Narratives and Databases in Game of Thrones - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 149

series, not just as a plan of action, or as a metaphor for the networked interaction
between character and families, but also as a way for fans to grasp the narrative:
he serial deployment of a world across disparate formats and contexts makes
it amenable to inhabitation because it leaves something open for readers
or participants to hook onto and adapt. In order to remain durable, a world
needs to be shared, and it needs to be built upon. It needs, in other words, to be
paradoxically complete but fragmentary. It needs to have a modular frame. 25
Sara Gwenllian-Jones also notes how the creation of vast cult geographies allows
viewers to imaginatively place themselves within that world, something Lancaster
terms “immersion in an imaginary entertainment environment.” 26 According to
Lancaster, fans can use games not just to experience the narrative of a favored
series, but also to “immerse themselves more deeply in the … universe … by
touching, playing, and performing with the cultural objects” of that universe. 27
As such, player alliances in the Game of hrones games rely on an unspoken
but shared connection between players. his added social level of game play
relects what Woods argues is a key component of complex board games, that of
the art of negotiation. 28 his state of constant insecurity about alliances within
the game adds interest, because it necessarily rests on the level of discourse that
exists within the board game group itself. For instance, by the time my group
of friends met to play Game of hrones , we had been playing paratextual board
games together for almost six months: we had begun to learn each other's habits,
personalities, and gameplay personas. When one of my allies needed help
defending an area against the onslaught of the Greyjoy/Baratheon alliance, not a
word was spoken, because I knew where she was likely to play. But this sense of
knowing your friends, which Woods calls “a pivotal part of gameplay,” can turn
social capital into a game mechanic, and as one by one your friends may betray
you, this “social metagame … is as much a part of gameplay as the simple map
upon which the outcome of these negotiations unfold.” 29 Success in A Game of
hrones: he Board Game is thus determined by forging alliances and also by
knowing when to break them, which mirrors the alliance strategies in the topics.
Strategy hinges on social negotiation.
Serialized game play
If the player is an individual controlling an entire group in he Board Game, the
player instead becomes a central igure in his or her own network in the HBO
Card Game. Game of hrones: he Card Game is a two-player game involving