A storytelling game is a

game A game is a structured type of play usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or video games) or art ...

where multiple players collaborate on telling a story. Some games primarily feature spoken storytelling, while others primarily feature collaborative writing. In some storytelling games, such as many tabletop role-playing games, each player represents one or more characters in the developing story. Others involve more

third-person narrative Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the ...

Collaborative writing games

Collaborative fiction is a form of storytelling which uses

collaborative writing Collaborative writing is a procedure in which two or more persons work together on a Writing, text of some kind (e.g., academic papers, reports, creative writing, projects, and business proposals). It is often the norm, rather than the exception, i ...

as the primary medium. A group of authors share creative control of a story. Exquisite Corpse, a

Surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

parlour game, is an example of a collaborative writing game. Exhibition catalogue, ', La Dragonne, Galerie Nina Dausset, Paris (October 7–30). The parlour game Consequences is similar.

Storytelling card games

In storytelling card games, players use cards containing narrative prompts or plot details to tell a collaborative story. Examples include ''Once Upon a Time'' and ''For the Queen''.

Tabletop role-playing games

Storytelling TTRPGs take various forms. Some require one participant (a gamemaster or narrator) to describe the setting and take supporting character roles, while others distribute this function among multiple players. White Wolf Game Studio's Storyteller System, which is used in

World of Darkness ''World of Darkness'' is a series of tabletop role-playing games, originally created by Mark Rein-Hagen for White Wolf Publishing. It began as an annual line of five games in 1991–1995, with ''Vampire: The Masquerade'', ''Werewolf: The Apocaly ...

role-playing games such as '' Vampire: The Masquerade'', is a well-known TTRPG described as a "storytelling game." These use a narrator. Other storytelling TTRPGs distribute narrative authority equally among all players. Examples include ''

The Quiet Year ''The Quiet Year'' is a map-drawing tabletop role-playing game published by indie game publisher Buried Without Ceremony in 2013 in which players collaboratively create maps to drive a central story of survival. Description Equipment The game p ...

'', '' Fall of Magic'', and '' Companions' Tale''. In contrast to

improvisational theatre Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv or impro in British English, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted, created spontaneously by the performers. In its ...

and live action role-playing games, TTRPG players describe the actions of their characters rather than acting them out, except during

dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American and British English spelling differences, American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literature, literary and theatrical form that depicts suc ...

or, in some games,

monologue In theatre, a monologue (also known as monolog in North American English) (in , from μόνος ''mónos'', "alone, solitary" and λόγος ''lógos'', "speech") is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts ...

History of storytelling TTRPGs

''Matrix Game'' (c. 1988) by Chris Engle was an early collaborative storytelling game not based in simulation. In this system, a referee decides the likeliness of the facts proposed by the players, and events happen or not according to a dice roll. Players can propose counter-arguments that are resolved in a dice rolling contest. A conflict round can follow to resolve any inconsistencies or further detail new plot points. In 1999, game designer Ian Millington's ''Ergo'' offered a collaborative role-playing system. It was based on the rules of the Fudge universal role-playing system, but eliminated the need for a gamemaster, distributing the responsibility for the game and story equally among all players and undoing the equivalence between player and character. The coin system in Universalis (2002) relies less on randomness and more on collaboration between players. Starting in the mid-00s, storytelling TTRPGs based upon historical events began to emerge in indie role-playing game design communities. Examples include ''Grey Ranks'' (2007) by Jason Morningstar, which takes place during the 1944

Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising (; ), sometimes referred to as the August Uprising (), or the Battle of Warsaw, was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from ...

, and ''Montsegur 1244'' (2008) by Frederik Jensen, in which players tell a collaborative story about the Cathars.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Storytelling Game Game terminology History of role-playing games Role-playing game terminology Storytelling