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Radial Plots – Push Me/Pull You Through the Gates
By Corvus | May 5, 2006
I’ve been chewing over the Honeycomb Engine’s Radial Plot Diagram, which I unveiled a few posts back (link), and decided that I was unhappy with a couple of things about it. So, here’s the revised version, followed by a discussion of the two major changes and the philosophy behind them.
Hm… First, a few general notes. This particular graph is a) simple for the purpose of clarity and b) symmetrical because repetition lends itself to comprehension (plus, it looks better with radial symmetry). The narrative paths you construct with the tool need not be simple or symmetrical.
The other thing I didn’t make clear is that this graph either represents a narrative with six constructed entry points, or (and this is the important approach) a narrative with two storyteller-created entry points and four entry points which are generated by the storyscape’s reaction to the narration. for example, the narration may be centered around acquiring an item of power. If the player begins asking around for information about the items location, rumors will spread of their interest and the local thieves’ guild may get wind of it and decide to steal the item and sell it to the highest bidder, or an arms merchant will decide to profit from the coming conflict and start acquiring an arsenal with hopes of selling weapons to the villain’s army (should the villain be the sort to raise an army). These events will not be specifically scripted, but generated dynamically from other components of the engine.*
This graph should theoretically be a narrative report tracking tool as well as a narrative generation tool. Within our central world’s storyscape are a few key goals with a majority of the player’s will share in, on one level or anther, in one way or another. It’s endemic to the background of your entry into the world. If this works like I’m designing it to, I will be able to pick those global goal states and modify various scale values to get a picture of how far along any given area of the plot has developed. There will be various views for this graph, including a player data view, a locational view, a renown view, an environmental view, an economic view, and this, the narrative view. It will also be extensible so that we can track any number of world events, such as players who exhibit suspicious stat progression or supernatural abilities (above and beyond the ones we intended), players who seem predominately focused on PVP, resource acquisition, etc. It’ll all be zoom-able and color coded.
Right then, on to the terminology changes.
What once was Hurdles, but now is Gates…
Main Entry: 1hur·dle
Pronunciation: ‘h&r-d&l
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English hurdel, from Old English hyrdel; akin to Old High German hurt hurdle, Latin cratis wickerwork, hurdle2 a : an artificial barrier over which racers must leap b plural : any of various track events in which a series of hurdles must be surmounted
Snipped, as usual, from Merriam Webster online (despite their pop up ads), emphasis mine (link).
My use of the term Hurdle, it occurred to me, is somewhat pejorative and conveys entirely the wrong idea. New storytellers to the system would automatically assume that a Hurdle plot point must be something that is overcome by the player, a challenge to their skill or their character build. Now, these points can certainly be used as such, but more importantly, they are intended to be transitional points in the narrative. Gates, if you will, from one act to another. They may be opened specifically be a player action, or a world event, or a timer, or any trackable event within the storyscape.
I briefly considered using Stile instead of Hurdle, but I figured that stile isn’t a universally recognizable term. Door doesn’t work because doors conjure some specific imagery of indoor environments and tend to limit interactions, from a metaphoric standpoint. Gate, on the other hand present many metaphoric actions and imagery, from white picket fence gates to tall security gates topped with razor wire. Gates can be opened, unlocked, swung open automatically, or blown off their hinges, and they tend to separate larger spaces than doors do. So, a simple change and voila, I have an excuse to ramble on for a few hundred more words.
Push Me vs. Pull Me
Some time ago I complained about games which ushered me through their narrative with a sequence of unsubtle shoves and pokes. I believe I had just finished playing Jade Empire at the time. I mentioned the idea of plot vacuums, which Craig Perko refers to as Aji, which is the concept of potential in the game of Go (if I recall that correctly). In essence, I was arguing that creating opportunity and motivation for forward narrative momentum was a stronger storytelling approach than pushing your audience down a path.
Even though that is my approach and even though the Radial Plot Graph encompasses this idea, somewhere between philosophy and documentation, my terminology got scrambled. So, I’ve cleaned up the graph a bit. It still reflects exactly the same story arc as the last version, but correctly places the emphasis on the Pull Points, rather than on points which may “push” the players in a direction, while still allowing for exploration.
Now, instead of the imagery of forcing the player to move in a certain direction, we’re encouraging her to choose a path. You’ll also note, in act two** that the two Pull points do not pull from the Exploration points which are shades of grey, but are still accessible from them. I’ll leave it up to your imagination how that would work and why. If you feel like running some ideas past me in the comments, so much the better!
Regardless, there are obviously fewer Pull plot points than Push plot points and are therefore easier to manage and integrate into your narrative. This isn’t to say you can’t have conceptual Push points as well. Gates can be used, plot points with only one exit are also possible (I won’t be using those, more than likely).
All right, I’m done for now. On the horizon for next week is the Round Table launch, more discussion of magic and, I’m sure, more discussion of the the radial plot graph. I’ve come up with an idea for the Renown card design that I’m going to experiment with this weekend. I may run a couple of things past you next week to see what you think. Until then, have a great weekend! Tomorrow I’m off to a fleece and fiber festival with Ms. Knittiot. No doubt I’ll be all enthused about crocheting again when we get back.
*To make total sense of this storytelling tool, it would be helpful to have a full understanding of the underlying structure of the Honeycomb Engine. Unfortunately, I haven’t talked about that yet, nor am I quite ready to. Of course, given how loquacious I’ve been feeling on the topic lately, it’s only a matter of time before I spill.
**That’s the inner ring bordered by a red line. Act three would be the Goal Point, which you’ll notice is also a Pull point.
Tagged:Honeycomb Engine, Writing. | 6 Comments »
May 5th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Interesting that Pull points have a certain symmetry with Perkplot’s active elements. There is something inherently interesting about creating a story that draws the player, rather than pushing him. Good books, do it after all – they make you want to read more so that hidden things become illuminated.
As for tangential, yet disconnected, exploratory plot points: the idea makes logistical sense to me. You explore a side quest that affects your alignment, or are forced down an alternate path due to a failure or alternate success from the current plot point. This displacement requires further exploration before it coalesces into a new plot that can lead forward (central). This would be the exploratory plot point. These can also be traveled both ways, allowing for exploration and ultimate return to the original path, should the desire arise. At least, that’s my take on it.
May 5th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
A long-abandoned part of my brain that used to do math suggests that what you’re doing might be more elegantly accomplished by using multidimensional fields. Unfortunately, I haven’t used that part of my brain for so long that I’m not entirely sure just what it means by that in this context, or even if it makes sense. If I get any clarification on that, I’ll pass it on.
Other parts of my brain think you’re going to need some sophisticated topology tools to track anything that’s going on in a nontrivial environment.
Are you familiar with The Maze?
May 6th, 2006 at 6:32 am
This is fascinatingly familiar territory for me; I wish I’d had some of these concepts down when I did the narrative design for Noir, as they would have been helpful.
Hurdle to Gates – given the term ‘gating the story’, already in use, Gate has to be a sensible choice. Suprised your sample only has one, actually.
You surely want, say, 3-5 acts?
Pull points – strange attractors in the narrative… this is such a small revision, but it’s non-trivial. This is what I’ve been terming funneling, in many respects. Expressing this as attractors instead of herding seems like a significant step forward.
May 7th, 2006 at 6:14 am
Duncan,
Good take! That’s exactly the sort of storytelling the Honeycomb engine is being developed for.
Keith,
I’m uncertain exactly how multidimensional field equations would produce the iconic interface to narrative design that I’m going for. Google turned up many pages which require more research time than I currently have. If you can nutshell it for me, that’d be great. However, this is just the surface design I’m discussing here. The behind the scenes portions of this interface are much more gritty and involve a lot of data I/Os.
This is meant to be a sophisticated topography tool, so I don’t disagree with those parts of your brain. But I’m uncertain how the Maze relates to a sophisticated topography tool. It appears to be less complex than other twisty passages I’ve seen. It’s basically a choose your own adventure text, yes?
Chris,
Gates: Well, there are three acts in this diagram (the goal state can be an act unto itself). It’s also quite likely that there are more gates hidden within some of the plots points in this graph. as each plot point potentially holds its own graph. The central Gates pictured here are ones that (keeping in mind this is for a multiple player environment) are linked and all open once someone has passed through one of the Gate’s plot point. The goal states are naturally all ‘gated’ to some extant as the conclusion of any single goal state concludes them all.
Pull Point: Extremely non-trivial. I can’t believe I didn’t express it correctly the first time,
Thanks for the comments, all!
May 9th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Fascinating stuff.
It may be deeper than it appears. It has some clever design tricks in it, including several layers of mutual interconnectedness (like your acts) and gates (one of which is vital to reaching the goal). As an interesting variation to the sort of structure you have above, there are also gates that lead into parallel acts which converge to the lose condition rather than the win condition, and it does a fairly good job at prodding you in that direction.
I think what brought it to mind is that it’s presenting a maze as a narrative, and when I tried mapping it I got something similar to your diagram.
I really need to pick up the book.
This may or may not be a good nutshell, but here goes. The world in each act is an entity, with different motivations to perform actions A, B, C, etc., through whatever means it has available (characters, “chance” happenings, etc.). The actions may be revealing clues, opening or closing paths, introducing/eliminating characters, whatever. Actions are tied to motivational trigger levels. As the player progresses through the various story nodes, various motivation levels are increased/decreased, and the world responds appropriately.
Which makes it sound vaguely like the interplay of factions in an MMORPG, but I’m reaching rather for something like Society of Mind.
May 9th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
That sounds very much like what’s going on under the hood of this representational tool. Don’t forget that I’d designing this for storytellers and I need to make sure the interface is accessible to all of them!