#16 Adapted Dramaturgic Models & Fenris

 I'm taking a short break from my TW2 quest design, waiting for some people to give feedback on the quest design document I produced last time. In the meanwhile, I'll write down some of my thoughts on dramaturgic models like the heroes journey and how they might be of use in storytelling without getting stuck in a predefined raster.

Silver Bullets for Quest Design

Well, there are none, since quest design is no mathemathical problem that has a solution. The main difficulty is the quest design task itself: It is not well-defined; similar to the word "game" there is no definitive answer to the question "What is quest design?". This is rooted in our natural language, which, having developed evolutionary, usually doesn't provide us with a clearly defined meaning to a word. Consequently the dramaturgic model of your choice won't be of much help if applied rigidly.

Visualization of this section's content. Source (modified)

But there is hope! As I mentioned in my very first blog post, structure that doesn't describe exactly is not necessarily meaningless. We can use it as a heuristic, an indicator, a first draft or as an inspiration for work.

A Storyline for "Fenris" - Vorhaus: Comic Throughline

The following is the comic throughline by John Vorhaus:

1. Who is the hero?
2. What does the hero want?
3. A door opens
4. The hero masters the situation
5. A club comes flying
6. Everything falls apart
7. The hero reaches the bottom
8. The hero risks everything
9. What does the hero get?

Here is a screenshot of the material I've been given:

By simply associating to this material, choosing an interesting idea and concretisizing it along the nine points, the following storyline resulted:

1. An obsessed writer, having clear beliefs
2. Eradicate all small dog breeds
3. Write down his thoughts to convince others to follow his thoughts
4. He manages to write his best book ever (so he thinks)
5. No one will understand his world
6. He is celebrated for his "excellent study of the extreme" and his "method acting interviews". Complete mismatch of his world model, why would no one follow him?
7. Deep, year-long depression, suicidal
8. He writes down a second book, explaining and assuring that he truly meant everything he wrote and goes deep into his personal motivations.
9. He discovers himself, learns painful truths, learns that his anger there to not have to be involved in deeper truths.
   

In the end, he visits a psychologist to learn more about all this (still under the cover of wanting to write that book). When the book is published, it becomes a bestseller, but all the media is only interested in his "weird" side, no one asks the real questions.

I also wrote down some ideas for scenes that make up the story as it is presented to the listener/viewer/..:

While doing this I particularly enjoyed the presentational aspect: How the story is communicated to the player. I guess I'll have much fun writing more quest design concretization!

Conclusion

This short post pointed at the fluid nature of quest design, the use of static models in such a field and a concrete application. I hope you have found something interesting while reading.

Have a good time!

#15 Quest Design Documents and The Witcher 2

What is in a Quest Design Document? This is the question of the day to which I found no satisfying answer when asking our friend, the internet. Thus there will be a little synthesis of existing resources and own thoughts, as always on this blog.

The second part will apply the results to my current Witcher quest design. I hope that this will centralize my ideas and enable me to provide others with something compact to review and give feedback on.

Purpose of Documentation

What is the purpose of documentation? A good design document serves as a concretization/implementation of the designers thoughts and serves as a basis for the concretization/implementation in the real world. It is a halt in between the mind and the final shape. That is why documentation is the place where a lot of preproduction may happen: It is usually more costly to do things right away in the intended medium instead of trying ideas on paper, with post-its, in digital documents, as a prototype, etc.

The second purpose is nearer to the original meaning of the word: Documentation is meant to provide the informations necessary to understand how its target works. Documentation thus at times also summarizes and abstracts.

The last major purpose I'll mention here is communication and coordination: Documentation serves as a hub for synchronization of thoughts between different members in a development team.

I have been thinking about and creating a quest design document structure with these thoughts in mind.

Quest Design Documents

A game usually has a game design document (GDD) of some kind, the software (which is of no interest here) has internal documentation in form of comments in the code base. Between the two there are things like level design documents (LDD), story bibles and character sheets. These are all artifacts that are not related to the code, but more detailed descriptions of elements that are in the GDD. They serve as places for selected developers/designers to work with and as a drill-down option for people starting from the GDD. Of that kind the quest design document (QDD) shall be, too.

As with all documentation, it's structure should be easily accessible and close to the structure of its target. Luckily enough, we already do have some understanding of what and where a quest is in the context of game development. Furthermore, I draw from a LDD that I made, interviews with quest designers at CD Projekt RED and a Gamasutra article on mission design. It will be adapted for quests as they can be found in games like The Witcher, The Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect etc. These are the informations that guided me most:

• it is similar to a screenplay, containing gameplay sections next to scenes
• it contains a chapter on playstyles
• it contains a chapter on themes/inspirations
• a quest can branch
• audio/visuals usually won't need a detailed description here
• the most central unit of a quest is the event - goals and locations are related and important
• pacing is important

And here is the QDD structure I thought of:

1 Introduction

    1.1 Quick Info

    1.2 Event/Goal Graphs

    1.3 Event/Space Layout

2 Chain of Events/Goals

    3.1 Section A

        3.1.1 Scene

            What is? (Space, Time, NPCs, Atmosphere, Quest Log)   

            What happens? (Speech, Cutscene, Reward, Fight, Exploration, Decision, Log Update)

            What motivates? (Quest Log, Level Design, Attachement, Involvement, Agency)

        3.1.2 Gameplay

         ...

    3.2 Section B

    ...
3 Backstory

4 Playstyles

5 Themes and Inspirations

6 Design Process Notes

    5.1 Known Issues

    5.2 Missing Features

You can see here that there's one major part describing the quest itself as it is meant to appear in the game and then there are some meta informations: overviews, highlightings of important aspects, entry points for other departments and progress tracking. Sections can be used to structure bigger quests and to handle branching quests. A single scene is a cutscene or a dialogue between two characters where occasionally choices are presented to the player. A gameplay section is anything that is not a scene and "in-game". To both three relevant questions cristallized while I thought about the informations to store in such a node.

The "What is?" question should be answered with descriptions of the current context: setting, characters nearby, atmosphere, gameplay options, player goals and some such. The "What happens?" question is probably most important, it refers to the changes that are caused by the game or the player: Environment changes, dialogue decisions, attacking a NPC, walking a path, ... "What motivates?" refers to the driving function of quests, they are meant to keep the player engaged in order to allow him to experience the game. Here oneay write about triggers, involvement, landmarks or guiding.

Enjoy the template I made for such a quest design document.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• The Questing Beast: A Q&A with RED Quest Designers Pawel Sasko and Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz Link
• Designing quests for The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 Link
• Creating a narrative focused mission design document: A Last of Us example Link
• A Level Design Document I made (Link1) and its inspirations Link2 and Link3
  

A "Witcher" Quest - Part 6: Quest Design Document

There is not much to say here, since I basically just followed my own instructions that I gave in the above texts and in the template. Here is the result. The most notable difference is probably the exact notation of the event/goal chain:

As you might notice, I dumped the Gameplay/Scene regular headers and incorporated them into the screenplay. I oriented in screenplays used in film, but didn't follow the exact formats often used there. Normal text like the one close to the bottom of the image is meta-information: It talks about goals, mood, the player and story construction. I also marked quets log updates, decisions and unfinished dialogue in a special way.

Ideas for Feedback

Concerning both the QDD template and the result for my concrete quest:

• What seems superfluous? 
• Will it contain everything necessary for understanding (if I continue like this)? 
• Is it easy to read/comprehend?

Conclusion

I've got a good feeling about creating such a document. The advantages noted above and my results of work confirm me. I would like to finish the QDD for "Wudmager" but I don't know yet how to connect such work with further posts here. We'll see.

Until then, have a good time!

#14 Concretization and The Witcher 2

 This post is concerned with the concretization of existing ideas, thoughts, concepts, stubs, ... This central element of any design process will be applied to my current quest design aswell.

Concretization

What, then, is concretization? I will answer this intuitively. On the one hand, concretization means to add informations, to differentiate, to formulate and create details. On the other hand it means implementation, to bring something closer to actual reality in opposition to its existence as an idea/concept in your head, on a piece of paper or in a sketching program.

1) Creation: Idea - Conditions, Gaps - Finish

Concretization means to fill out the gaps, the void that hinder the work from being finished, real: This is creation. A piece of paper needs something drawn upon it in order to become a drawing. The drawer will decide when it is finished: There is a certain (not precisely identifiable) minimum amount of drawings to be done. Until then, lines are struck, areas filled and synthesized to something bigger: Faces, landscapes, forms, scenes, ... The same applies to quests: An original idea is expanded, event chains, decisions, intended goals, characters, locations are added and connected.

Inspiration comes from both hard conditions and free voids. Idea, heuristic design guidelines and medium give some initial restrictions, later maybe other designers and higher level elements of the quest (theme, location, central decisions, major story beats, main characters, ..) guide further expansion. In the beginning, there is a lot of free space that needs filling and it is up to the designer to choose major directions and differentiations that will later be guidance for all the finest details.

2) Expression: From Mind To Existence In Real World Medium

Concretization means to get hold of an idea that took form in your head and bring it into the world. The second layer of meaning to "concretization" is thus essentially (self-)expression. The one(s) with the idea might inscribe an idea on a whiteboard or a piece of paper and transform it thereby away from its mere mental existence forth into the real world, where everyone else can perceive it.

But design doesn't stop at idea-generation, it proceeds, as said above, with differentiating the idea and its real-world correspondent, and it is the expressive aspect of concretization which captures this: Any differentiation, modification to the idea/mental design is transferred, propagated to the implementation. The real-world thing is updated according to the mental expansion of the idea - this is expression too.

Side Effects and Notes

• Expression is translation: From the language of mind or human conversation to that of the medium, on which the design shall be inscribed
• Higher and lower level expression: In a bigger video game studio, a lighting artist may works on a specific location and is guided by the informations that level designers, environment artists and storytellers have already set. A game designer develops something that has a lot more influence on the overall game and is conceptually much closer to the overall game direction.
• There is a dependency graph in all the activities in game development that is determined by higher/lower-level expressions and the (somewhat) distinctive types of creation

Further Reading / Inspiration

• CD Projekt RED: Junior/Specialist Quest Designer - Job Description, Qualifications Link

A "Witcher" Quest - Part 5: Concretizations

Not much talk here today; these are the concretizations I have thought of (see especially posts #10 and #13 to know what quest design and locations I'm talking about here):

• "Geralt arrives in a valley via a path"
• How should the start of the mod be? I don't believe simply letting the player walk down the path is appropriate. I'd rather add a temerian border post where Geralt needs to get entrance first during a dialogue scene. The mod would start right into that dialogue scene then. A fitting camera angle exists in the training level of Witcher 2 and the dialogue might do some initial exposition: The valley, the lord, the village, Geralt's goal.
• After having finished the dialogue with the border guard and passing through the gate, an arrival moment is happening: The player gets an overview over the valley. Here some space and monologue might be added to guide the player into halting and looking around.
• While Geralt climbs down some events might be triggered to not bore the player: Maybe some harpies cry in the distance or crows are flying around. Maybe a travelling merchant making a last rest before heading towards the village approaches the player.
  
• "Geralt hears someone crying"
• I don't know if crying is actually implementable with the tools given to me, but in any case more obvious hints seem sensible. Maybe Alene is lost because some monsters (Nekker?) attacked her and she ran away in fear into places she didn't go oftento before. Geralt might then find the place of attack, needing to defeat the still living Nekkers and following some traces (footprints in mud). Since Geralt meeting Alene is essential to the quest, I suggest to place alpha walls all around where Geralt says something like "There's someone in danger. I can't simply walk by.". I'd rather like to avoid alpha walls, so maybe there is a better solution.
• "Geralt meets and talks to Alene"
• If we look at her location on the map than it shows her in a rather secluded area. In the already existing level there were broken structures and trees placed there, so I decided that this part of the map will be a forest of graves, which explains why Alene is lost after going there: This part of the valley might be deemed dangerous, bewitched and therefore avoided by the villagers.
• "Geralt leads back to the main road", "Alene leads the way"
• I imagine silence in the first section, a short dialogue when Alene says she knows the way and then two unsuccesful tries by Geralt to get some informations from her. He might ask for instance if this is indeed the right way, since he saw the village being to the left of his arrival path, but they're now going right. There might also be a patroling soldier there and some harpies to kill on the way onto the mountains side.
• "Geralt walks back, Alene follows awkwardly."
• I expect here that the player is now advised to go to the village but while doing so, Alene follows in some distance. This might require some scripting, a custom variant of the usual companion system. After a while Geralt would have noticed her attempts to follow, so there could be two cutscenes, one with him looking back and seeing her hide quickly and a similar one where he additionally talks - to himself and her: sighing and out of pity and a bit annoyance allowing her to come openly with him.
• "Geralt walks back, Alene follows less awkwardly."
• In this scenario the two might actually conversesomewhat normally with Geralt explaining who he is and Alene talking a bit about her village and family.

This is it for today. I haven't yet arrived at the village with Geralt and Alene while concretisizing, but so be it.

Ideas for Feedback

• Are there, to you, other elements to concretizations? (e.g. what about evaluation?)
• How could the alpha wall solution I did in my quest design be replaced?

Conclusion

To me, concretizations are at the very heart of any design process, thus including quest design. The two meanings in this, creation/differentiation and expression/implementation are, in fact, essential in my opinion.

There is a small melancholy in this project - well, rather in anything that is time-consuming. It is the melancholy of unfinished designs: Designs that are not fully concretized, since their creator(s) did not seem them worthy of being fully finished. I fear, that this is the fate of many of quest designs on this blog, and this is its melancholy.

May the force be with you and have a good time!