Top Story Driven Board Games. 

My personal favorite types of narratives are ones the players can create. By that I don't mean role playing, I mean games like Root. In Root, there's a background lore/setting that starts players off, that goes a little like this: Years ago, the Eyrie ruled the woodland, but due to inner squabbling and whatnot, they fell out of power. This allowed the Marquise de Cat to come in and harvest the wood in the woodland to build infrastructure that gave rise to her power. The Eyrie don't like this, and they're coming back with force to show that they truly rule the woodland. Now, a few of the creatures in the woodland don't really like this, so they get together and form the Woodland Alliance that is trying to establish something more in-line with what they want. At the same time, there's a Vagabond running around and gaining the people's favor and playing all sides of the conflict to become what is seen as the "rightful ruler" of the land. Then you have other factions with expansions that also fit into this narrative pretty easily. In essence, everybody wants to rule the world, and everyone has their own way about going about it. The game mechanics require a few "key factions" to be in each game, and that's for more of a gameplay perspective than a narrative perspective. But it still works from a narrative point of view: you can have just a match between the Marquise de Cat and the Eyrie (two powers vying for absolute control) but you can't have a match just between the Woodland Alliance and Vagabond (who is the Woodland Alliance trying to overthrow? Why is the Vagabond trying to both help and subvert the Woodland Alliance? Or are they just attacking each other for no reason?) In this case, the form of the narrative follows the function of the game design. Players are able to create their own stories through the game. For example, a Vagabond could have hooked the Marquise up with a command warden that helped them become a stronger military. This gave the Vagabond some glory and power (points). The Marquise then realized that the Vagabond was moving to taking their place in the woodland, so they backstab the person that helped them out before using that same command warden. In the fray, the Vagabond manages to take out some of the Marquise de Cat's warriors, and sulks off into the woods to heals. When they come back, though, they come back with a vengeance: every time the Vagabond attacks the Marquise, their fame and glory goes on the rise. While Root doesn't have a specific, written narrative (like some of the examples you provided in your video), I think games that can create this type of story through their mechanics are beautiful. I also like how they are replayable with different outcomes. The Vagabond doesn't need to give the Marquise anything, they don't need to fight each other, and they can actually work together. How would this change in the story change the rest of the game?

Notes: - 3:56 Witness - 5:57 Mice and Mystics - 7:23 Above and Below - 10:00 Choose Your Own Adventure - 12:10 Time Stories - 14:26 Untold - Adventures Await - 16:38 Sleeping Gods - 18:50 Artisans of Splendent Vale (Kickstarter)

Love these chats! Very informative! The story cubes are just about my family's favorite thing. I have all the sets. Friends' kids love them. We basically just roll what ever and everyone tells a story using all the cubes. We always try to make them as silly as possible. This has created some great family in-jokes. Cannot recommend enough.

Hi Everybody! Welcome to episode 2. What are your thoughts on Role Playing Games Vs Narrative Driven Board Games? I love story-based games. What are some of your favourite narrative driven board games? Also, I am gradually getting to everyone's questions so stay tuned. :)

I love the mechanics of these games, I could see them very easily being used in my role playing games to create new ideas to explore. :)

Fun suggestions! If you don't mind dice rolling, The Drifter has endless story potential and infinite replay-ability. Thanks for the video!

Love the video. Thanks Danny! I’m always interested in thematic games. Naturally this makes game choice (and possible purchase) quite subjective if you like the genre. I enjoyed your choices to broaden my options 👍👏

All of these sound amazing! I was just wondering about replayability

No Destinies or Forgotten Waters? :o Those games are phenomenal.

Love narative games, although I don't have so much time for them anymore. My favourite is still Mice and Mystics, also really liked Stuffed Fables and also everything else Jerry Hawthorne does :)

I just recently started getting into story-based games, not playing them yet, but definitely looked some up. Ended up buying Near and Far and also backed Artisans!