You probably haven't heard of the many rules-light,
storytelling-heavy card and roleplaying games that hit the market over the last
decade. There are lots of them, and some are incredibly good.
If you want to get
three or four friends together to create communal stories from scratch, or
stealthily get teenagers hooked on storytelling, these games are the way to go.
Here are three of my favorites.
(3rd edition, Atlas Games, $25; http://www.atlas-games.com/ouat3/
or http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-ATG1030-Once-Upon-Time/dp/1589781317/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8)
Best for:
families, kids, and those who love fairy tales
In this fast collaborative family game the starting player
builds a fairy tale, playing plot elements from the cards in her hand and
creatively guiding the story towards her own Ending card. Other players use
their cards to steal the story's narrative, changing it a little or a lot to
fit their own cards instead. The winner is the player who uses all of her cards
first. The result is a wonderfully disjointed fairy tale created over 30
minutes, built communally and full of unexpected turns.
(James Wallis, $17.95; http://www.amazon.com/The-Extraordinary-Adventures-Baron-Munchausen/dp/1906402159)
Best for: adults,
the quick-witted, and those who love outrageous lies
Designed as a drinking game and written in the Baron's own
inimitable voice, this is a light and fast role-playing game where you try to
out-do each other's astounding accomplishments and legendary feats of
derring-do. The rules replace pencils and dice with money and fine wine. The
idea here is that you sit around bragging, telling fantastically exaggerated
(but completely true!) stories. ("Let
me tell you, m'lords, about the time I escaped death by guillotine only by
seducing a dyspeptic Bengal tiger.") Other players attempt to derail
your story by wagering a token and making an objection ("But surely this was the year of the great Bengal exhibition, when
no tigers were to be found in all of Europe? Perhaps it is your dotage, but you
clearly must be mistaken.") You either respond with an excuse and by
wagering a token of your own, or you swallow your pride and include their
objection seamlessly into your story. The game is won after everyone has told
one story, and delightfully, each player in turn gives all their tokens to the
person they think told the best story. That means that it's the best story that
wins, but collecting the most tokens helps you pick the winner.
(Bully Pulpit Games, $30; http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/
or http://www.amazon.com/Bully-Pulpit-Games-BPG-005/dp/1934859397/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AJ1TXM2ZJKD33BD9P53
Best for: creative
adults, people who love improvisation, and those who put a great story ahead of
trying to win
My rich and crazy aunt
is willing her vast fortune to 100 feral cats, but I need the money now; my clown nose manufacturing
business is in the toilet and I owe the Mafia a boatload of cash. They're
sending a hit man to take care of the problem, but I need to convince her to
change her will before she gets taken out. And oh yeah, that so-called
"hit man" is a brand new, wet-behind-the-ears assassin who my aunt
used to babysit for, and whose older sister I dumped for a floozy half her age.
Honestly, this seemed
like such a good idea at the time.
I think of Fiasco as your own Coen Brothers movie in a game.
The author describes it best:
Fiasco is inspired by cinematic
tales of small time capers gone disastrously wrong – inspired by films like Blood
Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple
Plan. You’ll play ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse
control. There will be big dreams and flawed execution. It won’t go well for
them, to put it mildly, and in the end it will probably all go south in a
glorious heap of jealousy, murder, and recrimination. Lives and reputations
will be lost, painful wisdom will be gained, and if you are really lucky, your
guy just might end up back where he started.
This game is played with 3-5 people in a few hours. You play
very human and very flawed characters, each with a powerful need ("the
need to become famous;" "the need to get even;" "the need
to keep your secrets") and strong relationships. During the game you all
work together to come up with and play out completely hilarious, disastrous
scenes of greed, desire and ambition.
I once played a game of Fiasco where someone laughed so hard
they threw up. Plan accordingly.
----------------
Kevin Kulp is a Boston-based storyteller, game designer, and
(weirdly enough) expert on shiftwork, fatigue and alertness. A board member for
LANES, the League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling (lanes.org),
he's a huge proponent of introducing youth to storytelling via great games. He
can be reached at @KevinKulp or at kevin.kulp@gmail.com.
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