We played the Norwegian story game Archipelago today.

We played the Norwegian story game Archipelago today. When I put this one on the calendar, I thought it was strictly an Earthsea setting, but it turns out Archipelago is actually a universal story game system (and an excellent one, at that). We did a swords & sorcery/Conan-type setting, but you could do almost anything with it. In fact, we decided that if we play it again, we’d love to tell a crooked-cop drama, like The Shield or The Wire.

Our story felt quite epic and, importantly, consistent. The rules emphasize and reinforce the idea that you are creating a story together, and that the story should have a consistent tone and the characters should obey certain rules within the world.

Each player has an Element, which is a force or environmental factor that they have complete authority over (and so have veto power when it comes to other players introducing things related to the element). In our setting, the elements were Magic, Culture, and the Drozzarkt (the bad guys, who were kind of a force of nature). If we do our corrupt cop story, the Elements will be something like Official Code of Conduct, the Thin Blue Line, and Law of the Street.

Additionally, each player has certain commands they can use to prompt better storytelling and RP from whoever is in the spotlight. These commands basically give you permission to disagree with where the player is taking the story and help to keep the narrative logical and consistent.

Finally, resolution is completely random. Whenever your character does something that can lead to failure, you can draw cards that say either “Yes,” “No,” and “Perhaps,” with each having additional conditions that must be incorporated into the story. It’s pretty cool.

All in all, we are definitely playing this one again. It is the closest thing to a universal story game system I have run across (and I mean a proper, freeform story game – not something like Fate, which has lots of traddy elements).