Paradox game designer Henrik Fåhraeus

How do you design your game so that it fosters players' ability to tell their own unique stories about playing the game, rather than recounting stories the game is meant to tell them?

Few games foster such emergent narratives better than Crusader Kings II, which may account for why the somewhat arcane 2012 grand strategy game became a bit of a sleeper hit for developer Paradox. 

At GDC 2014, Paradox's Henrik Fåhraeus took the stage to break down how CKII was explicitly designed to encourage emergent storytelling, and offered advice on how fellow developers could (and should) do something similar with their own games.

It was a neat talk about a compelling aspect of complex strategy game design, and you can watch the whole thing right now for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel.

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