November 17, 2024

Using dominoes to tell the stories of thousands

Tried something new recently?

Weekly, crowdfunding projects offer us new games to get into. They all choose their way to stand out. Some offer riffs on existing designs, others unusual subject matter, or novel ways to tell a familiar story. But, be honest now, when was the last time you learned a whole new game to tell a story you’ve yet to tell before?

Now, if that sounds judgemental, that is unintentional. I don’t play games like that myself very often, and with good reason: familiar rules en concepts have great advantages. I get to start playing faster, I have an easier time learning the mechanics that are new, and I’m positioned to understand the nuances of the game. But those facts themselves made me curious: why would we play with unfamiliar games, and how would you design one?¹

Perspective and means

To give a fragment of an answer to those big questions, I’d like to look at the story game The Details of Our Escape. For that game, innovation seems to lie somewhere between a new narrative perspective and new means to play with.² In plain English: rather than telling the story of individual characters by rolling dice every once in a while, The Details of Our Escape tells the story of thousands of people by laying down a chain of dominoes.

When I say thousands, I actually mean exactly 2348 people. The Details of Our Escape is about a caravan that leaves an enormous city behind to find a better life. As players, you'll tell the story of this caravan's journey by connecting dominoes and narrating what they encounter on the way. Simple rules about the way tiles can be connected determine the nature and tone of the encounter.

Unique properties

At the start of the game, the players each create a community among the thousands, of between twenty and six hundred people. They actually draw a domino that determines that number, which they keep with them. Each player decides what the members of their group have in common and what they're looking for.

Then the players draw a couple more domino's. They will take turns linking together a chain of them and every domino they lay down will represent an encounter the caravan lives through. This mechanic capitalizes on the unique properties of dominoes. You see, if your tile's connecting value matches the previous number, the caravan sticks to its course. If the number is one higher, say you connect a five to a four, the caravan diverts its course towards something good. If the number is one lower, the caravan diverts to avoid something bad.

The values on your domino further inform your narration by modulating the intensity of the keywords that are attached to this leg of the journey. You see, at the start, the players will have chosen two adjectives, like serene and fragile, or ancient and disturbing, which will inform their narration throughout. A high value on a domino means the encounter is, for example, very serene or extremely disturbing. A low value means its somewhat ancient or hardly fragile. The full prompt of each domino is a certain course and two intensified or toned down keywords.

Each turn, you’ll describe what the caravan encounters and how that affects your community.

Macroscopic storytelling

All the while, a silent question underlies each chapter of the story. Will my group find what it's looking for, or will they have to keep trekking on? Because, when someone can no longer play a domino on their turn, the caravan arrives at a settlement. There, the tile each player has kept with them since the creation of their community will determine if it stays with the caravan, or if it leaves.

The Details of Our Escape is interested in groups.³ A lot of play even zooms out to the level of the whole caravan. This perspective is supported by the means the game uses to randomize the caravan's journey. The tiles trace its path across the table and give players enough input on their turn, without limiting their imagination too much. When I was confronted with an encounter that was both very beautiful and very dangerous, I was very pleased to think of huge, majestic sea creatures rising up out of the water creating a dangerous whirlpool.

The Details of Our Escape shares its macroscopic perspective with map-drawing and world-building games, but infuses it with a more linear narrative via the journey of the two thousand. It allowed me to tell a story that distinguished itself significantly from the ones I usually tell at my table. I'm very glad I gave it a try.

That's it for now,
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