Once Upon A Time
When people ask me what my favorite game is, I don’t have to think very hard. For me, a good game is like a photo album: full of memories. When you look at it, you remember all the people you enjoyed it with, and all those wonderful times you had. Plenty of good games do this for me, but there is one, one above all that almost makes me weep… weep with laughter, that is, as I remember the times we played it and laughed until we cried. It’s a game that generates jokes and anecdotes that live far beyond the instance of playing it and thus leads to laughs over and over again, for months and years, from just half an hour of play time. The game was created over ten years ago (and won an Origins Award then) but remains on sale through Atlas Games, and continues to enchant new players with each passing year. There will never be anything quite like it, and the hobby is richer for having it. I speak, of course, of Once Upon A Time.
How can 168 cards do so much? By guiding the players through improvised storytelling. This is the rub, of course: a game can only do so much guiding, so inevitably the players are going to have to do some storytelling. Thus, not everyone is going to get as much out of this game as I do. It demands a willingness of its players to imagine, to create, to share creation with others in a friendly, giving way and to present those creations to others. It also demands that the players let go of a lot of basic gaming ideas, because if they play to win or if they play in a cut-throat style, the stories will die. Much like a roleplaying game then, a social contract needs to exist before you play, with players being of similar tastes and styles of play, and with everyone understanding the expectations of the game. My description makes it sound like something arty or elitist, or with weak, flimsy mechanics, but that’s definitely not the case. Once Upon A Time is a game, it has a structure, and you don’t need to be an actor to play it – but it does share many charactertistics of an RPG. Perhaps that’s why it’s so very special: it’s a strange hybrid creature, two separate ideas coming together to create a unique and beautiful gaming experience.
The box contains two sets of cards, with lovely illustrations on front and back. Of these, one-third (56 cards) are Happily Ever After cards. On each of these is listed an ending to a story – a fairy story, as suggested by the game’s title. Many of these come from real fairytales, too, though in isolation it can be hard to spot which ones. These range from the operatic “He revealed his true identity and they were married” to the vengeful “So the evil-doers were thrown down the well” to the reflective “So she wore it always to remind her” to the ambiguous “And they ate it at the feast and it was delicious” and the obscure “It fit perfectly!”.
Each player gets one of these cards, and the aim of the game is to tell a story that ends naturally with the ending in your hand – before somebody else ends the story with the ending in their hand. You can’t just tell any old story, however. The other 112 cards in the deck contain features which must play a significant role in your story. These are grouped into “suits” as follows: Characters (eg “Witch”, “Prince”), Items (“Sword”, “Ring”), Places (“Palace”, “Cottage”), Events (“People Fall In Love”, “A Battle”) and Aspects (“Beautiful”, “Can Talk”). In order to play these cards from your hand, you have to introduce these elements into the story. You can’t cheat and just run down a list, of course, they need to be major elements of the story. Manage to string a story together that weaves through these elements (and thus empties your hand) and reaches all the way to your ending and you win.
It’s not quite that simple though. Any time you mention something in your story that another player has the card for, they can jump in, play their card and take control of the story. It’s all one story, albeit an often jumbled and confused one, seeing as it is being told by three to six players with their random cards. Other players can also interrupt with special interrupting cards, so the game, ideally, switches control all the time. That’s where the fun comes in: trying to weave together all these divergent elements into something vaguely coherent produces stories so silly and so strange you’ll never forget them.
The rules also allow players to interrupt if the current storyteller hesitates too long or outright contradicts something previously established. However, the rules also stress that these rules need to be adjudicated with generosity so they don’t penalize people unduly. Along the same lines, there is the understanding that players need to play with some intent of having their story stolen, by making sure their story features plenty of elements that match the cards. Mostly this is taken care of by the fairy tale theme: fairy tales tend to feature wicked queens and brave princes and magical swords without much effort. It’s also helped by the fact that many of the Events and Aspects can be interpreted expansively (if somebody dies, then technically that’s also “People Part Company”), but players who are crafty will find ways to feature axes instead of swords and cobblers instead of beggars and even worse examples, or try to run their cards as fast as they can to further prevent interruptions. Others will try to lawyer their way around every card they play ad nauseam (“you said it was a lion, that counts as a king, king of the jungle”). And there’s nothing in the rules to stop them – but if they do it, they will kill the game. There’s no joy in winning that way, even for the victor, because it’s no real challenge.
The challenge in this game isn’t tactical at all. The challenge is a purely creative and collaborative one, in creating humor and stories and a fun experience for all. This is a fantastic challenge to face, and meet – for some. But for those who are keen to meet it, you couldn’t want for a better tool to help you do so. The wonderful array of cards and the way the story so naturally bounces back and forth between players leads to stories no one could ever have imagined or predicted, and they will be funnier than putting ferrets down your pants. As long as you go in knowing the goals of the game and how they can best be achieved, you’ll find an enchanting game that churns out these goals with ease and charm and wonder.
Stories, they say, keep us warm when the fire dies down and the blankets are too thin. Consider Once Upon A Time a portable generator that can run a furnace as big as a buick – and it fits in your pocket. Take it with you, keep it near your heart, and stay warm.
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:23
[...] RPG, but a potentially awesome tool for a DM’s toolbox of stuff, especially if you’re a storytelling DM. The link to Atlas errored out for me, so here it [...]