I really like to play games and I have a hierarchy of game types that are all divided in to subtypes but I'll share only the broadest categories. Currently, I am slogging my way through Borderlands 2 and I have a queue of other games to play on the Xbox. I think that as much fun as video games are, though, it isn't better than an actual board game. There's something about the tangibility of the pieces, having something with weight that you can move and place yourself, relying on other humans to play by rules that you all agree on. A step above boardgames is role-playing games, which can be like modular games that each person who plays experiences differently. Beyond that, though, and oddly almost contradicting what I said about tangibility, is the story-game. They share several similarities with RPGs but a story-game is about creating something for yourself or your group. Some of them can create artifacts of the game afterwards that resemble little short stories but for the most part, the whole thing exists in the player's mind.
It's incredibly rare to find a group of people who even want to play a regular session of Dungeons and Dragons but gathering people for something that is a bit more experimental and hard to explain can be a near impossible task, especially given an environment where indoor activities that aren't video games are almost anathema. So, we go one stage deeper and find the solo story game. When I try to play an RPG solo, I have fun but it takes up a lot of space and it can be hard to keep track of everything. With a story game, it's basically writing a story with a set of guidelines so that even when I'm the one who is writing it, it can still surprise me.
The role playing game community has always thrived on the creativity of it's players and it is here that story games grew out of. Independent gaming has produced some really amazing stuff and I'm going to link my two favorite completely free rules for solo story gaming. These are both from a contest that is held yearly so there are more on the way and the contest wraps up in February. These each hold a sort of fantasy leaning but they can both be easily modified to offer support for anything from noir to sci-fi to high school drama if that's what suits the player.
Spider's Dance
This is a game about a family of spider spirits traveling through a world. You create the map of the world, you tell the story of each spider's journey and you progressively show the spider's effects on the world as each one travels through the world. This could also be played as a sort of round-robin writing game.
Turning Leaves
I love this game. The potential to create a world, populate it with characters and slowly build more and more on to what is already there is amazing. If a person was suffering from writer's block, just reading through the character creation in this could knock plenty of ideas loose. This one also uses playing cards to determine certain story elements and index cards for each character(you create six to begin but create new ones in certain in-game milestones) as well as a player created map. It's all very interesting and a perfect time killer for a long ride somewhere or just a rainy day. However, when you really start getting into it, you won't need to search for an excuse to play.
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