Many board games do not have stories. Either they are totally abstract collections of rules, such as checkers or backgammon, or they have a thematic Framing Device used to help the player understand the mechanics of the game, such as Clue/Cluedo. And while there are many Tabletop Games with overarching plots set within the universe of the game, such as Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering having tie-in novels, the player does not generally play through the stories of those novels when they play the game.
In a Narrative Board Game, however, the game has a plot, and the act of playing the game takes the players through the story the developers have crafted. Some games have multiple different scenarios the player can play through, with each one having slightly different rules and setup, to give the player several possible experiences. Others string a series of smaller games together into a larger campaign, with the outcome of one game potentially affecting the next. There are several ways board games can tell a story:
- The game makes heavy use of Flavor Text, both to set the scene and to contextualize what the players are doing. Many narrative games open with a few paragraphs describing the setting of the game and the players' overall goal. Similarly, the actions a player takes in the real world might have text describing what effect those actions have in the game: A player might just be rolling a six-sided die and trying to get a 4 or higher, but according to the game, they're trying to pick a booby-trapped lock. Many narrative games have either large companion books the players read from, similar to Gamebooks, or apps that serve the same purpose.
- The game has points where the players are required to make a choice or pass some kind of test, with the gameplay diverging depending on their choice. For example, in a detective game, the players might have to choose whether or not to accept a favor from a mobster. Accepting the favor might make the game easier right away, but harder when he comes to collect on the favor later on. Similarly, if the player fails to pick that booby-trapped lock, a bomb might go off and the door might collapse, forcing the player to use another method to progress.
- The game has Multiple Endings depending on how the player(s) did. If the players fail, there may be multiple different failure states depending on how they failed; there might be one ending for all characters dying vs. another ending for making a lot of obviously bad choices. Similarly, there may be a Golden Ending for players who do an exceptionally good job, which usually means passing very difficult tests or overcoming other especially hard challenges.
This style of game is an evolutionary offshoot of classic Tabletop RPGs. Many such tabletop role-playing games included pre-made scenarios for the players to enjoy, but still needed a Game Master to control them, both to make choices about the direction of the campaign and to improvise if the players went Off the Rails. In narrative games, the "Game Master" is usually the game itself, providing the player(s) with a restricted number of choices (so they must stay within the confines of the story) while still providing varying paths for the players to explore. Narrative games can be used to give players the "feel" of a classic Tabletop RPG without the complicated rules, extended setup times, or need to have one player sit out to GM—or just to create an especially immersive experience.
Compare Game Books, another narrative-focused style of tabletop game with roots in the roleplaying genre. Adventure Board Games often feature a storyline campaign in addition to random scenarios, and are closely related. However, a Narrative Board Game does not need to feature character growth, which is a key component of an Adventure Board Game. Also compare Ameritrash Games.
As a broad category of tabletop games, this genre has spawned several sub-categories. Campaign Board Games are narrative board games intended to be played out over multiple sessions in order to reach their conclusion, while Legacy Board Games have the player physically alter components of the game (such as by using stickers or writing on cards) to change the experience over multiple sessions.
Examples:
- The Arkham Horror franchise uses this across multiple games in its line:
- The mainline board game, Arkham Horror, has several different storylines for the players to play through, with the players choosing a specific scenario each time they play. Each scenario has a unique board layout, monster deck, and event cards that provide Flavor Text describing the strange effects of the Elder Gods on Arkham. In Third Edition, the main narrative is provided through a deck of cards known as the Codex, cards from which are put in play over the course of the game and which provide both scenario-specific events and choice points, and more "generic" cards that provide rules that can apply in multiple scenarios. They typically feature Multiple Endings as well, with a Golden Ending if the players manage to win without the Elder Gods manifesting in Arkham, endings for straight up beating the Old Ones in a boss fight, and failure states as well.
- The card game, Arkham Horror: The Card Game provides multiple scenarios for the players to play. Many scenarios come in several parts and are designed to be played over multiple sessions, as in a Campaign Board Game, but there are also multiple stand-alone scenarios that players can play either as part of a campaign, or as one-offs just for fun. These have large paragraphs of text in their rulebooks to relate both the stories' beginnings and Multiple Endings, as well as "plot cards" that change and evolve as the players play through the scenario. Notably, the stand-alone scenarios are often stranger and wackier than the scenarios that come as part of overarching plots.
- Detective City Of Angels is a detective game where the players must solve crimes while another player, known as "the Chisel," acts as a Game Master. Only the Chisel knows the full details of each crime, and they act as the game's NPCs, offering testimony and falsehoods to the players, revealing clues, and reading Flavor Text where appropriate. There are several scenarios, and while they do form a larger story, they're designed to be standalone as well. The rulebook even advises that the role of the Chisel is not to ruthlessly toy with the players and oppose them at every end, but in fact to help the players tell a good story.
- Forgotten Waters can only be played by utilizing the physical board game and app companion — players make choices and rolls based on the gameboard and book, and when the outcome is plugged into the companion app the results are narrated in voiceover fashion. Each Scenario presented by the game prompts players to work together to accomplish the Captain's goals, and gameplay bonuses can be awarded to players who choose to spend time with the Captain and explore their surroundings. Players are also encouraged to pursue personal objectives, winding up with multiple possible outcomes for the crew as a whole (failure or success) and for individual players (failure, success, or legendary success).
- Gloom is a card game wherein each player tells a Gothic Horror story of a Big, Screwed-Up Family by playing semi-transparent cards on its members and narrating the miserable events represented by said cards, with the end goal being to maximize own family's misery before they all inevitably meet tragic and sudden ends.
- Hunt A Killer is a series of cooperative mystery games where your goal is to investigate the story of a murder.
- The deckbuilding game Shards Of Infinity has its Shadow of Salvation expansion. This expansion comes with a small book with a storyline for the players to play through. Like a Game Book, it uses several paragraphs of storytelling followed by choices for the players to make. Depending on their selection, the players construct different decks to make a Tabletop Game A.I. that they then have to play against and defeat using the game's normal rules.
- The Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective series of games revolve around solving mystery stories.
- Sleeping Gods is a hybrid of Narrative Board Game and Campaign Board Game. Each game of Sleeping Gods is played out over 45 rounds, which takes roughly 10-15 hours to complete, but there are no clear "stopping points" in either the narrative or the gameplay to divide the game up into "missions" the way most campaign games do. Saving the game consists of writing down the exact gamestate, and you resume playing from exactly where you left off each session. The manual even suggests that, if you have a dedicated game space, leaving the game set up for the length of each playthrough. This makes it more like a narrative game. However, each run through the storyline requires to invest a whole day to it or simply split it on two sittings, making it more like a campaign game.
- T.I.M.E. Stories is a series of narrative "decksploration" games where you play out scenarios where you're using Mental Time Travel to possess someone and make something right. You'll usually have to replay each scenario at least once, but your goal is to use as few attempts as possible, and all you get to keep between your attempts is whatever information you learned.
- Tragedy Looper is an interesting example in that while every scenario has a story behind it, only one player is aware of it until the game ends.
- The second edition of Waste Knights uses two books to craft several different campaigns: There's the actual campaign book, which has the rules for each storyline as well as maps for side-areas and stats for boss monsters, and the "Book of Tales," which features all the events and Flavor Text used to actually tell the story proper. The campaigns make heavy use of choice points, with some campaigns telling entirely different stories depending on which of two initial choices the players make in the very beginning.
- In Space Base, the game itself has a basic Framing Device (each player is trying to be the most successful commodore and earn promotion to admiral), but each "Saga Expansion" has a plotline in which the scenes progressively introduce elements of the expansion game mechanics.
