Board Games vs Video Games, is there a preferred medium for emergent narrative?

Carrying on from the last post's broadcast, emergent narrative is quite an interesting theme isn't it? I think so at least. It's a very interesting narrative technique that is almost unique to games (alternates would be create your own adventure books and that short stint I think they tried with T.V that would let you vote on how the story would continue? That may have been something I dreamed up I'm not sure).

Anyway, another medium I get a great amount of enjoyment is boardgames, so I got to thinking - with all the local social elements that feed into any good board game, do they make for a better platform for emergent narrative? At face value each medium has it's pros and cons. Lets have a look at them. (Keep in mind due to the wide variety of both computer and board games, obviously these examples don't apply to everything).

Choice making: At it's core, emergent narrative is all about giving the player choice, and making that choice affect the story later on. This is also a fairly core rule in many boardgames as many a time the players are simply given a backstory, or a fairly brief overarching story and are given the initiative to move on past it (strong example here is Arkham Horror, a game where players must team up to overcome lovecraftian horrors). Often though in these games a random element can come into play which will interrupt the player led story and take it in new directions, while this could be argued to be some equivalent of a computer system driving the players forward, the random nature of it I feel detracts from the structure. The equivalent in games would be as earlier discussed - choices made either in dialogue or through actions that drive the story forward, these feature a less random, more structured approach however.

Social: A fickle one depending on who you're playing with. In computer games adding a social (by social I don't mean facebook integration) aspect can really help players come together to shape the world - this is usually limited to MMOs, though it can also show in more casual games. Typically this would show itself as a group, probably a large group at that, reacting to a world event that would change the world depending on the outcome. In boardgames this is much more organised - particularly in tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons or war games like Warhammer 40k. In DnD the players form a small band of adventurers that react to the game masters instructions and try to impose their own will upon the world outside of his/her plans, more often than not leaving those plans in ruins and forging an entirely new world out of it. In 40k there have been massive tournaments between editions that result in potentially huge changes to the entire universe.

There's many more sides to discuss here, but I feel these two main focii represent the discussion fairly well. While one medium might provide stronger motivation in some regards, the other medium will pick up in others. Both medium are fairly efficient at providing emergent narrative for the players and neither really outshine the other properly, at least not just now... God it's horrible sitting on the fence.