Narrative in Board Games

Imagine if the Lord of the Rings had been laid out as a pile of 3x5 cards: characters, plot lines, events, and turning points. Now imagine shuffling those cards and dealing them out on a table. What is the likelihood of them making sense? This is the challenge of creating a narrative board game. The designer wants to avoid "railroading" the players, but also wants to tell a story that the players experience as though they were characters in that story.

Roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons have a "game master" who reveals a story bit by bit as players explore their environment in whatever order they choose. A more tightly controlled board game can do this as well. Some board games are designed around the story. The players are characters traveling through settings, meeting challenges and gaining rewards. One game that delivers strongly in this area is "War of the Ring." While this is a sprawling wargame that encompasses the story of the Lord of the Rings, it plays out differently each time the game is played and still makes sense, making for compelling game play.

This is part of the inspiration for Embers of the Empire, a game currently under development that is set in the Sellenria universe, one thousand years after the events in the book. In Embers, the core of the game is equally about the action and the story, but rather than have the events occur in the same order every time, people should be able to replay the game without being able to predict what happens next. In order to have a sense of growing tension and danger, the events are divided into 3 eras. Although the players increase capabilities through time, the enemy becomes more powerful and the situation more dire. The goal is a varied and changing narrative through every played game.

-Dan