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Original post by Drethon...MMORPG...

Having multiple (lots) or human players adds a lot of interest, but to me this is in a lot of ways a different issue and much, much harder, because of the number of players you have to deal with. MMORPGs already have trouble trying to make the world interesting for all players. Imagine trying to create consistent and interesting stories for them all.

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Original post by Beige Look, I think the field is quite interesting and needs to be explored, but in a way that's conscious of a story's individuality. While I'm sure that's what some of you had in mind anyway, it's rare that it's actually said in these conversations, and rarer that the conversation makes it self-evident. This leads me to believe that a lot of the people working on interactive storytelling, an idea so tightly wound into dramatic narrative, aren't even considering it from that perspective.

I think the challenge may be to create a framework that understands dramatic narrative. Why? When you talk about an individual story, you've already removed a lot of the interactivity. From what I understand, you're talking about putting the player into a story and letting the player make choices that affect it. I'm talking about putting a player in a world and letting them write their own story.

The problem is this: Really good narrative involes characters that feel and act in certain ways. Take any love story. What if the player doesn't really care at all about the other character. Not only would they rather act differently, but having to play their character through a love scene seems silly. FF7 is a great example. Aeris' death is portrayed as being a tragedy, and I know some people who said they cried. Other people didn't like her and were only concerned about the time they spent leveling her up. For the players that don't care, this is not a particularly compelling story. My goal is to allow players to play a story that they care about, that they find satisfying.

Maybe I've misinterpreted your goals, and maybe the ideal system is actually somewhere inbetween. Also, the players who want to experience everything or just want to powereplay aren't really the players we should concern ourselves with. Afterall, there isn't really much we can do about them.

tj963

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I think the challenge may be to create a framework that understands dramatic narrative. Why? When you talk about an individual story, you've already removed a lot of the interactivity. From what I understand, you're talking about putting the player into a story and letting the player make choices that affect it. I'm talking about putting a player in a world and letting them write their own story.

When I talk about individual story, I don't just mean a three-act play, strict in form. That was poorly worded on my part - I should have used the word narrative there. Then again, these definitions move so fast... :p

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The problem is this: Really good narrative involes characters that feel and act in certain ways. Take any love story. What if the player doesn't really care at all about the other character. Not only would they rather act differently, but having to play their character through a love scene seems silly. FF7 is a great example. Aeris' death is portrayed as being a tragedy, and I know some people who said they cried. Other people didn't like her and were only concerned about the time they spent leveling her up. For the players that don't care, this is not a particularly compelling story. My goal is to allow players to play a story that they care about, that they find satisfying.

Okay, but that's within limits, isn't it? Your goal is to allow players to play a story that they care about within the world you've created. Otherwise you would be making a holodeck. Tell me more about this.

How does player choice generate a story that the player finds satisfying? I guess that's The Big Question.

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Maybe I've misinterpreted your goals, and maybe the ideal system is actually somewhere inbetween. Also, the players who want to experience everything or just want to powereplay aren't really the players we should concern ourselves with. Afterall, there isn't really much we can do about them.

There are characteristics of games that will sway a player towards this sort of behavior, though, and they can be avoided.

Wow, lots to reply to!

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Original post by Beige This is what I'm trying to say. These changes do affect the narrative, the player's story, regardless whatever system you've put behind the scenes, because the player's actions are affected by the context you've created. You may be doing yourself a disservice by considering that sort of thing irrelevant.

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Why do you need to apply this to the entire story framework? It may make it more interactive, but does it really make it any more effective?

The answers to both of these are similar; the system I want to create needs to be involved within the entire framework. I'm trying to find a way to represent interactive stories such that it's easy to create the content for it, regardless of size. I'm certain now that it must involve abstracting stories in some degree. I can't just take a standard linear plotline and slap interactivity on top of it, because that doesn't scale. The example of Facade that tj963 provided shows what happens if it's tackled the standard way; a hand-crafted plot web ends up taking years to make for 15 minutes of drama; extending that to 30 minutes of drama would take a lifetime.

I also believe it will be more effective this way, because a full framework has the potential to integrate the interactivity a lot more than a fixed linear or multilinear plot would.

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Original post by Beige Gamers will either play these sorts of games to experience everything the game has to offer, to become immersed in the experience, or to perform flawlessly.

I have a strong opinion that interactive storytelling will make more players follow the second path, as long as the system is well-crafted. However, if the story system is constructed in such as way as to deal with three types of players, you can make the system accommodate all three player types.

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Those that pursue the first and last path are going to end up trying to see through the systems in order to achieve the optimum outcome. That's perfectly natural, but a standardized framework is going to suffer from being... standardized, and a framework. I'm concerned that the single-minded focus on overarching interactivity systems will generate games that end up just being predictable and not well-suited to conveying anything but the most cliche narrative.

This is real problem that interactive storytelling will suffer from (until the field is well established, possibly). Cliche narrative is pretty much a given for the first few systems, as a system needs to be heaviliy based on rules, and knowing when to break those rules to avoid clicheness will be beyond the first-generation of systems.

However I don't consider this to be a killer problem, as I think the chance to mold the story to fit the player's actions and taste will help counter that. Besides, most RPGs I've played seem to do just fine with the tritest of plots [smile]. I'm happy to leave the deep narrative concepts to the linear story writers; if anything the presence of interactive storytelling might force linear story games to have better writing.

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Look, I think the field is quite interesting and needs to be explored, but in a way that's conscious of a story's individuality.

I'm not sure we're quite thinking about the same thing here. I'm in agreement with tj963 that once you start thinking about a story's individuality you've already discarded a lot of the concept of interactivity.

While everyone is using terms like "narrative" and "story" usually with respect to games, what I'm thinking of is a whole different type of story. It's a different type of beast from the things we presently have. Consequently it will have a different set of strengths and weaknesses from the present batch of stories in games. We can argue whether the strengths of the new genre outweight the weaknesses, but until we've actually got a fully implemented interactive storytelling system that's worthy of the term we can't know for sure. And since we presently don't have a interactive storyelling system, while we do have the existing systems, I feel it's worth trying to implement one, even if the only benefit is it's just different.

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Original post by tj963 The problem is this: Really good narrative involes characters that feel and act in certain ways. Take any love story. What if the player doesn't really care at all about the other character. Not only would they rather act differently, but having to play their character through a love scene seems silly. FF7 is a great example. Aeris' death is portrayed as being a tragedy, and I know some people who said they cried. Other people didn't like her and were only concerned about the time they spent leveling her up. For the players that don't care, this is not a particularly compelling story. My goal is to allow players to play a story that they care about, that they find satisfying.

This is another reason why I'm aiming for interactive storytelling (in fact, I think stuff like that was the initial trigger for me to start working in this area; having romance scenes for characters I didn't care about, while they were missing for the ones I liked). While I think just having a level of interactivity helps add to immersion, allowing the story to mold itself to the desires of the player will make the immersion so much stronger.

To take Beige's example of two types of players, I think it should be possible to make an interactive storytelling system detect what kind of player a person is, and craft the story accordingly. Someone who is interested in story immersion could be given character-driven quests (to become beloved by all), whereas someone who is interested in powermaxing could be given epic type quests (to become the strongest hero they can be). This might involve a shift in the system, so instead of describing the balance between dramatic types (such as self-sacrifice and selfishness) the system is built around gameplay types, but it's certainly feasible and potentially quite powerful.

I disagree about clicheness being a problem. From the point of view of a real, human writer, all stories are cliche. They are all about characters who have goals and try to achieve them. There are only 3 (or 7 or 36) basic types of plot, depending on which system you like. But a real human writer has no problem producing stories which don't seem cliche, and neither should a well-implemented story generation engine which understands plot structure and has a reasonbly large vocabulary of objects to work with.

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Original post by sunandshadow I disagree about clicheness being a problem. From the point of view of a real, human writer, all stories are cliche. They are all about characters who have goals and try to achieve them. There are only 3 (or 7 or 36) basic types of plot, depending on which system you like. But a real human writer has no problem producing stories which don't seem cliche, and neither should a well-implemented story generation engine which understands plot structure and has a reasonbly large vocabulary of objects to work with.

The problem is the "reasonably large vocabulary of objects". People have had years of life experience to build up a working model of how the world works, and can use that in their writing. Computers only know what they are programmed with; it's insanely hard to abstractly represent the connection between objects that people make, because even the neurologists and psychologists haven't figured out how the brain works to that level yet. I think that the first few generations of storytelling systems will have such a limited vocabulary of objects that the resulting stories will all seem a bit "samey".

It's possible that after those systems have been build then we can start thinking of clever ways to help avoid that, but I think that there will be a machine-like quality to interactive storytelling for some time.

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Original post by sunandshadow I disagree about clicheness being a problem. From the point of view of a real, human writer, all stories are cliche. They are all about characters who have goals and try to achieve them. There are only 3 (or 7 or 36) basic types of plot, depending on which system you like. But a real human writer has no problem producing stories which don't seem cliche, and neither should a well-implemented story generation engine which understands plot structure and has a reasonbly large vocabulary of objects to work with.

From the point of view of a real, human player, every new game is potentially a new world, and every new world has a million new stories that can be told. They will not look through them and think "revenge plot, revenge plot, man vs. nature, man vs. man" unless we as writers give them reason to.

As for the story generation engine, Trapper Zoid seems to have covered that well. Speaking of which, you'll have to give me some time to reply to your post, there's a lot there :p

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The answers to both of these are similar; the system I want to create needs to be involved within the entire framework. I'm trying to find a way to represent interactive stories such that it's easy to create the content for it, regardless of size. I'm certain now that it must involve abstracting stories in some degree. I can't just take a standard linear plotline and slap interactivity on top of it, because that doesn't scale. The example of Facade that tj963 provided shows what happens if it's tackled the standard way; a hand-crafted plot web ends up taking years to make for 15 minutes of drama; extending that to 30 minutes of drama would take a lifetime.

Players play story-driven games to experience the content - to be immersed in it. Abstracting the story in the name of interactivity is like destroying the village in order to save it.

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I also believe it will be more effective this way, because a full framework has the potential to integrate the interactivity a lot more than a fixed linear or multilinear plot would.

Okay, effective at what?

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I'm not sure we're quite thinking about the same thing here. I'm in agreement with tj963 that once you start thinking about a story's individuality you've already discarded a lot of the concept of interactivity.

You're interpreting "individuality of the story" way more narrowly than I intended. An individual story, the player's personal narrative, in no way discards the concept of interactivity.

Every player experiences the games they play linearly, regardless of the systems working behind the scenes. That individual experience is what I'm talking about.

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While everyone is using terms like "narrative" and "story" usually with respect to games, what I'm thinking of is a whole different type of story. It's a different type of beast from the things we presently have. Consequently it will have a different set of strengths and weaknesses from the present batch of stories in games.

I am not sure that it is that different. I'd like you to explain, using your own terms, what exactly your vision is.

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To take Beige's example of two types of players, I think it should be possible to make an interactive storytelling system detect what kind of player a person is, and craft the story accordingly. Someone who is interested in story immersion could be given character-driven quests (to become beloved by all), whereas someone who is interested in powermaxing could be given epic type quests (to become the strongest hero they can be). This might involve a shift in the system, so instead of describing the balance between dramatic types (such as self-sacrifice and selfishness) the system is built around gameplay types, but it's certainly feasible and potentially quite powerful.

It's feasible, yes. But then you're not really getting into interactive storytelling, what with the powergamers. You're getting into creating a game-designer-in-a-box that'll dynamically create challenges, and that's a seperate topic. An neat thought though, probably worthy of its own thread.

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While everyone is using terms like "narrative" and "story" usually with respect to games, what I'm thinking of is a whole different type of story. It's a different type of beast from the things we presently have. Consequently it will have a different set of strengths and weaknesses from the present batch of stories in games. We can argue whether the strengths of the new genre outweight the weaknesses, but until we've actually got a fully implemented interactive storytelling system that's worthy of the term we can't know for sure. And since we presently don't have a interactive storyelling system, while we do have the existing systems, I feel it's worth trying to implement one, even if the only benefit is it's just different.

I don't disagree. I just want these concerns to be kept in mind, since it doesn't seem like anyone is considering them.

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Players play story-driven games to experience the content - to be immersed in it. Abstracting the story in the name of interactivity is like destroying the village in order to save it.

I don't consider abstracting a story to be analogous to "destroying the village"; I think it's possible to build stories from sets of rules. The end result might be a bit formulaic but it will still be a story. I also think that formulaic stories can still be immersive, especially if they are interactive.

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Quote: I also believe it will be more effective this way, because a full framework has the potential to integrate the interactivity a lot more than a fixed linear or multilinear plot would. Okay, effective at what?

More effective at being interactive. Specifically, potentially allowing player choice to have a deeper influence on the path of the experience of the story.

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You're interpreting "individuality of the story" way more narrowly than I intended. An individual story, the player's personal narrative, in no way discards the concept of interactivity. Every player experiences the games they play linearly, regardless of the systems working behind the scenes. That individual experience is what I'm talking about.

I thought you meant the single track of the player's experience with the story. It's possible I've misunderstood you, but one of the complaints I've read regarding interactivity from some game writers is that it robs them of control over the story path. This is true to some degree, but I think the trade-off of giving a little bit of control to the player will provide a whole new type of story experience.

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I am not sure that it is that different. I'd like you to explain, using your own terms, what exactly your vision is.

The ultimate vision I have for interactive storytelling is analogous to Lewis Carroll telling tales of Wonderland to the Liddell sisters, or the one I've seen from somewhere (but I can't remember where, maybe Chris Crawford?) about a grandfather telling bedtime stories to his granddaughter. I suppose you could consider it an automated dungeon master as well (I think I've used this description earlier on in this thread, haven't I?)

Essentially, the storytelling system creates a story world for the player, but unlike today's stories where the player is forced to follow a strict linear path, the choices of the player are respected. Instead of the system effectively yelling "You can't do that! That would ruin the story that I'm trying to tell!" everytime the player tries to veer away, it would allow the player some freedom to shape the path they want. There still needs to be structure in order to provide a story; this isn't the same as just letting the player roam free in a world simulation. But the system must allow the player to make some story relevant decisions and show them the consequences of that decision.

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It's feasible, yes. But then you're not really getting into interactive storytelling, what with the powergamers. You're getting into creating a game-designer-in-a-box that'll dynamically create challenges, and that's a seperate topic. An neat thought though, probably worthy of its own thread.

Not really; it's related. With interactive storytelling, the gameplay and the story would be intertwined. If the story is interactive, there's no reason for it not to be. The problem I have with the present RPGs is that they don't adapt to the choices of the player.

Take powergaming for example; the present standard plot of hero-saves-the-world-against-powercrazy-villain is incompatible with the path of the powergamer. Heroes are often about self-sacrifice, whereas powergaming is about selfishness (being the best you can be with disregard to anything else). It's a valid way of playing the game, but the story should reflect that. If a hero is more interested in building his stats than saving the world, then the story should change to a more appropriate form, such the tales of the legendary Greek heroes or that of Siegfried, where the hero can expected to act as selfishly as they like. Or the story could change so the hero is now interested in achieving ultimate power themselves, and take the place of the villain.

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Original post by Beige You're interpreting "individuality of the story" way more narrowly than I intended. An individual story, the player's personal narrative, in no way discards the concept of interactivity. Every player experiences the games they play linearly, regardless of the systems working behind the scenes. That individual experience is what I'm talking about.

I think I understand now what you're talking about, tell me if I'm right. When refering to the individuality of a story, you're talking about what one might call a particular story. You're talking about ensuring that each story a player experiences is enjoyable, and that we don't sacrifice the quality of a single play through in order to create lots of different ones. I (and Trapper Zoid too I think) thought you were talking about a particular story with the ability to make some choices, but you were actually talking about a single experience of a larger set. I agree this is an issue we shouldn't overlook.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid To take Beige's example of two types of players, I think it should be possible to make an interactive storytelling system detect what kind of player a person is, and craft the story accordingly. Someone who is interested in story immersion could be given character-driven quests (to become beloved by all), whereas someone who is interested in powermaxing could be given epic type quests (to become the strongest hero they can be). This might involve a shift in the system, so instead of describing the balance between dramatic types (such as self-sacrifice and selfishness) the system is built around gameplay types, but it's certainly feasible and potentially quite powerful.

I'm not big on changing the system based on player type. After all, those "types" aren't very well defined, may change over time, and may not always be accurate. My hope would be that if the player didn't want to spend time on relationships, he might just end up being known as a thief or ranger or something. Somebody that works alone and tends to avoid human contact, but can otherwise be good/evil or any other type of characteristic.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Not really; it's related. With interactive storytelling, the gameplay and the story would be intertwined. If the story is interactive, there's no reason for it not to be. The problem I have with the present RPGs is that they don't adapt to the choices of the player.

Agreed.

tj963