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Original post by sunandshadow Here are the thoughts I have after reading the last several posts: - Let's not go with possession because I think it would be too hard to implement in terms of gameplay. Also it's difficult to be attracted to someone who doesn't have a mostly human appearance. - A romance requires characters who are 18 or older, so no children. Let's try to keep the characters in the 18-30 range, at least in terms of appearance, who knows how long future people live? - 5minutegaming, does the history of how everyone got to the planet really matter? It seems pretty boring to me. And isn't the point of having the pc dropped into a new world that that character doesn't have any baggage to impose onto the player, and therefore the player can put more of himself into the pc? So no romances or grief left over from before the cryo-ing. - I personally find death and sickness distasteful so I would rather leave them out unless you all think it's important to put them in.

I agree with you that we should not go with possessions and keep everything in the corporial realm. Spiritual guides and visions of non-coporial beings could be acceptable.

And a romance does require more mature characters depending on which crowd you are targeting. I think that it would amplify the story if we made it more realistic so in a sense you could have one or two characters that are young say anywhere from 10 or 15 to 85 or 95. Cause simply put there could be anyone of any age locked in those cryo-tubes. I personally find it more alluring if the Author(s) acknowledges all the possiblities and incorporates as many as he/she can because then it makes the imaginary become more real to whoever is involved in it.

That-being-said I feel that the history is very important it is the mystery that is attempting to be solved by the main character and on your journey to solve it you meet and fall in love with the characters we surround you with. Of course there will be those who hinder your search and also come in the way of your love. And I believe those are the two conflicts that we can incorporate into the story. Someone coming inbetween you and one of the other characters whom you fall in love with. And someone else trying to slow you down in your search and conclusions about the past and trying to find a way to live in this wierd new future.

Also as far as death and sickness, it is a part of life and therefore it must be included. However, it only has to be mentioned and not in great detail. Even if you don't want to directly mention it that will suffice but it must be implied somewhere within the story that death has occurred. I think it is a great ending to have the character die at the end of the game although it will be extremely frustrating.

Speaking of which I just watched 'Pitch Black' for the first time cause I failed to see it in the theatre but when the woman dies, I forget her name, the cute blonde chick. Anyway when she dies I was like, 'no' why'd they have to do that but then her death did have meaning and I would have thought less of the movie if that hadn't happened.

Ok Estok, the history is only a brief summary of the events that actually occurred and in the whole dictantion I did not narrow anything down untill the end where I described the evolution of a spiritual race and a technological race. There are other evolutionary species spawning from still other colonizers who venture into the far reaches of the universe.

And about the races getting the message at the same time. The races are on opposite sides of the universe that means that while one colonial ship went left from earth 'past the black hole above them', the other went right 'around the sun and through the nebula'. There were many others that were scattered throughout the cosmos. And you are playing with physics to say that they evolved themselves with their technology rather than through darwinism. I would have to do some calculating to figure out the exact times and distances to be accurate but the two races would be far enough away from each other to not know the other existed but they could be close enough to others to know of their existance. And not every spiritual or techno individual knows all the knowledge that the race has accumulated one may know more than the other. That is a common mistake many writers make and that is to make so many characters omniscant.

Ok so about the villians well two is always better than one hehehehehe One who trys to break up your love or how about two that try to break up your love both for different reasons and then another who trys to confuse you and lead you off the path to find the truth.

Ooppss I did it again ^ thats me again :P

5MinuteGaming:
There is no need to generalize the problem (writers, bad writers...). You can punch me in the face and I give you permission to. I can take direct hits and feel no bad feelings about it. At the same time my question were not directed to prompt you for more details about your story. Each of my post seemed to be misunderstood by a degree by both you and sunandshadow. To come from another direction, I am going to ask this question:

Q) How would you describe your roadmap for developing this game story? What are the phrases/stages involved in the development?

A) My answer is the following, it is a top-down approach:

1) Meaning of the story, a message to convey, a conflict to present
2) a generic rough plot of a story for that meaning, including mystery and conflicts involved
3) a rough setting for the plot, rough metaphores and symbolisms to fit the conflicts and mysteries
4) a set of alternative endings derived from the same message, and setting
5) detail setting including history, customs
6) detail character, symbolism, metaphores
7) refine the plots

Where the plot is close to be the alpha and omega of development. Each step can be looped back to a pervious step.

All the questions I had addressed the situation where we don't have 1 and 2 done, while we were trying to get the detail steps downstream such as 5 and 6. These details are useless because if we change anything upstream they will just get washed away. To put it in a very flank way all the details you (5minutegaming) described in the history are unnecessary at this stage. They are valuable for later on but not now. All the talks about choosing a right setting are ungrounded because there is no standard to judge which setting is suitable. In my view the standard comes from stage 1 and 2. Without a meaning and message, without a rough plot and a set of rough plots, you cannot judge whether a world setting is suitable, according to this model.

I know that you guys are running a different model, I just want to know what stages and order of the stages you guys are using. My analogy for what we are doing currently, is that we are creating separate, detailed puzzle pieces that might not fit with one another to form a big picutre, since none of us know what the big picture is.

Ok Estok, the history is only a brief summary of the events that actually occurred and in the whole dictantion I did not narrow anything down untill the end where I described the evolution of a spiritual race and a technological race. There are other evolutionary species spawning from still other colonizers who venture into the far reaches of the universe.

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And about the races getting the message at the same time. The races are on opposite sides of the universe that means that while one colonial ship went left from earth 'past the black hole above them', the other went right 'around the sun and through the nebula'. There were many others that were scattered throughout the cosmos. And you are playing with physics to say that they evolved themselves with their technology rather than through darwinism. I would have to do some calculating to figure out the exact times and distances to be accurate but the two races would be far enough away from each other to not know the other existed but they could be close enough to others to know of their existance. And not every spiritual or techno individual knows all the knowledge that the race has accumulated one may know more than the other. That is a common mistake many writers make and that is to make so many characters omniscant.Ok so about the villians well two is always better than one hehehehehe One who trys to break up your love or how about two that try to break up your love both for different reasons and then another who trys to confuse you and lead you off the path to find the truth.

This is exactly what I meant by we are focusing on 5 and 6. We don't need details at this stage but a strong rough draft that can sustain the details later on. Do you guys want to develop plots and mysteries that are bound by your story, or do you want to use the story as a medium to present a greater meaning that will last outside the story?

If you guys want to play the game where we try to fit these pieces to form a picture, I am ok with it. Just say the word and I will discard my model.



Clarification on the age thing:
The age refered to the immediate characters, as in Naruto where the trio are young teenagers. I was not referring to those in cryos. Of course there are characters of different ages. The use of age group deals with the question on from whose eyes do you want the player to see the world. It is about mood and surprise elements. Using a younger age group make rooms for more exaggerations, mischeivous and silly (but funny) actions that would be considered retarded when presented using adult immediate characters. The young age group is also associated with a twist where some of the kids can actually have a much higher mental age (as in the kid form is a deceiving form). From the way we have been describing the characters I now expect that our romance probably involves sexual attraction, infering from how each race has a male/female version. This age group (or mental age group) suits better for a different set of humor.

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Original post by Estok Each of my post seemed to be misunderstood by a degree by both you and sunandshadow. To come from another direction, I am going to ask this question: Q) How would you describe your roadmap for developing this game story? What are the phrases/stages involved in the development? A) My answer is the following, it is a top-down approach: 1) Meaning of the story, a message to convey, a conflict to present 2) a generic rough plot of a story for that meaning, including mystery and conflicts involved 3) a rough setting for the plot, rough metaphores and symbolisms to fit the conflicts and mysteries 4) a set of alternative endings derived from the same message, and setting 5) detail setting including history, customs 6) detail character, symbolism, metaphores 7) refine the plots Where the plot is close to be the alpha and omega of development. Each step can be looped back to a pervious step.

Ohhh, I see why our responses look misplaced to you then, and probably why 5minutegaming's look the same to me. My model is quite different:

1) Types of relationships I want to write about
2) Character archetypes and motivations
3) Detailed worldbuilding describing how and why the people of each culture do what they do, including their biology but NOT history
4) Themes/Premises, usually 5 or 6
5) Vague plot including initial incident and endings
6) Add character details to support plot
7) Start writing, refine everything as I go along

I use this model not because I think it's better than yours, but because I work on the things that are easiest for me and I have the most ideas about first. I don't have a problem starting with any of my first 4 steps, but I can't start with plot because I'm really bad at it and never have any plot ideas.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster I think that it would amplify the story if we made it more realistic so in a sense you could have one or two characters that are young say anywhere from 10 or 15 to 85 or 95. Cause simply put there could be anyone of any age locked in those cryo-tubes. I personally find it more alluring if the Author(s) acknowledges all the possiblities and incorporates as many as he/she can because then it makes the imaginary become more real to whoever is involved in it.

The minor characters can be whatever ages, I just meant that the pc and the 7-9 major npcs who can be involved in romances should all be in the 18-30 range.

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That-being-said I feel that the history is very important it is the mystery that is attempting to be solved by the main character and on your journey to solve it you meet and fall in love with the characters we surround you with.

Oh, see, I was assuming the mysteries the player is learning about would be mysteries of worldbuilding: How does magic work, how do techo powers work, what myths do the icons used in the alien art and architecture refer to, where can I fit in this world? The problem with history as mystery is that you can't _do_ anything with it after you've figured it out. That's why I think the only important questions about the history are: "What became of all the humans?" And, "Is it possible for a human to become a spiritual or a techo and live among them, or do the survivor humans need to establish their own homeland?"

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Also as far as death and sickness, it is a part of life and therefore it must be included. However, it only has to be mentioned and not in great detail. Even if you don't want to directly mention it that will suffice but it must be implied somewhere within the story that death has occurred. I think it is a great ending to have the character die at the end of the game although it will be extremely frustrating.

I see no reason why a culture with advanced technology or magic would have to worry about sickness, although death is probably still inevitable. Why would it be a great ending if it was extremely frustrating to the player? Although if we're going to have a game+ feature where the player gets to start over anyway it wouldn't be too bad if the player died after living a full life.

My first attempt at an androgynous techno

Well Estok, I wasn't really going on a set writing process for this project. And I usually have parts of your first 4 steps already in my mind when I create the setting. For this project I figured that setting was the most important and should come first. Mainly because we are building a new world with new customs and races.

So I would have to say that my process has been
-setting
-plot
-character
-story

or pretty close to that. For this project if you want to look at a designing process for our entire game storyline I would have to suggest.

-feature overview/outline
-gameplay model
-rough adventure tree
-rough plot and themes
-rough setting

Then you just go through and refine in reverse order the last three

-refine setting
-refine plot and themes
-refine adventure tree

I'm not sure as thats the best way of doing and I could probably think of a lot of changes I would make but thats a rough idea of how'd I'd go about doing it.

Okay, we both agree that this process has two halves, first laying out the idea and second refining and adding details. So lets focus on the first half:

Estok:
1) Meaning of the story, a message to convey, a conflict to present
2) A generic rough plot of a story for that meaning, including mystery and conflicts involved
3) A rough setting for the plot, rough metaphores and symbolisms to fit the conflicts and mysteries
4) A set of alternative endings derived from the same message, and setting

Sunandshadow:
1) Types of relationships I want to write about
2) Character archetypes and motivations
3) Detailed worldbuilding describing how and why the people of each culture do what they do, including their biology but NOT history
4) Themes/Premises, usually 5 or 6

5minutegaming:
-setting
-plot
-character
-story


Hmm, how do these overlap? 5minutegaming, would you consider themes to be included in story? Should we all try to work on themes now?

By Story I meant the actual detailed events similar to a novel. The guts of what goes on such as the dialog where the characters are what their thinking ya know a story...

In the beginning we agreed that the main genre is romance. What aspect and stage of a romantic relationship do we want to present? What conflicts in romance do we want to show? What kinds of resistance or barriers do we want the lovers to overcome? What binds the two together?

For example:
[1]
Stage: Searching for a long-lasting relationship
Conflicts: How to decide, how to learn, how to discover, who to trust, how to express
Barriers: Race, culture, politics, distance, social goals, social status, profession
Binds: Common vision or personal goals, mutual emotional necessity, emotional emptiness

[2]
Stage: Amending a broken relationship
Conflicts: How to forgive, how to heal, how to work out differences, how to learn from mistakes
Barriers: Past history, emotional wounds, disagreement, conflicting status or new relationships with third persons, pride, denial
Binds: Shared property, common threat, profession, mutual necessity, emotional debt, regret


The sets listed here are not mutually separate. We can make a really long list and implement all of them on the same or different relationships. These two settings here are very common. Do we want to do some more novel stages and settings?