#29 The Drive of Narration

 This post is concerned with the potential of narrations to be captivating, such that you can't wait to see what's next.

Narration Drive

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:

But now, what makes a telling or a narrative driving?

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:

• make the incoming flow interesting: pacing, contrasting meaningful things
  
• every time a situation/conflict/arc is solved, open up another
• funnel the audience from unit to unit
  

Addenda:

• characters/agents are important because they can function as causes - film art  
• build "characters with spines", give them a highest drive - andrew stanton
  

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:

• obvious gaps of knowledge, things the audience wishes to know
• informations that are meaningful to the storyworld, e.g. challenging a character's beliefs
• carefully think about where the audience directs its attention: here the story should be told
  

 Quotes:

• "A spectator comes prepared to make sense of a narrative film." - film art 
  
• "it's this well-organized absence of information that draws us in" - andrew stanton
• construct holes, missing spots, that are implicitly promised to be resolved
• exploration is a rather un-guided form of resolving gaps

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:

• engage the audience, provide material to stimulate the audience's imagination
• make the audience care about/value the story contents and/or the story progression
  

 Quotes:

• "the audience wants to work on understanding the story but it doesn't want to know that" - andrew stanton
• desires can be "seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of affairs" - Wikipedia
  
• create "doubt in the outcome" - andrew stanton
• "we feel driven to know how the action develops, how the characters react and how it all comes out at the end" - film art
• "Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertaity" -- william archer, via andrew stanton

-- ~ * ~ --

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.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• 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.
  

• Wikipedia: Desire. Link. I should probably write an article of praise about Wikipedia some time. Even though it has its problems.
  

• Alexandra To et al. Modeling and Designing for Key Elements of Curiosity: Risking Failure, Valuing Questions. Link. Inspired the first version of the wheel of experience.
  

• Katarina Gyllenbäck. Narrative Construction. Link. Another major inspiration for terms and ideas used in the wheel of experience.
  

• Daniel Hessler. Game Design. Introductory course at the University of Bayreuth. Probably the main source of concepts and synthesizations for the wheel.
  

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).

A Skyrim Quest - Of Sheep and Flowers

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.

Ideas for Feedback

• What thoughts/tips come to your mind concerning the topic and design of "narrative drive"?
  

• Do you think the amount of to-be-crafted assets (locations, characters, models, mechanics, ..) for this quest is appropriate?
  

Conclusion

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!

#25 Group Psychology

 This time we will take a quick dive into the dynamics and regulations that may emerge in groups. I will try applying the won knowledge in a quest design thought experiment.

Group Psychology

In post #12 I mentioned dynamics between characters, which "are concerned with the processes happening in and between characters". I linked the concept of dynamics to systems theory and cybernetics, which deliver approaches to understand systemic and processual units.

If we understand characters as systems with internal ressources, loops, processes, sub-systems and input/output possibilities, then we come closer to understanding the principles of character design. And if we go further and describe a meeting or a group of people as a meeting/group of systems, then we can look at those temporal system-collections too through lenses of reciprocal influence, information exchange, shared informations, regulation of common beliefs/actions and so on.

The term dynamics describes all happenings in a meeting caused by that meeting. If a group decides to not go to school even if secretly not everyone is content with that, then both events are a dynamic that has emerged from the meeting.

A regulation describes standardized processes in a system. In a group this might be a certain manner of greeting or a time slot in which they usually meet.

How and why do groups form? I'd say the answers are the same: Because and via of interpersonal attraction, or commonalities. I think the main regulation of a group then is mainly decided by exactly those premises it built on and consequently all dynamics will be influenced by this. Opinions, reactions and attitudes negotiated in a group will be influenced by this base line.

Examples for typical regulations/structures in a group over time include:

• group membership status:
• full member
  
• "black sheeps", which eventually might become
• outcasts
• adjacent/marginal members
• new members
  

• roles, such as "leader" and
• functional/task roles: defined in relation to the tasks the team is expected to perform, e.g. "coordinator", "recorder", "critic", or "technician"
  
• relationship/socioemotional roles: maintaining the interpersonal and emotional needs of the groups' members, e.g. "encourager", "harmonizer", or "compromiser"
• individual roles
  

•  norms, the informal rules that groups adopt to regulate members' behaviour
• prescriptive: the socially appropriate way to respond in a social situation
• proscriptive: actions that group members should not do
• descriptive: describe what people usually do
• injunctive: describe behaviours that people ought to do

•  intermember relations, e.g. 
• friendships
• relationships
• power relations, see for example the 'rank dynamic position model' by Raoul Schindler with G (the outward fix point of the group), Alpha (leader, who leads the interaction with G), Beta (the expert, advises Alpha), Gamma (identifies with Alphas view on G, assists and works), Omega (opposes Alpha, antipole that expresses group deficits)
  

I'll admit that this knowledge is mostly (but not entirely) drawn from a wikipedia page. It won't bother us here, if it helps us designing quests.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Wikipedia: Group dynamics Link

• German Wikipedia: Gruppendynamik Link

  Here I got the informations on Raoul Schindler's model, of which I learned in university class on organisational theory.

Another Quest Jam

Martin, the player avatar, is weak, needs help remembering what is, and is lost in terms of navigation. He manages to get up and the player finds a way out of the unfriendly place he initially was in. He meets Henry, who offers him help in all his problems. The player can choose some minor dialogue options, but none will prevent weak Martin from accepting the help in exchange for collecting certain items. Henry follows Martin with every step, an unhealthy relationship is starting.

They meet Maria, who is a free spirit, naive and optimistic. He is lost in the space they're all in too and thus joins the now forming group, whose base line is about fixing things. In the group currently Henry is the leader, with Martin being a central and possibly powerful figure who is of lower rank right know. Maria is the antipole, who is sceptical of Henry and bonded with Martin on a very human level of positivity towards life.

They travel together for a while and slowly the authority of Henry crackles, which he himself notices. Henry begins to silently retreat (for such is his nature), being replaced by Maria in his stead. Martin still doesn't manage to be present in his fullness and commit to the leading skills he has. The group gets distracted onto side paths, lost from its goal and the now antipole Henry critizes his opponent Maria while alone with Martin.

They meet a third character, Kristoph, who has a strong rhetoric voice and hard values, he immediately attacks Henry whom he sees as a threat to healthiness and overwrites the presence of Maria. The scene escalates, the "badness" of Henry is openly discussed. Martin acts as a harmonizer and calms the group down. Henry makes concessions and withdraws from any participation apart from standard assisting. Kristoph degrades Maria to mere assistant too and makes Martin an advisor, seeing him and himself as "the true leaders" (overseeing that he himself has final control).

The group has re-stabilized and focused on its goal of getting out of that place, but its leadership is enforced. In the final phase, Martin realizes who he is and gains the advantage of being authentic, which brings an irresistable atmosphere to him. By simple actions Kristophs so strong leaderships is crumbling, and Kristoph himself realizes the glory in Martin, who eventually leads them out of the calamities, fulfilling the groups quest.

What means might be used to communicate all that?

• spatial arrangement of characters when they are all together
• where the group is going, what they are doing
• what characters say, how they act
• who is determining norms, actions, beliefs
• who is (if silently) opposing
• what objects are collected form/distributed to whom

This being a jam, I won't elaborate further. But it gave me at least me some interesting ideas for some current and future projects. Also, I'd like to analyse group dynamics in the lord of the rings *thinking emoji*

Ideas for Feedback

• Do you know a good book/reading on the subject?

• What other means might there be to communicate group dynamics and regulations?

Conclusion

Another post, another conclusion. This writing was quite pragmatic, but it highlighted one of the fascinating aspects of life for me. I'm looking forward to seriously apply this knowledge in a project.

I hope you're having a good time. Until the next post!

#21 Character Families & The Witcher 3

In general - a lot of [..] is actually about Geralt - in spite of being an itinerate monster slayer and dealing with a lot of nastiness and sleeping around with sorceresses and making questionable moral decisions - is about Geralt trying to figure out how to re-establish himself within a nuclear family.

Today we'll have a post on families, parents and why they're important for character and quest design. I'll demonstrate this on my current quest design project. (Star Wars I-VI spoilers incoming)

Family Matters

Why do so many stories have family conflicts at their heart? This one of the questions I'll try to answer here - but I'm no professional psychologist or sociologist, so rather expect some intuitive thoughts.

Star Wars is famous for its father-son conflict. Source

To make a start, let's look at the first paragraph of the wiki-page on families.

"In human society, family is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship)."

Already at this point I feel the need to intervene. To me this doesn't put enough emphasis on the "other relationships", which might include other people not necessarily romantically attached or an animal. More generally I would point out, that you may declare any other being part of your family, if you regard the other as an important part of your life. In turn you may also see someone biologically related to you as not part of your family.

This begs for a differentiation between biological and social family. While many peoples social familiy will be near congruent with their biological family, there are surely a lot of examples where they differ to great degrees. But let's continue with the wiki-paragraph:

"The purpose of families is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideally, families would offer predictability, structure, and safety as members mature and participate in the community. In most societies, it is within families that children acquire socialization for life outside the family, and acts as the primary source of attachment, nurturing, and socialization for humans. Additionally, as the basic unit for meeting the basic needs of its members, it provides a sense of boundaries for performing tasks in a safe environment, ideally builds a person into a functional adult, transmits culture, and ensures continuity of humankind with precedents of knowledge."

Reading this it becomes clear why family is important. Family provides the invidual with a big range of spaces, tools, guidances, .. to grow into "a functional adult".

Providing these things works - in my opinion (not taken from wiki) - via several basic, archetypic roles which family members may take up. Examples for such archetypes are "mother", "father", "brother", "sister", "grandfather", "grandmother", "uncle", "aunt" (C.G. Jung sends his regards). I want to emphasize at this point, that in the social family literally everybody might take up such a role and that I furthermore think that it is the social family, which is important.

Anakin was a brother to Obi-Wan, even though they weren't biological brothers. Source (modified)

A very important element of the family as a social entity are its responsibilities, commitments and deliveries. When a human child is born into a family, it needs family members to assume some the above mentioned roles, in particular "mother", "father" and "sibling" (so I believe). It is the families responsibility to provide members who commit to doing this and deliver what is needed. However there also needs to be a balance: There is such a thing as overparenting and parents abandoning themselves.

Besides Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, whom I quoted in the posts beginning on Geralt and family, Dave Filoni also provides a great example for how vital nuclear families are and how grave conflicts in them can be:

"he [Obi-Wan] is a brother to Anakin, but he's not a father figure. That's a failing to Anakin, he doesn't have the family that he needs [..] so he's left completely vulnerable"

Further Reading / Inspiration

• NoClip - Designing the Quests of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Link with Timestamp

  Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, Lead English Writer at CD Projekt RED talking about family and The Witcher

• The self is not singular but a fluid network of identities – Kathleen Wallace | Aeon Essays  Link

  If humans are a constantly actualizing network, then the family does a great deal to lay the foundations and core traits of that network. And if it doesn't - then the whole network becomes fragile.
  

A "Witcher" Quest - Part 10: The Father

Already in previous posts I explained or hinted to the underlying conflicts happening in my Witcher quest. Today I'll show a characterization of Aisker, Alene's father, who is probably the central figure to understanding what is so wrong in the village and why we encounter Alene in the way we do.

Aisker Wudmager. For higher resoution, see this pdf.

Aisker unconsciously hides his main fears and problems under the cover of "protecting Alene" and "advancing the village economy". And while he succeds in his political role, he isn't able to control his child, which divides father and daughter. He thinks he will be happy when he reaches his goals, but even though he mostly reached his goals political-wise, his happiness is far too low in proportion to the successes he seemingly had - and this makes him quite insecure.

Many of the things written down here won't be revealed in the quest, but they are important to inform how the different characters behave in specific situations.

By the way, a small trick that I often use for character names is taking a meaning/theme fitting to the character, finding a word and then translating it into some other language. In this case "Aisker" can be traced to something with fishing (I don't remember exactly what) and "Wudmager" to woodwork. A good extra trait for Aisker might be that he likes his first name, but not his family name.

Ideas for Feedback

• Do you think I adequatly described families?
• Where could the character of Aisker need more depth?

Conclusion

This was a very interesting post to write. It revealed to me some knowledge I hadn't had yet and it also allowed me to grasp the whole thematic in a cohesive way.

While my quest design journey is coming near its half-year anniversary, I'm beginning to think more and more about what I achieved here so far. Post #26 will be an interesting one, for sure - but I try to not be too hasty with my thoughts.

Until then, have a good time!