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March 20 is World Storytelling day, so I though this would be a good time to explore games that involve Storytelling. There are a few games where the players tell a story, but this category also includes games where a story is part of the game playing experience. Many games are bringing role playing and story telling into the board game experience. Let’s take a look at some games that involve the mechanic of Storytelling.
If you have played the games, what impact do you think the storytelling in these games has on your experience as a player? What are your thoughts on games that bring storytelling to board games? Do you have any favorites that you want to let us know about?
Note that we need help in order to complete one of the explorables below. As of this posting there are not enough reviews to Above and Below to be completely explorable. If you have played the game, please add your review. Don’t forget you get points for writing the review and you get points when people like your review. Since this game is an explorable this month, there will be increased traffic to the Game Page, so take advantage and get some treasured Critic Points.
Every several weeks we’ll be featuring games for exploration that share a common trait. There is no set number of games that will be featured, but we’ll try to incorporate a mix of old favorites and new titles where possible.
Exploreable Storytelling Games
Once Upon a Time: The Storytelling Card Game
Atlas Games | Published: 1993
Rory’s Story Cubes
Gamewright | Published: 2005
Tales of the Arabian Nights
Z-Man Games | Published: 2009
Mice and Mystics
Plaid Hat Games | Published: 2012
Above and Below
Red Raven Games | Published: 2015
Once Upon a Time is a very beautiful game for the proposal that was created and in my opinion is only for some players who are good at imagination and have a good base in interpretive RPG.
There are lots of different paths to go on explorables. Theme, mechanics, designer, publisher and even sort of game (light, medium, heavy, brainburner). I’ve really enjoyed this new arc the explorables has taken to.
@all
I am so happy to see people enjoying the explorables again. I have a couple more ideas for explorables, but now I am going to ask for your suggestions. It can be a theme or mechanic, but I could use some good ideas to keep these coming. I will tell you in advance that coming up with the idea is the first part, but I do check that there are enough games that have videos, reviews, etc. to be successfully explorable. So even when you have fabulous ideas, some of them may not be possible to be successfully explorable. I appreciate any assistance you have to offer.
Yay!! More explorables!!
@ Tiana
We were 6 seasoned gamers going at case 2 of the first consulting detective and we must have spent about 2 – 2,5 hours before we decided to check the answers. While we weren’t comfortable with our answers we were not prepared for what we read. To not ruin too much, there were names and places a plenty we never had heard of…
This is such a unique category! I love Hobbit Tales. It is very similar to Once Upon a Time, but with a Lord of the Rings theme!
@ inmarg I hear\read that a lot about the Sherlock Holmes games, especially Consulting Detective. I have not had a chance to play yet, but the game that made me feel pretty stupid was Exit the Game the Pharaoh’s Tomb.
@emspace I like your definition and terms of storytelling and story told. I knew of the difference in my head, but you have a clear way to explain and term it. I can see by the length of your list you really love storytelling games. I hope you enjoyed World Storytelling day.
I love storytelling games! I tend to buy games with strong storytelling elements and even when they’re subjectively not very much fun to play, I still can’t bring myself to off-load them.
I personally have divided these games up into “Storytelling” (where the players create the story) and “Story-told” (where the game unfolds the story for the players).
Among my favourite story-tolds are the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective series, and though Mythos Tales was fine, it wasn’t quite as satisfying to get right (could be all the errata, too).
I’m really happy Detective: City Of Angels, Detective: A Modern Crime, Chronicles Of Crime are all coming out this year or early next year. I can’t get enough of crime mystery story games where I get to play detective. If there were 5-6 of these games released every year, I would happily stop buying all other games. 😀
I also have This War Of Mine and Watson & Holmes which I haven’t yet played, plus The 7th Continent is due in a few weeks.
I’ve also enjoyed Near And Far, Agents Of SMERSH, and Nemo’s War.
On the strict storytelling side, UNTOLD: Adventures Await puts a nice framework around using Rory’s Story Cubes to keep the storytelling on track.
I have Fog Of Love, Fall Of Magic and looking forward to trying them with someone soon. Mangaka is also a great creative storytelling game that does involve drawing, but stick figures work just fine.
Sherlock Holmes, Mythos Tale and (hopefully) Legacy of Dragonholt all fit this category and are games (I expect to enjoy Dragonholt) I enjoy as much for the story element as finding answers.
No game has ever made me feel more stupid than case two of Sherlock Holmes…
Almost guaranteed to hear some wild stories when you play Tales of the Arabian Nights! ‘Tales’ aptly describes the storytelling.
I wish more games had a storytelling element. As much as I enjoy winning, sometimes sharing a journey with someone is more fun than crushing them, driving them before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women.
It also allows for dramatic readings. I love me some dramatic readings.