Thoughts on Laura Simpson's Companions' Tale

I’ve been excited about Companions’ Tale since I first learned of its existence. I love map games, I love story games, and I love stories of competing narrative authority.  Unreliable narrators and the mutability of reality through the lens of human experience both fascinate me.  Companions’ Tale has it all.
 
In Companions’ Tale, you and three friends tell the stories of a land and one of its heroes by sharing the adventures of the companions who have accompanied that hero.  No one plays the hero, and the hero never has their own voice; instead, they are an empty center whose shape and substance is determined by the competing actions, words, and stories of others.
 
The game takes place over 20 rounds of play, consisting of a prologue, three acts, and an epilogue.  Each act is made up of 6 rounds: an historian phrase, four story rounds, and a biographer phase.  Finally, each story round consists of each player playing one of four specific roles: the cartographer, the companion, the witness, and the lorekeeper.
 
In the prologue, each player answers a question about the world, then draws a representation of their answer on a communal map.  This round covers basic aspects of the world, establishing the major geographical feature of the landscape, the most prized virtue of the people who live there, some central beliefs, a basic power structure, and the nature of magic or technology in the world.  It’s a solid way to bring the fictional world to life in a few deft strokes.  The structure allows each player to have a say in the matter while never arriving at a group consensus.  Most story games want to avoid running by consensus to keep the fiction from being developed by committee, which can quickly suck the life and excitement out of the game.  But Companions’ Tale is specifically interested in keeping players from reaching consensus because the game probes the way people experience the world differently, often forcing their interpretation of events on others.  To this end, players are invited through the various roles available to them in play to comment upon and “correct” the other competing narratives.  (I mean “competing” in a Darwinian sense, not in the sense that some games are competitive.  There is no “winner” in a game of Companions’ Tale.)
 
After the prologue, the players play through the three acts.  Each act begins with the Historian Phase, in which each player chooses a place on the map and details an historical event that has occurred there.  To give the players guidance and to make the events thematically connected, the players first draw a single Theme Card from the Theme Deck that all the historical events must reflect.  Some sample themes are hunger, justice, anticipation, captivity, and creation.  There are 36 theme cards. 
 
The Historian Phase serves two major purposes.  The first is to build out the world to give the players more material to use in the fiction during the rest of the game.  The second is to give another outlet for players to correct or comment upon what other players have created on their turns.  This purpose might seem ill-served by the mechanic at first blush since the players in the Historian Phase have to introduce a newly reveled historical moment (rather than, say, revising or updating a previously discussed historical event), but players can create histories that undermine, support, or mitigate what other players have previously established on their turns.  This second purpose is especially served by the Historian Phases of the second and third acts.
 
After every player contributes something in the Historian Phase, the story rounds commence.  There are four roles assumed by each player in the story round.  The cartographer is in charge of translating things said by the other players onto the communal map.  They go first in the round, and during their turn, they must select a singe event from the last round and make adjustments to the map as they see fit.
 
The companion player goes next.  Their turn is always the longest and most significant.  They begin by selecting one of the four companion cards face up in the middle of the table.  The companion cards each name a relationship that the companion has with the hero, such as ally, lover, rival, childhood friend, rescued, mentor, etc.  There are 18 companion cards.  After the player selects their role, they draw a card from the Face Deck to see what the companion looks like.  The Face Card is just what it sounds like, a deck of cards with faces.  The 20 face cards are beautifully illustrated.  Then the player draws two cards from the Theme Deck, the same deck that the players drew from in the Historian Phase, and select one of the cards to be the theme for the story they are to tell.  In addition to have a broad theme, each Theme Card has one or two story prompts, such as “Once, a new domain of knowledge was released into the world”; “Once, a judge’s wrath exceeded the slight“;  “Once, blood paid for blood”; and “Once, heretical forces held sway over the land.”  Having a relationship, a look, and a thematic story prompt, the player tells a brief story from the companion’s point of view about an adventure the companions shared with the hero.
 
The next role played is the witness.  On their turn, they select some region of the map different from where the companion player set their tale and gives a few “facts” about the goings on in that area since it was last talked about in the game.  These “facts” can build off what has come before, elaborating on, revising, or contradicting what other players have said.  This keeps the world growing and developing as well as creating new material for future scenes.
 
The final role of the round is the lorekeeper, who describes some aspect of culture in the realm, such as a song sung, myths told, murals painted, or sports played.  Presumably the player will draw on the material that has come before, but that is not required by the rules in the rulebook.
 
The roles rotate each round until all the players have played all the roles.
 
The act concludes with the Biographer Phase, in which each player assumes the role of one of the hero’s many biographers by selecting a companion controlled by another player and describing “something unfortunate, amusing, or scandalous about the other player’s companion” (11).
 
Act II plays out the same way as Act I so that at the end of the second act each player has two somewhat fleshed-out companions in front of them.  Act II again plays out the same was as the two previous acts except that instead of selecting a third companion, the companion player picks one of her two already-existing companions to tell her tale.  Moreover, instead of drawing a new theme card, the players shuffle together all the theme cards previously used in the Historian Phases and the players’ companion rounds, including the theme cards they didn’t select, and use that new deck from which to draw her two possible theme cards.
 
Once the third act is played out, then a brief epilogue round is played, in which each player says a few words about the last time their companions ever saw the hero.  The player can choose to provide an epilogue for one or both of their companions.
 
Neat, right?  Over the course of the game, you develop a world with 12 historical events that provide the groundwork on which the other stories can be built and a colorful narrative for a hero as seen through the eyes of eight companions and the deeds of eight adventures.  The companions themselves have presumably put their best feet forward and have been undercut by three biographical revelations about them.  And of course you have a map that marks all of these occurrences and details.
 
All that is what I can see from having read the rules, looked at the cards, and imagined play.  There are concerns I have about how play will play out which I can’t address without actually playing the game (which I want to do and plan to do).  For example, we are advised as players to push things to a crisis in the second act by “introduc[ing] some growing threats that will set the world into chaos for Act III” (12), but how to make that happen is left up entirely to the players.  There’s not a separate set of cards or story prompts that naturally escalate conflict or create lasting threats.  Similarly, the third act is supposed to bring things to a climactic close (“If the world is not teetering on the edge of disaster, now is time to give a healthy shove” (13)), but that’s mere play advice without anything mechanical to help or make that happen.  Now, it could be that it’s natural in play that this all comes about, but I don’t see any reason why that should be so.  But it might.  Only play will tell.
 
The design mitigates my concerns to some extent by attempting to create throughlines and consistency in the stories and the world.  The map of course creates physical relationships for everything added by the stories.  Then using a theme card during the Historian Phase creates unified thematic backdrops for the history of the world.  Having players use existing companions and draw from already-seen Theme Cards in the third act increases chances that the stories will be able to recall earlier events and concerns smoothly.  Perhaps in play, these tools are sufficient to make the second act build and the third act resonate.  Again, only play will tell.
 
Another concern I have is that while the game gives the players some good material to tell their tales when acting in the role of companions, it still puts a lot of pressure on the player to turn that prompt and relationship into a story to share with the table.  I can imagine players seizing up, wanting to impress the other players but not knowing how to get there.  For example, you’re the hero’s ally and you have the theme of debt with the story prompt, “Once, a substantial debt was overdue.”  Now tell a story.  That is certainly great material, but is it enough to let you say something that excites, surprises, and pleases yourself, let alone your friends?  Part of the difficulty is that you are responsible for this free-standing story in its entirety, so even this small task can be challenging.  A lot of games lighten the load by spreading elements of the narrative across the table so no one player has to do all the heavy lifting.  There are some friends I’d be nervous to invite to play the game because even though I know they’d love everything else about the game, that moment of being in the spotlight alone would be unpleasant for them.
 
I love that the game calls into question what history is, what maps are, and what biographies are.  Each one of these art forms can pretend to be the capital-T Truth, impartial and imperial.  The game lays bare that human hands and hearts shape each of these arts, creating artifacts that are then handed down as authoritative things.
 
I expect the game will inspire other to further hone this idea.  Companions’ Tale creates a fun romp in which many hands change the map, many mouths shape the biographies, and many minds affect the official histories.  In our real world, of course, dominant forces decide the orientation of the map, the subject of biographies, and the content of history books.  There are many places to take this idea.

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