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Design for unique story events versus regularized actions?

Started by October 25, 2004 08:41 PM
21 comments, last by Wavinator 20 years, 2 months ago
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Original post by Wavinator
What really appears to be necessary here is an object which exists in the game world based on many different stats. The most simple paradigm is the enemy, which persists as long as there are hit points and does a bunch of things to lower HP in the hero or his allies. The gameplay for doing this resolves into a kind of grammar involving a subject and object, and this gives you a certain amount of flexibility with combat (does that make any sense?)

This grammar expands and becomes unweildy and even contradictory in terms of gameplay or context the bigger it gets. An example of this was a cheat where you could kill an ally in Ultima and then use their body as dead weight on a floor lever, then resurrect them, simply because the grammar included dead bodies as weight but not killing of allies.


Hey, I think that's a really neat, imaginative and refreshing way to solve puzzles! [lol] More seriously though, it should have been possible to just ask the ally to do it rather than having to brutally force him to (then again I'm not familiar with the setting of this particular puzzle, so maybe there is more than meets the eye here)... Still the point here is applicable: the floor lever didn't require some specific object as dead weight, but anything with enough mass would do (I would assume from context). It is true though that such generality can lead into amusing or simply plain stupid situations, if the system is not carefully crafted. I didn't claim it would be easy to make it consistent, but if done well it would allow a lot of replayability.

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Original post by Wavinator
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Do note, however, that the actual in-game wording might not be exact.


Yes, a bit of vagueness may either be refreshing or it may tempt players down the easy path. For instance, if you're walking around in Power Armor and get a choice between kidnapping and killing a guy, you may find it easy to do the latter until the former has a huge payoff (or the latter a drawback).


Well, yes, that's true, but I was thinking more along these lines: the questmonger wants you to do one thing but tells you to do another. After you are done you come back to collect your reward, but the questmonger realises that he made a mistake (which could have dramatic implications) or possibly he could claim that it was not what he asked for (he could be lying or maybe he errs again). After all, since when have people known what they really wanted? People also let their feelings affect what they say instead of relying on logic and exact communication.

If, on the other hand, you actually did what he really wanted to be done (instead of what he asked for), he might again realise his error, but in this case he would probably react in a more positive way.

How to recognize whether a questmonger is really asking for something he really wants, then? You could have a character skill (some sort of diplomacy skill or something) or you could have the questmonger described in a way that would give hints as to his real intentions (if the questmonger is displayed as furiously angry, the player could assume that instead of the stated quest ("kill the evil dude Jack de Fault, his family, burn the village he lives in etc.") the questmonger meant something else ("humiliate Jack in public"), for instance). Or a combination of these.

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Original post by Wavinator
We're in the same boat here. I want self-sustaining gameplay that allows you to ignore the plot, or even better, self-sustaining gameplay that is so hooked into the characters and environment that it IS the plot.


That would be closer to what I've always thought as what true role-playing is (in an rpg sense): not acting a role in a prewritten manuscript (which is what a fixed plot will enforce, to some degree or another), but rather telling a story. The eventual plot consists of the actions of the player's character, the choices the player made etc. The game provides an immersive, interactive world in which the player can exercise his imagination.

Of course, this does not mean you couldn't use scripted, parametrised scenarios in order to create that world, but you shouldn't enforce the player (or the PC, for that matter) to adhere to these scripts (if the player's character wakes up in a plague-ridden world with an amnesia and hears prophesies of chosen ones, the game shouldn't work so that whatever the player does, he always eventually cures the plague, regains his lost memory and claims to be the chosen one).
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Original post by Anonymous Poster
I would say at least to have quests structured in a branching manner.
The first branch may be that you have to go to someone else to get the details and certain branches may branch in different directions.
For example you may retrieve an item and then get robbed on your way back to your employer, or your employer is robbed after you retrieve the goods and you have the option to intervene (as you are no longer under contract you aren't obligated to).
Of course things like this probably wouldn't happen often, and it would seem rather silly if every time you did a quest, something amazing happened ("the innocuous bottle suddenly turned into a sentient artifact intent on taking over the world *again*")


This is good advice. In stories, plots are interesting because you should have been able to figure it out but didn't. It is a bit different with RPGs in that you shouldn't be able to figure it out for awhile, but then you ultimately triumph.

While something like this would need a lot of detail, I think simply making the unexpected happen (at varying levels of magnitude) every once in awhile is enough to be very entertaining. And this comes in the form of reversals (as your example mentions), red herrings, the occassional dead end, the occassional plot cross (where two totally independent plots get tangled), and misidentification (something isn't what it is claimed to be).

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I also think that the player shouldn't always be able to know what's going to happen.


You have to be careful with this, though. Whether or not its considered a bad thing or not, we've grown up with a whole generation of games that spell out what you're supposed to do in quest / mission parameters. This is usually the only mechanism to advance, and even if it isn't, it is usually the only mechanism used to make the world change in an interesting way. Because the grammar has mostly been very primitive (i.e., hack or click conversation option or give item) its all usually pretty straightforward and oftimes dull, which means the game has to set up combat or some other gameplay as the most interesting activity. (IOW, you don't play so much because the missions themselves are interesting, but rather because the missions get you into interesting combats).

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Let's say that the player has angered a faction, let's call them faction 'A' and that the player is friendly with faction 'B'.
Faction 'A' wants to get revenge and so sends a request that looks like it's from faction 'B' for the player to retrieve an item for them. The player, wanting to please faction 'B' accepts and does the mission as usual. Except that when they reach the place where they're supposed to do the pick up they're ambushed.
This may also increase the feeling that what you do affects the world. Annoy one faction and they may try to get revenge (if the 'annoyance' is great enough of course)


What I like about this is that I can see scenarios being triggered by a whole dynamic economy of stats and resources that you care about (maybe reputation and personal threat value, in this case). This underlying, organic economy is what enlivens and brings meaning to what would otherwise be very stale triggered events. In your example, the ambush is a self-contained event, a bunch of guys with guns coming out of nowhere or whatever; but where, how, who and most importantly why gets answered by this changing system of stats and resources.

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(from Deus Ex 2?)


Yes.

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You at least need some sort of randomness.
However, what's the real difference between a toll impersonator at tollbooth 'X' and a toll impersonator at a random tollbooth?
Not much, if anything.
You still encounter them and you know exactly what to do when the situation arises.
The randomness in this case does nothing to alleviate the 'formulaic' problem.


Ironically, combat has a similar formulaic overtone yet is one of the few things we can repeat ad infinitum. But you raise another good point. We don't solve plot problems the same way we solve combat, though we may approach plot problems strategicially.

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Basically I think that you shouldn't be able to tell that the toll collector isn't the 'real' toll collector.
Or at least easily. Maybe you need to do a skill check, or you only find out after they say something suspicious after paying them and you can decide to take revenge by killing them.
Threatening them may make them run away with the money or you could kill them.
Killing them may get your extravagent fee back but depending on the circumstances the 'real' toll collector may be dead and suddenly it looks like you're the suspect and a subplot just opened up.
Or they may just be tied up and they thank you for freeing them.
If you merely threaten them then you can free the toll collector, if they're still alive, or report the incident to the authorities.


One challenge is that certain situations may just demand too many specific details. The toll collector idea is much more unique than meeting a traveling stranger, for instance, and so the variations have be become increasingly elaborate. WHY they become elaborate is based solely on expectation: We expect a lot less of a random traveller encounter than we do of a hostage siituation. Heck, we even expect less of a petty crime.

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Reporting it may put you in good standing with the law. But stuff like reporting it may just be tedious, even if it is sort of realistic, and it's something you have to decide about.


If reporting is near automatic, then I don't have a problem with it, especially if it is infrequent AND causes some change in the game world. Otherwise, agreed.
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

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