, it's a simple game, but there's some really interesting mechanics in play. The create-the-relationships, not the character thing, as mentioned above is pretty brilliant. It allows for easy "change your locations" scenarios by simply using a few different charts. If you poke around on their website, you can see that they come out with a new "playset" every month, around a different location, era, or theme.

There's also mechanic of pulling dice from a central pool which is more fun that it should be that determines the relationship details, and if a character in a story is having good or bad outcomes.

It's worth a read of the rules to understand what is going on, and how easy it is for players to create their own messed up worlds. And to use as inspiration for other things.

Board Game Narratives, part three

And so, begins part 3 of Board Game Narrative Stuff. Once again, I lead with the following disclaimer:

It should be noted that I’m just collecting random thoughts on this subject. Various thoughts as described herein probably have many fallacies when viewed through the lens of different types of game, and I'm sure that anyone could find a particular game that refutes any thesis that I'm providing (heck, I can do that on my own).

Part 1 can be found by clicking on this link.
Part 2 can be found by clicking on this link.

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CHARACTER VERSUS OVERLORD
As a subset of the theme, the player should be defined as a character within the world the game is being modeled on. This does not necessarily mean the player is given a character to play (even though that is often the case), but somehow, the player has tangible understanding of the world, and actions naturally make sense through the game rules and whatever results from those actions make tangible sense. The player becomes a living component within the game world, and is not simply an overlord over a game board shuffling pieces about.

Most board games put the player into the position of the overlord; here a player has complete control over his world; components always follow at his command, randomness is often derided as something that can ruin good strategy, and the players simply get more powerful over time. The character model suggest a different world, where the world doesn’t conform to the whim of the player, and can lash out in unexpected ways back at the player. It’s a world where the players try to gain control, but the world is a slippery beast, and the player can fall down just as often as he climbs up in power and control.

Trading card games are interesting to look at in this view. The basic structure of a single game can be considered to follow the overlord model, in that you are simply gaining the ability to play with stronger cards as the game goes on. But the meta-game of deck building follows the character model. As you are trying to gain some sort of control over the randomness of the shuffle, and whatever other player you might face off against.

Additionally in regards to TCGs, there’s a sense of having some skin in the game; it’s not just a set of components you are playing with, as these are components that you’ve personally chosen. You’ve created this character,as represented by your chosen cards, by yourself (within the restrictions of the game world). There’s going to be at least a little emotional relationship to those little slab of cardboard, due to the amount of control that you are trying to influence over the game world in which the rules preside.

A lot can be said for Magic: The Gathering with regards to TCGs, but Jyhad: The Eternal Struggle (of course it’s been renamed to Vampire for a while), is an even better game, I feel (even though it runs a bit too long for my short-attention-span life). Not only are you playing with the creatures and things that you’ve decided to have, it takes your life points to gain control of them; the more control over the game you want, the weaker you become; your ties to the game world and a component in that world is much stronger.

STATUS ACQUISITION
What other traits can be found that helps to define a character different than an overlord? Again, looking at Tales of the Arabian Nights for inspiration, we can find that game's system of statuses (stati?) worthwhile. You can further breakdown the difference based on how abilities and statuses are collected and affected to the player. Each of these abilities can be considered to be a different game status, which regards to how the player interprets, or follows certain rules. In overlord situations, the player is the controlling entity over various components in the world, buildings up “engines.” These engines eventually lead to some critical mass where the player collects enough victory points with which to win the game.

In the case of the engines, each component part is an individual status. But there’s a few important caveats with this. One, in the overlord situation, the player quite often almost has full control over the status components he is collecting or building, carefully piecing together a puzzle that he hopes will fit the best. Secondly, and more importantly, the statuses are pretty much NEVER bad. They are all finely tuned cogs in a smooth running machine. Each status is working in the favor of the player toward his defined goal.

In the case of the character, the statuses that are collected by the player can be random, and almost always include not only helpful bits, but also negatives as well. And statuses are lost and gained. A character evolves by battling to keep his good statuses and somehow removing, or attempting to downplay, the negatives; an overlord just keeps getting more powerful.

As a representation of life, the character model of status works well. You go through life, gaining new knowledge and abilities, often trying to keep the demons at bay. And of course, you pick up bad habits as well. The idea of overlording, where a constant stream of good advancements at a person’s call and bidding, while wished for, never happens. There are always roadblocks (even though most of them aren’t quite as drastic as being turned into an Ape-form).

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
There have been a lot of papers and discussions in the past relating to narrative in games in the recent past, mostly for video games, that talk about Game versus Narrative. In these cases, it is usually in the form of interactivity versus storytelling. Often, the discussion comes down to this: a good story is a good story because of the very linear nature of storytelling. The author has completely control over plot points, the pace of the characters, and the various dilemmas and results of actions that pertain to them.

Unfortunately, the second you make this kind of work interactive, the author loses control over the story, and therefore loses almost all of the aspect of what makes the story good. Additionally, the sheer amount of content that would be required to handle all of the multiple paths a truly interactive character can take and still keep a plot-like storyform going becomes unwieldly and impossible to control.

This is what makes a role-playing game with a good dungeon master so valuable; there’s a human brain in there somehow controlling the pace and reacting properly to the interactive desires of the players, as the story is unfolding in a natural state.

In the case of role playing games, there have been other theories bandied about that might be worth checking into. Such as GNS (Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist) theory and The Big Model.

The RPG Everway is interesting to look at if only because it is left up to the game master to decide how to resolve actions, which is by using one of the three categories of the GNS model. Basically, there is no dice, but a tarot deck, which is used to help determine the results of actions through interpretation of the cards. However, the game is designed in such as way that the game master is free to follow what he feels what would be the best outcome for the story that is being created (Narrativist), solely based on comparing stats (Simulationist) or by card interpretation (Gamist). Since there are no hard and fast charts and lookup tables for "hard" success numbers, the game become a winding road that builds upon itself, as opposed to simple mathy exercises. it's this self-creating road that is built as needed that makes the game feel more narrative that others, as the game REQUIRES the game master to be a good story teller, and just someone who can compare numbers on charts the fastest.

Of course, any good game master should be able to do this, regardless of the look up tables that he needs. But Everway really clears away all of the needs of the charts, and lets the GM focus solely on the story.

Board Game Narrative part 2

And so begins Part 2 of Board Game Narrative Stuff. Once again, I lead with the following disclaimer:

It should be noted that I’m just collecting random thoughts on this subject. Various thoughts as described herein probably have many fallacies when viewed through the lens of different types of game, and I'm sure that anyone could find a particular game that refutes any thesis that I'm providing (heck, I can do that on my own).


Part 1 can be found by clicking this link.

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IMMERSION OF THEME
Since a main component of the narrative story is the theme, there is a need to somehow get the player immersed into the theme. Immersion can come from many areas, one core relation is that choices and performance of actions actions that seem natural within the world of the selected theme is necessary for this to happen.

Probably one of the biggest disappointments in this regard is the co-operative Lord of the Rings games. Here’s a case of a very rich theme in which the game itself seems to have very little to do with the exciting themes that surround it. It just feels like you are carefully playing cards to move your little tokens along various tracks, racing against another token on another track. There is no sense of defeating various villains or moving logically throughout a world; the players are just moving on to the next board as quickly as possible.

It’s a tricky thing. Usually, to get one immersed into a theme the design should try to hide it’s mechanics as much as possible, getting the fiddliness out of the way, trying to make sure that players are involved in the story of the game, and not the rudimentary bookkeeping actions that all games have. This would normally require that the game be kept simple in some regards. But often, that is usually not the case; the Lord of the Rings game example above is probably as easy as you can get, but since the game is reduced to merely “play XX amount of icons to move on a track” it loses almost all of the flavor that the theme represents. A game like Arkham Horror, which contains many components and reading of cards and various interlocking rules becomes much more complex, flavorful, and immersive.

Not that I’m inviting the idea that flavor text as an answer. In most cases, I hate flavor text. But if the individual rules and flavor text somehow merge as the same thing, then I’m all for that. Ideally, flavor text SHOULD be the unique rules, or at least describe the “what and why” of the unique rules given a certain representation on the card.

Additionally, I completely understand the idea to iconize all components as much as possible. This reduces the cost of a game significantly, being that the game doesn’t require multiple printings across multiple languages. But I feel that there is a cost to this; the game becomes, again, a mere shuffling of iconography around as efficiently as possible.

Again, following this thread of thought, the "tangible representation" of what is supposedly going on in the game should have some attempt at feeling like a real world representation. A game like Caylus completely fails in terms of feeling like an actual castle is being built. Additionally, as much as I like Princes of Florence, the game never really feels like fantastic works of art are being created which is what the game promises. Instead, the game is merely collecting points off of various menus.

FIGHTING THE SYSTEM
With regards to how players compete with each other, games can fit on a sliding scale with one end being competitive, while the other end being co-operative. Strangely, over the scope of most games, this result in an inverted bell curve of either-or possibilities; it is not very often that a game comes along that shares a compromise of being both competitive AND co-operative, unless you consider “traitor” games, when one of more players are secretly plotting against the rest of the players to help the system win.

While games on both ends of the spectrum can be narrative, games where the players must fight the game system tend to be more narrative, as opposed to pure competitive contests. Unless the system allows for the players to invoke thematic, creative “elements” into the game as the game goes along, pure competitive struggles focus solely on winning the game, and trying to derive the most efficient ways to do.

By adding systematic elements for the player to fight against, in addition to the players, the designer has time and creative effort to add thematic elements into the struggle. Ultimately, the game system becomes another player, who isn’t so much involved in “winning” (even though this can certainly be the case, especially in co-op games), but this virtual player is instead adding thematic flavor to the game, in the form of obstacles that are jointly being added against each player.

However balanced or unbalanced these events are, this does add randomness to game. Randomness, it can be concluded, is a prime factor for narrative, provided it is thematic and not random for random's sake. Events that are known to be coming or are scripted to happen, are things that can be planned for. Things that can be planned for then become mathematical exercises. Which reduces the thematic impact of such events.

This does not mean that things should happen completely chaotically or willy-nilly. Logic still needs to dictate these random elements. If a game’s monsoon season starts in late summer, then it shouldn’t happen in winter. But that doesn’t mean a player should know the exact date as to when the monsoon is coming. An even better approach would be including elements of foreshadowing that, yes, the monsoon is coming…the clouds are growing darker, but it’s still an unknown as to when the skies will open.


to be continued...

Board Game Narratives, Part 1

This will be a multi-part post, with a new post popping up every few days or so with regards to "Narrative in Board Games." It should be noted that I’m just collecting random thoughts on this subject. Various thoughts as described herein probably have many fallacies when viewed through the lens of different types of game, and I'm sure that anyone could find a particular game that refutes any thesis that I'm providing (heck, I can do that on my own).

What lead me to collect these thoughts is due to someone in my local prototype group searching discussions/papers on game narratives, and him complaining that there's not being able to find much out there. So now he can(Hi, Tim!).

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Narrative in board games is a tricky business. Most of the time, the purpose of designing a game is based around the ideas of just making it work, which includes balancing opportunities between players, making the rules "flow," or other such nonsense; trying to incorporate a narrative structure into this kind of world usually goes against these principals.

It is important to realize that, unlike other game genres, most board games do not really need an apparent story-like narrative to survive and be enjoyed. Obviously, abstract games exist for no other reason than for players to match wits across some pre-defined set of mechanics.

On the other end of the spectrum, role-playing games all have some amount of story driving the game, even if it’s a simple dungeon crawl. In many cases, the entire purpose of a given particular RPG is solely to drive a narrative; the game becomes much more similar to a work of improvisational theater. In fact, many “indie” RPG games are pushing the boundaries of this kind of thinking. See My Life with Master and The High Flying Adventures of Beatrice Henrietta Bristol-Smythe for examples.

DEFINING NARRATIVE
Wikipedia describes the term “narrative” as a ”story that is created in a constructive format that describes a sequence of events.” All games can have a simplified story structure if you are thinking about things in the standard abstract layout of how a story is told. In other words: “Beginning, Middle, and End.” So, in a most basic sense, all games have a story. But are they a good narrative?

As with most things, the pure existence of a narrative doesn’t make it good (like any art form). But in the terms that are frequently bounded about as far as narrative games go, the term “narrative” itself implies something more than a mere cycle of start-to-end phases. It implies that there’s an actual story with characters, or things that can be abstractly though of as characters, that are doing something. And that’s the hard part. Characters need to have goals, and reasons, however flawed, to achieve them. And it probably needs to be more thematically tangible than “to score the most points.”

Unfortunately, at a board game level, the game is mostly about simply winning. Typically, there aren't very many results: Be the first to score XXX, whoever has scored XXX at the end of a predetermined event, or last to survive. There are various twists to these themes that are often implied, but much like the Seven Main Plots, that's all there really is to it at it's most basic level.


TEST OF RETELLING
“Story” as a term involves something that is a rather collective unconscious kind of thing. While a game of chess could be told as a story, and retold as a simple series of events with regard to “how one person won the game,” from outside of the chess knowledgeable world, there probably is not much interest in it. In fact, it becomes the equivalent of geek speak to a non-geek. It is simply series of somewhat complex movement notations, with not much emotional heft, or cultural understanding to it, aside from "capture the king."

However, if you can somehow retell the story of the game not as a series of interesting moves, but as thematic entries, you are much further along an interesting narrative path. So here’s a key component: “how is the story re-told to other people after the events occurred.”

“Moving my knight to C8 to fork my opponent’s Rook and Queen…” quite possibly is a key component to a victory in a game of chess, as forking two expensive opponent pieces is typically rewarding, and a turning point in the game. And from the story of the game itself, could be considered to be a key plot point.

But as a thematic story itself, it’s not very exciting to those who don’t understand the intricacies of chess.

It’s why a lot of hobby board games fail in terms of an interesting narrative (while they still may be a compelling game to play). Sure they have a theme. But there is a lot of wood bit shifting around to maximum efficiencies. It’s not a very fulfilling story to a neophyte when you tell of your thrilling victory because “you managed to fill up the corn ship before Chuck could take his turn.” More often than not, this is commonly referred to as having a “pasted-on theme.” The theme merely exists in order to hopefully, in some great way or small, explain the abstracts of the mechanics.

As a counter example would be explaining what happened in the game through thematic episodes that had happened in the game. For example, in my last play of Tales From the Arabian Nights, probably the best moment came from a player who, in an act of trying to steal a magical statue of a horse that flies, she gained the assistance of another character (non-player). The theft was a success; however, the non-player character pushed her off the horse, and flew away, leaving her crippled.

It was a grand moment, but if you note in the re-telling of it above, no mention was made of the countless chart lookups, the destiny die roll, or any other mechanical rules-wise thing we needed to do.

Now, I probably should note that this is an extreme example (as Tales from the Arabian Nights is a pretty extreme case in these matters). Other games do manage to tell a story without directly “telling the story of the game mechanics” pretty well. Battlestar Galactica, for example, does a good job being able to re-tell parts of the game without getting into the rig-a-ma-role of explicitly needing to explain the mechanics: “The Admiral decided to force a jump at the cost of a few civilians in order to avoid the ever increasing Cylon menace that just kept coming; the cost of those lives were nothing compared to the possible loss of the entire fleet.”

Part 2 soon to come...