#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!