And here it is:

Tips for Random Story Generation

Im tempted to cut out quotes, but then you wont read the whole thing. Its quite well written.

SO, it can and is being done.

Q.E.D.

Im still looking through the link you posted but I still don’t see how a computer based story/quest generator could compete with a handcrafted game world. The best you can do is a random joining of pre-made elements because Computer don’t have imagination

First of all the quest creation engine would merely be a supplement..not a replacement for a hand-crafted world.

Second of all, the power and strength of such a device would be in PERMUTATIONS.
If you load up say 20 basic plot arcs, then you add a random # of key npcs with their own evolving list of needs and factions..then you add a random # of objectives based on the skills the player group possesses...then you have various elements that are randomized....

The point isnt random instanced missions....but a large set of plot devices and plot types that become a longer story.

Bah. the guy in the article describes it so much better. Read the article. Its all in there.

is there any game on that site i can download, i read the link but any programmer can tell you theres quite a gap between a vauge description of how a programs going to work and actually making it

The problem is that being RANDOM is COHERENT. I read through it, and its a nice idea. Take a set of parameters, mix and match, and out comes a nice story arch. However, these story archs can get very reptitive very quickly. Even if you are being asked to do different things, like Save old guy x, or Go scout place Y, random quests just dont have that hand-crafted satisfaction to them.

A great example would be when I was designing the story to the game I was working on, I wanted some good names, so I went to a random name generator. These generators seemed to be great. They had defined syllabelles that would match to make hundreds of names. However, after going through probably hundreds of names, I found only five that I found any use out of. In reality, I only kept one as a city name.

The point is to go back to the orginal topic, An rpg where you can actually role play in. Even when random generation is used, it still feels generic.

Anon, email me at anorris1@charter.net...you have some really good insight.

Didnt mean to hijack the thread, just thought it was relevant.

I think you have to come to a definition of roleplaying...what the elements of roleplaying are for you...then break each component out and turn those bullet points into larger gameplay processes for users to follow though with.

I don't think there's any argument that the best human plot generators are better than the best automatic plot generators. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples out there where the manually generated plot could be improved upon by just about anything. Yes, mix-and-match with modular plot components can only produce what you put in in the first place, but then again a completely hand-crafted plot can only produce what you put in in the first place, and gets a lot more predictable when you replay it...

There's a quite successful line of books here in the UK, called Mills & Boon Romances, which follow a very rigid template, and could probably be churned out by a computer program almost as easily, but are eagerly devoured by grannies (of all ages) who want something slightly titillating without being shocking, and don't want to have to make the effort of following a complex plot.

Or there's numerous TV soaps where story-lines are sufficiently modular that if one soap does something the others will all have the same storyline within a few months (allegedly - I only watch one soap myself, so can't really compare)

hmm intresting never though i would get this kind of respons on my topic.

Very intresting posts going on here.

Some of the main points to make a rpg game were roleplay matters is that its an live world. And its going to change even if you as player dosnt do anything.
Give the player emotes the fine animations to actually roleplay. Let the npc have some kind of language interpreters so that all npc has a "chatbot" so you can convers with them.

And for the questing part. An intresting approch to "random" quests is to build quest from the needs of townsfolks the needs of every npc who might need somthing.

example: NPC1 needs mushrooms but he is to buisy with his daly work or to afraid of the forrest to get them so he calls for help.

So build artifical citys buzzing with life Give each kingdome/city/npc goals thay want to achive. Maby have "city of guarding" protect an artifact. While thives guild in the other part of the world want the artifact. And have an intelligent quest generator to make quest connecting to the artifact. Thives will get quests to steel it. Get information about it. and so on. While the protectors might want to develop better crafting to protect it better. And have quest generated if it was stolen to locilise who did it and were it has gone and retrive it.

I think all this is very possible but will requier huge amount of proccesing power just for the "life" and logic of the world.

A dream there is also to have creatures based upon real world creatures with their own lifes own breeding and so on. Let people be able to make creatures extinct.
For this to work it really has to be that each fight is a challange rather den just chop through a few hundred monsters.



a few of my coppers contributing to the world of rpg.


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Untill i cant differ my dreams from games i will work for the ultimate RPG game!
~Athos

Athos I think you have some great ideas. However, the sheer power required to make such an intracit system by a computer processor is unheard of. What you described would take 1/10 as long hand crafted then to auto-generate. I like the idea of NPC Motives though - Its just hard to create a system that adheres to it.

Quote:

Original post by Anonymous Poster Future Part 3 : Tapping into players creativity/manpower to fill MMORPG worlds with content.

You know there is already one of thise games out there. Its called second life =) And Shadowbane an other mmorpg game out there was built to have player made content and most of the games gameplay to be controlled by the relations between guilds. But thay failed quite hard.

Great post anyway. Are you trying/writing an article about quest generating or so? i think you sould register =) so we can know who you are =)





When i get more free time on my hands i am going to start building small scale versions of the ssystem i mentioned before. But right now i have to much school work to take care of.