#10 Ideation and The Witcher 2

Today I'm talking about finding and expressing quest design ideas, which in some form is part of every quest design process. I am planning to think of such a process and I hope that my previous and future theoretical posts will help me with that. The second half will present a quest design idea based on the world of The Witcher and will then proceed to refine it in the manner described in the first half.

Ideation

In order to make a quest, we need to come up with good ideas. There are several techniques that might be used to achieve this - I decided to combine some of them and distinguish two aspects:

1) Be aware of Conditions and Context

It makes a difference whether we know about the underlying technologies, the existing game mechanics, locations, narrative - in short: conditions. It is much easier to flesh out a quest idea, if you already had all or some these conditions in mind:

If we want to come up with a quest idea that plays e.g. in a world consisting of a single big ice desert, then it might help to learn about the Inuit, expeditions to the north pole or previous cultural captures of that theme. If used with care (e.g. not blindly/rigid copying), setting up this context or frame in your mind helps, since it gives you material to play around with.

An example for this are the inspirations listed by CD Projekt RED quest designer Philipp Weber for The Witcher 3 (source):

• old legends, fairy tales, witcher lore or history
• real-life issues and problems
• gameplay features
• other quests (-> continuations)
  

2) Setting up a Space for Creativity

Step 1 was concerned with game/quest-specific material. Step 2 is about creating a space for creativity, where all thoughts allowed - even though they do not fit the conditions/context right now: We want free thought - it might be inspired or influenced by some material, but there need to be as few restrictions as possible on the thought itself in order to explore as many possibilities as possible.

Here are some rules which might express this philosophy (inspired by a course on game design at my university):

• creative self-confidence
• every idea is allowed, there is no failure, unfiltered ideas
  
• express your ideas
• all ways of perception/expression are valid
• everything is a material (ideas themselves too!)
• continue any flow and do not rest
  

Extra rules for multiple persons:

• communicate
• just one person talking

It is a very interesting task to create spaces in which such rules are set. In his book The Art of Game Design  Jesse Schell advocates for the unconscious as a source of creativity. To him it seems necessary, to let the unconscious speak and capture its expressions. He quotes analytical psychologist C.G. Jung who believed that god speaks through the unconscious. In fact, since Jung himself was most of his life time occupied with learning about the unconscious' nature, one might look at the methods he used. Jesse Schell furthermore cites Salvador Dali, who waked himself in the moment shortly before falling asleep to get into a fresh mental sate. Some software tools might also do the job:

During one of the game jams I participated in, there was the need for some brainstorming of missions, separately for several planets in the narrative. Above you see two frames I created in the program Miro, an "online collaborative whiteboard platform". To each frame a planet is associated and I placed informations on the planet and its characters in the corners of the respective frame. During the brainstorming sessions the other narrative designers and I just freely associated in these frames with sticky notes, note arrangements and connecting lines, as can be seen on the left. When finished, we sorted them into thematically somewhat coherent columns and proceded to write a mission based on each column of notes.

Philipp Weber provides another great example: In this tweet he remarks that he got many inspirations for The Witcher 3 quests simply by riding through the game world. Here the quest context is directly present and since you can just be in that world without much distractions, there is also enough space for free exploration of thoughts and feelings.

So we see that with an open, adaptive, somewhat focused approach, much can be achieved in the ideation phase without great effort. While one might think brainstorming should be free of any structure, I believe it is very helpful to get into a certain mindset and use some material as a starting point.

Further Reading / Inspiration

John Sharp, Colleeen Macklin Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure

A "Witcher" Quest - Part 1: Pitch and Ideation

My newest quest design will take place in the Witcher universe. I will continue some ideas that I had begun before starting this blog, so first of all already existing ideas shall be documented.

Summary so far

The quest is about a young woman, named Alene Wudmager, and her place in the village and family she is living in/belonging to.

Geralt arrives in a wide valley with a great forest, a small castle and a villlage near a lake. Heading to the village (hearing of a monster contract there) he encounters Alene weeping and lost in the wild. He decides to help her get back to her home. When they come back to paths known to Alene, she takes the lead and they arrive at a woodmaker's hut in the deep forest. A mid-aged man who introduces himself as Alvin Wudmager opens up and bids them in, but quite it soon it is revealed that he is but her uncle and cannot take her in. Ashamed of lying and apparently in stress about going back to her real parents Alene breaks down again.

Her uncle asks Geralt to escort her to the village and regardless of his decision - when he starts out the next morning, Alene will follow him, being to scared to walk alone (her uncle apparently does not want to go to the village either). In any way, walking to the village becomes very strange. Alene is obviously very insecure, doesn't speak much and Geralt is not very apt in dealing with such situations.

Arriving in the village things become worse. The inhabitants tense up when seeing them pass by, but it seems that something more fundamental is off here. When delivering Alene to her family, Geralt realizes that her father is the eldorman and a rigid patriarch. Fuming, he takes her in without giving any heed to Geralt and immediately starts scolding her, implicating to employ violence when in private. The door closes and Geralt is left with a decision on whether to intervene or not.

1) Geralt intervenes. Geralts enters the family's house and forces the father to let go. He becomes even more furious; Geralt and Alene leave. Aleene feels thankful and entrusts him with a plan of hers: To ask the local lord for permission to leave the valley with her uncle of whom she knows, that this had been a dream for a long time. She originally intended to share this plan with her uncle the day before, but was too scared and confused with the unexpected situation. She asks Geralt to help.

2) Geralt intervenes not. He returns to think of his original plan, the monster contract. Since he cannot speak to the eldorman, he heads to the local tavern and speaks to the innkeep. He learns that the village has a long tradition of woodcraft and only in the last fifteen years began to heavily focus on fishing and "boating" the lake. This movement was apparently driven by the eldorman and the only original fisher of the village - Nohman Kapuner. The Kapuners are said to ever have been fishing and be a little bit different than the other villagers, "living directly at the lake and all". The eldorman enters the inn, joins the conversation and ruefully excuses himself for his behaviour. He introduces himself as Aisker Wudmaker, Alvin's brother. Turning the conversation to the contract, he explains that it is the fisherman's son who disappeared and of whom it is believed that a monster captured and murdered him. He asks Geralt to help.

At this point in both threads the next decision is to either accept or explore the village for a little first. Upon exploring you can find some environmental storytelling and minor dialogues, but you can also talk to the respective other party - Alene or her father - and gain the chance to switch.

From here on my design is only sketched:

1) Alene and Geralt return to her uncle Alvin (this time a much less awkward journey) and convince him of Alene's plan. While Alvin starts preparations, Alene and Geralt visit the local lord, who seemingly doesn't care much about anything happening in his country and sees only an opportunity in this bid for leave. He tasks Geralt with something (in his view) stupid and upon completing it, gives him some reward and allows Alene and Alvin to leave the valley. Returning to the hut all is ready for the departure and Geralt says goodbye.

Geralt, if he is curious, will visit the village before he leaves. Upon arrival he sees a hut burning and several people fighting each other. He learns that the conflict between wood- and lake-loving people escalated when further people died and neither conflict moderation nor a prospect of resolution were there.

2) Geralt starts his investigation on the issue of the disappearing fisherman's son. He asks the residents and learns that the conflict between water and wood is much tenser than he originally was told. He hears of accusations that some family kidnapped the son. Nonetheless, the people seem relieved that somebody finally tends to the matter. Geralt ventures into the wood to trace the son's steps. (Here I don't have anymore notes)

After returning to the village it is discovered that Alene is missing again. Some time later, her dead body is discovered in the woods.

In the end, Geralt beliebes to have found the origin of the murders, but is not fully convinced. The village however is content with it and returns eventually to normality.

Finishing the pitch

While this isn't the only material I have (there also some characterizations I wrote, a small flow chart and a pacing graph), I believe here is a good point to stop and evaluate. This summary (or pitch) is not complete:The first half is pretty good described, but I am not content with the degree of concreteness in the second half. So before moving on to other ways of examination, I will finish this one.

To do this, I employed my ideation techniques. I created a frame in the Miro board and started constructing the storylines with small rectangles, arrows, color codings, descriptions and so on. This way I was forced to think about this quest in its entirety. It helped to spot areas that need(ed) some rework or polishing. The flexibility provided by Miro allows to quickly rearrange whole branches and arrange everything in a well-ordered way. Here is the result:

I recommend downloading and opening the image with an image viewer to get a closer look.
If you want full detail, here is the image in a vector graphics PDF version.

Besides changing and formulating events/goals and their specifics, I also got the chance to think about some bigger concerns:

• I envision this design to enclose two quests: "Alene" and "Wudmager". The former concetrates on the personal fate of the young woman you meet, while the latter is about Geralt doing his job: Solving problems. Thus, the second quest has a slight focus: You can essentially decide to not meddle in the familiy's matters (even though you get several chances to do so) and only do what is necessary to complete the contract. The contract however needs to be done in both ways.
  

• When I came up with the idea for this quest I wanted to create involvement, and to this the current iteration also gave heed: At several points you are (or are offered to be) dragged into something that is actually not Geralt's concern, but as a player you might decide - out of emotional or rational reasons - to continue or follow these involvement cues and events.
   
• My inspiraiton are the more complex, locally bound quests created by CD Projekt RED. The prime example is the storyline around the Bloody Baron, were, amongst other means, several main quests were intertwined in a non-trivial way, which highlights their complexity. I applied this in my design too by adding cross-references, inclusions and one-way connections between "Alene" and "Wudmager". I also plan to let them start at different times.
   
• During constructions I found that my previous plan had a lot of walking around and talking and decision making. Consequently I thought of some places for fighting - for the same reason I marked some story points where free exploration might be possible: In those moments there would be some room for side quests and minor content.
  

Having this more detailed outline now, I'm probably going to continue with a post on the space and world this story plays in.

Ideas for Feedback

• In what are other situations and/or states of mind does creativity emerge?
• Should I make my quest's beginning more elaborate? Are the latter parts too elaborate?
  

Conclusion

My ideas on creative processes could be extended: There is, for instance, the analogy of play space and creative space. I could also expand on architecture or the unconscious. But for now I am content with my characterization.

I started a bigger quest design this time. There is interest and hope in me that by building upon some existing ideas some more focus on refinement and concretization will happen. Looking upon my doings I see, that what I did today was already a good sign.

Looking forward to the next post, I hope you have a good time! (...)