I love board games almost as much as a good book. I enjoy spending an entire day in good company and racking my brain to get the best strategy to win a game. But did you know that some board games can help you improve your writing while having fun?
In this post, I have curated a compilation of my favorite games related to writing or the creative process. I hope you find them interesting and are encouraged to try them!
Dixit
A funny game that enhances our ability to improvise and helps us to train creativity. In Dixit, we will take turns as storytellers and we will have to use the cards to create sentences for the other players to guess the image.
- Players: 3-8 (works best with 5-6)
- Age: 8+
- Duration of games: 30 minutes
- Authors: Jean-Louis Roubira and Marie Cardouat
- BGG Link: Dixit
Dark Stories
A card game that involves solving mysteries. If you enjoy crime novels or Coen movies, you will appreciate this game. Each box contains fifty cards, and each card is a new puzzle to decode.
- Players: 1-15 (works best with 4-6)
- Age: 12+
- Duration of games: 20 minutes
- Authors: Holger Bösch and Bernhard Skopnik
- BGG Link: Dark Stories
Rory’s Story Cubes
Probably the simplest game on the list, but also one of the most inspiring. Each set of Story Cubes contains 9 dice with different designs. You can roll them randomly and use them as a creative trigger. There are many sets with various themes, and you can also mix and match them. Their website provides tips and ideas for using the dice.
- Players: 1-12
- Age: 4+
- Duration of games: 20 minutes
- Authors: Rory O’Connor
- Link: Story Cubes Site
Once Upon a Time
Another card game for telling stories, this time focused on fairy tales with princesses, castles, witches, and enchanted princes. It is interesting to work on the structure of classic stories and imagine new ones based on them.
- Players: 3-6 (works best with 5-6)
- Age: 8+
- Duration of games: 30 minutes
- Authors: Richard Lambert, Andrew Rilstone, and James Wallis
- BGG Link: Once Upon a Time
Mysterium
A collaborative card game for solving a mystery involving a ghost. A funny game in which one player portrays the ghost while others work together to unravel the ghost’s demise.
- Players: 2-7 (works best with 5-6)
- Age: 8+
- Duration of games: 42 minutes
- Authors: Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko
- BGG Link: Mysterium
Roleplaying Games
Although they do not come in a box and are not a board game per se, role-playing games are a highly recommended exercise for any writer. Participating in a role-playing game as a player allows you to become a character in the story and collaborate with other characters to build it.
But the most striking thing for a writer is understanding how role-playing games work and being able to direct a story. The director of a role-playing game must work on the structure, the narrative tension, the background of the characters, the mystery, dose the information, try to guide the characters, and, at the same time, have the capacity for improvisation to redirect the story when players stray too far from the plot. A very complete job to exercise our writing muscles!
If you have never played role-playing games, you can read this guide on how to Get Started with Roleplaying Games. However, you can also look for a simplified version of role-playing games that works even for a single player. This brings us directly to the last game on the list…
Fiasco
Probably one of my all-time favorite games, Fiasco was published as a multiplayer book to invent together a story in the purest style of the Coen brothers’ films. The second book goes a little further and adds ideas for writing stories based on the game system and even explains how to create new scenarios with the themes we prefer.
Upon reviewing the information for this entry, I learned that there is also a version of Fiasco in a more traditional board game style. I have not tried it out yet, so I can not provide my opinion.
However, I highly recommend the two books of Fiasco. I believe they are essential for any writer to play or just enjoy reading and analyzing the rules.
- Players: 2-5
- Age: 18+
- Duration of games: 4+ hours
- Author: Jason Morningstar
- Link: Fiasco Site
Conclusions
This is my list of board games for writers. Many other narrative games that could be included, but these are my favorites. Of all the games I have tried, I consider these to have boosted my creativity and enhanced my writing skills the most.
In any case, you can try games that interest you, even if they are not on this list. You never know where you might find inspiration!