Go Wavinator! :o 4 posts while I formulated my 1

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"Two wrongs do not make a right; it usually takes 3 or more."

quote: Original post by Ketchaval

I think that you would need to give the events more "motivation", make it so that the kings have reasons for doing things and make this more obvious in play. (Character by Gameplay thread - game design forum), so that the King Arunhotep''s messenger comes to you with a demand that "by his Majesty..." you give the city over to him or face the wrath of the God King himself. So that each thing is done in character to the people intitiating the action. (And that the events initiated are in character with the initiators). This would probably work better on a smaller scale.

Two points on this: Motive and color.

Events and decisions are already driven by a powerful motive: to survive and prosper. These translate well to game goals, (conquer, form a peace, go to space), but the "problem" is that these goals don''t translate well to narrative.

As far as color, where Civ does this (mostly interaction dialogs), it''s nice. Your own advisors and the diplomats of other nations speak in character. However, what they say is pretty repetitive. If you want them to say a bazillion different things, each applicable to the thousands of permutations that make up a civ game, we''re going to run into an near-impossible (with today''s tech and techniques) resource / content issue.

What you do when faced with this confronation would also be part of the story/ gameplay ie. if you start to amass troops near the border, and King A. has some Spies in your court, then you might get another threat …

So there would be a lot of pre-specified ways of responding to events.

You have this already, tho''. You can only respond to or even generate situation from a limited set of choices. Do you appease, or defy? Conquer? Ask for help from an ally.

Civ has this already, but it doesn''t seem to make a story in the traditional sense of an emotionally impactful, meaningfully orchestrated tale.

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Ie. My kingdom was attacked by the bloodthirsty barbarian tribes…

(snip cool story)

This is cool, and Civ can occassionally give you something like this. It would work if you were guaranteed only stories like that, and it was presented to you in a format closer to how you wrote it. But, this leaves out a lot of the detail, micromanagement, and repitition that is the spirit of civ. As I''ve noted before, this makes for great gameplay but awful story.

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Just waiting for the mothership…

Are you really going to give any of us the $50???

What's done is done (Until you hit Undo) :)

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Civ has this already, but it doesn''t seem to make a story ...

No, it needs more to make a story. More depth and motivation and meaning, but -

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... in the traditional sense of an emotionally impactful, meaningfully orchestrated tale.

- it has to have meaning to the player, and while ''orchestration'' does often make for a good book, it does not often make for good gameplay (as I''m sure has been said over and over.)

If the game were designed to allow the story to be written by the player(s) it would by definition have meaning to them. A very dificult balance, but I believe doable if enough attention is given to it.

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"Two wrongs do not make a right; it usually takes 3 or more."

quote: Original post by Buster

A game like Civ doesn't need narrative. It would, in fact, ruin the idea of the game. The player is making their own narrative just by playing.

You can send that $50 now if you'd like.

Not only do I agree with you, but I think you can't add it without destroying the fabric of the game as it is.

The "narrative" that you get is really a recounting of events. The challenge is to add "story" or narrative in the traditional sense.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

Edited by - Wavinator on October 10, 2000 7:46:16 PM

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With just gameplay you don''t need complex motivations. You play to win, or possibly just because you like the interface . It''s the challenge you''re looking for, not an experience.

You see! You see! __THIS__ is why I think it can''t be done. The whole point of playing Civ is to *win.* The whole point of enjoying a story is for the *experience* of the narrative. Good story is like fun exploration. You don''t know how things are going to go. I think you often enjoy the twists and turns in the story, and really have no idea how it''s going to end. In fact, isn''t a story lame when you know what''s coming and how it''s going to be resolved? Yet, with a game of Civ, it''s either going to be you, or the other guys on top (there are *some* similarities, in that you don''t know how you''ll get there either way... but I see mostly differences).

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If you don''t really care about the events within the game then it''s missing something in my opinion.
Like in chess, you don''t care if you lose most of your pieces so long as you get that checkmate! Still good fun at times, but too dry for my tastes.

But you do care about the events. You care if your industrial cities fall, if tech is stolen, if two of your enemies suddenly decide to ally. But it''s with an eye on winning.

Yet if Stalingrad or Athens or Peking falls, you don''t go all weepy over it because these things are just assets. But in a well crafted story, maybe you would.

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The players write the final narrative, the creator just provides the overall setting, and the NPC''s dialog. Depending on the players, the resulting story is often better than the original concept, and is more rewarding to the players than being forced to do certain theing certain ways to progress in the game. The story becomes the payers'' story.

This gets closer, but still has a major problem: How good would your P&P player story be if it played out like a level of Diablo (thinking medieval fantasy RPG, here). You kill some kobolds. You kill a skeleton. You take damage. You restore your health. You open a tomb. You kill some more kobolds.... etc.

This would be the equivalent Civ story: You found Washington. You research the wheel. You produce chariots. The people are unhappy. You adjust the luxury tax rate. You build settlers. You found New York. Barbarians menace New York. You lose New York. You build militia. They kill the barbarian army. You get 100 gold. You refound New York.

Get the picture? Great gameplay, lousy narrative.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by Ratheous

Go Wavinator! :o 4 posts while I formulated my 1

Hahaha!!! Behold the wonder that is CAFFIENE!!!


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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by MSkinn99

Are you really going to give any of us the $50???

Absolutely!

I want to learn something about narrative and gameplay. I believe that these two are on the opposite ends of a linked spectrum. But if someone can give me a credible workup of how you''d take Civ, with the gameplay as it is, and inject meaningful narrative / story, I''d think that''s worth a free game!



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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by Wavinator
You see! You see! __THIS__ is why I think it can''t be done. The whole point of playing Civ is to *win.* The whole point of enjoying a story is for the *experience* of the narrative. Good story is like fun exploration. You don''t know how things are going to go. I think you often enjoy the twists and turns in the story, and really have no idea how it''s going to end. In fact, isn''t a story lame when you know what''s coming and how it''s going to be resolved? Yet, with a game of Civ, it''s either going to be you, or the other guys on top (there are *some* similarities, in that you don''t know how you''ll get there either way... but I see mostly differences).

That''s a very incredible revaltion, Wav. I really think you''re right. It ties together nicely with what I was posting about on the Cheese thread. In a story-based game we should take advantage of the fact that the outcome of events does not have to be beneficial as long as they''re interesting because they''re experiences. In a game where there''s no narrative you''re usually playing to win, so a bad outcome is a failure and is meant to be avoided.


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quote: Original post by Ratheous

- it has to have meaning to the player, and while ''orchestration'' does often make for a good book, it does not often make for good gameplay (as I''m sure has been said over and over.)

I think you''d find folks here who disagree. In my view, they''re goals is to lead the player through a carefully orchestrated, linear experience. I have no problem with this per se, the emphasis is on experiencing and observing, rather than doing / decision making. To me, that gets away from what an excellent game is all about.

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If the game were designed to allow the story to be written by the player(s) it would by definition have meaning to them. A very dificult balance, but I believe doable if enough attention is given to it.

I agree with you, and the first person who does this has an advance order from me immediately! But the devils in the details. It''s the difficulty of the "how" that''s the issue, and what I don''t think can be done yet.

Your GM, because he''s equipped with creativity and a thinking process that''s the envy of AI developers everywhere can create narrative in ways a computer can only dream of. And keep in mind that the majority of a Civ game is either fought between human opponents or one human and AI.

Even if you took a multiplayer civ game, though, I don''t see how you''d get great narrative / story without fundamentally altering the game. But I''m open to suggestions.

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Just waiting for the mothership...