Games that Lend Themselves to Emergent Narrative

[Corrupted Unicorn]

What is an emergent narrative?

It's, simply puy, the story you come up with as you play a game, and it can be VERY different from the actual story programmed by the developers. 

I am INTENSELY CRAVING games like these. There's games that easily lend themselves to emergent narratives, such as Minecraft, the Sims, or Rimworld; but if someone manages to come up with a story out of Tetris, I don't want them to feel left out!

For me, games with virtual pet/battle monster mechanics work particularly well with this: things like Pokémon, or Neopets, or Palworld or Chao Garden  I love coming up with little stories and microcosms for my critters: giving them personalities, interactions, and coming up with "special rules" that affect both how I play and the context. Another game I think lends itself to emergent narratives well is Miitopia, where you can customize as many player avatars as you want, send them to adventures, feed them, dress them and have them interact with eachother, even going for outings together. 

I'd love to elaborate on this if asked, but I'm about to leave: but before I go, what games do you find prime for creating your own stories out of them? Do you want to share one of those stories here? Do you have any original characters that started out as a character in one of these games?

Of course, all my examples here have been videogames, but I think we should leave out card games and board games! I've been interested in creating storylines out of fortune-telling cards such as Tarot 

[jensen]

The game I would mention is pretty sure of itself but for the right reasons. It refers to itself as "the deepest, most intricate simulation of a world that's ever been created." I'm sure there is a couple people who could already figure it out but this is the tagline for Dwarf Fortress. You start with a couple of Dwarves and your world really expands from there, you can really go for whatever you want. They even double down on emergent narrative with the latest update (Adventure Mode) which lets you take control of one specific dwarf you have and go on an adventure with them. The link I used is for the graphical version on Steam but if anyone is interested and wants to play for free, the ASCII version is free, although your learning curve is greater because of the ASCII.

Another video game that lends itself to this is World of Warcraft. Both Retail and Classic are good bases for really fleshing out your own character, but my personal pick is Classic. You can meet some lovely people in the virtual world and really develop yourself in character. My character is Krayvenn the Forsaken Rogue, and I make sure to write all mail to my guildies in-character even if they don't bother. I've received a few messages on discord thanking me for the in-character mail so it really motivates me to keep at it, even if it's the most I do with my character's story.


Outside of video games, I would point to Solo TTRPG/Journaling games. For the majority of these, you are using the system provided to create your character and generate some prompts but after that you are left to your own devices. There is a couple other people on the forum that I know are into these like myself so I won't go into too many suggestions. One game I have is about your travels as a Bounty Hunter in space. You generate your character and your bounty and the system helps give you writing structure but what you do with the prompts can really blow yourself away. On the other side of things I have a game where you are a young witch starting at a witch school, and you write about your year at the school. You write 3 years as your character to get a complete story, and there is even a "year out" option where you write about visiting somewhere else between 2 of your academic years.

I have quite a big board game / card game collection but it's hard to name a game that fits itself to emergent narrative well. They definitely exist, I've seen some on YouTube that are really cool and each time you play you are developing on whatever story you and your friends concocted last time, and you get this nice "campaign" feeling once you have played a lot of games of it.

[candycanearter07]

One game I love (but can't really play much nowadays) is Space Station 13, which despite its age (2005!!) and outdated engine (screw byond) is a really wild game that is basically a sandbox roleplay with a plot and some light objectives. Theres so many interlocking systems (crafting, construction, cooking, chemistry, atmospheric simulations, power generators), a ton of different jobs, players (servers usually cap out at around 100?), etc, that you can kinda do anything given the time, materials, and manipulating other player (characters) its quite a good time. Only thing is the learning curve is very steep and the engine sucks, theres a Unity remake in Space Station 14, but I don't like it bc it's still in beta and missing a lot of stuff.

[jensen]

Space Station 13

How could I forget SS13?! Yes, this totally fits with emergent narratives. I have so many good memories of being a murderous janitor and a geneticist turning all the police into monkeys.

[candycanearter07]

How could I forget SS13?! Yes, this totally fits with emergent narratives. I have so many good memories of being a murderous janitor and a geneticist turning all the police into monkeys.

Heck yea, classic spess. Did you use the tator DNA gun??

[JetDungeonDragon]

I think it goes without saying that The Elder Scrolls can do this in spades. Though for Oblivion and Skyrim I find that I need mods to help hammer it home compared to Morrowind or Daggerfall. For the former, I even did write a short story around it. TTRPGs go without saying, and especially solo games.  I'll second Pokemon being a really good series for it. The OG X-CoM and Terror from the Deep are fantastic for it too as the fodder slowly filters into your elite troops that you may or may not have given really stupid names too. Elona and its sequel Elin is big for me on that front too. I have something in the works for the latter but other projects have been eating up that time.  Off the top of my head, that's all that comes to mind.

EDIT: Oh, how could I forget all the Digimon World and Digimon Story games!