Prior to taking this class, I hadn’t played physical storytelling games. I enjoy many narrative storytelling digital games, so exploring this genre of games while developing a concept with my group was a learning experience. One of the games me and my peers played was …and then we died.
Target audience: people who enjoy collaborative, storytelling tabletop games
Creator: Emma Larkins
Platform: physical tabletop card game
In the current version of my group’s game, each player becomes a narrator for 30 seconds, must perform a role, and then the narrator chooses from other players’ written continuation ideas.
My argument is that …and then we all died and my team’s concept is both designed to prevent the paralysis players feel that often kills storytelling games, but they solve this problem in two different ways. On one hand, …and then we all died succeeds by making collaborative storytelling feel more low-stakes and fluid. On the other hand, my team’s concept pursues the same goal through the reliance on roles, judgment, and rules. When we compare the two games, we can see how different mechanics can either relive or intensify the creative pressure on players.
The most important mechanical difference is where each game puts what I call, “burden of invention.” In …and then we died, a player forms a word by overlapping a word-fragment card, draws a replacement, and points to another player who must continue the story using that word. Play continues until the final card appears and someone concludes the story with the group’s death. Interestingly, the rules say that players can create made-up or misspelled words to encourage an improv mentality. This is a clever design because it narrows creativity without punishing imperfections. For example, during one round of play with my group, one of my group members was struggling to create a word from the cards. After a few minutes, she hesitantly made “cat.” She was hesitant because a cat had nothing to do with our current storyline, but the openness of the game allowed for the next person to integrate “cat” into the narrative, and it was super funny! Players aren’t asked to invent something from nothing, they are asked to respond to a concrete word cue. The game’s description is “anyone can be a storyteller,” and its mechanics genuinely support that claim.
Compared to my team, our concept distributes the burden differently. We layer multiple systems onto each player’s turn such as time limits, visible role performance, written continuation submissions, and point scoring. From a mechanical standpoint, this gives players more structure and jobs. In our game, a player isn’t just continuing a story, they are also trying to act out their role clearly and make a plot point to the developing story entertaining, ultimately increasing pressure for the players. For example, during the play test, the player with the role “The Oversharer” had to do multiple things at once: overshare and drag out the plot point within one minute, remember the shared storyline, and be entertaining. This was a notable pressure point, but they found the game fun because of this! Using the MDA framework, I would say that …and then we died produces fellowship and narrative first, while our games push towards more of a challenge, expression, and performance pressure. Because our game adds judgment and points, the game inherently feels less cooperative and more theatrical.
These differences also explain how the two games compare to others in the storytelling genre. …and then we died is closer to a relaxed, rules-light version of the card game Once Upon a Time, where shared storytelling is the focus and stakes are lowered. My team’s game is closer to Cards Against Humanity and even a bit like Charades because the fun comes from selection and exaggerated delivery, compared to a game like Once Upon a Time where it’s based on pure narrative flow.
Ultimately, what differs our concept from other storytelling games is that it treats storytelling as some sort of party-game performance system. I think the strongest part of our prototype is the continuation plot point pile, because it helps prevent the paralysis of not knowing what to say afterwards. The course reading “What do Prototypes Prototype?” also helped me understand my team’s process better. We struggled a lot with worrying about whether or not combining all these types of fun would be too overwhelming for the player. Did we want it to be a collaborative storytelling circle? A judging game? A role-playing performance game? A bit of everything? We’re still figuring it out so it makes sense that some mechanics feel unresolved.
In conclusion, …and then we died and my team’s concept reveals two different philosophies of design in trying to solve the same problem. …and then we died makes storytelling paralysis less of an issue by making each player’s turn lighter and more cooperative while my group’s game structures the act of storytelling. This makes our design more performative and funnier, but also more cognitively demanding. Comparing the two helped me see that in storytelling games, the question is whether the mechanics make creatively feel safe enough to keep going.
