@we-did-the-time-warp-again and I just finished a year-and-a-half long asynchronous playthrough of Like Skyscrapers Blotting Out the Sun, a tabletop game by Speak the Sky, and it was some of the most fun I've ever had playing a game.
in Like Skyscapers, one player takes on the role of Writer. Their job is to write a literary work, sentence by sentence, page by page, chapter by chapter. The other player takes on the role of Translator: interpreting what the Writer has said.
The result is a page full of words - the writers' prose at the top and the translator's footnotes at the bottom - hurtling towards one another, like two waves, until they crash. At that point, the chapter is DONE. You never actually write the full story: you summarize the rest, and then draw some cards and look up prompts to answer questions about the Writer and Translator: their lives, their relationship, their process, and the material world around them.
Our writer, Finch Overgarden, is an expatriate from a kingdom of rich ancient tradition that's often at odds with the modern world. The translator, Schleswig Holstein, is a fervent fan of Overgarden's work - and, as host to the beleagured writer, alternately patient and exasperated with up with his guest's "eccentric" procliveties.
You can read their story, and their work (titled "The Royal Road" by Overgarden but translated as "Grand Tradition" by Holstein) about royal intrigues, traditions, and procedures in the Google Doc below. If you've got a friend you like to write with, this game gets my heartiest recommendation possible.
