Cogent Arts & Humanities

Narrative in Board Games

As has been established by several leading figures in Game Studies, the cybernetic nature of games requires theories and frameworks developed for other media to be adapted, or re-invented, for the digital games. This is due to major differences in structures of characteristics between linear, non-interactive media and games, whose combination of algorithmic structures, audio-visual representation as well as their rules and mechanics share a symbiotic relationship with the minds that interact with them. This crucial distinction in form and experience applies to most areas of scrutiny when it comes to games. One of these key areas is narrative.

Narrative in video games has been one of the most hotly debated topics in Game Studies. While aspects of these theories apply to board games, there are considerable differences in the two media that call for a narrative theory of board games. Some of these differences include: the shared, social nature of board games, their taking place primarily in the minds of the players and their materiality, among others.

This collection seeks to explore key characteristics of narrative in board games from both theoretical and design perspectives that allow the reader to get a better handle of board game narrative useful for critical analysis and board game creation.

In the past ten years there has been a major surge in the board game world for games that have a strong narrative element. This is a departure from what was classically popular in the board game world. One of the reasons for this emphasis on the fictional and narrative aspects of board games are: the increasing prominence of crowdfunded board games that typically draw on visually rich and fictionally strong worlds to attract backers. This development has spread to audience expectations of board games more generally, not just crowd-funded ones, and thus there is an increased demand for more integration between mechanics and fiction and a decrease in the tolerance, and thus demand, for games whose fiction is a mere decorative wrapper around its mechanics.

Both the board game industry and academia are missing a multi-faceted approach, or robust conceptualization of board game narrative. While this collection focuses specifically on board games for the sake of rigor, the conceptualizations of narrative present within are also useful for other forms of analog games and related media, such as TTRPGs, LARPs and Immersive Theatre.

The collection invites contributions for this collection that focus on narrative in table-top board games. While reference to related media such as digital games, table-top RPGs, wargames, LARPs and other forms of physical games is agreeable, they should not be the primary focus of the submitted papers. Topics related to narrative, and ones which contribute to it such as: fiction, literariness, theme, role-playing, characterisation and so on are also welcome. It is worth noting that since there is a varied understanding of what game narrative is (ranging from narrative as a strictly formal property to one that is a more emergent and experiential phenomenon) authors are invited to incorporate as broad a notion of the concept as they like, as long as they qualify which school of thought they favor.

Contributions are welcome from a multiplicity of disciplines including: Game Studies, Literary Studies, Film Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, HCI, Cultural Studies and others.

­­All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 27 March 2026.

Please contact Kristen Brida at kristen.brida@taylorandfrancis.com with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Keywords

1. Board Games
2. Narrative
3. Writing
4. Emergent Narrative
5. Game Design and Narrative

About the Guest Advisor

Gordon Calleja is a Full Professor of Game Studies at the Institute of Digital Games at the University of Malta. Gordon has published extensively on player experience in digital games and board games with particular focus on immersion. He has also published on game narrative, game ontology and board game experience and design. He is author of In-Game:From Immersion to Incorporation and Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design both by MIT Press (USA).

Gordon is a game designer at Mighty Boards, a board game design studio based in Malta. Gordon has published Will Love Tear Us Apart, a game adaptation of Joy Division’s track that was nominated for several international awards. He has also designed and published several board games: Posthuman, Vengeance, Posthuman Saga, Vengeance: Roll and Fight, Excavation Earth and Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan.

His games have been nominated for a number of awards including: SXSW Experimental Award, Webby Game Award, Innovation Award at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. He has also won the Jury and People’s Choice Awards for Best European Game at the UK Games Expo.

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Conflict of Interest Disclosure

Professor Calleja does not have any Conflicts of Interest to disclose.