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?

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.

If you can nutshell it for me, that’d be great.

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.

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!

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.

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?

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.