#06 On Play (and The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring)

Welcome to another blog post. Today I'll talk about play as a space for player actions and a quest design for one of my favourite (mostly out of nostalgia) real-time strategy games.

Also, last weekend the global game jam happened and I participated, so maybe you'll find here a post on the game I worked on in the near future.

Play

What is play? I understand play as a human activity: A collection of actions in a mode of engagement with the world. A "frame", as Bateson would say, in which actions and signs are not interpreted as being part of the real world. The more our play-actions are perceived by us as non-serious, the more "pure" the play is.

The play-frame is a semi-structured environment for us. It is structured by the signs/movements shown and possible actions given to us, but play is only complete, if a player uses his agency (=ability to act) to actually explore the possibility space of actions by doing, combining, rethinking, inventing things in this space.

Due to its non-serious nature, play may provide humans a safe space: A space for relaxing, self-expression, socializing, for allowing themselves to feel/think freely, and to experiment with ideas, sequences, identities etc. . Bernard Suits thinks play in its extreme form:

Suits reimagines the grasshopper as a philosopher who seeks ultimate goods-activities that are pursued for their own ends, and for no other reason. The laboring ants, preparing for the winter, are working for a purpose, but the grasshopper seeks only happiness for its own sake, and concludes that games are the way to this utopia. In an ideal world, he reasons, we would do nothing but play.

(Metagaming ~ Stephanie Boluk and Patrick Le Mieux)

Providing play-spaces to people may thus be a goal worth reaching.

How does play relate to (computer) games? Well, play needs an object, something to "play around" with. A (computer) game can be this object. Games are a possible structuring of play and they exist in the already mentioned two-fold way: Played and unplayed. Designing, developing and providing a computer game is thus providing people objects to play with.

At this point we can name one of the great conflicts that show themselves in gaming/playing: That of structure vs. freedom. If the possibility space is too big, the player gets lost and he will feel a lack of meaning. If the game is structured too much, then he might feel remote-controlled and unable to act. Game Designers are often concerned with the question of how to embed structures in games without robbing the player of his "play-feel".

Quests are one possible method to deal with this problem. Quests are structures that provide interconnected goal-inducers and events, but the in-between, everything undefined by the quest, that is an opportunity for the designer to allow play. Serjoscha Wiemer calls computer games an "opened intervall": Instead of being an unchangeable (closed) time intervall as movies, songs or books are, computer games computer games allow for intervention by the user. Thus, an important task for quest designers is the intentional not-shaping of steps in between the quest events and goals.

This will show itself in my quest design for today, too.

A "The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring" Quest:

The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring (WotR) is a real-time strategy (RTS) game that is set in Tolkien's well-known universe. Its campaigns, which we will expand here, consist of several scenarios which are only playable in a certain order. To each scenario there is a map and a mission: E.g. in the good campagin the scenario is in the Iron Hills-map, where Gimli and some dwarves fight orcs attacking the dwarven kingdom.

The main gameplay is on those maps: The player usually needs to raise a base based upon ressources gathered from food- and iron-sources. Buildings have different functions: There are e.g. armories (providing upgrades), towers (shooting enemies) and barracks (providing fighters). Next to base-management, the player controls various heroes and fighting units. By means of explicitly stated goals and triggered/scripted events (dialogues, animations) the story of the scenario is told. So, basically, each scenario has a quest that needs to be played through. Note, that the whole campaign is a quest too: There several goals (for each scenario) and events (new map(s) unlocked) telling a connected story (the war of the ring). For a more detailed explanation of the game mechanics visit this this page.

Campaign overview. Source: Link

Szenario gameplay.

My own quest design will be a szenario in the evil campaign. This will require a sketch of a new map and a quest to it, so I'll split this in two blog posts. When reviewing the evil campain (see the wiki) one notices, that the game features many scenarios like the "The Sacking of Minas Ithil (TA 2002)" which aren't part of the core "war of the ring" which took place from TA 3018 – TA 3019 in Tolkien's world.

In this tradition I'll add a mission called "Towers of the Teeth", playing in TA 1980. The towers of the teeth are called Carchost and Narchost, built on either side of the black gate of Mordor. Originally they were built after the of elves and men over the dark lord Sauron at the end of the second age (SA = second age, TA = third age) to closely monitor the country such that no evil could ever come back into Mordor. But since ca. TA 1050 Gondor got more and more into trouble, until eventually TA 1640 "Mordor is left unguarded" and 320 year later, in TA 1980, "The Witch-king comes to Mordor" according to the LOTR appendices.

Location of the Black Gate in Middle-Earth. Source: Link

The new mission integrated into the campaign map. Base map source: Link

I'd integrate the new mission right before the "The Sacking of Minas Ithil" and "The Pass of Cirith Ungol"-missions which play in TA 2000, TA 2002 respectively - in fact, it seems sensible to make "Towers of the Teeth" their direct predecessor as shown in the map above.

Choosing such a szenario has the great advantage of probably not needing to think much about assets or characters since there is already a map playing at the black gate in the good campaign and we can reuse the units available in the associated missions. Here is a sketch for a map where this mission might play:

The main idea is that the witch king, leading the evil forces, has knowledge of some secret paths leading around the black gate. Notice that I have incorporated a camp of good men here in order to make any sensible gameplay possible, even though this is contrary to the lore. This is a common pattern in such games and has been used multiple times in other missions of this game.

I already included some other landmarks such as a second ressource pool and a "special place" which often tells a little hidden side story. I also tried to sketch the layout in such a way, that it is similar to other maps in the game: A lot of corners and paths to explore.

Since time is running out, I'll leave the design for now. Maybe this will even be a quest design in three posts, we'll see.

Ideas for Feedback

• Are there examples for serious play?
• How could a more complex story be told with an RTS like WotR?
  

Conclusion

Playing around with "play" was a nice thing to do and it sets the scene for such wonderful topics as "structure", "narrative", "self-expression", ...

Making a quest design for WotR was rather unsatisfying for now: Introducing the game, thinking about mechanics, background lore, a mission and a map was a lot of frame-work. On the one hand here the advantage of labor division really shows, but I also notice that there simply is not enough time.

Nevertheless, a really rewarding thing to do. I will end my post here

Have a good time!