There's a little game called Crusader Kings 2 that is practically made of this sort of emergent storytelling. You're given a map of Medieval Europe, North Africa and India, crawling with thousands of characters living out their procedural lives, marrying, bearing children, feuding, warring, scheming, rising to prominence and descending into obscurity, reshaping borders and dying of syphilis. You choose one character of this huge roster and start participating in this enormous emulation.
There's no clearly stated goal, you find one for yourself and try to reach it. Be it to unite the Irish lands under one crest or rise through the ranks of the Byzantine Empire, break off of the Holy Roman Empire and form the independent Bohemian kingdom or make Zoroastrianism a major world religion, it's up to you.
It's not about the goal but the journey. You might be an aspiring Irish warlord on the quest of uniting all of Ireland, but you are so cynical and lustful that the Pope himself, disgusted with your God-awful ways, excommunicates you and gives every Catholic noble a carte-blanch to attack you and force you to abdicate in favour of your drooling imbecile son who's then quietly smothered in his sleep by his Regent. Your fledgling kingdom then falls apart as your numerous former vassals fight for power and the island is invaded by an opportunistic Castillian duke who has a claim on the Irish throne because his mother married you uncle or something. All seems lost for Ireland but the Castillian usurper receives a serious blow on the head during a minor clash in Connacht and dies while in coma several days later, causing a succession crisis in his homeland.
None of that concerns you, however, as the loss of your son has shaken you so much you've received a Possessed trait and are to preoccupied with instituting turnips as currency in the little county you still own. Your subjects, unhappy with the reform, decide to get rid of the crazyman on the throne and slip a poisonous snake into your bed at night.
So you die. But not all is lost as long as there are landed members in your dynasty, so you now play as your distant cousin who, through some intricate marriages and alliances, had inherited a county on the Baltic coast. Uniting Ireland might be impossible for you now, but what about uniting Lithuania..?
All this is very much possible in this game. The combination of big politics, small-scale personal interactions and random events creates a gripping narrative that is never the same however many times you play. The only problem with CK2 is that it is a global strategy game that is reserved for unwashed nerds who'd rather stare at a map rather than stab their way to victory like any normal gamer would.
There's no clearly stated goal, you find one for yourself and try to reach it. Be it to unite the Irish lands under one crest or rise through the ranks of the Byzantine Empire, break off of the Holy Roman Empire and form the independent Bohemian kingdom or make Zoroastrianism a major world religion, it's up to you.
It's not about the goal but the journey. You might be an aspiring Irish warlord on the quest of uniting all of Ireland, but you are so cynical and lustful that the Pope himself, disgusted with your God-awful ways, excommunicates you and gives every Catholic noble a carte-blanch to attack you and force you to abdicate in favour of your drooling imbecile son who's then quietly smothered in his sleep by his Regent. Your fledgling kingdom then falls apart as your numerous former vassals fight for power and the island is invaded by an opportunistic Castillian duke who has a claim on the Irish throne because his mother married you uncle or something. All seems lost for Ireland but the Castillian usurper receives a serious blow on the head during a minor clash in Connacht and dies while in coma several days later, causing a succession crisis in his homeland.
None of that concerns you, however, as the loss of your son has shaken you so much you've received a Possessed trait and are to preoccupied with instituting turnips as currency in the little county you still own. Your subjects, unhappy with the reform, decide to get rid of the crazyman on the throne and slip a poisonous snake into your bed at night.
So you die. But not all is lost as long as there are landed members in your dynasty, so you now play as your distant cousin who, through some intricate marriages and alliances, had inherited a county on the Baltic coast. Uniting Ireland might be impossible for you now, but what about uniting Lithuania..?
All this is very much possible in this game. The combination of big politics, small-scale personal interactions and random events creates a gripping narrative that is never the same however many times you play. The only problem with CK2 is that it is a global strategy game that is reserved for unwashed nerds who'd rather stare at a map rather than stab their way to victory like any normal gamer would.
