Partial Stories and Collective Creativity in Class: A Case of Story Prototyping With an Open-Ended Storytelling BoardGame for Higher Education Students

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the potentialities of open-ended board games for story generation in educational contexts. We have analysed story prototypes created through D-Stories, a collective storytelling game designed for this project. The research was carried out between 2023 and 2025 in Barcelona in two different higher education contexts. In D-Stories, story cards, organized in basic typologies that prompt potential interrelations, are turned into a story prototype through playful collaboration and improvisation and iteration. Thus, cards and connections shift through chance, individual and collective choice. Using the notion of partial stories, which allows us to analyse cards as self-contained but connectible story elements, we carried out a content analysis of 54 stories, looking for narrative strategies (RQ1), how card contents were turned into narratives (RQ2), the most popular cards (RQ3) and the most frequent connections favoured by game design (RQ4). Even if conventional narrative strategies were predominant, there were some alternative approaches to storytelling and emerging intertextual connections, social imaginaries and even stereotypes. The spaces of possibilities opened by open-ended storytelling games are powerful tools for creative literacies in different educational settings and levels.