The Story and Emergent Play of Boardgames

I was having a text conversation the other day with a super cool dude who reads this blog.

He works in video games and is also an avid board gamer. He has some pretty cool thoughts about game design and the differences in genre. After we played a game of Eldritch Horror, he remarked about how the narrative creates itself. I also got to read some of his stuff online about how he does so when he plays solo.

He’s taking the randomized events of this boardgame and crafting the fiction in his head. During this conversation, I strangely realized that I pretty much never do that. At least not with boardgames.

But here’s the thing – give me a solo TTRPG like New York Zombie or even 4 Against the darkness, and I am absolutely doing it. Both of them are very procedural driven games that could be mistaken for boardgames if you substituted card draws for random table rolls.

So what’s the difference?

I’m really curious if other people feel the same way on this one. Definitely leave a comment below and let me know.

With solo TTRPGs, I feel an implied permission (and even a duty) to paste a narrative onto the mechanical happenings at the table. I’m playing New York Zombie and I’m fighting a rabid dog? It’s a short leap for me to decide that I’d passed that dog in my neighborhood every day for the past few years, giving it my leftovers. Suddenly, this thing that is purely mechanical, has a fictional/emotional weight to it.

Yet when it comes to boardgames, I’m looking more “to win”. I want to engage with the mechanics in the most efficient way in a manner that I never to with TTRPGs.

Sure, the game has a theme, and I’m a sucker for a fun one, but in my mind, it’s just pasted over the mechanical processes of it. I don’t feel like I have the same permission (and certainly not the duty) to make a story out of what’s happening.

Once my friend told me about all this, I questioned myself. Why is it I don’t feel that permission? He obviously does. Is it because my brain spends so much time concocting stories that boardgames are an escape from that?

I also thought of ways the story building could be more ingrained into these games. What if there was a journaling process? Roll to resolve the card. If you fail, you lose two health. Write a paragraph about what was injured and how it happened.

Would that be pushing it more into TTRPG territory? I dunno – I don’t think the division between the two is necessarily as big as we think. Often, I think it’s a matter of components and a referee, but there’s so many edge cases that make that statement false. I’ve talked before about how I think I could get away with claiming Marching Order 2.0 is a board game or a TTRPG – it’s just a marketing term at this point.

Seriously, though – is this just me? It very well might be. Leave me a comment – I’m curious.