Tag: Storytelling

Storytelling games present players with a narrative story that the players directly influence through their in-game actions.

Mice and Mystics

| T3d-1978
Mice and Mystics

Mice and Mystics

In Mice and Mystics, players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra’s minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Collin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle’s former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra’s weakness and defeat her.

Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle’s housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to hoard the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Mice and Mystics will provide any group of friends with an unforgettable adventure they will be talking about for years to come – assuming they can all squeak by…

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Role Playing
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.72

Fallout

| T3d-1978
Fallout

Fallout

Fallout is a post-nuclear adventure board game for one to four players. Based on the hit video game series by Bethesda Softworks, each Fallout scenario is inspired by a familiar story from the franchise. Survivors begin the game on the edge of an unexplored landscape, uncertain of what awaits them in this unfamiliar world. With just one objective to guide them from the very beginning, each player must explore the hidden map, fight ferocious enemies, and build the skills of their survivor as they attempt to complete challenging quests and balance feuding factions within the game.

As they advance their survivors’ stories, players come across new quests and individual targets, leading them to gain influence. Who comes out ahead depends on how keenly and aggressively each player ventures through the game; however, if a single faction is pushed to power too quickly, the wasteland will be taken for their own, and the survivors conquered along with it.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Role Playing
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.99

Dead of Winter

| T3d-1978
Dead of Winter

Dead of Winter

“Crossroads” is a game series from Plaid Hat Games that tests a group of survivors’ ability to work together and stay alive while facing crises and challenges from both outside and inside. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game, the first title in this series, puts 2-5 players in a small, weakened colony of survivors in a world in which most of humanity is either dead or diseased, flesh-craving monsters. Each player leads a faction of survivors, with dozens of different characters in the game.

Dead of Winter is a meta-cooperative psychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition, but for each individual player to achieve victory, they must also complete their personal secret objective, which could relate to a psychological tick that’s fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or (worst of all) vengeance against the colony! Games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing. Work toward the group’s goal, but don’t get walked all over by a loudmouth who’s looking out only for their own interests!

Dead of Winter is an experience that can be accomplished only through the medium of tabletop games, a story-centric game about surviving through a harsh winter in an apocalyptic world. The survivors are all dealing with their own psychological imperatives, but must still find a way to work together to fight off outside threats, resolve crises, find food and supplies, and keep the colony’s morale up.

Dead of Winter has players making frequent, difficult, heavily-thematic, wildly-varying decisions that often have them deciding between what’s best for the colony and what’s best for themselves. The rulebook also includes a fully co-operative variant in which all players work toward the group objective with no personal goals.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Bluffing
  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Push Your Luck
  • Storytelling
  • Trading

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.01

Code 3

| T3d-1978
Code 3

Code 3

Code 3 is a cooperative, story-driven, 80s-themed crime fighting game. Can you save your city from badly-named mob bosses, fear-inducing serial killers, a rising crime rate, and a police Chief that isn’t always your friend? These officers may have 99 problems, but crime ain’t one.

Code 3’s cooperative scenarios challenge players to complete goals and make choices before revealing the next part of a branching story arc. Of course, mob bosses aren’t the only thing hindering our officers, as 911 calls spread like wildfire about your city. If too many 911 calls go unanswered… the game is lost.

Customize your crime fighting duo by selecting two officers (out of hundreds of officer combinations), each with their own unique deck, which are then shuffled together to create your “Beat Partners” deck.

You can tailor your Beat Partners deck to answer 911 calls quickly, to investigate for witnesses and evidence, to complete scenario objectives, or even move your beat cops into position to help your allies. There are hundreds of character combinations that you can experiment with, and finding the best two cops (or canines!) is key to your team’s victory! Choices are everywhere!

Most importantly, Code 3 gives players the opportunity to handle things by the book… or play just outside the rules. However, if players choose to step outside the Police Department’s Code of Conduct then the Internal Affairs Division starts investigating them. Players then shuffle “IA Heat” cards into their deck, and if two are ever drawn on the same turn, those players must immediately proceed to a contentious “Internal Affairs Interview.” Unfortunately, this prevents players from hitting the street and handling those 911 calls. Your teammates can help you during the IA Interview by vouching for you… but at what cost? Are they willing to put their reputation on the line for you? Are they willing to risk their own IA Interview?

Code-3 is a sand box of 80’s cop action. Do you love rolling dice? Do you love pushing your luck? Do you love unraveling the story? The meta-game? Helping the team? Being in charge? And… do you do it by the book? Find out now!

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Storytelling
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Aftermath

| T3d-1978
Aftermath

Aftermath

Aftermath is an Adventure Book Game in which players take on the role of small critters struggling to survive and thrive in a big, dangerous world. Humans have mysteriously vanished, and the remnants of civilization are quickly being reclaimed by nature and the animals who still remain.

In the game, you play as a misfit band of critters known by their colony as “providers”. There’s the guinea pig with anger issues, a hamster that talks fast and drives faster, a small mouse with keen eyes and a lot to prove, and a mysterious vole who’s borderline feral. These characters each have their own personalities, play-styles, and personal goals.

You’ll leave the safety of your colony and venture out into the abandoned world on one of 20+ story-driven missions and side missions. Scavenge the ruins of mankind in search of food and supplies for your colony, but beware — the world is filled with bandits and predators, and you must fight or flee to stay alive.

Return to your colony with resources and information that will help your friends and family survive. Grow your colony and keep it safe by building structures and improvements with the spoils of your adventures, but plan accordingly, for the colony will face hardship each time you leave it…

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Player Elimination
  • Role Playing
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.88

Abomination: The heir of Frankenstein

| T3d-1978
Abomination: The heir of Frankenstein

Abomination: The heir of Frankenstein

It’s been twenty years since Victor Frankenstein died on a ship in the arctic, but his vengeful creature lives on, as does Robert Walton, the sea captain who vowed to kill the fiend before mercy stayed his hand. It’s now 1819, and a sinister darkness descends upon the city of Paris. A mysterious benefactor of gigantic stature has emerged in the scientific community, never showing his face, claiming to possess the late Frankenstein’s research. He sponsors a grand competition, offering an even grander prize: unlocking the mystery of mortality!

Renowned scientists from around the world come to take part: some drawn to solve this eternal riddle, others coerced against their will. But a certain captain comes as well, one deeply suspicious of the secretive patron, hoping to finally fulfill his vow.

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a competitive game of strategic monster building for 2-4 players, inspired by Mary Shelley’s classic novel of gothic horror. In the game, the creature demands your help to accomplish what his own creator would not: to bring to life an abomination like itself, a companion to end its miserable solitude. Through worker placement and careful management of decomposing resources, you’ll gather materials from the cemeteries and morgues around the city, conduct valuable research at the Academy of Science, hire less-than-reputable associates, and toil away in your lab — all in an effort to assemble a new form of life and infuse it with a “spark of being”. Do well, and the creature may reward you during one of its surprise visits; do poorly, and you may come to regret not putting forth more effort. Narrative elements come into play throughout the game, guided by your decisions, leading to potentially unsavory outcomes.

The game ends when you succeed in bringing your creation to life or when the Captain kills the creature, whichever happens first. Then the player with the most points fulfills Frankenstein’s dark legacy, becoming his heir, for good or ill…

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Narrative Choice
  • Set Collection
  • Storytelling
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.25

Vigilante

| T3d-1978
Vigilante

Vigilante

In Vigilante, you lead a team of heroes to fight back a swarm of villains running free in the city. Vigilante brings social deduction, action management, and tableau-building into a unique combination that leaves you with many different paths to take to accomplish your goals, new strategies and synergies between heroes, and a lot of tension!

There are a variety of scenarios (game modes) depending on player preferences. The game plays in rounds, where players have 4 actions to either fight (and imprison) villains, recruit new heroes, search for equipment and other helpful cards, or heal. Afterwards, players secretly roll their dice and contribute one of them, which sometimes will help the group but usually hinders them.

In Brought to Justice, each player gets a secret role. ‘Good’ players represent the majority and must imprison 7 villains per good player before the end of the game (i.e. if there are 2 Good players, they need a combined total of 14). ‘Evil’ players are trying to foil their plans, and Neutral players have independent missions which generally throw a little chaos into the mix.

Shifting Allegiances takes Brought to Justice and creates even more uncertainty by only guaranteeing one ‘Good’ player, while the rest of the mix could be any combination of ‘Good’, ‘Evil’, or ‘Neutral’ players. Even though there’s a possibility that all players are good, it will take time to gain each other’s trust, and you could end up sabotaging your own victory!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Deck Building
  • Deduction
  • Hidden Roles
  • Storytelling
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

TIME Stories

| T3d-1978
TIME Stories

TIME Stories

The T.I.M.E Agency protects humanity by preventing temporal faults and paradoxes from threatening the fabric of our universe. As temporal agents, you and your team will be sent into the bodies of beings from different worlds or realities to successfully complete the missions given to you. Failure is impossible, as you will be able to go back in time as many times as required.

T.I.M.E Stories is a narrative game, a game of “decksploration”. Each player is free to give their character as deep a “role” as they want, in order to live through a story, as much in the game as around the table. But it’s also a board game with rules which allow for reflection and optimization.

At the beginning of the game, the players are at their home base and receive their mission briefing. The object is then to complete it in as few attempts as possible. The actions and movements of the players will use Temporal Units (TU), the quantity of which depend on the scenario and the number of players. Each attempt is called a “run”; one run equals the use of all of the Temporal Units at the players’ disposal. When the TU reach zero, the agents are recalled to the agency, and restart the scenario from the beginning, armed with their experience. The object of the game is to make the perfect run, while solving all of the puzzles and overcoming all of a scenario’s obstacles.

You usually take possession of local hosts to navigate in a given environment, but who knows what you’ll have to do to succeed? Roam a med-fan city, looking for the dungeon where the Syaan king is hiding? Survive in the Antarctic while enormous creatures lurk beneath the surface of the ice? Solve a puzzle in an early 20th century asylum? That is all possible, and you might even have to jump from one host to another, or play against your fellow agents from time to time.

The base box contains the entirety of the T.I.M.E Stories system and allows players to play all of the scenarios, the first of which — Asylum — is included. During a scenario, which consists of a deck of 120+ cards, each player explores cards, presented most often in the form of a panorama. Access to some cards require the possession of the proper item or items, while others present surprises, enemies, riddles, clues, and other dangers. An insert allows players to “save” the game at any point, to play over multiple sessions, just like in a video game. This way, it’s possible to pause your ongoing game by preserving the state of the receptacles, the remaining TU, the discovered clues, etc.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Move Through Deck
  • Narrative Choice
  • Puzzle
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.60

Tales of the Arabian Nights

| T3d-1978
Tales of the Arabian Nights

Tales of the Arabian Nights

In Tales of the Arabian Nights, you are the hero or heroine in a story of adventure and wonder just like those told by Scheherazade to her spellbound sultan! You will travel the land seeking your own destiny and fortune. You will learn stories and gain wisdom to share with others. Will you be the first to fulfill your destiny? The next Tale is yours to tell! There is, of course, a winner in Tales of the Arabian Nights, but the point of the game is less to see who wins and more to enjoy the unfolding and telling of a great story!

In this new edition of the groundbreaking storytelling game, you enter the lands of the Arabian Nights alongside Sindbad, Ali Baba, and the other legendary heroes of the tales. Travel the world encountering imprisoned princesses, powerful ‘efreets, evil viziers, and such marvels as the Magnetic Mountain and the fabled Elephant’s Graveyard.

Choose your actions carefully and the skills you possess will reward you: become beloved, wealthy, mighty – even become sultan of a great land. Choose foolishly, however, and become a beggar, or be cursed with a beast’s form or become insane from terror! YOU will bring to life the stories of the inestimable Book of Tales in this vastly replayable board game with over 2002 tales that will challenge, amuse, astound and spellbind you for years to come

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Narrative Choice
  • Role Playing
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • ~120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.16

Suspects

| T3d-1978
Suspects

Suspects

Suspects is a range of investigation games with streamlined rules and plots centered on the psychology of the characters in the style of Agatha Christie’s novels. The first opus will feature the ingenious and fearless Claire Harper in three stories that pay tribute to the great classics of detective literature!

Claire Harper was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford in 1927. Specializing in criminal law, she is also an adventurous traveler. Every mystery is an opportunity for her to test her formidable spirit of deduction and her unfailing determination! In this first episode, follow her in her investigations that will take her from grand manor houses to shady theaters and from Scotland to…Egypt!

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.82