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Icons courtesy of komodomedia.com
We played Once Upon a Time last night at a party, and it was a good time. Could have benefitted from a more controlled structure, I think. With a slightly more aggressive group, it could have become a chaotic shoutfest pretty quickly. The concept is interesting though. How many sorts of "folk games" are around where players cooperate to create a shared narrative?
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I think something with a board would be good
Maybe each player gets a character that goes from "once upon a time" to "and they lived happily ever after" (I'm envisioning a candyland-style board here). That way the progress is controlled (i.e. turn-based) and our more aggressive friends don't get to keep more subdued people from participating, but each player can try to involve the other players in plot elements earlier on the board to drag them back. So, each square is either a woodland path or a castle moat or a tower or something and the player needs to weave a coherent narrative with everything that has come before and the locale and their own character, but could also include other players' characters. And whoever gets to happily ever after first wins. Kind of exactly unlike real life.
Seems like a likely candidate for adding RPG elements
After all, a tabletop RPG is really just a system for storytelling. What we'd have here would be a structure that allows each player to be both a character and story creator. Maybe there are cards or something that allow players to change the board, fling an impediment to their opponents, or pull the narratives together. Perhaps involving oneself in story elements allows a player to accumulate "story points" which can be spent to influence the other players' storylines.