Mage Knight is one of my favourites for this. It makes zero effort to give any narrative at all during the game but the stories it tells are so vivid I can still recall some now. Great game!

I don’t think there are many games better than Oath for this. The world building is so fantastic you just can’t help but create narratives that stick with you game after game. Just the fact that you are encouraged to document the game in the journal provided means you are literally creating stories. Highly recommend a play when you can.

Great list!! Robinson Crusoe is currently my number one! Call to Remember is such a great game! Surprised This War of Mine is not on the list. Very similar to Crusoe.

Robinson Crusoe is well loved, but I still say it is underrated. Such a great great game everytime win or more often lose. I just played it at Pacificon 2021, great narrative in a rare win. Found a storage box to save food and killed a walrus providing that food that allowed us to make a bonfine and escape. different story every time

Twilight Imperium often has a emergent narrative as well. The story the game tells is completely dependent on what the players do. My most recent game the winner was someone who played mostly as a pacifist the whole game and they built strong alliances so that other players would be hesitant to attack them. At the end of the 5th round when they unexpectedly declared their victory it created a very interesting ending to a very interesting game.

I'm surprised that This War Of Mine didn't make the list somewhere. I realize it has a book of canned story snippets, but I don't recall those outcomes specifically. I recall the decisions we made during the game that led to those outcomes. In fact, the emergent narrative experience that This War Of Mine provided our group was so haunting and intense that we opted not to play it again. It was a powerful, deep, emotional experience that was a little overwhelming. And that experience, to us, was tied entirely to the decisions we made. An orphan girl comes to the door and we're so low on supplies that we can't share our food. So she dies. I don't remember the text of the story snippet about her death, I remember the choice we made that led to that outcome. One of the things I think it does so well is that your decisions don't just change the game state. They also change your state as a character. Not because my stats changed in a mechanical way, but because my character is changed by the emotional weight of the decisions they've made. The next time someone outside my pod needs help, maybe I'm more inclined to provide it, remembering how I felt when I turned the orphan girl away and she died. Or maybe that experience hardened me to the survival-of-the-fittest nature of the experience, and I become calloused to the suffering of others. Those are all changes that occur to me as a person and character based on my previous choices, and it's 100% emergent narrative. No movement on a Corruption track, or adding a minus 1 to dice rolls if I've been bad. The game itself isn't providing any feedback on how I should feel about my decisions and how I should behave to optimize outcomes. It's the most immersive gaming experience I've ever had, for better or worse. This was the game I thought of first when I saw the subject of this video. I think it's a near perfect example of emergent narrative in a game.

Great list. At the risk of pandering, Scythe is a big one for me. 'Troops on a map' in general lends itself to emergent narrative, and on top of that you have a point-of-view character.

Extremely interesting topic and as someone who enjoys playing board games but for no deeper reasons than the game’s theme, the mechanism and the basic social aspect of playing a game together with friends and family members, I really enjoyed your take on revealing a personal story or narrative on each individual play of certain games and has opened my mind to that opportunity in the future (Paleo is on my ‘future buy’ list)

I’m working on a board game design with emergent narrative gameplay, so this video is wonderful timing! Some of my favs include: - Star Wars Rebellion - Castles of Mad King Ludwig - Evolution Climate / Oceans - Dead of Winter - Western Legends - Terraforming Mars - War of the Ring

We fell in love with Paleo as our first emergent narrative. Thankyou for the recommendations. Super excited to experience more

I've played a bazillion games of Robinson Crusoe but there's so many emergent qualities to my most memorable games, it might be hard to be super specific. The way our gaming group have approached the game is that we were going to repeat attempts at every scenario until we finish them before we moved on to the next scenario. Personally I think that was a wrong move because we got burned out and sometimes some people would get downright pissed at some bad luck. Anyway, there's a ton of very specific rules in that game which make it a little bit "did I even really win" when you remember something that might have been overlooked (FYI: that is the least desirable quality I have in any game I've ever played, super specific rules that only apply to a very specific situation- I.E. in Crusoe when you have to spend a night outside of camp, etc., discovery tokens that have to be resolved immediately, etc.,) Anyway, we had played the scenario prior but this time we worked hard at innovating to the situation, accomodating our action wishlist vs. momentary necessity, and had real luck with our bonus 5 inventions draw (bed, pit, etc., holy crap) and starting items. It was a truly awesome start. We were right on track for a win within a "decent" 2 rounds (as I recall now it was scenario 3 Save Jenny), and shit literally hit the fan. Pelts were at a premium to our success so we started to upgrade our weapons and bam, two build cards and a gather card showed up in the event deck and and straight up wrecked any possibilty to do what we wanted to. The player who we all still decided needed to hunt took 5 wounds from a bear which got us everything we needed to beat the scenario (immediately after a successful build action next turn...), even food for the night, but the random event put a snow cloud on the docket for that night so when we went to roll weather (which would've been just a "wild animal" die) with no shelter because we had to move camp the night before because a card we didn't think would bite back canceled any resources from our camp tile ("nearest to but camp first if I recall) and we needed wood to build a boat to escape the dreadful island (or to build shelter), the snow die showed up 2 so we had to burn 2 wood, then 2 food, and another 2 wood (because this game is relentless, we did eventually beat it with very little time to spare so it's a good go) which we weren't able to meet. I used to look at each turn in that game as about a month (or even a season), because it's never specific, but scenario 3 was more imminent. In my eyes it played out as: Bam- shipwrecked! Shit! Jenny is a hurt person stranded on a rock on a clashing sea. Everyone needs to mount a rescue mission. Luck has it that we have been minimally wounded besides a few things we did because the imminent rewards were much needed at the time. I'm sure we will pay for our bonuses later. Regretfully, we rescued her early because after Jenny was rescued to camp, she required another ration of food each round so someone had to go without every meal time whereas she would be hurt slowly but would apparently catch her own food each day. After her rescue, she would literally do nothing but eat our food and heal her wounds. Fair enough. Then our soldier friend got a poisonous bite somehow and morale kept going down so determination skills were out the window after being such a boon during the first half of our mission. We needed that boat or we weren't going to survive the incoming hurricane so after breaking a few wooden spears from random building accidents (lol- this game...) someone decided to try to muscle it. They were mortally wounded during the hunt, the prey they chose was a mighty bear. They showed up at camp victorious with a sled full of delicious meat and hides for our boat. Enough to last us a moment, but our party was unable to eat all the meat and most of it spoiled to time. Things were never the same after for said hunt-wounded character. The season was coming to a close and respiratory issues occured because of a lack of our camps heating efficiency. A freezing cold came in and our inabilty to collect enough dry wood for combustion was said character's last straw.

When you explained the topic, I immediately thought of The Quiet Year. You construct a map and tell/draw the story as it develops, using only a deck of cards and some dice. We had quite the story develop when we played and it was a really memorable experience!

Nemesis is my number one as well for this. Freedom: the Underground Railroad, Root, Gears of War, and the Shipwreck Arcana all really fill this role for me

Great video, my favorite mechanic and that’s why Robinson Crusoe is my favorite game. I’d also recommend Sub Terra for this. We’ve had plenty of games where many didn’t make it out of the cave alive and cases where people sacrificed themselves to save others.

Call to Adventure is my top game for this. It's one of the very few games where I will be swayed by the story I'm building as much as I would be by the actual gameplay/points. At the end of the game my group always tells one another the story of each of their characters.

Call to Adventure was definitely my number 1 in this category. I also think Tidal Blades does this well with giving you a little background and personality on your character, and then you choose the engender and stunts you enter to improve your various skills. Then together you need to protect the city and yourselves from the monsters emerging from the Fold. Each game you have that difficult decision of when are you ready to go after a monster. Dice Throne Adventures is our recent one doing this since there actually isn't a lot of text. We have those memorable moments of a boss about to lay down a game ending attack but a teammate having a card to block it. Or a teammate having a card to complete an ultimate to start the battle against the Mad King. I was the Huntress and one time I had to give poor Nyra a beating to stay alive so my son's Artificer could probably finish off the battle. I have so many amazing pictures of my son's victory cheer😁

I love Inis, Root, and Arkham Horror the Card Game for creating these emergent narratives. Having characters on a board helps visualize the world and how it changes, but I think the most important thing is that everything has a name in combination with a flavorful ability that really helps creating the narrative in your head. For instance, the Mountain in Inis just says 'when a player moves to this territory they have to lose an action or a clan'. This immediately creates an image of this dangerous territory that you would rather move around than move through. We created the citadel on top of the mountain once, and the ruler was looking over the empire around it, mostly undisturbed. And it was only when someone became too powerful that he would descend from the mountain to defend his rule. Cole Werhle (designer of Root and Pax Pamir, and Oath, i.a.) talked about using only proper nouns and no other flavor text on his cards. He said that the combination of name and ability gives room for the players to create a story in their head. And I think he really succeeds in that in his designs.

Surprised Fog of Love didn't feature anywhere on the list. Creating an emergent narrative is basically the whole point of that game.

Sub Terra and This War of Mine would haven been on mine. But I would have shared a few with you, definitely : Robison Crusoe and The Pursuit of Happiness for instance. Still have to get my group together so we can start playing King's Dilemma as well...

fun topic! I love emergent narratives :) my fav would be Obsession, I also think Oceans tells a great story and can have very memorable situations, and finally Agricola! What a rollercoaster it can be if you’re using all the card 🤓

This is one of my favorite things in all of board games. 2 of My favorite games are robinson crusoe and star wars rebellion for all the reasons you gave. I think dune imperium definitely deserves a spot on this list too. Everytime my group finishes a playthrough of DI we sit back and discuss everything that went down through the course of the game and I think that's a sign of a great game.

First comment!! Big fan from Brazil!! Love your work, Jamey! Keep it up

I love games with an emergent narrative and agree wholeheartedly with your comments about Nemesis. My vote goes to Expedition Zetta. This game invents entire solar systems on the fly and has the crews of ships exploring and researching them. The events and incidents that emerge plus the interactions and relationships between the crew members of the ships is highly entertaining and drives a great emergent narrative.

Probably the most memorable game with an emergent story is Greenville 1989. We can remember what happen with some of our groups of friend, especially the one who would describe she stayed inside the phone booth for three turns!

I like the thoughts on Tapestry, Clank! And Call to Adventure (we have the Stormlight Archive version as my kids are big fans of the books). Flash Point: Fire Rescue is another great one. I have bot had a chance to play Rebellion, but War of the Ring (2nd edition) I think hits on all of the same points Jamey is making for it. Other thoughts: Twilight Imperium IV. The factions and Mecatol Rex already have their backstory, but I feel every game it seems things play out differently as the various factions interact and different agendas are revealed and voted on. Every game tells a fun and different story. Clash of Cultures. I’m a huge fan of this game, and much of that comes from the emergent story that comes from the paths you can take with your civilization and how it interacts with the others. Star Wars: The Card Game (LCG). Now ‘defunct’, this Eric Lang design does a lot of what Magic: The Gathering does, set in the Star Wars Universe, I haven’t had the chance to play Nemesis, Paleo or The Pursuit of Happiness, but they look very intriguing. Too many games to play and not enough time.

I think that Leder Games lineup contains some of the greatest games when it comes to emergent storytelling in games. I may be a little biased because especially Vast and Root made me realize how much I prefer emergent storytelling to written storytelling. There can be a written setting you throw the players in. Create the world for them. Kyle Ferrins art of course helps the world building a lot for Vast, Root and Oath. Another game I want to mention is Mage Knight. I read below that you have not played it but I really recommend it as a story telling engine on top of a great game. What helps here is that you discover the map during play and place down markers at certain spots where you interacted with it. So at the end of the game you can see your path because you left these markers like breadcrumbs. That helps remembering every story beat that happened. I always take a picture of the map at the end and while I do not have time to play it more then 2-3 times in a year I can still look at the picture and remember the adventures that I had in my playthroughs. And I bet every Mage Knight player will confirm that such a picture is enough to remember all the struggles and moments that happend in that particular game (maybe not if you play 50 times on TTS in a year ;) ). One last thing: Nemesis would be my number 1 as well on this list. It is just amazing how each play of this game develops every time.

Nemesis is definitely a top tier for emergent narrative. I know some folks go so far as to consider it more of a played cinematic experience as opposed to a game. One I haven’t seen people mention yet is Last Night on Earth. It’s similar to Nemesis for me in that it’s entire shtick is to play out a b-level zombie movie with all the tropes thrown in. To this day, 8 years later, my game group tells the story of the preacher locking himself in final mortal combat with the hoard, sacrificing himself to buy time for the other survivors to escape.

I played Star Wars: Outer Rim this weekend for the first time this weekend and that had a strong emergent narrative similar to Rebellion. Not as grandiose as rebellion, but it made for some fun stories about bounty hunters and some of the lesser known characters in the SW universe

Xia Legends of a Drift System is one of the best games with emergent narrative along with Root, both those games tell such great stories that are completely player driven.

Most excellent discussion! This is such an important idea, so well articulated. Thanks! Emergent narratives is a fundamental principle that i think is also a great way to view how meaning is created in many non-linear arts, in general, even if choice is less of a factor in something less interactive than a game; but still choice exists when artists leave interpretations and approaches up to the viewer. An improvised drawing is often an application of a few themes/ systems from which a narrative emerges. (These, My thoughts as I draw while listening to you. ;) Do you think this is too much of a stretch Of the principle? Gamewise: I adore Mage Knight which does this well, since the avatars and powers have such excellent but open ended character, and abilities have some great implications. However, perhaps the specific narrative moments aren’t as quite as strong as others on this list? Maybe because ethical decisions are fewer, and it is more purely strategic? however the theme follow-through is so rich and world building so detailed this creates a strong “narrative ambience” throughout. Is this perhaps a sub-category? What about Gloom? This is another stretch, because so much story is contained on the cards, but then they are still quite vague, and all of the connections and justifications are left up to the player’s imagination, and a game of gloom can be tons of made up story telling. Decisions are often not just based on what would score well, but what would story well. Again, I question whether this is a slightly different category, but it is in the same room at least. Scythe! Of course. I won’t describe this one to you, but kudos here! Finally, Scrabble! Just joking. Seriously though: what do you think about emergent narratives vs narrative ambience? Just wordplay or a real difference?

I definitely prefer emergent narrative to written narrative. I don't typically like narrative based games, but if the game is mechanically and thematically good and it naturally encourages emergent narrative, that is a big win for me. Arcadia quest is a good one at that, it only uses a bit of narrative to setup each scenario (which you can easily skip). The emergent narrative happens as players scramble around the board killing monsters and each other along the way

Xia: Legends of a Drift System would be my top emergent narrative board game, followed by Nemesis. The sandbox play always comes together to build both a story for each player but also the world which forms the backdrop to those stories.

Scythe definitely should be the Stonemeier pick for this list. As much as I love Tapestry it's Scythe that creates the story every time around. People do tend to stick to certain factions, bring their own meaning to it because of factions' abilities, not because of written text on the encounters cards. Come one, JUST LOOK AT YOUR SHIRT in this video :)))

Great video. I normally play Euros but Imperial 2030 creates some satirical emergent moments. Satire is the intent of the theme that Mac Gerdts was going for, so it succeeds at that. I think you would like it as you like Risk and Concordia (same designer), plus the rules are less that most medium weight Euros with about 6 or 8 pages.

I am a big fan of Emergent Narrative... I think I wind up telling stories with pretty much every game I play.

Nemesis is definitely #1 on this list! Another game is Marvel Legendary. You’re recruiting heroes but various villains appear and the mastermind uses his tactics against you. The tension can really build as the deck shrinks

I don't have much experience with emergent games, but I'd put Gloomhaven at the same level as King's Dilemma and Clank Legacy in that it has a lot of narrative, but you also create narrative around your own characters and each scenario can be memorable for reasons outside of the written narrative. Maybe Mysterium and Feast for Odin as well, but anything after that in my collection is a real stretch.

War of the Ring and The Game of Thrones: The Board Game would be at the very top of my personal list ;)

Damn that shirt looks like a new faction for war chest

What about Dream Crush? We always uncover the most memorable characters, I feel like I meet real, interesting people every time we play! (We mostly play with cards that we write as we play). It is essentially 100% text based though.

You should absolutely try Fog of Love

Good list Mage Knight would be my number 1 if I were to make this list…. have you played it?

Re: Castles of Mad King Ludwig. There's definitely an emergent *something* in rationalizing room placement, imagining how it would function. Maybe the term needs to be broadened. Emergent significance?

Just curious Jamey, did Oath not quite hit the emergent narrative mark for you?

I’m surprised Oath got no mention here!

Hey Jamey, Great topic for a list. I understand ins support most oft your mentioned games but you are missing one important in my opinion 🤠 Eldritch Horror. Each play we can tell the „end then“ Stories and even if we play the same elder one again, it is a new experience 😊

Paleo sounds like my kind of game. I love a good story, but I also like completing a game in its entirety in a single sitting of not more than a couple hours, so I prefer it when games let your actions do the talking/narrating. I was told that if you incorporate narrative into your design such that the players actions naturally tell a story that is close to your intended narrative, then it inherently cannot be "emergent," but it sounds like you don't agree with that, do you Jamey?