Not much to say here: For several reasons I've decided to move to Wordpress and built a more.. atmospheric site. Visit here:
Some features, especially the expandable archives, are sadly not as neat as here on Blogger, but I can live with that, considering the advantages.
It was a nice time here and this blog will remain as a source of nostalgic feelings for my future self. But no more posts - adieu!
"Substance before Style"
Another post, another storytelling device: The user interface, or for short UI.
On his website, Bruce Tognazzini gives a holistic (my favourite!) introduction to what he calls "interaction design". The background he is writing from is that of the great design, UI, UX (user experience) trends which came up with the arrival of digital interfaces. He writes about core topics such as aesthetics, anticipation and autonomy. Here's the link for anyone interested:
First Principles of Interaction Design
However, while Tognazzini is primarily interested in communicating correctly with the user, I as a storyteller am equally interested in the question of how to give the designed interface a style consistent with the narrative or: what options I have to tell a narrative via the interface.
I think the answers lie in all the gaps, the variables that are not determined by interaction design principles. Today's project will serve as a demonstration of this thought:
A recurring reader of this blog or a person studying game studies with me might remember this project. It is, essentially, an interactive novel enriched with some audiovisual and interactive features.
You'll notice that various elements are at times heavily inspired by Cyberpunk 2077, especially its UI (see e.g. this great portfolio). Note however, that this is an unofficial fan work and is not approved/endorsed by CD PROJEKT RED.
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| Before the actual game starts, the player is presented with a view allowing to determine herself when the actual gameplay starts. Also: Opens up a void, which wants to be filled. Color and character usage sets up the theme. | |
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| When pressing ENTER, the logo is faded in and distorted, accompanied by an electronic, distorted sound. Link |
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| The standard gameplay view is accompanied by soundtrack and has several sub-elements with specific thoughts put inside. |
The lines and boxes framing text, decision and quest UI have two-fold meaning: Once, they create the impression of a system that can be steered - this is especially reinforced by the line's fading in and out over time. Second, they create the impression of being boxed in, unable to break out of this system - a thought which is reiterated in the game's tutorial and ending, where seemingly corporate messages are delivered about how the game should be enjoyed, for instance. It tells the meta-story of this game.
Regarding the story happening inside the boxes, the right UI is a visualization of the non-linear quest graph with its current state and possible future events. It tells the story that is written down and decided on the left in a way that may generate interest in the future or alternatives.
The entire visual style with mechanical moving elements and a clear reference to Cyberpunk aesthetics sets the atmosphere, thus possibly helping with immersion.
Even if I'm surely no "native" UI designer or 2D Artist, I do am a little bit proud of my work. It feels coherent in the right way - and this, in the end, is what a good production should be like, I guess. Anyway. I would have uploaded the whole game on itch.io already and embedded it here, but I'm not sure yet whether I'm allowed to.
If you already found this post and want to play - stay tuned! As soon as I know more about the legal stuff I'll post this on Twitter with an updated post including the - possibly altered - game.
Until then, have a good time!
The second post in this series is about concretizing a NPC community concept.
By placing certain actors in certain places, having certain looks and being surrounded by certain objects, we can tell something about the place and the people living there. This telling becomes even more evident when things are moving: People work, birds fly, plants move in the wind and a mill might be driven by water. This all certainly is worldbuilding and might even be storytelling, if the used actors/places/objects/.. are part of a story. The following video shows how the environment in Cyberpunk 2077 heavily influences its storytelling by mood-setting, contextualization etc.
Cyberpunk 2077 Environment Breakdown with 3D Artist
I decided to not share one of the countless articles on the craft of environmental storytelling itself here, since on the one hand it is a pretty well-discussed topic in narrative and level game design, and on the other hand I simply didn't have a concrete ressource to recommend.
First step for community creation and environment art with the radish modding tools (besides basic project setup) is defining a new layer. A layer is like a container for anything that can be placed into the gameworld, including e.g. regular assets like tables and such, but also waypoints, areas and actionpoints (a point that defines the execution of a certain NPC behaviour without yet saying who does it).
A layer definition might look like this (written in YAML):
You can see that a layer "nekkerlayer" in skellige is being defined. It has six actionpoints, each with positional data (x, y, z, rotation) and an action (e.g. "nekker/nekker_angry_jt") assigned. Next come two areas, which consist of a height parameter and an arbitrary number of corner points. Under "statics" various assets are listed; here a blood decal referenced from the engine's asset depot is used.
Such layers can be defined via a game mod and their definition can be dumped directly into the right format.
Not all work, however, has a nice GUI-tool. The community definition itself, meaning the definition of NPCs and assignments of NPCs to actionpoints, possibly also for different phases, times and dynamic world conditions is all written manually.
In a phase, for one actor (who might be used multiple times) it is defined how they spawn and behave. They might wander around in wanderareas (bear), guard an area and follow an intruding player up to a certain distance (bear), spawn in packs (there are always 2 bears spawning, with a respawn time intervall of 20 seconds). They might also have a pursuit area defining how far they follow the player and show different behaviours (be at different actionpoints) at different times.
After defining layer and community in a file, the radish encoder from the modding tools and the official mod kit translate these definitions into game data and bundle them into mod/dlc extensions, which can be easily plugged into the game.
This makes the main task understanding the concepts behind the many options for layer and community definitions, of which I showed only a fraction here. I'm quite grateful to be able to work on such a high level at all, considering the fact that the official mod kit at release had a much more narrow scope and was much more technical.
Next time, I'll either be done with this trial and present the final post in this series or - and considering the problems I'm having right now with the remaining tasks this might very well be the case - another project will find its way onto the blog.
Hope you're doing well and are taking your time to do nothing!
In this post we're gonna take a look at NPC communities: How NPC are integrated into the gameworld, doing actions, reacting to events and being integrated in quests or small dialogs.
A neat article including this topic is one written by now Lead Acting Quest Designer Phillip Weber. It covers the technical process of creating quests and communities, explaining how in tools like REDkit or radish modding tools NPCs can have time-bound actionpoints in the world where they repeatedly exercise a certain "job", how they might have different phases in which they show different behaviour, and how they might react to dynamic events like rain. Here is the link:
Making Games Classics: Quest Design in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
A more abstract but interesting lesson is that quest designers, while obviously focused on getting quests done with the help of other developers, may also do related tasks like setting up a small scene which doesn't need much cinematography or creating a NPC community which simply enriches the environment the quest plays in.
In the last post I mastered stage six of the learning course dubbed "trial of radishes". Stage seven is about advanced communities: They should have special guarding or walk behaviours, or dynamic assignment of actions and such things.
From the task description it become evident that it would be sensible to design three communities, each fulfilling multiple criteria. First I thought of a place for them. The Witcher 3 is already quite filled with content, but my long roamings in Skellige reminded of the northern isles there, which are uninhabited and probably unknown to many.
Visiting this place, I decided to name it "Langeness", referencing a "Hallig" (a kind of small isle) in the North Sea to which I lived close for many years. Unfortunately the place wasn't as empty as memory told me: There were a lot of harpies which would later disturb my communities much too often. On the land I found three fitting places:
The majority of the communities NPCs were intended to be in the areas I, II and III, with
To make all this more interesting I decided to include some environmental storytelling. On the peaks at 1a-d I intended to place guards looking to the sea, but it turned out terrain probably wasn't plain enough, so I had to reduce this to guards at 2 only. At 3 some times one to two skelligers should show up, mocking a helpless fellow at 4, trapped by the bears. The bears are angry because at III some skelligers had killed one of them (although some skelligers themselves were killed), causing nekkers to appear.
The next post will dive into how I set up communities technically and which ideas guided me when faced with options.
I enjoyed writing this little impression of work that might very will be part of quest design. After all, quests often work with characters and these characters need a place in the world. A community.
Hope you're doing well - until next time!
This post presents the conclusion of long ongoing project of mine, a scene for trial 6 in the trial of radishes, which are a tutorial for the radish modding tools for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
The active reader might remember post #18, where I introduced how the creation of scenes is organized in the radish tools. There, I begun with the dialogscript for my The Witcher quest around Alene and Co., more specifically the moment when Geralt and the player first meet Alene's father.
The dialogscript, though, is only text and structural organization of the scene flow. The visual, the actors placements, animations, shots and props - the cinematography - was missing. A starting point provided by the trials and a nice ressource for beginners is the following booklet:
Cinematography Techniques: The Different Types of Shots in Film
A much more holistic and thorough review of cinematography can be found in the book Film Art, which already had a lot of appearances on this blog.
So, here is the final scene:
As you can imagine, progressing from a dialogscript (dialog + basic scene flow) to a storyboard (the central point for the cinematography of a radish scene) is not trivial. And while thinking of a cinematic concept wasn't that difficult, implementing it and fixing all problems was quite laborious. There are a lot of special workflows and technical difficulties involved that required a persistence from me that I did not have all the time, leading to several longer pauses in working on the project.
Here are some shots and trivia I am proud of:
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| While the flowers are being talked about, a shot from their perspective is shown, highlighting the beauty Alene has in her mind. |
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| After three shots of Geralt trying to do conversation, we get this close shot focusing on Geralt stopping (that) and Alene's silentness. |
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| A view from the village, representing the fact that the villagers, too, have a perspective on the situation: Left: The door to the father, right: Geralt & Alene. |
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| At the door, for the most time Alene is present... |
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| ...until her father demands of her to come in, leaving Geralt. This shot highlights the absence of Alene via negative space. |
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| When the father has left and until he speaks again, Geralt is shown from behind a lot, making for a change in what the eye sees and bringing a feeling of Geralt grinding thoughts. |
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| Geralt in the foreground, the door in the back. |
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| An overhead shot, framing the choice as something that is above single actors. Inspired by Psychonauts |
the weather starts getting worse from some point on, reinforcing the tragedy of the scene
I am grateful to have finally finished this project. It turned out much more laborious than the previous trials, but then, so did every trial stage so far.
Hope you had fun reading this and/or found something interesting.
Until next time!
After writing the last post, I decided to take another step against my drive for theory. This is on the one hand to get closer to the root motivation for the whole project - practical quest design - and on the other hand a reaction to the simple fact that I'm slowly but surely running out of theoretical content that is not redundant. It might take some time and change until my theory batteries are recharged and then I'll surely continue with those larger text constructions.
Instead, these passages will be filled with short reading recommendations. The first one is "The devil is in the details" by former CD Projekt RED Quest Designer and Director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz.
You can read it here.
It is old, true, but also one of the most accurate depictions of the craft I've ever read (point given, there aren't many depictions at all). Maybe this is due to the fact that I myself am quite CDPR-adjacent in many game development matters.
This mod was my first attempt at Witcher 2 quest modding and it turned out to be a long work with some problems not having been fixed even in this release. But oh well: Sometimes, projects and lines of thought need to be closed to make room for new ones.
I know for example, that the lighting is off. And that the NPCs and monster's names do not work correctly. But since time is limited and ressources at times inaccessible, I'll have to live with that. Maybe I will be able to address these issues in future mods.
I'm reinventing, but also modifying my own wheels and I think this is a sensible approach to my learning journey at this point: Right now I still have the freedom to explore in different directions, grasp the width of the field before step by step narrowing my focus. So I wouldn't be surprised if more such turns arise in the course of this project.
I hope you, too, take your time to do the things in your own pace.
Have a good time!
Today we'll inspect and deconstruct the concept of a quest giver. Following that I'll start implementing the quest I devised last time.
In stories, characters are one major source of movement/change. One specific figuration of that is a quest giver. Such characters provide the player with quests and are function thus as initiators of sections of game experience.
Initiation
By their very nature quest givers are the main component for setting up a quest. Here the promises/ dissonances will be introduced, which need to be reflected in the subsequent progress/decisions and final payoff/resolution (see posts #17 and #20). The quest giving is the moment were the transition to a new story and experience happens and it is the designers task to make that transition right.
An initiation can also be seen in a more abstract context of going off into the Unknown, allowing yourself to learn something new, exploring unchartered territory. A quest giver in that sense is the liminal threshold, the access point to a new world or "palace of meaning". Even if the meanings are based on fictional signage, the meanings themselves are real and may be transferred to reality if they belong to a constelation that exists in realiy aswell.
On a more technical note, initiation by a quest giver carries the issue of "How to tell player this NPC is to be a quest giver?". There are various solutions to this
"have all quest-givers directly approach the characters automatically" and related to this: introduce the quest giver in the context of another quest
"clearly mark all relevant quest-givers somehow, such as having a sign float over their head"
"make the quest-giver stand in a prominent place and say things that suggest their function"
"don't mark quest-givers at all, players won't know if the character gives a quest unless they ask"
These are all taken in more or less verbatim way from the respective tvtropes site.
The above video shows an example of "automatically approaching quest givers" in Fable.
Trope Deconstruction
As the existence of the tvtropes site suggests, the concept of a quest giver is not particularly new to video games and indeed, it has been used quite often in many games so far. However especially in the early days of quest games these characters tended to be rather flat in their conception and often had a mostly functional use (at least that is my impression). This I found mirrored in books like the one Lee Sheldon wrote, where he devotes a large part of his section on quest givers on a commentary advocating that
There are many functions NPCs can have. But none of them need exist only as sterotypes or mannequins cut and pasted from town to town in a game.
A lot has evolved since 2004, and we find now that video games tend to divert more and more from characters that feel purely functional and lifeless. But I think it is an important lesson to have in mind for every designer newly entering this industry (as I am): For they probably didn't experience the origin of these developments and thus maybe need to understanding in retrospective why it is important to give special care to these NPCs.
Jeff Howard (2008) Quests - Design, theory and History in Games and Narratives, p. 26ff. Howard inspired my paragraph on the idea of quest givers as access points to new meanings.
TVTropes contributors (2021) Quest Giver. Link. The go-to site for tropes in media.
Lee Sheldon (2004) Character Development and Storytelling, p. 85. On this page, Sheldon discusses the shortcomings and needs for quest giver design of his time.
So, for this post I've implemented the quest I devised in the last post:
Have fun. It's better played in fullscreen.
So today I talked about the topic of quest givers and their meaning to story and quest design. I found the idea of those figures as transition points very sensible. Furthermore, I implemented a second quest design as interactive novel of sorts. I'm content with the result, even though the result did turn out quite experimental.
Have a good time!
This post is about quest logs, journals, in-game quest descriptions and the like. Following some paragraphs on the topic I'll write a quest inspired by the ever glorious Diablo.
In many games with a substantial narrative and goals related to space there is also some kind of quest log, oftentimes detailing what is to be done, why and (to some degree) how. It is also a good place to document things that have been done and give some contextual information.
From a media studies perspective, quest logs can be regarded as a visualization of the avatars goals/plans/ etc. It is thus a way to
In a way, one might say that quest logs are a very good quality of life feature for games. This is underpinned by the vastness of task management tools like Trello, todoist or Slack which all have the same goals and effects.
I'll continue with showcasing some of the components/features actual quest logs have. First of all it is to say, that such a log is usually based on visual communication (with the occasional sound effect). It is from this perspective then that quest logs shall be deconstructed here.
A list of quests, categorized
Probably the most common feature and component: A list of all discovered quests is queried and displayed as a scrollable list of signifying visual blocks, labelled with the respective quest titles. Such a list is usually either filterable by pre-defined filters or search strings, or it may also be ordered into collapsible sections. Usual categories are: main/side/.. quests, location in the game world, timestamp for when it was acquired or finished/unfinished.
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| A classic quest log (from WoW) where quests are categorized by location. |
Quest properties
Hereby I mean all static and dynamic (changing on runtime) attributes a quest might have. These can be coded by quest name color (see example above), extra small texts/numbers or tracking symbols. For instance in the above image, the green color of "Vault of the Wardens" means this quest is deemed "easy". Of course there are other attributes besides difficulty might be displayed: belonging to base game vs. expansions, number of participants (see e.g. "Solo", "Solo only", "Small Fellowship", or "Fellowship" in LOTRO), or is/is not tracked. Often there is a possibility to set a quest to "(un)tracked".
Quest content
By selecting a quest often an overview is displayed: Containing such diverse elements as a dynamic description, dynamic objective overview, rewards, location on the map or links to fitting entries of any external view.
A dynamic description tells the context and set up of the quest, but is updated and extended at certain points in the quest progress to reflect new happenings.
A dynamic objective overview lists the current objective(s) and possibly also preceding ones.
A rewards section lists wha the player will gain when finishing the quest or from which items she'll be able to choose from (although I've found the latter only in MMORPGs so far).
So this is it. These are the features I encountered in video games so far (I think). But what about some design guidelines?
Quest Title Guideline: Regarding the quest title, I'd suggest that such a name should reflect the quests underlying theme(s) in some way, catch the quests mood - but not too explicitly (e.g. not spoiling things), rather in a convoluted or artistic way, like a piece in the puzzle you understand only when having experienced the main point of the quest.
Quest Description Guideline: With the quest description it is more about giving the player the information to understand what's going on in the quest right now. So one might provide the trace in the quest by motivating the objectives and explaining what happens. Ideally the description is also embedded in the games narrative itself (e.g. written from the avatar's perspective.
My quest design today won't be for Diablo as a game but as a genre, I guess. As base game I'll assume some standard open world/story RPG like The Witcher/Skyrim/etc. Anyway, here's the - quite dark - quest:
Gameplay Event: Quest giver sees the avatar and calls them for help.
Scene with Quest Giver: They asked for help because their aunt, Leyla is acting strange of late.
Objective: Visit the aunt in her hut
Log: A busy merchant approached you on the market and asked for help with family troubles: His aunt Leyla showed strange behaviour of late and he himself did not find the time to deal with this situation, so he sends you.
Investigation at Hut: She's religious, avatar decides to ask neighbour.
Objective: Ask in the neighbouring hut about Leyla.
Scene with Neighbour: They tell she went to cathedral of the nearby city and was weirding since, eventually vanished into woods.
Objective: Trace Leyla into the forest
Objective (optional): Speak to the cathedral's priest.
Log: Leyla appears to have been very religious, even venturing as far as to the city to visit the cathedral there in bad times. Her neighbour though tells you she had last been seen wandering into the forest.
Scene with Priest: Aunt had a hard time with herself after the husband died, apparently he'd been burned by the local lord for witchcraft. The priest prayed for her thus and ended with the standard formula "And Thou Shalt be a-Blessing..". On right choice/force induction he'll tell you that she had a very bad reaction to that ending.
Log: From a priest in the cathedral you learned of Leyla's troublesome past. She apparently sought the priest for help at times. [If learned:] To the priests confusion, a blessing he gave her tremendously affected her.
Tracing Footprints into Forest: Leyla is found praying by an ancient altar.
Scene with Leyla:
[Option 1:] If the avatar didn't find out about the blessing and her extremely negative reaction to it, he won't be able to guess that it was the blessing that made her snap - she'll loose hope and sacrifice herself on the altar when the player leaves sight radius.
Log: When you found Leyla, she was already in a state beyond help. You could but stand by and watch her way of concluding with life.
[Option 2:] But if the information was gained, then the player will be able to convince her of living in a monastery and the true reason for her unsettlement on the blessing will be unveiled: After a long life of not achieving anything being left alone she felt a god-like redemption like that would just not be right (even though unconsciously she of course wished it to be true).
Log: When you found Leyla, she was almost in a state beyond help. Discussing her blessing seemed to remind her of the earthlyness of her troubles and she decided to take a more peaceful road for the last times of her life.
Objective: Return to the quest giver.
Scene with Quest Giver: The avatar tells of what he learned and achieved and receives respective rewards.
I find quest logs interesting because they are a very direct interface to the underlying quest system. While the "real quest" plays out in the non-UI gameplay, the quest log is a means to access meta informations to the happenings (which is probably also one reason why they're more often abstract in their signs?).
Concerning that quest I wrote, well, I played Diablo II Resurrected the other day so I got inspired. Might be a candidate for turning into an inkle game next time, we'll see.
Until then, have a good time!
Today I'm gonna think and write about quest objectives. Indeed, making them distinct from quest goals will help understanding that matter more clearly, I feel.
In my quest definitions so far one prevailing element is the existence and juxtaposition of events and goals. Since for me at least it never wasn't really clear how their relationships is, I'll try clarifying that in this episode.
Events and goals have in common that they are mental constructions, part of mechanisms in the mind. Events can be defined as abstractions and summations of movements perceived:
An event is thus fundamentally about the change from a previously perceived state.
Goals on the other hand do not refer to the trueness/falseness of something in the world we perceive. Rather they make a statement about something one wants to be true/false therein:
A goal is about a future state that is wished to become true.
Note that unlike events, goals are bound to an actor of sorts. Events on the other hand are not necessarily originating from an actor only.
We see, that the production of fitting events is the means to fulfill a goal. We also see that the audience always needs to have at least one goal: That of wishing to continue to experience the story. This applies for all media, but mind how this plays out different in e.g. books and computer games: Usually the effort to continue the "book-experience" is trivial: You merely have to turn pages (those are the events needed). In games however the player's ability to participate in event triggering allows for much more complex ways of building the events necessary to reach the goal of "continue game-experience".
But of all this I've talked already lengthily in my post on narrative drive. I'll now turn my eyes towards quest objectives. First, what makes an objective different from a goal? Consider the question of goal-authorship in video games: It is obvious that the player's mind is the last instance of goal-creation. However those goals are oftentimes inspired or even afforded by the game: For example landmarks or those written goal propositions we get whe playing a quest:
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| Quest objectives in TES V: Skyrim. Source |
These I call quest objectives and we see they are designer created and, as quest items, explicitely referenced by a quest system. By quest system I mean that part of the game's code that is responsible for revealing the events of a quest.
Here follows a short list of guidelines I think sensible:
The KISS principle: Keep it simple, stupid. Players shoudn't have to employ specific postmodern literacies to decipher the objective presented to them.
Thematic cohesiveness: As with all game elements, the objective too should feel fitting to the theme. One might use e.g. "thy" instead of "your" for a heavily medieval themed game.
Player expression: As with decisions, goals allow for expressing player thoughts. If a player likes a character, for instance, then you might insert an optional goal of talking to that character before moving on at an important point in the narrative.
There have been several attempts to create typologies of (quest) objectives or goals in games. I'll present one here as a pool of inspiration without much further discussion.
Firstly we have Debus, Zagal and Cardona-Rivera (2020):
Choose, Configure, Create, Find, Obtain, Optimize, Reach, Remove, Solve and Synchronize
When reviewing books on quest design or video game storytelling such as Jeff Howard (2008) or Lee Sheldon (2004), then I find that those do not provide exhaustive overviews of such goals. Their value is much rather in the attempt of an overall synthesis of thoughts on their respective topics. What a luck that there are on the hand scholars devoting themselves to specifiv topics such as a listing and destilling of "imperative game goals" (Debus et al.).
Wictionary Contributors. event, goal. What a time to be alive for linguistically interested people.
German Wikipedia Contributors. Ereignis (event), Ziel (goal).
Lee Sheldon (2004) Character Development and Storytelling, p. 224ff.
Jeff Howard (2008) Quests - Design, theory and History in Games and Narratives, p. 101ff.
I'm going to continue my quest for quest implementations. Here is the latest progress:
And it is in its finished form, for now. I added some consequences to the choices and reused the part about tanking from the sun, which I introduced in the first version. Also, some CSS magic, as you see.
What design principles do you know or have for (quest) objectives?
Do you catch up with the story progress in "Sustain the Moon"?
Another post is another win. And I am content with finally having thought and talked about the event/goal/objective difference, whose relations were a point of annoyement to me for quite some time now. Also the feeling of having been able to prototype a quest so fast with inkle is great. I'll probably do that again.
Until then, have a good time!
Shifting to some more - well - profane, or rather: 'classic' quest design topics. The first one in the line is quest items.
So what are items in the first place? The wictionary tells me, it is a "distinct physical object" and, more specifically for video games, "an object that can be picked up for later use". I think I'd agree that in video games items are usually those which can be picked up and stored in an inventory. However it doesn't seem fitting to reality to say that every item may be used. So I'd go with:
items are distinct physical objects that can be picked up
This gives a good intuition for what is possible with them (some thoughts on meaning here are inspired by Jeff Howards book on quests (see below)):
distinct implies that the player is able to perceive at least some of its boundaries, form and what else might be part of an appearance
note, that this allows for an assignment of an equally distinct meaning to this item and also for the relative stability of that: nonetheless assigning different meanings is probably one of the more interesting things to do with items
physicality gives items a very concrete existence, making them part of the spaces the player herself might pass through - it also forces certain aspects of appearance to be: a physical object needs a shape and a weight, for instance
note, that this allows for literally embedding meaning into the game world: it is probably the basis to applied worldbuilding and environmental storytelling (see for instance this discussion of objects in the starting area of Cyberpunk 2077)
lastly, the player is able to pick up items and possibly also discard them. well, assumed that the player herself is able to move, then she may then carry this item through the game world
note, that this is a perfect setup of items as a storytelling device: we can assign the item a meaning and tell the player to carry that meaning through a game world - possibly even showing interactions between item and game world or item and avatar. this is an easy way to make a meaning durable
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| Items in TES IV: Oblivion. Source |
Now what are quest items? To answer this, I'll cite a classification made by Jeff Howard. It goes as follows:
I'd like to disagree with the last definition and rather say that quest items are those, which are explicitely referenced by a quest system, "explicitely" meaning here that the concrete item is referenced and not "any sword" for example. This seems much more logical and useful to me.
Howard, Jeff. Quests - Design, theory and History in Games and Narratives. Chapter 4 - Objects. Link. Has a big focus on the literary, quests, meaning and symbolisms.
Sasko, Paweł. Lead Quest Designer plays Cyberpunk 2077! #1. Link. A big fundus of knowledge concerning mainly "storytelling, game design, quest design and psychology".
In order to actually implement a quest for a change, I downloaded inkle and wrote a system with hubs and dynamically addable, showable and deletable objectives. Then, I implemented the first half of the solarpunk quest from last time in it:
So this was nice and relatively easy. I'm thinking this might be a format in which I could also tell future stories here, instead of always leaving them in a non-implemented state.
In which ways have you used items in quest contexts?
Do you think my rather "quick and dirty" concretization of last post's quest design worked so far?
I am very satisfied with this post. It contained a theoretically inspired, but practical section on items and it featured an actual quest implementation (we haven't had those in a while ..). The link between them is missing, but I can live with that. For the future, I hope to continue with more such small-scale but worthy productions.
Until then, have a good time!
This post will be about the concept of theme. In order to properly think about this, a short re-construction of some familiar conceptualizations will happen first.
When a designer creates something, a work, then he builds an arrangement of signs. Whether the work is physical (a book, a piece of furniture), digital (a computer game, an image) or of other form (a spoken thought, a dance) - it is always a collection of signs. The pure movement perceivable when viewing a dance has meanings: There might be an entity called hand, another that is cloth and a movement across the floor.
These meanings can be more convoluted - a sign might stand for something that is not itself: A trace in the snow might stand for a rabbit having passed here, a heart stands for the concept of love.
A narration is a forthbringing of signs that is authored, possibly without straightforward meanings and entertaining/artistic. Here, entertaining shall mean "an interesting arrangement of signs" and artistic "an interesting arrangement of meanings" (I'm not yet sure about the definitions in this paragraph). In my view, a lot of works may thus be a narration.
But not all of them have a plot which tells a story: If those exist in a work, then it implicates a recognizable connected series of events - and while this is for instance clearly part of films, a piece of furniture doesn't afford that easily to read a story from it.
In the mixture of all the signs and meanings incoming through possibly a lot of communication channels and being driven to progress, some guidance, orientation might be helpful.
Here comes the theme and shines:
A theme (Greek; actually "the lawful, the placed" [..]) is a concise musical figure which, as the fundamental idea of a piece of music, is designed for recurrence, variation and processing in the further course and, if necessary, can be confronted or combined with further themes.
- German Wikipedia on musical themes Link
The fact that a theme is indeed "designed for recurrence, variation and processing in the further course" makes it automatically a kind of golden thread to the work. A narrative theme might be a certain constellation of meanings. A visual theme might be a color palette and a collection of textures. And if such things repeatedly show up, then they give a certain structure to the player's experience, grounding them in the game.
This citation moreover gives the designer a neat perspective on what to do with themes: They are the perfect source of inspiration for content and all the given freedom of designing in the game engine, in the time spans given by schedule etc. can be further concretized with the edge given by a theme. In the concretization, the theme can be e.g. positioned in certain places (a character speaking about sth., a place, a mechanic, ..), transformed (variation, modulation, twisting, ..) or set up in opposition(s) to something else.
Lastly a theme is - by its very nature of permeating thhe whole experience - that, which the audience is most likely to take away, remember from the work. Thus, being able to choose a theme gives the designer a certain power. And as it goes with such in tendencies unidirectional powers, one needs to be very conscious about them. A good theme, as Jesse Schell puts it, is meaningful and has a strong resonance with people.
"These minor tales ultimately reinforce the theme of the major narrative" - Pinault, David.
"In music, a subject is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based." - Wikipedia, Subject(Music), Link
"A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel"
- Wikipedia, Theme(narrative)
"The theme of a work of literature is its central
or dominant idea. This idea is seldom stated explicitly; rather, it is
conveyed through the selection and arrangement of details, through the
emphasis of certain events or images, and through the action and
reactions of the characters."
- Fiction: Reading, Reacting, Writing, Link
Wikipedia, Theme(narrative) Link. Among other concepts: "thematic patterning is the insertion of a recurring motif in a narrativ"
Pinault, David. Story-telling techniques in the Arabian nights. I'd like to read this book some time.
Solarpunk is an artistic genre that is concerned with showing a successful human future and how to get there:
“what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?”
- A Solarpunk Manifesto Link
It is contrasted with rather dark settings like Steam- or Cyberpunk and is by its very nature quite optimistic, close to nature and close to sustainable technology.
Here I'll draft a game and a quest in it. The game:
Humans have transcended: They left their bodies behind and transferred their minds to space-walkers: Cyborgs that are able to beam through space and change their own size. Space-walkers are of white-black-yellow color and get their energy via solor panels. An important part of the gameplay is to not loose so much energy such that the next sun for recharging can't be reached. The second important part is the 3D-movement and resizing, needed to avoid planets, land on planets. The third part is the hatch on the walker's front, which can be opened and closed and may be used to transport everything imagineable.
The player plays a space-walker who is sent back to the humans home, Earth, and investigate some issue there.
Phase 1
The player reaches the local governmental mission-dispatching node (a level with tech-heavy, metallic architecture, but mixed with natural elements / several NPCs are around). It is unusual, normally a mission is dispatched via radio, to save the energy of moving a walker through the universe.
In a cutscene, a apparently high ranking authority gives the player the task of "sustaining the earth's moon" without much further ado. When the player asks what the problem is, he gets the answer: "The Earthers have gone capitalistic on their planet again".
New goal: Reach Earth and talk to the local authorities.
Phase 2
The player travels to Earth, shrinks and takes a visit in the glassy parliament of the UNO. With horror she perceives that the inhabiants of earth have apparently forgotten/mystified their spatial expansion via various catastrophes.
The player is forced to a
Decision: 1) Try convince the Earthers with ethical logic. 2) Search for a different solution.
Trying 1) will fail, for the Earthers are too deep in the capitalistic system. The player is then thrown back to the decision and will eventually choose 2). In a monologue, the avatar decides to visit the moon and see how things are there.
New goal: Visit the moon.
Phase 3
The moon is inhabited by a mostly scientific colony which apparently is much more rational and open-minded than their earthly counterparts. Upon learning of the state of humans in space and the concerns regarding earthen overexploitation of the moon, they propose to have the moon transferred to another planets orbit. After some questions, the avatar agrees.
There is a discussion concerning the future of the soon to be condemned moon colony. Being able to promise support by the galactical government, the player can influence the outcome of the discussion, resulting in one of the folowing goals:
New goal: Transfer the moon's inhabitants back to earth.
New goal: Transfer the home-bound part of the moon's population back to earth.
(No new goal - step skipped: All of them want to stay on the moon)
And after that is done:
New goal: Transfer the moon to another planet.
Phase 4
The moon is gone and the contract fulfilled. The player sends a message to the galactical authority and gets a reward.
The player may optionally visit Earth again where she'll find some very upset NPCs and different happenings depending on the previous choice. She'll similarly be able to visit the moon.
I have to admit, it was very funny to come up with this quest. And I could easily imagine a follow-up quest, or even a quest line - maybe its even part of the game's main story.
Do you share my understanding of theme as a golden thread?
Seeing how the term 'theme' could be approached from a musical side made me happy, for I am for quite some time already convinced that quests and music have a lot in common. Pacing is another great example supporting my suspicion.
My Solarpunk quest wasn't that much Solarpunk in its hopefulness, I think - but I'm not sure. However the quick game and quest design I produced here revealed itself to be astonishingly effective. This will be tried again.
Until then, have a good time!
This post is concerned with the potential of narrations to be captivating, such that you can't wait to see what's next.
What do I mean by narration drive? Well, the drive (or drives) of a narration is that which makes the audience want to follow that particular telling of a narrative. This might be rooted in they way of telling (so this part is about storytelling) or in the content that is told (what the narrative is about). Below you find a previously seen graphic illustrating some of the terminological differences:
In my understanding, much of this has to do with what I call the experience cycle of human being. What you find below is a simplified synthesis of several game studies papers, twitch/youtube videos of story creators, blog posts and own thoughts.
Input / Trigger
As a narrative is told, steadily, bits of input (signs, movements) are given to the audience (the player). Upon perceiving them, they are interpreted on possibly several layers (see post #9) and now serve as a trigger to go on in the experience cycle.
Guidelines:
Addenda:
Learning, Knowledge
The informations is classified and integrated - learned - into existent mental models. It may well be the basis for a new complex of knowledge, such that e.g. the story "The Lord of the Rings" is demarked separately and can be recalled as one unit. Humans are able to imagine alternatives to what they already know - that way Tolkien was able to think of a fictional world in the first place. The in my view biggest propellers of curiosity and involvement are related to knowledge and summarized in the following
Guidelines:
Quotes:
Motivations and Goals
This is the part that is at the heart of this post. Conceptually, here the drive, the acceleration of the wheel, the aquisition of energy for action is happening.
From the perspective of this section the others provide material for being driven and created special kinds of drives: flow continuation, meaningfulness, curiosity/wanting to understand. But abstracting those motivations, we can see that all of them are grounded by a common principle: Identifying a (imaginary or past) state of affairs, valueing it high - desiring it.
The last ingredient is uncertainty. If we'd know for sure and in which way a desire will be fulfilled, the it becomes pretty boring. But having an unknown variable, some gap to fill, makes it much more interesting, motivating.
Guidelines:
Quotes:
-- ~ * ~ --
So, this shall be it for now. I know, I know, the part on agency is missing. It is missing because it is worth an article on its own, especially in the context of video games. For now we'll have to content ourselves with this overview, which by the way fits to many media, I think. In general - a lot of my thoughts actually stem from philosophical, psychological (among others) ways of thought, simply applied to video games.
Andrew Stenton: The clues to a great story Link. I'd advise everyone interested in storytelling to watch this TEDtalk
Bordwell, Thompson, Smith: Film Art, Chapter 3: Narrative Form. Even though concerned with the film medium, Film Art continues to deliver excellent material for my posts on narration.
And many more... (this multitude of sources is the case for many posts, but I wanted to highlight it here specifically, since developing these thoughts really was a convoluted process).
I'll practically explore the concept of narrative drive in today's quest. Which is about magic sheep in a cave's glade, or at least that is the initial idea I've had.
Phase 1. Upon asking an innkeep about news, they tell the player of a monk in the tavern, who apparently has some problem with his tenple.
New sidequest: "Of Sheep and Flowers"
New objective: "Talk to the monk"
Phase 2. The monk sits in the tavern, devastated and muttering to himself. Upon talking to him, he first seems to have little hope, when he starts telling you: He is no monk but a keeper. There is a religious cave (not temple!) nearby which has been corrupted by a force he couldn't identify.
Decision: 1) "Speak on." 2) "I've heard enough of this religious nonsense"
When option 2) is chosen the keeper is offended and ends the dialogue. The player can retry infinitely often.
When option 1) is chosen, the keeper's spirits rise (he apparently hadn't someone encouraging him that often). He tells the player he himself would defeat the corruption but he isn't allowed to fight in religious places. However he will accompany the player through the cave. He asks whether the player accepts the quest.
Decision: 1) "Well, let's do this." 2) "This is too strange a job even for me"
When option 2) is chosen the dialogue ends. The player can retry infinitely often.
Otherwise, the keeper says he'll wait at the cave entrance and the dialogue ends.
Replace objective: "Meet the keeper at the cave entrance"
Phase 3. At the cave entrance a wall painting of flowers can be seen, next to it the keeper is standing. The location's name is "Cave of Flowers". Upon speaking to the keeper, he uneasily tells the player to not wonder about certain "oddities" they might see inside. The keeper becomes follower of the player.
Replace objective: "Investigate how to cleanse the cave"
Phase 4. Entering the cave, a lot of flowers and beautiful lightings coming from shafts in the stone can be seen. There are several shrines and places with benches arranged in circles. Closer investigation reveals draugr graves in the walls.
In one of those locations, a sheep is standing amidst a lot of flowers. It doesn't walk, doesn't eat and doesn't look around. The keeper tries to explain that this is one manifestation of the corruption: Flowers having been turned into sheep. Sounding devastated again, he speaks that the flowers don't know how to sustain themselves in a sheepish body and'll therefore die soon if the corruption is not eliminated.
Phase 5. Draugr actively start emerging from their graves and the lighing becomes darker, the number of sheep rises. The keeper says the draugr are part of the corruption aswell.Phase 6. The pair reaches the innermost glade, being a new section called "Glade of Flowers", with the highest number of sheep. In it, a group of Talos-priests and common fighters is practicing some ritual. The group calls the keeper heretic, betrayer and start attacking. The keeper won't fight.
Replace objective: "Kill the Talos worshippers"
Phase 7. The group has been defeated. The sheep haven't turned back to flowers though. Discussing the events, the player-avatar is confronted with a
Decision: 1) "Kill the ship, before they die of hunger" 2) "Let's search the attackers"
If the player searches the leader, he'll find a notice detailing the groups hideout. Talking with the notice in his inventory to the keeper, will lead to him deciding to attack that hideout.
Replace objective: "Purge the Talos-hideout"
Phase 8. Keeper and player walk to the nearby hideout and fight through it. The end boss is a higher Talos priest, who carries a spell book with him. The spell transforms flowers into sheep and back. The keeper takes the book. He thanks the player for helping him and tells him to come back to the cave in a few days.
Replace objective: "Visit the keeper in a few days"
Phase 9. The player meets the keeper in the now sheep-free cave. He receives thankful words, gold and the spellbook from the keeper.
Quest end.
What thoughts/tips come to your mind concerning the topic and design of "narrative drive"?
I don't think I have written a longer post yet - considering both text length and writing time. Also, I feel that there is still some polish and improvement of theory possible. But oh well, it is in the nature of such things to be quite difficult to grasp as worded concepts. Maybe future me will have a clearer view on this.
Until then, have a good time!
Blog post #28 has arrived. It is in general about storytelling and specifically about how storytelling manifests in quests in the video game medium. I'll try applying a very central idea in my very own practical design.
The introduction to a definition for "storytelling" by the National Storytelling Network (NSN) emphasizes that storytelling is "an ancient art form and a valuable form of human expression".
This highlights that storytelling is indeed a cultural practice, and onw can easily imagine hunters / gatherer - communities sitting around a fire some thousand years ago with a hunter group telling of how they managed to slay that one bear but lost one man in the process. The same applies to several other kinds of stories of course.
However, the central definition of the NSN is somewhat more formal:
Storytelling is the interactive art of using words and actions to reveal the elements and images of a story while encouraging the listener’s imagination.
Now, the NSN clearly didn't think of movies, books, video games etc. because they are focused on oral storytelling. But I think it remarkable that nonetheless the terms interactive and action pop up. And ever more interesting: If we exchange some oral-specific words by more general ones, then we get a pretty nice and more general definition for storytelling:
Storytelling is the interactive art of using signs to reveal the elements and images of a story while encouraging the audience’s mind.
So storytelling is in its core about arranging, presenting, mise-en-scène of story-material. Storytelling means encoding a story and transmitting that to the audience, which decodes and processes it bit by bit.
Storytelling can happen in video games: Designer and player can encode story-bits into a game, and the audience (usually the player, but sometimes also e.g. viewers on Twitch) decode and process them.
This can happen in the form of quests: The quest designer might prepare connected, serialized events, goals, means of achieving and choices for the player who, by e.g. enacting events and deciding on things and solving problems, finally determines the story told.
The great potential and difficulty in this is of course the player's agency. The player is able to participate in the storytelling, to tell herself a story. What, by giving a player space to notice and look upon her - consciously and unconsciously - performed decisions, we as designers might even elicit reflective thoughts in the player.
 |
| CP77 issued such a reflective feeling in me after killing someone supposedly bad by setting up a moment of rest and a character who mirrored my thoughts. Source |
This, of course, works in other media too. Only, in video games it works very well, because the origin of action can be the audience itself by means of the avatar and and mechanics - which won't ever be the case in a book or movie.
Here some intuitive guidelines to set up storytellings that issue reflection in the player's mind:
Keep the player in flow while performing. We want to hit the player with Brechtian reflection afterwards, to elevate the effect. For now she shall execute her standard (possibly morally rationalized) behaviour.
Create a transitionary moment. The player needs to catch a breath and slow down, gather his thoughts process what happened.
Designers and artists can play heavily with the story's archetypes, atmospheres, themes, symbols here to elicit the player's associations with them such that she may look and reflect upon them.
National Storytelling Network: What is Storytelling? Link
Post #22 Non-linear Stories Link
A lot of inspiration and base work for this post is in here.
Wikipedia: Epic theatre Link
Driven by - amongst others - Berthold Brecht, epic theatre "emphasizes the audience's perspective and reaction to the piece"
Well, let's do something concrete:
A menace of matte gray, postmodernly deconstructed and rebuilt
A queen of power, a human, animal, an intersection of meaning
Silver flashes, lightnings on glassy dark
Untouchable and high
Evil eyes staring down
Eating you, the poor, the people, those who are
But you don't fear no more
1.) Throw the atomic warhead
2.) Don't throw it
1) You are shot down in masses
1) Auto DNA-ID ON-line Defensive Sys. ® Militech Corp.
1) There's a saviour amongst you
1) And he burns it down
1) Burns it all down
1) The whole damn city
1) People cry, the new gods die.
1) A new chapter of Anthroprocene begins
1) Warlords rise in the Ashes
1) Society collapsed
1) Much that once was is gone
1) And as you gather in your cave
1) The inner critic asks your soul
1) Was it me who's right?
You can see here how I set up the to-be-reflected action (throwing that atomic bomb) to be done in a flow state. After that, the action is loosing intensity and closeness until finally a very quiet image is provided with a concluding question functioning as reflection trigger.
Did you ever experience reflection on your own action in a game? Why?
Do you think you'd be left with such a feeling after playing that Cyberpunk quest? Why (not)?
This post has expressed on of my favourite thoughts about games. I guess it has appeared already in some other posts. It is, by the way, wuite an interesting feeling to slowly loose track of what I've written down and what not. Maybe this blog won't be a knowledge dump but rather a documentation of my conceptualization processes.
I hope you have a good time. Until the next post!While we dived into enduring things last time, today I'm going to write about how to use those things which aren't there yet. It is about the feeling called suspense. Afterwards, I'll apply my learnings in an unexpected manner.
That, of course, was a lie. But it showcases what I mean: The feelings that arise in an audience when there is an unresolved conclusion, a missing tone in a harmony, a foreshadowing, an interesting mystery.
On the designer side we're talking again about expectation management, about which I previously wrote a blog post. There I differentiated an expectational arc into promise, progress and payoff. The promises were divided into meta-promises (setting up the style of the work), world-knowledge (setting up the storyworld) and hypothesises, which are all expectational arcs related to how the story unfolds. One could say they are concerned with questions and statements such as:
This is what storytelling, to my knowledge, is interested in: The dynamics in the audiences heads while the story is told to them and of course - how to create which ones.
In my previous post I also wrote that "expectation management fundamentally breaks down to the gaps between":
Furthermore: "Storytellers [..] may use the gap between points 1. and 2./3. to make a story more compelling through interesting reveals at the right time (pacing) and subversions".
Now, one way of creating interesting reveals is to make a prominent and meaningful promise, dragging the progress slowly but steadily while keeping on promising prominently, and creating a final reveal.
I'd label the feeling felt while progress is building suspense. It is on the same page as moments of intensity, of "holding ones breath" or not being able to see what'll come next.
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| What will happen to the man? What is the kid's role? |
There surely are other such patterns: I'm thinking of surprises, plot twists, the calm before the storm, a moment of rest and such things.
But for today, let suspense be me guide.
#20 Expectation Management, link. The basis for this post, containing the sources to concepts like promise, progressm payoff and hypothesis
The Building Of Stories, page 55 and following, link. A very nice explanation of what suspense is and how to create it
Searching to get something finished, I'll continue on the cyberpunky storyquest I began last time, hoping that such a smaller project will be finished more likely.
What will I do? I'll write. The moments I present here are those where I wanted to create suspension:
The sun is setting in my back
Orange lights - no, red lights chasing me
Black and red, devils forms
Accelerating, catching up, surrounding me
Their hatred is approaching me
My senses on alert
What is it?
1.) That smell..
2.) Them sounds..
3.) Those vibration..
...
The constant beat
Again, again and again
My body a flash of violet and silver
A fiery violet heart, oceans of anger
Waiting to be unleashed
We need to press on
You and me, my military friends
You'll drive me into my abyss, your abyss with your whips of steel
In the first case it's about withholding what it is, that's following the avatar (which is revealed when choosing any decision line), in the second case the player might wonder more intensively what his avatar is acually up to.
What other patterns of expectation management (like suspense, twist, etc.) come to your mind?
Are my writing samples not clear enough in their promise to be suspenseful?
This post had a very nice topic and leads into a direction that I'd like to pursue further. There are already several possible related topics on my mind.
There is a certain suspense to life itself too, I'm realizing. What will happen with me and those dear to me? Although I of course know of the parallel between plot/story and life, this thought never came to my mind before.
Granted, for me, a certain suspense does surround my next post.
Until then, have a good time!
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