As someone who has always played board games, I have always wondered why we, as humans, find them so fun. We have played board games for thousands of years. Senet, the first board game, is estimated to date back to around 5000 bc. As a writing student, I have been studying narrative and have learnt how deeply human beings resonate with it. We apply it to everything we do: sports, the news, our friendship groups; even our own personal journey through life is narrativized. We find a good narrative so fundamentally gripping that we can’t help but keep turning the page, or in the case of board games, we can’t help but take another turn. Here is how board games create narrative, using Freytag’s pyramid as a template.
Exposition/Stasis
The player to your right finishes their turn. The board is set; the pieces lie in wait. Until you take your turn, nothing on the board can change. There is stasis. Stasis is essential because it provides the exposition and context. Where are the characters? Or in this case, the pieces? What are they doing? Where are they on the board? The Stasis provides us with the beginning: how everything lies in rest before the plot unfolds. A good story will quickly shake this stasis. As an audience, we want the status quo to be challenged. As players, we want to change it in our favour. How do we do that?
Inciting Incident
Like the protagonists in our books, we are called to action, but instead of an old mentor or a love interest that tempts us into adventure, we are called by the beginning of our turn. This will be the inciting incident that upsets the stasis and begins our journey.
Rising Action
The journey towards our climax begins in a book, where the protagonist struggles against conflict, journeys towards their goal, and makes crucial decisions based on what they want. This is also where we, the players, struggle through our conflict. Which move do I make? Where do I move my pieces? Who should I attack? What resources do I need? Trying to think moves ahead or trying to decide which player is the biggest threat, maybe you’re in a position of strength, but you need to appear weak to avoid getting a target on your back. All these agonising decisions, all these obstacles mark our journey towards…
Climax
We have looked at the board, agonised over our decisions, and overcome internal conflicts. Maybe other players have talked to us, opposing agendas sowing ideas in our head, perhaps they’ve lobbied for alliances, or threatened your pieces. The decision-making process is an obstacle, and, like any narrative, it has been overcome, and we arrive at our climax. Everything so far leads to this point: we make our move, we oppose
the villain, whether that be the sticky situation we find ourselves in on the board, or maybe we are moving against another player. Perhaps it’s a solo game and the “villain” is our high score. Whatever the final showdown is, this is the climax; everything hinges on this move.
Falling Action/ Catastrophe
The hero has faced the villain, or in this case, we have faced the board and the other players. We have made our move. Now we see the outcome, maybe it is a catastrophe, perhaps the player we move against set a trap, and we walked right into it, perhaps we lose no matter what move we make. Or maybe you make your move, and immediately realise you should have done something else, in which case this narrative becomes a tragedy, defeated by ourselves. Or, hopefully, it’s the right move, we overtake first place, we claim the resources we want, we set ourselves up to win, and maybe we do indeed claim our victory.
Resolution
Our move made, the enemy responds, is it a defeat? Do the stakes rise in another turn? If it's early in the game, then yes, the previous turn was merely one small fractal narrative within a much larger one, maybe one enemy is defeated, and now a new player threatens you, or maybe first place needs to be taken down a peg. Many games encourage this narrative anyway. ‘The Game of Thrones’ game is built on weaving your own Westerosi drama, RISK is a story of war, and Nemesis is a story of betrayal.
Even without a strong theme or an inherent emphasis on narrative, the joy in board games comes from their unrelenting ability to create stories. Stories of betrayal, revenge, comebacks, or falls from grace. Every move, every game can set off dominoes of stories at the table. Maybe it will be a story of love, perhaps the board game café is where you meet your future partner, or maybe you’ll fall in love with board games themselves.
