This game concept does not seem unified to me, although I may be biased since I don't like time, war, layered worlds, or demons as general concepts because they usually have bad worldbuilding. IMO the key to making a good mystery is creating a well-defined hole surrounded by coherent worldbuilding which allows the player to logically extrapolate and guess at what the mystery might be - what you have instead is the whole world being inside the hole except for little bits and pieces you can see occasionally through the swirling fog. As a player you cannot make satisfying decisions if you don't have a solid idea of what the world is like to base your decisions on.

I liked the Dreambell idea a lot better.

Subtle moral and messages

Quote: Original post by slowpid
I dont think it matters if the player grasps that he is being put through a test of his/her morals, it almost stands that they shouldn't know.

Your intuition is correct. Everything you see here are not what the player will readily see as they play the story. I was presenting the story from a designer-to-designer point of view. What you see here is the foundation, not the appearance. I believe that it would be a complete nuisance to overtly present the moral question. However, since the story was designed from inside out, the moral of the story runs in the veins of the characters. To the casual players, the underlying moral will permeate subconsciously, and to the discerning players, they will see the complexity and details involved in the design.

So you are correct, the player should feel that, "why am I being asked all these moral questions? Am I in some kind of moral test?"

The frontline of the game is mystery, action, and romance, constructed over a subtle network of deeper messages.

Thanks for the compliment, but I don't think the design between the charactesr and the story is complete. I do want people to continue attack it.

Cryo

Quote: This game concept does not seem unified to me, although I may be biased since I don't like time, war, layered worlds, or demons as general concepts because they usually have bad worldbuilding. IMO the key to making a good mystery is creating a well-defined hole surrounded by coherent worldbuilding which allows the player to logically extrapolate and guess at what the mystery might be - what you have instead is the whole world being inside the hole except for little bits and pieces you can see occasionally through the swirling fog. As a player you cannot make satisfying decisions if you don't have a solid idea of what the world is like to base your decisions on.

I liked the Dreambell idea a lot better.

<u.>The story does have a unified meaning, which is the Cryo. It is about a past that was frozen, it is about the unfinished battles, it is about a scar that is almost healed but once again revealed. It is the player's decision to let it heal or to continue the revenge beneath.

All top level elements of the story are created based on this unifying meaning. There is the surface of the crust that represents the fragile peace built on the ignorance of the past, and there is the wound beneath represented by the frozen battlefield. Between the Techno and the Magical there was the scar of a war, and between the two races and human there was another scar. The healing process is further represented by the mixing of the two formerly rivaling races, the transformation of earth above the battlefields, the combined strengths of the former rivals (the Wyruka and the Templar), the reunion of the lovers (Luth and Cherro), the reunion of sisters (Frequency and Shamila), time as the medium of healing, and Cryo as the catalyst of the healing.

What do you see that is not unified?



War

Both Dreambell and Cryo have the theme of Warfare.

In Dreambell, the war is still going on, but coming to an end, where the hidden tension among the generals intensify (they did fight together, but there is no telling whether one of them would backstab the rest to seize the throne). The gameplay of Dreambell is a mix of mystery and RTS (Think Shogun: Total War where there are mysteries and an underlying romantic plot). The player is actually involved in the battles, and how you fight will affect how the other generals think about you. (Just as you are watching them, the other generals are also watching you.)

In Cryo, there is no warfare gameplay. There is no battle being fought in the game. The frozen war is analogus to a timed bomb. The moment the war is revived, the game ends. The job of the player is to dive into the intertwined fuses to identify the one that could defuse the bomb.

In my perspective, the theme of war is less in Cryo than in Dreambell. At least no an active war. What is it that made the war in Dreambell acceptable but not in Cryo?

Demon

I don't like demons. I think they are total bs. However, at least in Cryo the demon is a symbol, not a mindless horde of invaders. In addition, you almost never see the demon form of you until the end of the game. If you think about what the 'demon' really is in Cryo, it is just a representation of the choice of revenge and the consequence. It is the C4 of the time bomb. You almost don't see it until the bomb blows up. There is no denial that the plotline about the demon is one of those 'save the world from getting blew up by a weapon of mass destruction' stories, where the 'demon' represents the 'weapon of mass destruction'. Is this exactly what you don't like about the demon? Having something that could totally destroy the world is total bs, right?

Yet I found that it would be quite a waste to have such a beautiful gameworld, but the player has no option of blowing it all up. In Cryo, the player is going to dive into the frozen layer and see all of these relic war machines that are more advanced than the civilizations above. The player is going to think, "Geeze, these things are cool, I wish I can see them in a huge battle." I think that it is satisfying to include those plots and scenes in the story, and let the player to anticipate something shockingly huge to happen at the end. As the player go through the frozen battlefield, I want the player to imagine the power that he is giving up in exchange for peace. I want the player to feel, "I don't care about peace anymore, I just want to feel the power," at least once while playing the game. The huge things happen after stage 3 of the gameplay, as a reward. The player has done enough, it is the time for the game to unleash the crazy power that the player had been waiting for.

Worldbuilding

You objected to time, war, layeredworld, and demon because you think that they will lead to a bad worldbuilding. I don't object your intuition. But I don't build a game world from that direction.

"what you have instead is the whole world being inside the hole except for little bits and pieces you can see occasionally through the swirling fog. As a player you cannot make satisfying decisions if you don't have a solid idea of what the world is like to base your decisions on."

I built the mystery and the world based on the messages that I was trying to convey. It was TDM. The mystery is the world, and the world is the mystery. Nothing in the design is redundant. I don't see why you would assume that the worldbuilding would suffer from because of it. I think you are confused because in Cryo, the mystery is linked to the world. If I translate directly what you have just said, you said:

"Your design is all messed up because the player is only given the pieces of a puzzle withough knowing what the finished puzzle look like."

But that was exactly what the game was about, giving the player the puzzle pieces, and let the player piece them together. I think it is an interesting idea, because the player can find a piece that he could find a piece that he could intepret equally as part of an angel or part of a demon. It is like an interactive ink-blot test. Sounds heck of fun to me. Of course the player cannot arbitrarily piece any two pieces together, based on a lot of pieces that are already given (since the world does not start out blank).

If you look at the final, finished interpretation, the coherence and depth of the world building is preserved. That is the only thing that matters.

And the pieces are not 'little bits and pieces you can see occasionally through the swirling fog'. The exploration at the frozen layer below the techno capital is a 3-hours action adventure where you will be unlock various chambers, and fight the wakened guardians. It is not little-bits-and-pieces facts, but more like right-in-you-face-what-the-hell-is-going-on facts. In Cryo, pieces are not that hidden, but the intepretations of them can be subtle. The player is expected to look deeper than what is apparently provided. In general, the game tries to make the player to think about a conspiracy. The player needs to look a little harder to see the truth beyond.

[Edited by - Estok on March 26, 2005 3:57:47 AM]

Quote:

Quote: This game concept does not seem unified to me, although I may be biased since I don't like time, war, layered worlds, or demons as general concepts because they usually have bad worldbuilding. IMO the key to making a good mystery is creating a well-defined hole surrounded by coherent worldbuilding which allows the player to logically extrapolate and guess at what the mystery might be - what you have instead is the whole world being inside the hole except for little bits and pieces you can see occasionally through the swirling fog. As a player you cannot make satisfying decisions if you don't have a solid idea of what the world is like to base your decisions on.

I liked the Dreambell idea a lot better.

<u.>The story does have a unified meaning, which is the Cryo. It is about a past that was frozen, it is about the unfinished battles, it is about a scar that is almost healed but once again revealed. It is the player's decision to let it heal or to continue the revenge beneath.

All top level elements of the story are created based on this unifying meaning. There is the surface of the crust that represents the fragile peace built on the ignorance of the past, and there is the wound beneath represented by the frozen battlefield. Between the Techno and the Magical there was the scar of a war, and between the two races and human there was another scar. The healing process is further represented by the mixing of the two formerly rivaling races, the transformation of earth above the battlefields, the combined strengths of the former rivals (the Wyruka and the Templar), the reunion of the lovers (Luth and Cherro), the reunion of sisters (Frequency and Shamila), time as the medium of healing, and Cryo as the catalyst of the healing.

What do you see that is not unified?

You have dreams, time, magic, religion, and technology elements here. Magic, dream, and religion are somewhat redundant with each other because they are all ways of adding normally impossible things to the world. Now, you can combine any two of them by presenting magic as divine energy coming from a god/gods, magic as an elemental energy that can be added to mortals to make them divine, magic as a human subconscious energy that is expressed through dream, dreams as a natural realm that can be manipulated by magic, or dreams as visions sent by a god/gods; but, how can you meaningfully and coherently combine all three of these elements? And then you want to try to blend in time and technology too? That's like trying to make soup by putting in every ingredient you have in your kitchen. If you want your story to have thematic unity and coherent worldbuilding, I would definitely suggest limiting yourself to 3 of these elements; I think you could thoroughly explore your main idea and accomplish eveything you want the story to accomplish much more powerfully and elegantly without using all of these mis-matched and redundant elements.

Quote: War

Both Dreambell and Cryo have the theme of Warfare.

In my perspective, the theme of war is less in Cryo than in Dreambell. At least no an active war. What is it that made the war in Dreambell acceptable but not in Cryo?

I prefer war presented as a strategic activity to war presented as a philosophical symbol. My understanding of war is that it is dirty, painful, and morally ambiguous, and thus not something I personally want to contemplate at length or in detail; war as a strategy game OTOH usually doesn't involve individual death and pain and tragedy, instead it's just like moving pieces around on a chessboard, a fun problem-solving exercise involving effecient use of time and resources.

Quote: Worldbuilding

You objected to time, war, layeredworld, and demon because you think that they will lead to a bad worldbuilding. I don't object your intuition. But I don't build a game world from that direction.

Well, then I am not in your target audience. To me detailed, coherent, interesting worldbuilding is the second most important ingredient in a story (after character). This also answers the point about demons, since my objection to deamons as a symbol here is that they are not coherent with the rest of the worldbuilding.

Quote: "what you have instead is the whole world being inside the hole except for little bits and pieces you can see occasionally through the swirling fog. As a player you cannot make satisfying decisions if you don't have a solid idea of what the world is like to base your decisions on."

I built the mystery and the world based on the messages that I was trying to convey. It was TDM. The mystery is the world, and the world is the mystery. Nothing in the design is redundant. I don't see why you would assume that the worldbuilding would suffer from because of it. I think you are confused because in Cryo, the mystery is linked to the world. If I translate directly what you have just said, you said:

"Your design is all messed up because the player is only given the pieces of a puzzle withough knowing what the finished puzzle look like."

But that was exactly what the game was about, giving the player the puzzle pieces, and let the player piece them together. I think it is an interesting idea, because the player can find a piece that he could find a piece that he could intepret equally as part of an angel or part of a demon. It is like an interactive ink-blot test. Sounds heck of fun to me. Of course the player cannot arbitrarily piece any two pieces together, based on a lot of pieces that are already given (since the world does not start out blank).

If you look at the final, finished interpretation, the coherence and depth of the world building is preserved. That is the only thing that matters.

And the pieces are not 'little bits and pieces you can see occasionally through the swirling fog'. The exploration at the frozen layer below the techno capital is a 3-hours action adventure where you will be unlock various chambers, and fight the wakened guardians. It is not little-bits-and-pieces facts, but more like right-in-you-face-what-the-hell-is-going-on facts. In Cryo, pieces are not that hidden, but the intepretations of them can be subtle. The player is expected to look deeper than what is apparently provided. In general, the game tries to make the player to think about a conspiracy. The player needs to look a little harder to see the truth beyond.

I don't know how you go about building a jigsaw puzzle, but I always look at the picture on the box first, then find all the edge pieces and build the frame of the puzzle so I have something to use as an anchor, a foundation for filling in the hole. This is the way I suggest mysteries be handled in games and fiction - give the player a frame, a definition of the boundaries of the problem, before you start tossing them random pieces. The Dreambell design had this - your general dissapears, and the mystery is why/where he went, and if/when he'll come back. Cryo is much less organized because the player is wondering who he is and what the world is; one or the other of these things would be good, or one of these things first and the other after the first is resolved would be good, but both at the same time is unfocused and confusing (swirling fog). The final perspective is not the only thing that matters - if the player feels lost they are likely to quit playing long before they get to that final perspective.

Creating an ambiguous situation such that your audience will supply a personal interpretation is an interesting challenge, but you run the risk of the audience being confused and suppling no meanings, or supplying contradictory meanings to different elements such that they don't add up to a sensible final picture. IMO ambiguity should be used sparingly and in a tightly controlled way so that you can predict all the possible interpretations your audience will come up with; because after all, creating satisfying fiction is all about skillfully manipulating your audience's thoughts and emotions, and you can't do that if you don't know what they're thinking.


If your main plot is the decision whether or not to continue the war, this is also problematic. A decision can make for a very powerful scene or short story, but there is just not enough material there to make the novella-length or 5-act-play-length script necessary for a game. Look at the novel _Crime and Punishment_, it has a boring, non-suspenseful middle where the main character waffles over the decision of whether or not to confess that he is a murderer. The story loses all the power and intensity it could have had because the format was too long for the content. Also, a big ethical decision doesn't work well with the interactivity of a game format, because usually one choice or another will seem obviously right to any give player because of that player's philosophy and personality, so the player will immediately know what they want to decide and be frustrated if the game wants them to ponder over it for a long time. Are you reading the Hard/Ugly Choices thread in the design forum? It's very relevant.

Magics and Technology

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
You have dreams, time, magic, religion, and technology elements here. Magic, dream, and religion are somewhat redundant with each other because they are all ways of adding normally impossible things to the world. Now, you can combine any two of them by presenting magic as divine energy coming from a god/gods, magic as an elemental energy that can be added to mortals to make them divine, magic as a human subconscious energy that is expressed through dream, dreams as a natural realm that can be manipulated by magic, or dreams as visions sent by a god/gods; but, how can you meaningfully and coherently combine all three of these elements? And then you want to try to blend in time and technology too? That's like trying to make soup by putting in every ingredient you have in your kitchen. If you want your story to have thematic unity and coherent worldbuilding, I would definitely suggest limiting yourself to 3 of these elements; I think you could thoroughly explore your main idea and accomplish eveything you want the story to accomplish much more powerfully and elegantly without using all of these mis-matched and redundant elements.

This sounds like what I told you during the CWP. But your assumptions are wrong. Cryo is much earlier branch of the CGS. The notion of Magics and Technology is very different from the way you are thinking. For instance, the Magicals is not about religion or divine powers, it has nothing to do with gods or immortals. If you remember the twist I talked about between Magics and Technology, that twist is maintained in Cryo.

The magical perspective is derived from the view of intelligence based on strong logic. The Magicals are very rational, logical, and systematic, their efficiency comes from a delegation, command system. You can think of their 'technology' as the age of artificial intelligence matured before the age of computation and information. They do not believe in faith, they do not believe in divine favor, that some entity is watching over them or anything of that sort. They believe that in order to get anything done they must believe in themselves, plan ahead, and work execute them with their determination. They are more like intelligent go players. If there is something they want to do, they will plan many steps ahead in order to achieve it. Althought it has nothing to do about gods, the culture retains a strong sense of duty and hierarchy. In the character design, this culture is reflected by the Shamila, the systematic, intelligent, rational researcher.

The Techno perspective is derived from the view of intelligence based on cellular automata. The Technos is very adaptive and in some sense my religious, but there is still no notion of god. They believe that there is no reason to exert tremendous forces trying to maintain a certain equilibrium. They believe that definition of goodness or well-being of the society is adaptive and changing all the time. No matter what you do, an equilibrium will be achieved, and that equilibrium will in turn define what 'good' is. Their actions are more probabilistic, spontaneous, and without much consideration about what future they are heading toward. (Since no matter how it ends up it will be how it will be, so, what the hell.) They are capable of thinking very far ahead, but they don't think they need to, because they are adaptive enough that they can handle any situation. The Technos are still very logical and systematic on designs, but not on their view about the future. This culture is represented by Frequency, the unpredictable, impulsive, racer law-breaker.

The notion of dream represents where logics and emotion are mixed together in an interdependent and unseparable state. The notion of independent intelligence is dissolved in this realm, where thoughts and emotions are shared among the entities. This is representd by the 'human' race where the strengths could be combined and manifested in the will of a single individual.

You are also correct that there are 3 main elements. What do you think is too mixed with respect to this clarification?



War

Quote: I prefer war presented as a strategic activity to war presented as a philosophical symbol. My understanding of war is that it is dirty, painful, and morally ambiguous, and thus not something I personally want to contemplate at length or in detail; war as a strategy game OTOH usually doesn't involve individual death and pain and tragedy, instead it's just like moving pieces around on a chessboard, a fun problem-solving exercise involving effecient use of time and resources.

The main idea in Cryo is to prevent the war. Shouldn't this match your view that wars should not occur, and make it a favorable idea to include? I understand that what you meant was, if you have a choice you won't go into the topic about wars at all.

The central idea of Cryo is the healing of old wounds. It is unavoidable that pain is involved. With respect to this central idea, war is one of the deepest wound that can occur among humanities. Because of this, I feel very justisfied and logical to include it. What do you think about my reasoning of including it?



Worldbuilding

Quote: Well, then I am not in your target audience. To me detailed, coherent, interesting worldbuilding is the second most important ingredient in a story (after character). This also answers the point about demons, since my objection to deamons as a symbol here is that they are not coherent with the rest of the worldbuilding.

I think what you call worldbuilding, coherence, and details are very important. In terms of TDM, the coherence is intrinsic to the hierarchy, it is never ignored. For worldbuilding, there is a distinction between high level worldbuilding elements and low level worldbuilding elements. The high level elements are symbols directly associated to the message of the story, and from there, the lower level ones are designed following the hierarchy. They are all linked and coherent because of the way they are designed. Details are designed the same way.

Would you tell me exactly what elements are incoherent and why they are incoherent?

(Edit: I realized that you don't know what the 'demon-form' is in Cryo. It has no associations to any religious or mythical creatures. If the word 'demon' has too strong an association to it, you can interchange that word with 'destructive'. The 'demon-form' is the form where your power is concentrated for the purpose to destroy, and revenge. There are no 'high demon', 'doom guards' 'demon messagers' or anything of that sort.)


Clues vs puzzle pieces

Quote: The Dreambell design had this - your general dissapears, and the mystery is why/where he went, and if/when he'll come back. Cryo is much less organized because the player is wondering who he is and what the world is; one or the other of these things would be good, or one of these things first and the other after the first is resolved would be good, but both at the same time is unfocused and confusing (swirling fog). The final perspective is not the only thing that matters - if the player feels lost they are likely to quit playing long before they get to that final perspective.

I don't see why you think that Cryo is less organized. The question about who you were and what the world is are the same mystery. Because of who you were and what you did, the world ended up the way it is. I don't see why you think they are separate. Don't you think that it would actually be inappropriate if the mystery behind who you were has nothing to do with the mystery behind what is happening? If you think about any other mystery games, the initial 'separate' mysteries are always linked together, to yield the overall sense of coherence It would be unsatisfying to ask the player to solve mysteries, where the mysteries have nothing to do with one another.

Quote: I don't know how you go about building a jigsaw puzzle, but I always look at the picture on the box first, then find all the edge pieces and build the frame of the puzzle so I have something to use as an anchor, a foundation for filling in the hole. This is the way I suggest mysteries be handled in games and fiction - give the player a frame, a definition of the boundaries of the problem, before you start tossing them random pieces.

When an intelligent player receive the puzzle pieces without knowing the big picture, the player knows that the pieces need to fit together somehow. The player is supposed to ask questions like, "hmm... I found this, this, and this. Is this what happened? But I don't want to believe that the NPC I am with is the villain. How would I go about making sure that she is not the villain? I will go to this place, so that I can find evidence that she is not involved." For mystery games you need to think the pieces as clues than actual puzzle pieces. The player is really playing the role of a detective.

After this explanation, what flaws do you still see in my design?

Quote: Creating an ambiguous situation such that your audience will supply a personal interpretation is an interesting challenge, but you run the risk of the audience being confused and suppling no meanings, or supplying contradictory meanings to different elements such that they don't add up to a sensible final picture. IMO ambiguity should be used sparingly and in a tightly controlled way so that you can predict all the possible interpretations your audience will come up with; because after all, creating satisfying fiction is all about skillfully manipulating your audience's thoughts and emotions, and you can't do that if you don't know what they're thinking.

You are correct that it is an interesting challenge, but there is no risk of confusing the audience. The basic model is not much different from a normal detective game. Isn't it true that when you find the bloody knife at someone's room, that it can mean that the owner of the room did the job or some one else planted it there? Now, suppose you keep on accusing the owner, then the owner will think that you may be associated with the true murderer. The player will be capable of gathering enough 'evidence' to convince himself that the owner is the murderer. At stage 3 of the game, the player will finalize his thoughts, and face the truth whether he has accused the right person. What do you see that is wrong with this design?

The player in Cyro is not left alone to interpret the events. First of all, the exploration and investigation is done in pair. The player will pair up with an RNPC. The RNPC is going to interpret the events also. Secondly, if the player is really confused he can find Gillieon. She is there for this very purpose.

The interpretations are limited by the dialogue options. The interpretation of the main character is reflected through monologue/thoughts. The player does not have complete freedom on interpreting the situations, since complete freedom is impossible to provide by the designer. You are correct that there is a limit to how much ambigurity will exist. But I think you did not see Cyro as a game with detective elements, therefore you overestimated the risk of having just ambigurity.

Quote: If your main plot is the decision whether or not to continue the war, this is also problematic. A decision can make for a very powerful scene or short story, but there is just not enough material there to make the novella-length or 5-act-play-length script necessary for a game.

Stopping the war is a main idea, but the player will not realize that the danger is of that magnitude until the middle of Stage 2. In Stage 1, everything is calm, there is no indication that a war is on the verge of being resurrected because you were uncovered. But as the player continues to learn more about the world and his past, he will figure it out. The gameplay itself is not about presenting a war and asking the player to bring peace or not. I think what I posted here is a more accurate depiction of what the game is like, where a majority of the game is on figuring out what is happening and what happened. The final decisions are made at Stage 3. In what way is it too short? What would you suggest to add to make it a 5-act play length script?


Elegance
You said Dreambell is more elegant, I think that is true. DreamBell is based on a realistic, historical setting where there was no need for explanation of much of anything. So a short paragraph was enough to show clearly what the game is all about.

If you want to talk about elegance, it might not be fair to compare a fantasy/fiction setting to a historical setting, since the former obviously has many advantages. If you compare the setting in Cryo to other fantasy/fiction settings, there are not much differences. In other words, the world building is only at par to what are already out there. What is not at par, however, is the more involved and elaborated network of mysteries.

If I were to design a gamestory from scratch, I wouldn't have chosen a fantasy setting. First of all I would have chosen a realistic setting, and the scope would be much narrower. However Cryo is to a weak design either. If you consider the overall design, Cryo is taking advantage of each part of the world building, the gameplay, mystery, and the world are as big as one another.

I still don't quite get why you think Cryo is confusing. In a nutshell, it is just a game of CLUE, where the board is the planet, the rooms are the locations, the players are the RNPC and you, and the mystery is who you are and what happened. Now add a little sci-fi, a little fantasy, a little action, a little romance, and you get Cryo. What is there so complicated about it?


Assumptions

Cryo is not that close to Xenallure. And there are a lot of elements that I talked about but never got across to you.

Frequency on her bike, with the PC on the back.
Frequency

For the character design, when the PC and Frequency are put together, she may feel that she is babysitting the PC. A similar effect is there when the PC and krystal are put together, where the PC may feel that he is babysitting her. The situation improves after the PC levels up.

[Edited by - Estok on April 29, 2005 12:35:17 AM]

Whew, finally I find some time to read and reply to this. Okay, well, if you substitute the word 'demon' for 'destrudo' (destructive urge) or something else with no religious connotations, and otherwise there are no gods or religious elements in the game design, then it's not as overcomplicated as I initially assumed.

I agree that this Cryo idea is not paricualarly similar to Xenallure, that's why I mentioned Dreambell as a comparison instead. Actually Cryo reminds me somewhat of Final Fantasy 8's story, which involves war, time, and magic. I did not like FF8's story, but there are other people who did.

Quote:
The story does have a unified meaning, which is the Cryo. It is about a past that was frozen, it is about the unfinished battles, it is about a scar that is almost healed but once again revealed. It is the player's decision to let it heal or to continue the revenge beneath.

...

Stopping the war is a main idea, but the player will not realize that the danger is of that magnitude until the middle of Stage 2. In Stage 1, everything is calm, there is no indication that a war is on the verge of being resurrected because you were uncovered. But as the player continues to learn more about the world and his past, he will figure it out. The gameplay itself is not about presenting a war and asking the player to bring peace or not. I think what I posted here is a more accurate depiction of what the game is like, where a majority of the game is on figuring out what is happening and what happened. The final decisions are made at Stage 3. In what way is it too short? What would you suggest to add to make it a 5-act play length script?

If you want to look at how to stretch a single decision into a whole plot arc, a romance novel might be a good place to look, because they often stretch the decision of two people to become a couple into a whole book. The way they do this is by giving the two people conflicting goals and doubts, then setting out barriers for the people to overcome, such that each time they overcome one barrier and their relationship develops a bit they run into a new, bigger barrier. In terms of a mystery, the barriers are often newly-revealed pieces of mystery, such as a discovery about one character's past or powers. Usually the two characters overcome the last barrier and confirm their relationship before the climax of the book, and then for the climax they face an external threat that they defeat together using the strength of their relationship. Now, this is a very linear, character-centric approach and thus might not work at all for what you want to do. I can't really give you plot advice; we established in the collaborative story thread that I have great difficulty envisioning plots that are not built around a strong character dynamic such as a romance. Particularly, stories about time tend to have complex chronologies which affect how they are plotted, and since I don't like time stories much I have no experience with creating that sort of plot.

You have said that this story is about a process of investigation leading to the decision to stop the war, with a helping of romance on the side. But I'm still not sure what your premise that you want to communicate to your audience is. I can tell it has something to do with war/peace, and human nature as variously exemplified in the magicals, the technos, the main character, and the culture of the past, but what it it all supposed to add up to? Are you actually going to present war and peace as equal choices and let the player choose between them at the climax of the game, or are you going to present peace as the intended choice, or will the moral be that a balance between war and peace is essential to human nature and growth/the future...?



So, why are you working on this design if by preference you wouldn't design a fantasy story? That might be the root of the problem right there - if you are not a fantasy fan perhaps you prefer to design the story in a way that seems mis-focused to me, a fantasy fan.

The Central Idea of Cryo
The central idea of Cryo is dissolving conflicts. When you look at conflicts, there is a spectrum of it ranging in magnitude from conflicts within the self, to conflicts across races and time. Warfare is at one extreme of the spectrum, while the player overcoming his own vengence is at the other. Although the war is the conflict with the biggest consequence, the story itself also deals with conflicts at the other places on the spectrum. Therefore what you said was correct and was already done. It was not done by only characters, but also in the worldbuilding and mysteries.


"Particularly, stories about time tend to have complex chronologies which affect how they are plotted, and since I don't like time stories much I have no experience with creating that sort of plot."

I am not sure what you have been referring to a 'story about time'. Cryo is not a time travel story or any thing where you can go back and change the past. I don't see where that confusion began. The variable past and variable present are at the design level, not at the presentation level. What this means is that the designer designs several scenarios for the past and the present. From the player's point of view, the story unfolds logically and chronologically. It is not like Wayne's World or anything like that.


"You have said that this story is about a process of investigation leading to the decision to stop the war, with a helping of romance on the side. But I'm still not sure what your premise that you want to communicate to your audience is."

The central idea is dissolving conflicts. War is set to be the final conflict to be dissolved because it is of the greatest magnitude, but before that there are still many more, such as the relations among the characters. It is not a coincident that the conflict of war itself is closely connected to the personal conflict of the player character. It is done this way so that the spectrum closes on itself. In other words, the war is not just any war out there. It is the war within, the war that began the Cryo.


"I can tell it has something to do with war/peace, and human nature as variously exemplified in the magicals, the technos, the main character, and the culture of the past, but what it it all supposed to add up to?"

I think the above answered this. But the idea of how human nature is variously exemplified in the races is not a central idea. I think that is an idea in Xenallure, but not in Cryo. In Cryo, the story does not try to put any emphasis on the differences between the races, although the races are different, and their differences have philosophical basis. It is because the differences are not part of the message of the story.


"Are you actually going to present war and peace as equal choices and let the player choose between them at the climax of the game, or are you going to present peace as the intended choice, or will the moral be that a balance between war and peace is essential to human nature and growth/the future...?"

Peace will be the intended choice. Warfare is presented as an uncurable problem in the past. That was why the world was frozen, because if it was the done, the world would have ended. In Cryo, the war in the past was not way presented as an solution. However, there was a dual concept that while the war was not a solution, it was also unsolvable. The idea here is not to create a balance, (i.e. it is not about 'it is too peaceful now, so let's have a war') but to see and accept the cycle of events. Problems will arise. There are times you will become part of it, there are times you can solve it, and there are times the only thing you can do it to wait. The war has been frozen long enough, that a solution now exists for stopping it.



Fantasy setting
"So, why are you working on this design if by preference you wouldn't design a fantasy story? That might be the root of the problem right there - if you are not a fantasy fan perhaps you prefer to design the story in a way that seems mis-focused to me, a fantasy fan."

Technically I am not working on it. The things I am presenting were done six months ago. I was not asking for plot ideas either, because that was also done. I was writing down the whole plot map including the decisions the player will make, and the featured actions and fightings in FMMass.xls, but I found that would be unfair. I said I would not pick a fantasy setting because the central idea does not require a fantasy setting. I don't think I would call myself a fantasy fan because I have quite low regard for games and animes in fantasy settings. Most of them just choose that setting for superficial reasons. There is a difference between understanding the benefit (at the semantic level) of a fantasy setting and then choosing it, and choosing it just for the sake of having it. A 'fantasy fan' refers to those that would be attracted to a fantasy setting because of what it is, not why it is. I am pretty sure that you are aware of this, that is why in Xenallure there is a 'reason' why the races are like that. But I am not talking about the literal but the semantic reason.

From a fantasy fan's point of view, what do you think are mis-focused in Cryo?

Hmm. My instincts tell me this design has a fatal flaw that would make it not be any fun to play, but I'm having difficulty finding words to describe what the problem is. But, I'll try.

Quote: Original post by Estok

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow"You have said that this story is about a process of investigation leading to the decision to stop the war, with a helping of romance on the side. But I'm still not sure what your premise that you want to communicate to your audience is."

"I can tell it has something to do with war/peace ... but what it it all supposed to add up to?"

The central idea is dissolving conflicts. War is set to be the final conflict to be dissolved because it is of the greatest magnitude, but before that there are still many more, such as the relations among the characters. It is not a coincident that the conflict of war itself is closely connected to the personal conflict of the player character. It is done this way so that the spectrum closes on itself. In other words, the war is not just any war out there. It is the war within, the war that began the Cryo.

Okay, a central idea is not the same as a premise. The premise is a belief which you want to communicate to your audience; the 'moral of the story' if you will. Your premise has something to do with 'accepting the cycle of events' related to 'war within'. What exactly do you want to teach your audience?

Perhaps, "The way to dissolve conflicts is to come to terms with the 'war within' by seeing and accepting the external cycle of peace and war as a fundamental part of human nature."? Just guessing here...


Now, again, neither a premise nor a central idea is the same as a plot. A plot is, in its most basic form, an initial incident which destabalizes the situation, causing the characters to struggle and the audience to feel suspense until the climax re-stabalizes the situation. What is Cryo's plot? Where does the suspense come from? Note that the situation which is destabalized by the initial incident corresponds to my previous mention of the frame of the puzzle, the definition of the borders of the mystery which allows clues and guesswork to be anchored to known information. 'Situation' here usually refers to worldbuilding including the details of characters' social positions and relationships to each other, but in rare cases 'situation' may refer to the main character's knowledge about himself. You have situation referring to both, which is detracts from the focus on either. I will repeat that IMO it is simply a bad idea to have a character simultaneuosly wondering who he is and what his world is. You can do either one, or one first and then the other later, but trying to do both at the same time prevents you from giving either the focus and attention it deserves.

I would define a fantasy fan as anyone who prefers to have unique new worldbuilding to learn about rather than realistic worldbuilding. As a fantasy fan, I expect that the writer will cater to my curiosity by describing the important elements of the worldbuilding in a way that artistically romanticizes them and also analytically explains their function and theory to me. By the end of the story I should understand the invented principles of magic or whatever, and how they shaped the plot and the characters' attitudes and behavior. I expect the worldbuilding as a whole to be coherent and integral to the plot. Any fantasy or science fiction story where the worldbuilding and plot don't make sense by the end is a failure of that genre.

The big picture
You are correct that a central idea is not the same as a premise. However, it is also not the 'moral' of the story. For example, if you are trying to write a music about a lake, then the central idea is to deliver the essence of 'lake' through music. It has nothing to do with "I am trying to teach the audience something about the lake." I think you are confused when you ask this:

"Your premise has something to do with 'accepting the cycle of events' related to 'war within'. What exactly do you want to teach your audience?"

The first part is wrong, and the question doesn't make sense. The central idea is about dissolving conflicts. Imagine the following conversation:

A: I want to write a game story, what should I write about?
B: How about conflicts? all stories have some type of conflicts.
A: Okay, I will write about conflicts and about how to dissolve them.
B: What kind of conflicts are you going to include in your story?
A: I want to have a variety of conflicts, ranging from personal to global conflicts.
B: That is a lost of conflicts. Are you going to present them in any order?
A: Yes, I will start with the easier ones, and then move towards the two ends. So, in the beginning of the story, the player will face conflicts that are not personal. The player will first observe the problems around him, problems that seem to have no relation to him. Then the connections will be made, and the problems will become personal, and the player will find himself involved in the conflicts.
B: Shouldn't the story start with something related to the player?
A: Yes, it does start with an initial personal conflict, but as the story unfolds, the leads toward solving that conflict will lead to other conflicts that are not immediate to the player. The player is expected to put his self interests aside to help the RNPC. Therefore, the order that the player will solve the conflicts indeed start from the middle of the spectrum and moves towards both ends. The final two conflicts that will be solved at the extremes will be the personal conflict that the story begins with, and a global warfare that is the other side of the personal conflict.
B: So the two extremes meet at the same point.
A: Yes, so that when you look at the flow of the story there is unity, that the story is not just arbitrarily going in two directions. The movements toward the both extremes are on the two sides of the same coin. The two are inseparable.

After reading the above you should know that the comment:

"Perhaps, "The way to dissolve conflicts is to come to terms with the 'war within' by seeing and accepting the external cycle of peace and war as a fundamental part of human nature."? Just guessing here..."

shows a miscommunication. You were focusing on something too small about Cryo and missing the big picture. The 'war within' and the cycle of peace and war are just part of the elements to present the central idea, not the central idea itself.





Cryo's Plot
"A plot is, in its most basic form, an initial incident which destabalizes the situation, causing the characters to struggle and the audience to feel suspense until the climax re-stabalizes the situation. What is Cryo's plot?"

This is the plot. It should sound familiar:

After being resurrected from cryostasis, you wondered what happened to you and what the world is. The researchers had told you that a global disaster had hit the planet, and that you are a survivor of that tragedy. You have suspicion of what really happened, but you also had no reason to doubt what the researchers had told you. In any cases, you know that this is your life now and you must learn how the new world works and adapt to it. You are given the choices to live with different RNPCs with different perspectives of the new world and different level of interest about your past. While you are with the chosen RNPC, you will discover certain suspicious behaviors and events, that lead you to think that it was not a simple global storm that put you into a cryo.

(The suspicion of the player starts at the beginning of the story because there is a cutscene before the PC is resurrected, that points to something more than a storm. Or the player can just know by instinct that it can't be just a storm. The initial facts are always lies or partially correct in a mystery game.)

From that moment on, your suspicion will lead you to adventures above and below the crust to discover the past and the relationship between the races, as well as the identities of the RNPCs, and the purpose of the excavation.

Worldbuilding

Quote: I would define a fantasy fan as anyone who prefers to have unique new worldbuilding to learn about rather than realistic worldbuilding. As a fantasy fan, I expect that the writer will cater to my curiosity by describing the important elements of the worldbuilding in a way that artistically romanticizes them and also analytically explains their function and theory to me. By the end of the story I should understand the invented principles of magic or whatever, and how they shaped the plot and the characters' attitudes and behavior.

I don't see how Cryo fails this. What you consider as 'important' I consider as 'basic' criteria for any story. Of course the story will have to explain any new functions and theories. I did not spend the time discussing them because they are not where the meaning of the story lies.

You are interested in a new world with new rules. I am not interested in a new world with new rules where the new things have no meanings. Therefore in Cryo the new world and new rules are created based on the meaning, not the other way around. In the end, both designs will have coherent new world and new rules, both will have elements that artistically romanticize, both will have analytical explanations of the inventions and theories, but only one will guarantee delivering the meaning of the story through all of these aspects.


*I think that animal traits make the design worse for a story about romance for mature audience. On top of that you chose the anime style and decided to include BDSM. I don't see how it artistically romanitcises the story, other than making it less mature.

Gillieon - Gillieon is the standard RNPC that the player will pair with with the least effort.

[Edited by - Estok on April 8, 2005 11:08:27 AM]

You know, sometimes when I talk to you I have the disconcerting feeling that although we are using the same words we are thinking that they mean totally different things...

Quote: Original post by Estok
The big picture
You are correct that a central idea is not the same as a premise. However, it is also not the 'moral' of the story. For example, if you are trying to write a music about a lake, then the central idea is to deliver the essence of 'lake' through music. It has nothing to do with "I am trying to teach the audience something about the lake." I think you are confused when you ask this:

"Your premise has something to do with 'accepting the cycle of events' related to 'war within'. What exactly do you want to teach your audience?"

The first part is wrong, and the question doesn't make sense. The central idea is about dissolving conflicts. Imagine the following conversation:

A: I want to write a game story, what should I write about?
B: How about conflicts? all stories have some type of conflicts.
A: Okay, I will write about conflicts and about how to dissolve them.
B: What kind of conflicts are you going to include in your story?
A: I want to have a variety of conflicts, ranging from personal to global conflicts.
B: That is a lost of conflicts. Are you going to present them in any order?
A: Yes, I will start with the easier ones, and then move towards the two ends. So, in the beginning of the story, the player will face conflicts that are not personal. The player will first observe the problems around him, problems that seem to have no relation to him. Then the connections will be made, and the problems will become personal, and the player will find himself involved in the conflicts.
B: Shouldn't the story start with something related to the player?
A: Yes, it does start with an initial personal conflict, but as the story unfolds, the leads toward solving that conflict will lead to other conflicts that are not immediate to the player. The player is expected to put his self interests aside to help the RNPC. Therefore, the order that the player will solve the conflicts indeed start from the middle of the spectrum and moves towards both ends. The final two conflicts that will be solved at the extremes will be the personal conflict that the story begins with, and a global warfare that is the other side of the personal conflict.
B: So the two extremes meet at the same point.
A: Yes, so that when you look at the flow of the story there is unity, that the story is not just arbitrarily going in two directions. The movements toward the both extremes are on the two sides of the same coin. The two are inseparable.

After reading the above you should know that the comment:

"Perhaps, "The way to dissolve conflicts is to come to terms with the 'war within' by seeing and accepting the external cycle of peace and war as a fundamental part of human nature."? Just guessing here..."

shows a miscommunication. You were focusing on something too small about Cryo and missing the big picture. The 'war within' and the cycle of peace and war are just part of the elements to present the central idea, not the central idea itself.

In my mind, the definition of 'premise' is 'the moral of the story'. But let's consult an objective 3rd party, the Dramatica theory book. It says:

Quote:
Some writers will tell you theme has something to do with the mood or feel of a story. But how does that differ from genre? Others will say that theme is the message of the story. Some will put forth that theme is the premise of a story that illustrates the results of certain kinds of behavior. Taking each of these a bit farther, a story's mood or feel might be "anger". A message might be "nuclear power plants are bad". A premise could be "greed leads to selfdestruction." Clearly each of these might show up in the very same story, and each has a somewhat thematic feel to it. But just as certainly, none of them feels complete by itself. This is because each is just a different angle on what theme really is.

What I am asking you is, "What is your message or premise? What are you trying to teach your audience? What is the POINT?" Okay, it's about dissolving conflicts. What about dissolving conflicts? Something like, "The way to dissolve conflicts is..." or "Conflicts ought to be dissolved because..." or "Conflicts can only be dissolved if..." or "[Something] is attained by dissolving conflicts."

Quote:
Cryo's Plot
"A plot is, in its most basic form, an initial incident which destabalizes the situation, causing the characters to struggle and the audience to feel suspense until the climax re-stabalizes the situation. What is Cryo's plot?"

This is the plot. It should sound familiar:

After being resurrected from cryostasis, you wondered what happened to you and what the world is. The researchers had told you that a global disaster had hit the planet, and that you are a survivor of that tragedy. You have suspicion of what really happened, but you also had no reason to doubt what the researchers had told you. In any cases, you know that this is your life now and you must learn how the new world works and adapt to it. You are given the choices to live with different RNPCs with different perspectives of the new world and different level of interest about your past. While you are with the chosen RNPC, you will discover certain suspicious behaviors and events, that lead you to think that it was not a simple global storm that put you into a cryo.

(The suspicion of the player starts at the beginning of the story because there is a cutscene before the PC is resurrected, that points to something more than a storm. Or the player can just know by instinct that it can't be just a storm. The initial facts are always lies or partially correct in a mystery game.)

From that moment on, your suspicion will lead you to adventures above and below the crust to discover the past and the relationship between the races, as well as the identities of the RNPCs, and the purpose of the excavation.

That is not a complete plot, it's only an initial incident and some rising action. How is Cryo resolved?

For example, here is Xenallure's plot:
Initial incident: A human is summoned into a strange world
Rising action: The human learns about the world to gain power within it
Climax: The human makes a stand and claims a place for him/herself
Resolution: The human lives happily in whatever role they chose

So, the initial disturbance of the human being moved to an unfamiliar setting is resolved by the human letting go of the old setting and adopting the new setting as their home. The human's helplessness and the world's mysteriousness in the beginning is balanced by the human's knowledge and power to make decisions at the climax. The balance that was disturbed has been restored. What balance is disturbed and how is it restored in Cryo?



Worldbuilding

Quote: I would define a fantasy fan as anyone who prefers to have unique new worldbuilding to learn about rather than realistic worldbuilding. As a fantasy fan, I expect that the writer will cater to my curiosity by describing the important elements of the worldbuilding in a way that artistically romanticizes them and also analytically explains their function and theory to me. By the end of the story I should understand the invented principles of magic or whatever, and how they shaped the plot and the characters' attitudes and behavior.

I don't see how Cryo fails this. What you consider as 'important' I consider as 'basic' criteria for any story. Of course the story will have to explain any new functions and theories. I did not spend the time discussing them because they are not where the meaning of the story lies.

You are interested in a new world with new rules. I am not interested in a new world with new rules where the new things have no meanings. Therefore in Cryo the new world and new rules are created based on the meaning, not the other way around. In the end, both designs will have coherent new world and new rules, both will have elements that artistically romanticize, both will have analytical explanations of the inventions and theories, but only one will guarantee delivering the meaning of the story through all of these aspects.


I don't understand how you can say, "they [fantasy worldbuilding elements] are not where the meaning of the story lies" and then say, "in Cryo the new world and new rules are created based on the meaning." That doesn't make any sense. Either the 'fantasyness' of the story is meaningful or it isn't, and if it isn't you'd probably be better off not putting it in the story. To me the 'frozen war' seems like a fantasy worldbuilding element where some of the meaning of Cryo lies.

It is also probable that we are using different definitions of the word 'coherent'. To me a 'coherent' worldbuilding is one which makes sociological and evolutionary sense, whereas to you the fact that it is thematically unified is probably more important.

Quote:
*I think that animal traits make the design worse for a story about romance for mature audience. On top of that you chose the anime style and decided to include BDSM. I don't see how it artistically romanitcises the story, other than making it less mature.

What does that have to do with Cryo? I know you feel that way about Xenallure and you know I disagree, so what's the point of mentioning it?

Beware that u copyright your stories before post them online. Other ppl can steal them. I know because i learned the hard way. I had my ideas stolen from me
as we worked on the game. He even said he has a deal with XBOX to create this game. He then moved away with my ideas, and isnt givin me any credit. I tried gettin in contact, but each time i failed. I am not askin you to have sympathy and play the worlds smallest violin, but i am tellin u to copyright this stuff so the same thing doesnt happened to you.