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Game Narrative, Collaboration, and Storytelling
By Corvus | May 1, 2006
A couple of excellent posts/articles got me to thinking and I figured it was time to start talking about storytelling again. The first post was Craig Perko’s post Episodic Overlap (link) and the second was Jeff Noyle’s Gamasutra article, Techniques of Written Storytelling Applied to Game Design (link).
Since it’s been a while, I’m going to once again remind you of my definitions of plot, narration, and story before I begin:
Plot: The abstract summation of the driving events of a narration.
Narration: The intentional context of the presentational medium.
Story: The intended and actual experiential and emotional progression of the audience while interacting with the narration.
It occurred to me that the issue with game narrative’s linearity is one of approach. It’s a problem that is both technical and authorial in nature. Let’s look at the issue of authorship first.
When most writers craft a narration, they have a plot, or a goal state in mind. There are author’s who sculpt their narratives around a character’s actions and who have little to no idea where their narration will end up, but they’re relatively rare and I don’t think any of them are writing for games. So what we end up with is writing which is focused, not on the audience’s journey, but on the goal. The story being presented via the narration is quite limited in this regard. The audience’s agency during gameplay allows for slight deviations, but at several points throughout the narration, their experience is brought back to the storyteller’s intended baseline.
This approach is extraordinarily limiting. So with Fallout, KotOR, Jade Empire, or even Fable, even if we’re expecting more agency over the story path inherent in the narration, we’re still walking prescribed paths through the narration. This places the importance on the author’s story and diminishes the audience’s story. The audience’s story is built experientially, from one game encounter to the next. It is not usually a clean storytelling arc that can be easily described by the three act structure, or the hero’s journey.*
On the technical side, because gameplay isn’t typically considered to be a part of the narrative, the game engine itself isn’t designed to construct a participatory narrative and therefore doesn’t allow for any other approach than one of linear presentation. Not until plot points are considered an important element of a game’s design will we truly have a new form of storytelling.
So that’s the problem. What’s the answer?
I’m not sure I have the answer, but I can rough out for you what we’re working on with the Honeycomb Engine™, which is what I hope is the answer.
First off, two of our goals for the Honeycomb Engine™ are: a) providing each player with a unique opportunity to build customized characters which can be developed into archetypal, mythic presences via a sequence of personal story experiences and b) create tools which allow storytellers the ability to seamlessly integrate their own stories into the storyworld.
It was immediately apparent to me that a linear narrative structure wouldn’t work for what I was attempting. So, I developed a radial narrative structure which allows for multiple entry points, depending on a character’s physical location, social standing, etc, and describes goal states which can be achieved to bring the story to a close. Each plot has multiple goal states, at least one ‘heroic’ and one ‘villainous’ and frequently several others as well, allowing for a much more personal expression on the audience’s part as possible. Then, plot points are constructed which lead to each goal state. There are (at this time) three types of plot points: Exploratory, Push, and Hurdle.
Exploratory plot points are the most common and involve the gathering of data and can either be incidental (secondary effects on the world such as poor crop yields, the superstitious peasants are fearful for their lives, odd noises have been heard coming from the mountains, etc) or crucial (primary effects on the audience such as someone is systematically killing people just like you, the Sceptre of Kuma Rohn has been stolen and there’s a reward, etc).
Push plot points involve a direct influence on the audience from another portion of the narrative, whether it be from an NPC or a PC (the peasants decide to lynch you to appease the source of the odd noises, the guards arrest you because you match the description of the person who stole the Sceptre, someone trying to stop you attempts to kill you, etc).
Hurdle plot points are things the player must accomplish in order to move the narration forward (find the Sceptre, kill an opponent, kill the time serpent that’s been plaguing the village, etc). There ought to be multiple ‘parallel’ Hurdles available to the player so they can move forward regardless of their preferred tactics. These should be considered gateways, not choke points. Often, all parallel Hurdles are considered passed when one of them has been completed, but it is possible to have different Hurdles for different portions of the narration (the ‘villainous’ must create/find/buy a poison, but the ‘heroic’ player must create/find/buy an antidote).
Plot points should be crafted from the perspective of the audience and not from the perspective of a global narrator. Every potential path option should be considered and examined. Some plot points may contain smaller radial narratives of their own (particularly Hurdle plot points) and others may be a single, simple event. During it all, of course, the player is free to participate in other radial plots and incidental interactions. If you’re thinking this sounds like a lot more work than traditional writing, you’d be correct. But I’m not done yet, either. It’s even more complex than that.
As often as possible, the plot points should not directly involve any story specific characters. Instead of creating new characters from scratch for every plot, there should be role requirements. These can be renown requirements (renown basically describes alignment and experience), skill requirements, physical location requirements, professional requirements, etc. Then, drawing upon the audience’s past associations, the engine will cast those roles, wherever possible, with characters the audience is already familiar with. This will allow for a continuity of experience that is important to a sense of immersion and accomplishment.
Hm… it’s soon time to move on to the next project of the day. I think I’ll end this abruptly here and come back to it tomorrow if you’ve got something you’d like me to follow up on or discuss in more depth.
*Not to minimize the importance of such storytelling tools.
May 1st, 2006 at 1:24 pm
The biggest question I have is: how do you write compelling dialog without knowing what character will fill a particular role. Keeping in mind that one of the biggest tools to use to make casual dialog seem compelling and intersting is the use of foreknowledge. That is, the character remembers past interactions and can reference them.
I can see it being done, but it would require writing a lot of dialog options that will never be used in a single pass through the story.
May 2nd, 2006 at 2:59 am
I’d like to know if you mean radial as in starting at the hub and expanding to the spokes, or starting at the edge and working to the hub? Two very different structures! The former risks combinatorial explosion if not constructed carefully; the latter is self-contained but requires grand enough themes to eventually remove starting conditions as a factor (most fantasy stories have this anyway).
I think you’re ambitions for this system outstrip what you will eventually be able to achieve – but provided pragmatism steps in during development, this might not be a bad way to set out. Why not aim high, after all.
Take care!
May 2nd, 2006 at 1:16 pm
[...] In fact, why don’t I shut up and let the graph speak for itself. If you read yesterday’s big post (link), it should be relatively self explanatory. But don’t let that stop you from asking any questions you may have! [...]