Narrative mechanics

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Sat, 07/17/2004 - 17:05

jwarrend

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I had the opportunity to playtest SiskNY's game "Ghost Hunters" the other day, and while I enjoyed the game, I mentioned to Steve that I felt it could benefit from a stronger "narrative" element. Steve has come up with some great changes that sound like they'll really increase the narrative tension in the game, and I hope to play it again with the revision.

However, this got me thinking about a way to introduce a "story" element to a game, and how difficult this is. I'm not simply talking about a game having a "story arc" as in a beginning, mid, and endgame, I'm talking about a game that specifically makes players feel like they're involved in a rich story. It seems that the difficulty contains at least two prongs.

The first is the "replay" element. One implementation that I've seen work quite well is that of "Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective", where players are trying to solve a mystery and have a map of London with labeled locations. Going to that location involves turning to a corresponding entry in a book and reading the encounter. The theme evocation is absolutely beautiful, but...you can only play each adventure once (after that, you know the solution to the mystery!). So it seems that having a game with rich narrative but also high replayability is tough.

On the other hand, there's the "cohesiveness" element. You want the story to hang together, to feel like it's one, comprehensive story. The "entries in a book" model is great for that. But, such a solution, or a similar one, requires an "all wise" intelligence who "knows" the whole story and can tailor each encounter based on the overall story. For a game where no player wants to be a moderator, a game with components that lend replayability, like cards or tiles, must be placed in such a way that the game system at one location has "knowledge" of the elements at a different location.

This seems almost insurmountable, and I'm sure there are even other problems that I'm not foreseeing. (There's, of course, the "depth" element; Clue is highly replayable, and highly cohesive, but doesn't have a very rich "story" that you're taking part in...)

I propose an interesting solution to the dilemma, and I'm curious whether people have any impressions or comments. The idea would be that each player represents a specific "character", and is given a book describing encounters specific to that character. Then, there would also be a deck of cards, which in some way are drawn by each player, and which reference one of the entries in the active player's book. So, for example, there could be a card that says, "The telephone rings. Go to Entry 200 to answer it." Then, the active player goes to the indicated entry and depending on which character he's playing, you'll get a different outcome. And of course, the entry could correspondingly get some variability by requiring you to draw a card, eg "Entry 117: You uncover something in the basement. Draw a Discovery card."

That, combined with the order in which the cards come out, could provide a good amount of game-to-game variation while still getting the "narrative" element of the entries in the books. Of course, the kicker will be having narrative elements that are interchangable enough that they all "fit" together. In some sense, this just hangs on choosing the right kind of story where shuffling the events doesn't change anything material. In a "mystery"-style story, it would be just fine because the increasing tension comes from increasing levels of discovery, but it doesn't matter what order the facts come out in. But additionally, a way to pull this off would be to have the story elements relate to the game state in simple ways. For example, "Lightning strikes: the lights in the house are now OUT" and this affects the gameplay in some way.

The other hurdle, as I see it, is the difficulty of having some events forcing the story irrevocably down one path. For example, if the killer is revealed in one entry to be a woman, it shouldn't be possible for a different entry to contradict this fact. In some sense, this could be achieved by having the essential "facts" of the story being orthogonal. Or, by having certain events set up a chain that only allows certain other events to come out (though that's harder to rig0.

Anyone have any thoughts or reactions to this idea? Has such a thing been done? I think it's potentially a good compromise between using cards, which give good variety but poor cohesiveness, and "book entries", which give good cohesiveness but poor replayability.

I suspect actually designing a game like this will be the work of several years, but I may give it a go if I'm feeling ambitious! There's a game coming out from Avalon Hill called "Betrayal at House on the Hill" that sounds like it may have some similar ideas; we'll see how close they are to what I'm describing!

Thanks for any thoughts,

Jeff

Sun, 07/18/2004 - 01:35

daem0n_faust

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Narrative mechanics

How about a ccg-type of encounters (or maybe the term "expandable card game" since it isn't actually for collecting purposes, but playing)? My point here is, making either a game whose encounters are based on drawing random cards in the "encounter deck" (as it always is with card games), but there's these story-telling elements and missions on cards (like maybe find this character or item, which are also cards on that deck). So it is practically replayable, although I think too many gameplays will prove otherwise. So when people become bored with that same series of adventures, a new set of encounters may be purchased. Errr... I'm not thinking of earnings here, more of necessity. Then, when people want to play a real long-term adventure, they could combine all available encounter decks.... will this work is beyond me for now.

Another idea is to have a "campaign card list". Say, we have a complete set of encounter cards. I have these preconstructed CAMPAIGNS in my rulebook which lists the cards that are needed to pull that kind of game off.

This is sounding too much of an RPG card game. Then again, if the game isn't only revolving on encountering cards, that is, there are other game utilities such as board, maps, story-based missions... then probably it MAY work.

Sun, 07/18/2004 - 12:40

Scurra

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Narrative mechanics

I have to say that "All for One" started out with a similar intention: I wanted to find some way to create a storyline game without imposing exactly those restrictions that Jeff describes.
In the end, I couldn't manage to sustain both a cohesive storyline and an actual game, and ended up shifting more towards the game component - there are 48 Missions (which are loosely based on incidents from The Three Musketeers and the following books) but there is no sequential imperative; although completing one Mission will tend to make another one invalid, thus preventing completely self-contradictory outcomes in the same game. But that's as far as it goes for "storyline" in my game.
(Although I suspect that if a group wanted to, they could make a plausible story out of the completed Mission cards from one game...)

In other words, I don't think that there is a viable way to combine both a deep storyline and a fully replayable game. However, I look forward to being proved wrong :)

Sun, 07/18/2004 - 16:02

Anonymous

Narrative mechanics

jwarrend wrote:

...this got me thinking about a way to introduce a "story" element to a game...

Cool! I'm glad that Ghost Hunters brought out the desire for more and better narrative style games.

Quote:

...and how difficult this is.

You got that right! Ghost Hunters is actually the second game of mine in which I set out to tackle a narrative feel. The first one (Sherlock Holmes/Great Detectives) started off when my brother and lamented (way back in 2000) that Clue simply didn't have the depth we wanted in a detection game. We went on from there to try and develop a system whereby players would gather clues and piece together the facts of the crime and then deduce the perpetrator. It started to break apart when we realized that we would not be able to rely on players making the right deductions regarding the clues we were giving (especially considering the Victorian setting). We moved the game more towards a non-deductive element which works more for replay and game simplicity, but is lacking in the richness of narrative that we originally wanted.

Later I created Ghost Hunters as a way to allow players to feel as though they were taking part in a tale of the supernatural. My main fear was the staleness of having the entire game be dependent on either a book to drive encounters (once the book was gone through, players would know waht to expect), or to rely on a game master to select encounters that fit into the growing narrative (I really didn't want a game master).

The end result, the random encounters version that you playtested in Albany, was the first step towards what I really wanted. The improved version will be better in that the difficulty level of the encounters will increase as the players move through the game. This will get me closer, but still not as "narrative" as I wanted. There will be specific narrative elements and encounters triggered at various game stages, but the bulk of the encounters are still random (though heavily themed).

Scurra wrote:

In other words, I don't think that there is a viable way to combine both a deep storyline and a fully replayable game.

I have had a very difficult time finding just the right balance. I think that the new direction I'm taking is a good balance for me personally, but there always feels like more that can be done to lend a narrative element.

jwarrend wrote:

I propose an interesting solution to the dilemma, and I'm curious whether people have any impressions or comments. The idea would be that each player represents a specific "character", and is given a book describing encounters specific to that character. Then, there would also be a deck of cards, which in some way are drawn by each player, and which reference one of the entries in the active player's book.

Sort of like the old DragonQuest/TSR adventure books, but with multiple books and a deck of cards that all intertwine. It would be intersting to see it come together, though the whole concept of intertwining narrative elements (especially in the event of varying numbers of players) would be very complex to lay out. I would be interested inhelping out if I can. It would be a great game if it worked as you envision.

Sun, 07/18/2004 - 16:05

Anonymous

Narrative mechanics

Scurra wrote:

...there are 48 Missions (which are loosely based on incidents from The Three Musketeers and the following books) but there is no sequential imperative...

I missed this reading through the first time, this is exactly what I did in Sherlock Holmes/Great Detectives. The elements in the game evoke the world of the Sherlock Holmes narratives, though there is no mandatory order for the elements to appear. They all interplay together to build a game, but not a narrative.

Sun, 07/18/2004 - 18:27

Scurra

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Narrative mechanics

SiskNY wrote:

The elements in the game evoke the world of the Sherlock Holmes narratives, though there is no mandatory order for the elements to appear. They all interplay together to build a game, but not a narrative.

Yeah, I think that's the inevitable outcome of a process like this - you want to simulate a particular world without being constrained by a known plot, and this drives the design process down a particular path.
That isn't to say that the narrative aspect can't be fairly strong (build your game around a map and requirements to visit certain areas of it; demand that particular criteria are met in order to achieve specific goals etc.) but finding a way for it to work without needing a GM-type player seems to me to be the hardest task.
If you have been following the discussions about a putative X-Men game (on the Wiki), you'll see that Seth and I have been grappling with mechanisms that try to build on my All for One format but develop the concept towards a much more specific storyline idea (although in that case, it seems to be more "warring storylines" than one more coherent one.) But the intention in that case is clearly to try and evolve the format such that it has scope for introducing different "stories" that are resolved in different ways, thus keeping players on their toes without needing the intervention of a GM-player to control the system.

Mon, 07/19/2004 - 10:34

jwarrend

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Narrative mechanics

Thanks for all the replies. I haven't seen the rules to All for One or Sherlock Holmes CCG, so I can't comment on how they succeed at doing what I'm describing, but I think both seem to have the right idea, that there isn't some preset "story", but rather a series of interchangable story elements that conspire to create something that "feels" like a story.

The concern I have, though, is that the "story" that the game occurences create could feel more like just a long string of turns of equal importance rather than a racheting up of tension as the game goes on. Certainly, I'm sure there are tricks you can use, like making later occurences more "important" than earlier ones, or something. But the key in getting a "story" feel is that the game should progress in a narrative way, with a beginning, development, climax, and conclusion.

I think the difficulty in what I'm proposing appears to be having storyline elements that are substantial and yet which are interchangable. Part of the problem is, as it always is, defining the goals for the players; what are they supposed to be doing? The advantage of this format, I think, is that, like any good story, you are learning as you go what is happening with the story.

One way to help things out might be to impose some broader "structure" on the game. Like, for example, that of Mystery in the Abbey, where after everyone has had a turn, they all return to the Chapel and an Event happens. Having that kind of an element could give structure to the game, ie, if players always have to dine together, and maybe a "dinner event" card appears each time.

As Scurra points out, though, the kicker is really to have the system organize itself in a coherent way without a GM; to have the drop of card X affect the drop of card Y without either knowing the where/when details of the other.

I do think it will be tough, but I think it's achievable. I expect it will require veering more into the "story" direction than in the "game" direction, though, and I think that need not be a bad thing. As I said, I think a game can have a "narrative flow" to it, but I'm looking to create something with a very strong feeling of being in a story, without relying on role-playing from the characters.

I welcome Steve's offer of assistance, and I'd be happy to have everyone else on board who thinks the idea is worth pursuing. I'm not necessarily seeking to create a game (or "just one game", rather), so much as a new (or different, anyway) kind of game. Of course, when the system is coherent and the game is ready to go, I'll need plenty of help writing good story elements. A "thriller" story is probably an easy place to start, but something totally different could be explored, as well.

Accepting the idea that "different events have different effects depending on the character that draws them" will work, the key challenges seem to be:

-- Coming up with a way for the different events to come out

-- Ensuring that each event "locks in" the story in some direction. ie, if one card reveals that one player is a vampire, he can't later turn out to be a wolfman as well.

-- Coming up with story elements that are interchangable, yet substantive.
e.g., "You hear a loud noise in the basement" can work with a lot of different stories, but who cares unless there's something important associated with the noise?

-- Coming up with a way for story elements to affect the game state.
Taking the "loud noise" example, what does the loud noise *do*? If the players try to find the source, how do you ensure that the game does something interesting in reaction?

I thank you all for the discussion and welcome further thoughts, particularly with respect to the system I've proposed -- will it work? What other obstacles will it present?

Thanks for any thoughts...

Mon, 07/19/2004 - 11:17

nosissies

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Narrative mechanics

jwarrend wrote:

Thanks for all the replies. I still haven't seen the rules to All for One or Sherlock Holmes CCG

fyi Jeff, you actually have a copy of Steve's Sherlock holmes instructions sitting at my house :-) He left copies for you and mike.

by the way, nice thread. I'm working on a project as well which would benefit greatly from a mechanism which balances narrative/story arc/character motivation and game structure/events.

I'll just state a few of the challenges I see, in no particular order, which pretty much echo everything which has been said.

In my case I'm working with a particular theme, which would work really well for an RPG, but my goal is to create a board game. So, how do you get some of the dynamics of an rpg into a board game with no game master which will only last an hour or two and still be interesting the second (and third and fourth) time you play it.

Part of this is motivating the players, which we talk about doing via goals, but it would be nice to evoke some emotions as well. Can you motivate players by fear, compassion, insecurity, love, etc? For what it's worth, the first game I think of there is "careers" where you decide what your goal will be in terms of happiness, fame and fortune.

Replayability is huge. You could tie the game very tightly to a storyline, but then the game would likely play the same way every time. Sort of like the old choose your own adventure books. Turn to page 25 if you want to go into the forest, turn to page 34 if you want to go into the cottage (quickly scan the pages and see if you die....then pick a page).

Unique characters/goals are dificult too, you don't want the players to have to read a novel to sort out what happens to their character. For example, if one person's goal is to slay as many vampires as they can, and another player's goal is to avoid vampires, how does interacting with a vampire effect each player. Do you want to have to write a ton of unique rules which only come into play for each character in very unique circumstances? this seems like it would bog down a board game.

thanks for listening to my babbling.

peace,
Tom

Mon, 07/19/2004 - 11:56

jwarrend

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Narrative mechanics

nosissies wrote:

by the way, nice thread. I'm working on a project as well which would benefit greatly from a mechanism which balances narrative/story arc/character motivation and game structure/events.

Cool, I hope to hear more about it/play it at some point!

Quote:

In my case I'm working with a particular theme, which would work really well for an RPG, but my goal is to create a board game. So, how do you get some of the dynamics of an rpg into a board game with no game master which will only last an hour or two and still be interesting the second (and third and fourth) time you play it.

This seems to be something that a lot of people around here are working on. For my game, at least, I'm not looking so much for the "role playing" elements as much as the "rich tapestry of a story" elements. However, one of the sticking points is deciding how broad the range of stories ought to be; should all of the stories start from the same "jumping off point", like, for example, "You're exploring an old graveyard", or should it be possible to be exploring a graveyard, a haunted house, an abandoned village, etc? The more similar the stories are, the more interchangable the elements will be, yet the more same each game will feel, as well.

Quote:

Part of this is motivating the players, which we talk about doing via goals, but it would be nice to evoke some emotions as well. Can you motivate players by fear, compassion, insecurity, love, etc?

This is a discussion unto itself! The best I've seen is Reiner Knizia's "Lord of the Rings"; every time I play that game, I feel like things are getting really tense by the time we get to Mordor. As for the other emotions, I was asking exactly the same question wrt "compassion" in developing "Disciples". My one lingering lament with that game is that the different actions (Preach, Heal, Exorcise, Compassion) don't really "feel" very different, and I was trying to find a way to give the different actions some different functionality, so that you weren't just playing a card that says "Compassion", but that you had to *be* compassionate. Obviously, I didn't come up with anything! The game works, so I'm not worried about it, but it would be interesting to make a game that puts players through different emotional experiences.

There are some that are easy; anger is an easy emotion to produce, as evidenced by that classic game, "Slap your neighbor in the face". My feeling is that for more complex emotions, generating these in a competitive game is tough. For example, I was toying with a "redemption" mechanic for Disciples where a player could ask for "forgiveness" and avoid some penalty. But this was forgiveness in name only -- the player would only be doing what he perceived would get him more points. The very soul of forgiveness was missing.

And it's kind of that way with other emotions as well. I think that to truly get people to experience complex emotions, you'd have to get beyond a game that had a competitive structure, or in fact, a goal structure at all. That may not be a bad thing, but I think both the games we're describing still seek to be a "game" first and foremost.

Quote:

Replayability is huge. You could tie the game very tightly to a storyline, but then the game would likely play the same way every time. Sort of like the old choose your own adventure books. Turn to page 25 if you want to go into the forest, turn to page 34 if you want to go into the cottage (quickly scan the pages and see if you die....then pick a page).

Yes, this is what I'm trying to avoid, and it's my hope that a different person experiencing Event 200 in this game, which in turns leads to another player experiencing Event 201, will make the game replayable by virtue of being impossible to consider all of the possible different permutations the story could take.

Quote:

Unique characters/goals are dificult too, you don't want the players to have to read a novel to sort out what happens to their character. For example, if one person's goal is to slay as many vampires as they can, and another player's goal is to avoid vampires, how does interacting with a vampire effect each player. Do you want to have to write a ton of unique rules which only come into play for each character in very unique circumstances? this seems like it would bog down a board game

A very good point, and to be honest, I haven't really begun to think in terms of what players are supposed to be "doing", what defined ways there are by which they interact with the game itself. I agree, a lot of special rules are undesirable; I think a simple overall structure to the game will be needed to relate the events to the game state.

I think it *may* be possible to have different stats for different characters without having to roll dice. For example, one event could be "Locked Door: Open to Entry 203", and Brutus' Entry 203 says "You force open the door", whereas Wimperella's Entry 203 says "You can't get the door open."
This simplifies needing a special rule about Opening locked doors -- it's all built into the game. Yet, the character descriptions will feature some overviews as to the character's strengths and weaknesses, such that you'd expect to need Brutus to force open a door, and wouldn't expect Wimperella to be able to...

Just some more thoughts; thanks for chiming in!

Mon, 07/19/2004 - 12:25

Anonymous

Narrative mechanics

nosissies wrote:

...quickly scan the pages and see if you die....then pick a page...

:lol: It's like you were looking over my shoulder back when I used to be into those types of books!

Mon, 07/19/2004 - 13:43

#10

Anonymous

Narrative mechanics

This thread is along the same lines as an article I read last weekend that I found after following a link in a different thread:

http://www.costik.com/gamnstry.html
"Where Stories End and Games Begin"
by Greg Costikyan

It discusses various items that lie along the continuum from a pure narrative story to a pure interactive game. It's a decent read, and might give you guys some more things to think about (or not).

--Randy

Tue, 07/20/2004 - 12:30

#11

phpbbadmin

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Also

Note that the geek has a whole category for the Story Telling mechanic. Although some hardly belong there, there are some interesting games to study such as Dark Cults and Once upon a time.

Tue, 07/20/2004 - 13:00

#12

Anonymous

Narrative mechanics

Dark Cults is one of my favorite games if only for the great artwork! I can sit and look over the cards on a stormy night and be taken away by the atmosphere. It is also an interesting game for storytelling (though not the best or most balanced game to do so). It involves a rudimentary method of developing a story from the pieces represented on the cards. Each card indicates the types of pieces that must follow it. If someone plays a "Sudden Commotion" card, the next player must play a character (either malevolent or benign) to explain why there was a commotion.

It is a fascinating means of producing a story within the limited confines of a game environment. Much like the article to which nickmoniker linked in an earlier post (excellent read in relation to this thread, by the way). In the article, Costikyan makes the argument that stories succeed best when presented in a linear fashion that produces the maximum desired effect. Games succeed best when players are let loose within the confine of the game environment to wander freely and work towards a goal.

I agree with his finer points, but I don't necessarily agree that stories and games are mutually exclusive, only that any successful merger of the two will need to be incredibly well thought out to accomplish the emotional impact of both a game AND a story.

Dark Cults and other story telling games work well as games that evoke the feeling that you're telling a story, but in the end, there is no emotional impact as there would be after reading a good story. All the bits are there, but the whole isn't as meaningful.

The biggest difficulty is in the linearity of any good story. Something else mentioned in the article is the use of branching to create a story in which players can make decisions that affect the outcome of the game. That would be something like what Jeff mentioned in each player having a book to reference when they do something. The main drawback is that everything is still linear. You may branch down different paths, but those paths must be accounted for in some way ahead of time.

RPG's and games with game masters succeed to a greater extent in the fusion of story and game in that the game master can direct the game in a meaningful way based on the actions of the players. The game itself doesn't need to contain every possible action of the players. The game needs only account for the mechanics behind those actions (if a player wants to fight, cast a spell, read a book, interact with villagers, etc. this is how they do it). The game master fills in the narrative from their own imagination (if you get a good GM) or from the framework of a module.

How would a game incorporate a series of mechanics to account for player actions, an environment in which the players can pursue their goals according to the mechanics of the game, and still grow in a fashion that leaves the players with the emotional outcome of having partaken in a story?

Tue, 07/20/2004 - 14:00

#13

jwarrend

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Narrative mechanics

SiskNY wrote:

The biggest difficulty is in the linearity of any good story. Something else mentioned in the article is the use of branching to create a story in which players can make decisions that affect the outcome of the game. That would be something like what Jeff mentioned in each player having a book to reference when they do something. The main drawback is that everything is still linear. You may branch down different paths, but those paths must be accounted for in some way ahead of time.

Not necessarily; again, what I'm proposing is a level of interaction between the "replay" components (cards, tiles) and the "static" components (story elements) that allows the game to rely equally on both.

For example, let's say the story is a mystery and the killer has 3 attributes -- shirt color, hair style, and facial features, each of which have 5 subvariables. Now, in my game, the idea would be that on your turn, you'd pull a card that says "You find the killer's shirt: Go to entry 200", and in each player's book, entry 200 tells the shirt color, but it's different in each book, so the outcome depends on who pulled that card. Now, the effect that this has on the game depends on the current status of the game; for example, are either of the other two facts known? Will players seek to capture all of the green-shirted suspects, or search for more clues regarding the other facts?

Obviously, this is a stupid example of a story with zero depth, but my point is, I *think* that you can get some variability from the order in which the story elements come out, and what those story elements happen to be (depending on who they happen to). The trick is getting story elements that are interchangable enough that they still tell a good story regardless of which ones actually occur.

One way to do this is to make the story elements orthogonal, as in the simple example above -- learning the killer's shirt color doesn't affect your quest for info about his hair style. This kind of story permits *deductive* reasoning.

However, I don't know if I want a deduction game -- I'd rather have a game whose "mystery", to the extent that there is one, is solved *inductively*, ie, you gather evidence that points to a conclusion, but it isn't by eliminating all other possibilities so much as by fitting the evidence together.

It's beginning to sink in how insanely ambitious this is, and I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a bad idea to start out by testing the cards&books mechanic with a simple, silly story just to see if it can be done; I just need to think of a simple story that will work. With me, though, I tend to go all out from the get-go and bring the thing full-on to playtesting, which means that I probably spend more time on dead-end games than I would if I built them more piece-wise, but it's fun trying to create a whole system so that's typically what I do. We'll see how it goes!

-Jeff

Tue, 07/20/2004 - 14:14

#14

jwarrend

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Narrative mechanics

(Decided I'd respond to this separately...)

Quote:

How would a game incorporate a series of mechanics to account for player actions, an environment in which the players can pursue their goals according to the mechanics of the game, and still grow in a fashion that leaves the players with the emotional outcome of having partaken in a story?

I submit that the person who can answer that question will have something truly original on their hands!

The closest game to succeed in doing this, from reading a little on the BoardGameGeek, seems to be "Tales of the Arabian Nights", which sounds kind of like a very elaborate "Choose your own adventure" book, and sounds very well done. At each encounter, you read a paragraph, then are asked how you will respond, which blips you to another encounter depending on your response.

To make more specific what my personal aim for this project is, I submit the following design goals:

-- The goals for each player should depend on the character that they are playing, and should be learned during the gameplay, and should respond to events that happen during the game.

As a counterexample, there's a game called "Black Morn Manor" in which players are trying to beat a uber-bad guy, and to do so they need to find out where he can be defeated and what is needed to defeat him. Since there are 10 different "masters" in the game, there's some replayability, but it's always the same basic story -- we're all trying to beat the big baddie. I want several levels of narrative richness on top of that -- I want each character to have a unique goal. And, I want that goal to vary from game to game. I want discovering what it is you're supposed to be doing to be part of the game. And, I want that to depend on other things that happen during the game.

-- The game should change depending on which characters experience which events.

For example, if there's an Event that reveals to the players that the bad guy is plotting to take over the world, who first learns this should influence the game; perhaps the bad guy attempts to persuade Baron von Sinister to collude with him, whereas he tries to kill John Goodie because he knows that only Goodie can stand in his way.

-- Certain events should render others impossible.

This is the tough one to implement; the crux of the matter is that if the bad guy's goal is revealed to be "take over the world", it shouldn't later be revealed to be "steal money from the French". I *think* that a way to do this would be to put each Event *class* into a bin of 10 possible entries, say, so when you draw a card that says "Event 230" happens, you have to roll d10 and add that to the result to see if you get 231, 232, 233, etc.

But I agree, Steve, the crux of the matter is to come up with a game mechanic that allows players to interact with the system, in a simple, economical set of rules. What I want to avoid, to whatever extent possible, is a "number based system", ie "compare your stat in this category to this number, and see if you succeed." Nothing wrong with such systems, but they've been done well in the past (by you, e.g.) and I want to do something different.

I would be very willing to continue this discussion at chat tonight, for example, or further in this thread...

-Jeff

Tue, 07/20/2004 - 16:02

#15

GamesOnTheBrain

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Re: Narrative mechanics

jwarrend wrote:

The idea would be that each player represents a specific "character", and is given a book describing encounters specific to that character. Then, there would also be a deck of cards, which in some way are drawn by each player, and which reference one of the entries in the active player's book. So, for example, there could be a card that says, "The telephone rings. Go to Entry 200 to answer it." Then, the active player goes to the indicated entry and depending on which character he's playing, you'll get a different outcome. And of course, the entry could correspondingly get some variability by requiring you to draw a card, eg "Entry 117: You uncover something in the basement. Draw a Discovery card."

This idea reminds me of a game called Ambush!, a solitaire game of World War II combat. Ambush uses a Paragraph Booklet and large cards with paragraph numbers on them. Each mission has its own card. The card is inserted into an envelope with a window on it. The card is slid back and forth to reveal a particular paragraph number when entering a certain hex on the battlefield. The player then looks up the paragraph number and learns what happens in the game.

Fri, 08/13/2004 - 06:28

#16

sedjtroll

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Joined: 07/21/2008

Narrative mechanics

Jeff, what you propose sounds to me very much like 221B Baker street- the Sherlock Holmes game you described in which there's a book of clues, and for each Mystery (a game is one Mystery) the appropriate clues are numbered on the Mystery card. Thus, if you visit the Apothecary, you look on the card and see that the Apothecary clue is number 57, so you look up #57 and get your clue. Next time you play the Apothecary clue will be #61 or something. Likewise for the rest of the buildings.

So your suggestion sounds to me very much like 221B Baker street, but instead of 1 book and several clue locations (listed on the Mystery card), there'd be 1 clue location (the deck of cards) and several books (1 per player).

In 221B the clue locations change from game to game, in your version the same deck of cards would be used and therefore the same clue numbers. But in 221B all the clues are the same from game to game (but only some of them are referenced), in your game the clues would be different from book to book.

I think this is a doable mechanic for the same reason 221B works... but as you say it would take a LOT of coordination so that it makes sense.

On another note entirely, regarding a narrative feel to a game like All For One which is made up of discreet events based on a book, but that do not occur in any particular order (as they would in the book)... What about numbering the events, and then either having the rule that the eventes must occur in order (lame) or simply that you cannot do an event numbered lower than the previous event that occured (interesting).

In other words, suppose you're game was based on Star Wars, and the events were things like:
1. Luke meets Old Ben
2. Stormtropers kill Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru
3. Luke starts force training
4. Rescue Princess Leia
5. Receive stolen Death Star Plans
6. Destroy Death Star
...etc
Then whichever event happens first, say it's #3, then events 1 and 2 are invalid. If the next event is #5 then 4 becomes invalid. So whatever events DO take place do so in the correct order. It'd be like having the movie on in the other room as you walk in and out.

I would not recommend that for All For One at the moment because I think it would detract from the game, but a game with a narrative feel might be able to incorporate such a mechanic.

Brainstoming... Oooh! Idea!
There would have to be something to do with the event cards that become invalid- either the cards could have dual uses, or maybe an 'invalid' event card could be played 'onto the pile' of an adjacent event... Say you did the Stormtroopers kill Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru event, so you keep it in front of you. Then someone could not do the Luke meets old Ben event, but maybe it could be played onto your pile in front of event #2, making a chain or group of sequential events. Scoring would be different than actually DOING the event, and playing the card that way would probably be less involved in actually DOING the event. Perhaps when you play a card that way you score something, and then at the endgame you score for your story bits, the more sequential cards in your story bit, the bigger you score for it. Hmm...

Fri, 08/13/2004 - 11:02

#17

jwarrend

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Joined: 08/03/2008

Narrative mechanics

sedjtroll wrote:

Jeff, what you propose sounds to me very much like 221B Baker street- the Sherlock Holmes game you described in which there's a book of clues, and for each Mystery (a game is one Mystery) the appropriate clues are numbered on the Mystery card.

Yes, I've played 221B Baker St before. It is a cute enough game, though the clues are sometime pretty lame. (It's common that to identify the killer, you have to solve a word puzzle or something). But the idea behind the game is great.

Quote:

So your suggestion sounds to me very much like 221B Baker street, but instead of 1 book and several clue locations (listed on the Mystery card), there'd be 1 clue location (the deck of cards) and several books (1 per player).

Yes, it's a bit like that; the additional difference is that unlike 221B, in which each mystery is "self-contained", the entries in my books would be more isolated story elements that could fit together in a variety of narratives.

Quote:

I think this is a doable mechanic for the same reason 221B works... but as you say it would take a LOT of coordination so that it makes sense.

Yeah, that's really the hard part; perhaps insurmountably hard, I'm not yet sure. The trick is that if you have a plot element "You hear a thumping noise in the basement", say, that could fit into a lot of stories in a lot of places, but it's connecting everything together in a way that flows that will be tough.

Quote:

What about numbering the events, and then either having the rule that the eventes must occur in order (lame) or simply that you cannot do an event numbered lower than the previous event that occured (interesting).

I think something like this could work fine; my idea was sort of to have the narrative "telescope", such that the story exists on several levels of "revelation" and each revelation narrows down the story a bit more. For example, maybe the first plot point is "who is terrorizing the town?", and once you've resolved that you move on to "how do you stop it from doing so?", but the idea would be that there would be other plot points that could have happened instead. Not sure if I'm explaining this very well...

Quote:

Brainstoming... Oooh! Idea!
Perhaps when you play a card that way you score something, and then at the endgame you score for your story bits, the more sequential cards in your story bit, the bigger you score for it. Hmm...

I think this would work just fine for a "storytelling" game like All for One or X Men. For this game, I think, I want the "goal" to be player-specific, and discovered mid-stream in the game (I'm really not making this easy on myself, am I?). So the objective isn't just about putting together a coherent story, because the idea would be that you are in the midst of a (semi-)coherent story. The goal would be instead defined by the story that you find yourself in, and suitable to the needs of that story.

For example, maybe the overall story is "the bad guy is a werewolf", and one character finds that this is the same werewolf that killed his aunt, and he must rid the world of this menace, whereas another player finds that the werewolf is her long-lost brother, and she must try to find a way to heal him. That kind of thing.

Thanks for the excellent ideas! As usual, they seem to be going in a different direction that the one I have in mind, but since this is in a very early stage anyway, it's well worth thinking if there are ways to incorporate them. Thanks!

-Jeff

Mon, 08/16/2004 - 19:50

#18

Anonymous

make the rules more open ended...

Here's a stream of thought on the answer of making the story more interactive etc.

Instead of trying to make the pieces of the game generic enough to make sense in some sort of linear story, one may try to make the games rules far more flexible.

If there is problem, say you need to get inside a locked building, one player can choose to break a window to go inside, while another player may choose to solve the problem by picking the lock.

Making it very much like an RPG in the story-telling, except it isn't up to a Game Master or DM or some central figure, but up to the other players whether actions are acceptable or not and then maybe you'd only need to turn over penalty cards if it fails. Ie if your charcter is 4' 1" and weights under 100 pounds and you try to break down the door with your shoulder, the other players may agree that the action should fail, whereas another charcter who is huge would be able to use that action.

What you would really need is sets of goals to accomplish, and then people could try to solve that anyway they like, but then there'd be different consequences to failed attempts at the solution.

This would force people to be creative, yet restrained by the environment or world of the story. Meaning that if it's Sherlock Holmes' time, people are confined by the norms of that time and aren't going to pull out black lights to look for fingerprints.

This system could only be used with those that aren't slaves to charts and rules, but are more interested in advancing the story and the like. Probably not for everyone, and certainly there'd be some argument about what is trying to "cheat". But with the right crowd and a good set up it might work.

Replayability might be a problem though, because certain logical answers may work everytime, and thus be employed everytime...

Tue, 08/17/2004 - 10:41

#19

jwarrend

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Joined: 08/03/2008

Re: make the rules more open ended...

jjacy1 wrote:

Making it very much like an RPG in the story-telling, except it isn't up to a Game Master or DM or some central figure, but up to the other players whether actions are acceptable or not and then maybe you'd only need to turn over penalty cards if it fails. Ie if your charcter is 4' 1" and weights under 100 pounds and you try to break down the door with your shoulder, the other players may agree that the action should fail, whereas another charcter who is huge would be able to use that action.

I think you have a very interesting and clever idea here for a different kind of game. I think it's still in the RPG "family" because it's so open, and I think there may be some obstacles. The main two seem to be that it rewards creativity heavily, (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and that what players decide to "allow" or "disallow" will be based more on what pays them back than on fairness. For example, if it's known that "in this room is the treasure that will win the game for player A", and player A is a master locksmith, the other players could *still* cause his attempt to fail ("it was a really tricky lock"). This, of course, would lead to arguing and debating, and my concern is that there's a potential for an argument with *every* action in the game. That's the advantage of the objective, impartial GM.

I am sure this is a solvable obstacle, but I think it's a different kind of game than I'm envisioning; in my game, the story is somewhat "constrained", so an RPG model may not work; it's worth thinking about, though. One idea I have (which I think I sort of borrowed from "Tales of the Arabian Nights") is that each player will have several traits, and these will make certain actions possible. e.g., "If you're 'Strong', you may break the door down". I think this will be simpler than giving players ratings in 6 different categories and checking their "level" against some difficulty rating of the encounter. That system would be more realistic, but mine will be more intuitive, if a bit more simplistic.

Thanks for your excllent thoughts. I think what you're suggesting could definintely be worked into an interesting game!

-Jeff

Tue, 08/17/2004 - 13:24

#20

Anonymous

Narrative mechanics

jjacy1 wrote:

Making it very much like an RPG in the story-telling, except it isn't up to a Game Master or DM or some central figure, but up to the other players whether actions are acceptable or not and then maybe you'd only need to turn over penalty cards if it fails.

Cool! An RPG without the game master! All decisions are made collectively by the group. Interesting! I share jwarrend's concern about fairness in the decision making process, but I think it's a cool game idea.

jwarrend wrote:

One idea I have (which I think I sort of borrowed from "Tales of the Arabian Nights") is that each player will have several traits, and these will make certain actions possible. e.g., "If you're 'Strong', you may break the door down".

I like the direction that you're taking with your ideas. More focus on character and narrative without bogging down on the minutiae present (in fact necessary) in many RPGs. On idea that came to mind as I read your last post would be to have players choose the traits for their character, then have "narrative cards" or some other method of advancing the story that would indicate the relevant traits and then give a reference to the outcome of the use of that trait. The references would be looked up in a book to resolve the narrative element and give some sort of direction for the story.

I had something similar in mind regarding a western themed game whereby the players play out a series of "scenario" cards. At the start, each player would draw cards to determine their goal for that specific scenario and would get points at the end of the scenario based on their goals. In the werewolf example, there could be a set of goal cards that are brought out at some point in the game. Each player would then have to take a card (either look at it then or at some other predetermined game condition). That would indicate to each player their relationship to the overall narrative (and how they would be rewarded at the end of the game).

The hardest part in your narrative game would be correlating the pieces of the game in meaningful and progressive ways. In the western game I envision, each scenario needs only fulfill the stereotypical spaghetti western scene in a movie. The scenarios themselves wouldn't have to interact or otherwise depend on each other. In your narrative concept they would. It may be as simple as having piles of cards in order (possibly numbered in a manner similar to sedjtroll's idea). At the end of each "chapter" of cards (the end would depend on the game conditions indicated by the story and the cards), players would then progress to the next chapter, selecting the card pile indicated and omitting those that are no longer relevant to the story. (Of course, I only use a card mechanic as a simple crutch to express an idea, the actual narrative mechanic is up to you.)

That way, the story would be constantly moving towards a conclusion along the path of the narrative arc, but the specific storylines would be determinable (to some degree) by the players through their actions.

Tue, 08/17/2004 - 15:22

#21

Anonymous

Narrative mechanics

Come to think of it, this would be a great game design contest! Design a game that gives the feel of a narrative arc and character growth within a closed game system (i.e. not RPG style) that takes replay value into consideration.

Wed, 08/18/2004 - 21:06

#22

Anonymous

Narrative mechanics

A game could be modelled on Vladimir Propp’s narrative theories on faerie tales. Put bluntly, his point is that all faerie tales are constructed in the same way, with nine (or so) distinct phases. I’m sure a google search on Propp would give results, I don’t remember the exact table (lucky for you). If a narrative game is constructed around a similar table, I think you could have a bunch of interchangable main events for every phase in the story without losing coherency. Every main event should combine ”lower” narrative elements, certain places etc.

Train of thought: Let’s say we organize the events in a hierarchy (kind of like the numbered events mentioned before, but with several events/elements having the same level of importance). The ”highest” events would be those dicating the players’ goal for the entire game/scenario. Ie. ”The ballerina at the circus is kidnapped, and you need to find her.” (or the ”Ballerina” card could have several motivations attached to it, each player drawing one (secret?) motivation. In this system, one of the players might even be the villain, and certain events later in the game would force him to reveal himself.)

Lower events should be more generic, to fit into the scope of several/all the higher events. For example, a charachter searching for the ballerina might visit the oracle cave to get a clue (why not? I don’t know what kind of setting this is). The event card he draws from the oracle pile gives certain instructions: ”You need to breach [place], where you will see your antagonist. Draw a ’dangerous place’, and draw an ’antagonist’ once you’ve overcome the obstacles of the place.” In the ’dangerous place’ pile might be the abandoned factory, the mirror maze at the circus, etc. They all have different dangers that come into play when you visit them (and earlier even cards kept on your hand might help you enter certain places etc). When the player goes to the designated place and makes it through its hinders, he draws the antagonist card ”Zappo, the evil clown”. This would probably mean the players had to invent the story a bit – does he get a mystic vision of Zappo in one of the mirrors in the maze, does he see Zappo escaping from the factory as he enters the machine hall? Maybe every place has a stack of ”resolution cards” to give the details of what happens in its centre.

In the end, I guess a game like this would be about collecting necessary clues to reach your goal: generic antagonists, their hiding places, their weak spot, their most fiendish weapon etc. Kind of like Scotland Yard. Then getting to the designated spot after having collected equipment to defeat the villain. Or something like that. Making a game after this model would probably involve a multitude of differently themed cards/events – helpers, equipment, mishaps etc. that might be combined to make different stories. As stated, the difficult part would be for the designer to sow everything together, but I’m sure that if the setting is at least slightly bizarre, then it would just be fun to get strangely incoherent combinations of events.

Should the players compete in a narrative game? It would also be possible with a game where the players try to reach a common goal, but the dangers of the world might overcome them first. So the players would fight together, constantly antagonized by the game itself.

One last digression: Last I played RPG (six years ago omygosh), I had a pretty clever idea, at least that’s what I still think. Instead of creating characters the ordinary way, I made 5 cards for every player. The first card gave a concept (Detective, Pennyless noble, Talking dog etc.), the second gave a name, the third gave a special power and the fourth and fifth gave one personality trait each. So the characters were randomly generated, and during the game session, I gave single players different ”event cards” with directions on them. In the zoo: ”You (the character) tell your friends about your favourite animal.” When the characters chases an antagonist: ”Describe the chase and where he is running, and decide upon a place where you finally catch up with him.” In a bar: ”You see someone you know. Who is it, and why is he relevant to the plot?” etc. Of course, this is easy to pull off in a RPG, but maybe similar ideas might be used in a board game.

Exhaustingly yours,
--Simen

Wed, 08/18/2004 - 21:27

#23

doho123

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Joined: 07/21/2008

Narrative mechanics

Another topic along these lines would be to research Joseph Campbell. who wrote Hero of a Thosand Faces. Basically, he outlined the narrative structure of all myths and relates them to your everyday life, and how you follow a mythic circle of events.

Wed, 08/18/2004 - 22:28

#24

doho123

Offline

Joined: 07/21/2008

Narrative mechanics

Another resource people might want to look at is the RGP Everway. This uses no dice, but instead relies on a Tarot-type deck to determine random results. Obviously, this still requires a game master at this point to make a definite interpretation, but the game system is designed to be a complete storytelling experience, and not wrapped up in checking tables and tables and rolling against probabilities.

As an example, if a character wishes to do something that requires a random check, a card is flipped over. The interpretation of the card can be based on such things as it's imagery (say, DEATH meaning bad), or more elemental causality (the character has been "grounded" more towards "fire", and the card is THE SUN, which is strong for someone grounded in fire, therefore, he is successful).

Fri, 03/24/2006 - 13:30

#25

jwarrend

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Joined: 08/03/2008

Narrative mechanics

It's been quite a while since I started this thread, and I haven't really
worked on the idea too terribly aggressively except for a brief period last
year when I considered submitting it to Zev's contest. But I've begun to
think about it again, and will mention a couple of the lines I'm thinking
along.

One potential step forward I've made is to come up with a concept of
"connections". I'm envisioning that the crux of the game's action will be
to connect isolated events. For example, at one point you might get "Your
host leaves the dinner table suddenly, screaming and holding his head" and
later, "You find a small vial containing a purple elixir". The game will enable you to connect those two events, which I think might trigger a "revelation" in some way or other. Revelations would be the mechanism of plot advancement, and would address major story points like "what is going on here?", "why have you been brought here?", "what is your goal?", "how do you accomplish it?", etc. (I think I've settled on a suspense story line for now, at least as a starting point to prove out the game concept). The key with connections is that they enable events to be somewhat interchangable; in a different story, those two events could happen but could be unrelated.

How to achieve this? My idea is that each "event" card will have a row of icons on either side, and will remain in a display once it occurs. When a new event comes out, you compare the icons on its left side to the icons on the right of each of the existing event cards. When two cards give the same icon in the same position, you have made a connection, and [something happens]. Not sure what; probably you get a revelation in a category indicated by the icon, but presumably it should also be related to the specific events themselves somehow.

I'm also considering adding another layer whereby the game would proceed along three major Acts (like a play), with transition from Act to Act occuring as you accumulate more and more revelations.

I think it's possible to accomplish much of this without the paragraph book, actually. I'm realizing that for this to really work as a game, the board and components must be where the current game state lies, and the paragraph book should only serve as a tool to modify and manipulate that game state. If the entire game took place in the paragraph book, it would only be a story, not a game. What I'm finding difficult is a compact way to allow variables from the game state to influence the selection you go to in the paragraph book. For example, in deciding how an event transpires, I'd like all the following to factor in:
-- Which character triggered the event?
-- Where is the character located?
-- Is it day or night?
-- What else has happened up to this point?

And probably a few other things besides. But this is already very difficult to figure out how to feed all of this input into the paragraph books. I can see one way to enable at least a couple of these:

First, I imagine there might be four (or so) event card categories: an encounter, a discovery, a resource, or an occurrence (which may be the same thing as an encounter). Each card would have a "day" side and a "night" side, so when the card is revealed, you flip the appropriate side face-up. At the top of the card is a row of 3 numbers, corresponding to entries in a paragraph book, and which of the 3 you pick is given by which Act you're currently in. And, as mentioned, either before or after this check you also look to see if you've made a connection.

But the most important of these is "what has happened before", and I don't yet see a clear-cut way to have the paragraph books maintain a coherent story if that story is also being assembled on the fly.

Another layer I could see adding is a "hub" paragraph book. It doesn't contain any actual entries, it just sends you to an entry in your paragraph book based on the current game state. So, you flip over Event 2A, and go to the hub book. The "hub" entry would simply have queries like "Are you in the Kitchen or the Laboratory? If so, go to paragraph 415; all other rooms go to 318".

But I'm wondering if all of this is necessary simply to enable the benefit of more elaborate flavor text that the paragraph books would afford. If indeed the paragraph books exist solely to modify the game state, then I wonder if a very similar functionality couldn't be achieved simply from the componentry as I've laid it out above. It would be more generic but could still be somewhat cohesive. The big loss might be character specificity, and that would be a shame.

How would a more generic scheme work? I guess something like this. You flip a card; it's daytime, so you flip the day-side face up. It is a discovery -- it's "You find a purple elixir". You compare the left side of the card to the right side of the previous events, and find a match with "The Professor leaves the room suddenly, holding his head" -- you are entitled to draw a Revelation card from the "Transformation" deck.

Another thing I need to figure out is how to actually enable players to "do" things. In other words, how do you allow the character to "drink the elixir", or to "investigate that noise they heard down the hall"? So event cards may also need to point to follow-up entries.

Perhaps the different activities players can engage in are represented by randomly-drawn cards, and THOSE cards are the ones that have the 3-Act track on them; those cards then tell you what kind of event card to flip. So, for example, I want to use the "investigate" ability; I flip an "investigate" card and since I'm in Act 2, the Investigate card tells me to reveal an Encounter event. Perhaps these are also room- or character-specific. But the idea is that these will script the gameflow, so that early in the game you're going to tend to get more occurrences, towards the middle you'll get more discoveries and resources, and towards the end you'll get more encounters.

Hmm, clearly there's lots more to think through here.

-Jeff

Fri, 03/24/2006 - 19:26

#26

TheReluctantGeneral

Offline

Joined: 12/31/1969

Narrative mechanics

I'm glad to see this thread has been revived. It's a subject of continuing interest to me in my current (in fact first, and so far only) project.

I've had to read this post a few times to get an idea of what jeff is trying to do, and I may well have misunderstood, so try and bear with me here...

jwarrend wrote:

I'm envisioning that the crux of the game's action will be to connect isolated events

..snip..

The key with connections is that they enable events to be somewhat
interchangable; in a different story, those two events could happen but
could be unrelated.

I'm not sure that what you describe above can really be termed a story. If you managed to achieve what you suggest above then the story would seem to be randomly generated. The problem with this is that players will not react to the events in question as a narrative, simply as events in a game. Additionally, a narrative in its traditional form should maintain narrative tension, and while you may well be able to generate gameplay tension, I don't think this is the same thing as narrative tension. It does not generate the same emotions.

As at least one article on stories and games has stated, they are effectively opposites. I have come to the conslusion that while a narrative and a game may can be compatible (as they are in an rpg for example), striving for replayability destroys any chance for them to co-exist. I think of it as a kind of 'mutual exclusion pinciple'.

I struggled with the same issue, and have decided to bin replayability of a given narrative to enhance the experience of the first time play. My replay value has to come from have a long story, and once that is finished, a large menu of additional and completely new stories should players have the appetitite for more.

jwarrend wrote:

What I'm finding difficult is a compact way to allow variables from the game state to influence the selection you go to in the paragraph book. For example, in deciding how an event transpires, I'd like all the following to factor in:
-- Which character triggered the event?
-- Where is the character located?
-- Is it day or night?
-- What else has happened up to this point?

Ok, lets say your set on having replayability. One technical mechanic for taking a series of game state variables and looking up a paragraph number is as follows. Lets take the 4 variable above as an example.

Take one ring bound book, and cut the pages horizontally from end to end. You get this:

-+------+
-| char |
-+------+
-| loc |
-+------+
-| day |
-+------+
-| hist |
-+------+

Now flip the pages on each section until what you have in front of represents the answers to each of the questions above. Now, on the right hand side of each of the 4 sections is a number. That is your reference for the para lookup. Of course, this does not help in deciding what should be written in that para - this is merely a neat lookup mechanism.

A word on game state history. This is very difficult. You could still use the above scheme as long as the number of historical variables are limited. Having 4 possible historical variables will require 16 pages in the 'hist' section of the lookup book. 8 such variables will need 256 pages. However, even 8 variables can be managed - they would need to be arranged carefully to make finding the right page a quick process.

jwarrend wrote:

But the most important of these is "what has happened before", and I don't
yet see a clear-cut way to have the paragraph books maintain a coherent
story if that story is also being assembled on the fly.

I don't think there is a way. At least not without a computer, and even then not without software that has sme grasp of teh art of storytelling. My (highly tentative) solution to this problem can be summarised as follows:

1) Don't aim for replayability. Have lots ofstories instead.
2) let player actions cause storyline divergance for a while, but ensure the the arcs are periodically reconverged.
3) The 'game' is in the story arc divergences. It is during times of divergences when players can compete, since they have imperfect information by which they may make a profit or loss. If the story is brought back to a stable state, that is not killing playability because during the period of divergance players have the ability to antcipate and guess where the next story convergence point will be, leading to successive priods of building tension followed by sudden resolution, which is after all the classic narrative arc described in any beginners book on fiction writing.

To relate this to the murder mystery game: setup the story, let the players go round collecting cards, finding snippets of information etc and then bring the whole thing back together. At this point you can either:

- have a scoring round which rewards players who have been successful during this chapter, and then reveal all info required for the next phase so all players start at the same point for the next phase.

- allow players to cary advantages accrued during the current phase into the next, Perhaps they could exchange points accrued for extra hints or info in the next phase.

Now repeat.

jwarrend wrote:

I wonder if a very similar functionality couldn't be achieved simply from the
componentry as I've laid it out above. It would be more generic but could
still be somewhat cohesive. The big loss might be character specificity,
and that would be a shame.

You could do it, but my current thinking is that you would all feeling of having a narrative.

Fri, 03/24/2006 - 20:21

#27

hawaiiirish

Offline

Joined: 01/21/2009

Narrative mechanics

jwarrend wrote:

(Decided I'd respond to this separately...)

Quote:

How would a game incorporate a series of mechanics to account for player actions, an environment in which the players can pursue their goals according to the mechanics of the game, and still grow in a fashion that leaves the players with the emotional outcome of having partaken in a story?

I submit that the person who can answer that question will have something truly original on their hands!

You should checkout B-17 Queen of the Skies, if you want that. Honestly, the game play can be a bit clunky (charts and dice-rolling) but, by the end of the game - there is emotional investment (in that, you are naming the characters and seeing the outcome.) Play 25 missions of that and tell me that you're not emotionally invested (and exhausted).

The "narrative" aspect comes from how the mission shakes out (how the tables and charts respond to dice rolls). Now take that type of system and slap a theme on it (...hmm Murder Mystery, Haunted House, Espionage, etc.) and you would have a winner.

Small edit: I think that the beauty of B-17 Queen of the Skies is not that the story is presented to the player. The player is left to imagine the story as it unfolds * in front * of them. So, no, there are no books spoon-feeding the narrative to the players. No long-winded passages. Just an entry on a chart that says "The bomb-bay was hit with FlaK. Explosion". That's slick, IMHO.

Sat, 03/25/2006 - 01:58

#28

sedjtroll

Offline

Joined: 07/21/2008

Narrative mechanics

jwarrend wrote:

-- Which character triggered the event?
...The big loss might be character specificity, and that would be a shame.

What about a different paragraph book for each character, and you use the book of the character that triggered the event..?

Sat, 03/25/2006 - 07:39

#29

Scurra

Offline

Joined: 09/11/2008

Narrative mechanics

Frankly, I really think you are barking up the wrong tree here Jeff.
I understand what you are trying to do, but I really think you are fomalizing it too strictly, simply to generate a replayability aspect that it doesn't need and interferes with the narrative possibilities.
When I play 221b Baker Street, I don't mind that I can only play a case once, because the experience is all about making those connections and figuring things out for myself, not having something make them for me. I may be entirely on the wrong track, but that's kind of the fun.

IOW I guess I'm saying that your description feels to me as though you lack confidence in the players being able to inhabit your world convincingly, and so you need mechanical contrivances to get them to progress in a narrative.

As noted elsewhere, I like player participation in my stories, hence my love of RPGs. A more radical extension of this is the live role-playing genre (not the rubber swords gang.) This is the "how to host a murder" game taken to a more extreme level. The group of players is given a scenario and each player has a character background with some goals on it. You then let the players determine the route of the story.

For instance, last weekend, I played in one based on the Regency Romance genre (Jane Austen et al.) The location was a country house at which the characters had been invited for a social dance. So there were lots of nobs and military but also one or two commoners who had lots of money. The setting already introduced certain constraints, making the characters interact in different ways, and the goals were deliberately designed to play havoc with that (for instance, pretty much every character had some sort of "scandal" in their past, which would ruin them if exposed. So part of the game was to protect your own secret whilst embarassing a rival.)

But beyond one or two items that were represented as cards in envelopes, no-one needed specific instructions as to what they should do when they made the "connections" that had been set up within the plot. Instead, they are left to their own devices. The writers have no idea where the different characters are going to end up, beyond a general desire to make sure that everyone has an interesting time (for certain definitions of "interesting", of course! Casting a live-action game can be more important than it appears if you want the players to appreciate the game.)

I guess I'm with the Reluctant General here - trying to make narrative and replayability co-exist is almost impossible. Live-action games get closest to the "replayability" aspect of narrative storytelling because there is no clear fixed outcome and the same group of players could play the same game again with very different results with no sense of it being a random string of events. But as soon as you bring any foreknowledge with you into the environment a certain aspect of the game experience is lost. With a good group, this is offset by the interactions you are having (rather like rereading a good book; it doesn't matter that you know how things are going to turn out if it's well written.) But mostly the thrill of discovery is lost...

Sat, 03/25/2006 - 09:34

#30

jwarrend

Offline

Joined: 08/03/2008

Narrative mechanics

TheReluctantGeneral wrote:

I'm not sure that what you describe above can really be termed a story. If you managed to achieve what you suggest above then the story would seem to be randomly generated.

Yes and no. Let me clarify what I think I'm going for here, since it may be unclear. First and foremost, I want to create a boardgame. I don't want to create a storybook, or an RPG, or a LARP. But I'm interested in exploring whether there's any middle ground between those -- a game in which players must make consequential decisions but in which the action revolves around the unfolding of a narrative and in which the players at all times feel like they are part of that unfolding narrative.

Let's look at a couple of related games to see why this is different. First, LotR: it's built around the books, and follows the progression of the stories, so it should give a strong narrative feel right? For me, no. It's one of my favorite games, and the theming is great, but it doesn't feel to me like we're progressing through the narrative except in an abstract way. Part of this may come from the fact that we already know the end from the beginning, so there is no "unfolding" of the narrative. Another example is "Fury of Dracula", which is basically a turbo-charged Scotland Yard with a Dracula theme. This is somewhat closer to the mark, because there are a lot of twists and turns and it does feel like a story that is playing out. But although tension mounts as each side gets closer to its victory condition, the story doesn't really "progress" as you go -- it's basically the same action throughout. The hunters are trying to find and engage Dracula, and Dracula is trying to evade the hunters.

Quote:

The problem with this is that players will not react to the events in question as a narrative, simply as events in a game. Additionally, a narrative in its traditional form should maintain narrative tension, and while you may well be able to generate gameplay tension, I don't think this is the same thing as narrative tension. It does not generate the same emotions.

Correct. This is exactly what I am trying to achieve. I want the string of events the players encounter to be causally connected in some way, so that they do feel that there's an overarching narrative unfolding around them.

But also note that I don't want to get too enmeshed in literary theory here. I don't think players need to experience the same kind of emotional impact you get from a book or story for the project to be a success. I'm looking more for the causal connection of events in the game, and the unfolding revelation of the story. It doesn't have to move the players to laughter or tears or fright to succeed.

Quote:

As at least one article on stories and games has stated, they are effectively opposites. I have come to the conslusion that while a narrative and a game may can be compatible (as they are in an rpg for example), striving for replayability destroys any chance for them to co-exist. I think of it as a kind of 'mutual exclusion pinciple'.

That article, by Greg Costikyan, was referenced in this thread. I've read it, and while I love his other article "I have no words and I must design" (it completely revolutionized my formative stages as a designer), I think that the article in question is extremely pessimisstic in tone and I came out of it with the impression that in Greg's mind, any attempt at such a blend, from choose-your-own-adventure books to RPGs, are basically destined for failure by definition. I happen to think Greg, and you, and David, are in error. Whether I can prove it is another matter!

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I struggled with the same issue, and have decided to bin replayability of a given narrative to enhance the experience of the first time play. My replay value has to come from have a long story, and once that is finished, a large menu of additional and completely new stories should players have the appetitite for more.

There's no question that replay in a game is paramount; it has to be possible to play a game many times with a different outcome, or the game is DOA. We're simply disagreeing about how to get there. Indeed, games like 221B Baker St give one approach: just have a different "story" every time. And that's fine. In fact, SiskNY are collaborating on a game right now that will have this scheme for replay but will give really strong immersion. I hope we'll be ready to roll out some public discussion soon, as I think it will actually be quite successful.

One problem with a single-storyline game is, of course, that the designer can't really be a participant! That's a problem for me, since I'm designing games that I want to play. If I design a game that I can't play, what's the point? Our solution in the above game is to have the solution be randomly generated, so that each "storyline" is self-consistent but is still unique.

But what I'm looking to attempt here is to leverage common story elements and see if they can be assembled differently to form different stories. For example, "you find a body". That is pretty generic, and could fit into a variety of stories, and a variety of places in the stories. Is there a way to make a story that incorporates elements like these, but by assembling them differently each time, can give broad replayability?

Quote:

Take one ring bound book, and cut the pages horizontally from end to end. You get this:

This is a very cool idea! Kind of like a mini "computer". Very helpful, thanks. This is exactly what I'm looking for -- "here's a way you could do this", instead of "don't even bother trying". I'm already trying, so no need to talk me down from the ledge!

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A word on game state history. This is very difficult.

Yes indeed. It's the toughest part, and also the most important. The game has to do two things: it has to exclude "wrong" occurences (for example, if early in the game you reveal that the bad guy is a werewolf, later events can't point to him being a vampire), and it has to build off of earlier occurences (so you found out that the bad guy is a werewolf -- what does that do, in gameplay terms? How do later events "know" about this and how are they influenced by it).

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I don't think there is a way. At least not without a computer

Ease of play is definitely a concern; if the algorithm that ensures perfect narrative flow is so difficult to use that the game is tedious to play, then that's no good either.

Quote:

2) let player actions cause storyline divergance for a while, but ensure the the arcs are periodically reconverged.
3) The 'game' is in the story arc divergences.

This may be a good way of doing things; I'll think this over more. Thanks!
And thanks for reading and commenting; I appreciate your input and insight!

Scurra wrote:

Frankly, I really think you are barking up the wrong tree here Jeff.

Well, thanks for the encouragement!

Quote:

I understand what you are trying to do, but I really think you are fomalizing it too strictly, simply to generate a replayability aspect that it doesn't need and interferes with the narrative possibilities.

Again, a game needs replayability; that's a given. I'm simply seeking a solution that allows assembly of a story from a series of semi-generic story elements, rather than doing it by playing a different "canned" narrative each time.

Quote:

When I play 221b Baker Street, I don't mind that I can only play a case once, because the experience is all about making those connections and figuring things out for myself, not having something make them for me. I may be entirely on the wrong track, but that's kind of the fun.

221b Baker Street is a great core idea whose execution is flawed, but the basic idea works pretty well. But you have to admit that while it's fun, it's scripted quite rigidly -- there are a pre-arranged set of clues, and you wander around looking at them until you have enough to make a guess at the solution. (Actually, that's not all that different from the game that SiskNY are working on...hmm...) It works because the game plays out pretty quickly (too much rolling and moving, but that notwithstanding), but I wonder if there's a way for a game to be as cohesive but more dynamic in its execution -- more story-like in its flow, with a beginning, middle, and end.

Quote:

IOW I guess I'm saying that your description feels to me as though you lack confidence in the players being able to inhabit your world convincingly, and so you need mechanical contrivances to get them to progress in a narrative.

I have no idea what this means. Are you saying that anything that falls short of an RPG or LARP represents the designer taking a pessimisstic view of the players' creativity? The reality is that not every player wants to come up with a game's narrative on the fly; people who want to do that will likely play an RPG, but that doesn't mean that a game that scripts things more for the players can't be an equally valid endeavor. I think a board game has strong differences from an RPG in that the world the players are interacting with, and the means by which they interact with it are more "bounded". As a gamer, I like this because it distills the game to the essence of the choices I'll make, rather than blending in the additional ingredient of creativity.

There's certainly room for both types of games in the world, but I'm looking to create a boardgame, not an RPG. I am simply looking for a boardgame that communicates to the players the sense that they are interacting with an actual "world" and that the things that happen in that world have ramifications that influence the kinds of actions they will want to take.

Quote:

The group of players is given a scenario and each player has a character background with some goals on it. You then let the players determine the route of the story.

Sounds perfectly fine, just different from what I'm going for here.

Quote:

I guess I'm with the Reluctant General here - trying to make narrative and replayability co-exist is almost impossible.

Well, there's nothing I like more than a good challenge!

-Jeff

Narrative mechanics

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