[MUD-Dev] Reusable plots for quests

[Brandon J. Rickman]

On Sat, 11 Oct 1997 22:58:39 PST8PDT "Travis Casey"
<efindel at polaris.net> wrote:
>Brian Price <blprice at bedford.net> wrote:
>>A story can be expressed as a combination of three plot scopes;  the
>>master plot, the sub-plot, and the random event (or micro-plot).  A
>>master plot consists of a dozen or more significant scenes spread, on
>>average, widely through the story's time and space.   Generally, the
>>master plot begins near the beginning of the story and continues
>>through to the end.  The master plot is the main story line.
>
>I don't really think we need all of these story elements on a mud.
>Subplots aren't always needed -- many short stories don't have a
>subplot, for example.  In longer stories, subplots can serve any
>number of purposes -- usually, though, they serve to provide a
>parallel or a counterpoint to the primary plot.  To serve these
>purposes, though, the subplot would have to be constructed carefully
>in parallel with the main plot, rather than being randomly chosen.

I somewhat hastily deleted Brian's original message on this thread, this
is the standard disclaimer of a reply to a reply to a missing post.

First a brief nitpick about the use of terms like "story", "plot", and
"quest".  It seems to be clear that a story is, generally, made up of
plot elements.  (There is a storytelling software package that avoids
the absolute definition of "story" by defining something called a
"story argument", the latter being a subset of the former.)  But the
plot of a story is more of an after-the-fact detail.  The Troll King
actually kidnapped Princess Shortcake because he was in love with her,
and Our Hero rescues the Princess because her father, King Shortcake,
hates Trolls.  The plot elements of the story may not make sense, until
the whole story is finished.  In the traditional mud quest there is a
clearly defined goal or solution to the story.  But a Hero, by dealing
with the plot elements, may end up with an interesting story yet
fail to solve the "quest".  One way to rescue the Princess would be to
form an alliance between the trolls and King Shortcake.  If the quest
was supposed to be "capture the princess and kill the Troll King" this
is a failed quest solution.

>A mud, though, is more like a serial or a soap opera.  Since these
>lack definite beginnings and endings, there's no need for them to
>have subplots which "run with" particular plots.  Rather, secondary
>plots can overlap primary plots in various ways and even with each
>other.

In a world where the stories are constantly returning to the same
state (a local climax) or some endless permutation of storylines
(soap opera) there seems to be a desire for a steady-state system.
These systems purport to be "interesting" but they have great
potential to be tedious and dull.  It is, I would argue, the personal
involvement with the story or the vicarious enjoyment of the story that
needs to be emphasised.  Rather than the "man learns a lesson" plot, which
is the most common story in muds already, think about the "man is a
seemingly insignificant pawn" plot:

You are a messenger.  Your master, some local noble, gives you a message to
take to the king.  You must travel many miles, deal with road bandits, 
outsmart greedy innkeepers, and perhaps "learn a lesson" before you can
deliver the message.  Maybe there isn't even a "big" plot associated with
the message, it is just some routine correspondence.  But the messenger
doesn't know that (and, in my world, the _game_ doesn't know either) until
the message is lost or stolen and a plot breaks out.  Whatever overall
story there is involves several characters, and none of them know every
detail of the story.

>>One difference between a novella and a novel is the drastic reduction
>>with the novella form in the number of seemingly inconsequential
>>events interspersed throughout main and sub-plot alike.  These events
>>can be described as random events or micro-plots.  These micro-plots
>>typically have a scope of only a single scene and have only minor
>>relevance to any sub-plot or master plot serving mainly to add color
>>although occasionally affecting plot direction.
>
>For similar reasons, I think it possible to leave out random events --
>however, it may be a good idea to throw them in anyways, since there's
>less of a problem with creating ones which are thematically appropriate.

I don't know what these "random events" are that you would like to leave
out.  A random die roll?  A random encounter?  Random weather?  A random
venerial disease?  A random sub-quest to find cheese for a mouse?

Which is easier: taking a big story plot and breaking it down into lots of
little bitty plot details, or taking lots of itty bitty plot details and
putting them together into a big story plot?  Making up a big plot based
on details could be called a conspiracy theory.

>>A somewhat arbitrary choice of basic plot elements can be made to form
>>the common set of plot elements.  The current plot element node logic
>>theorem holds that these elements can be defined as setting,
>>character, information, features, and events.  The element setting can
>>be described as the physical surroundings in which the scene occurs.
>>The character element consists of the characters and creatures which
>>are within the setting during the time the scene occurs.  The
>>information element consists of knowledge which may be obtained by or
>>imparted to a character from some other element during the course of
>>the scene.

I guess I missed the node logic theorem.

>This reminds me strongly of a method which has been used to generate
>random stories created by a computer.  Here's the basic outline:
>
>- First, a general "plot" is randomly selected.  These plots are
>[...]
>- Each of these general plots has an associated set of "slots" which
>[...]
>
>Adapting this to a mud seems fairly easy -- simply pick a generic plot,
>randomly pick items that match the types needed by each slot (i.e.,
>NPCs, objects, places, etc.), and then place items where they need to
>go for the plot to be viable.

This always implies some kind of directed activity on the part of the player,
i.e. players are obligated to go on "quests" where they must perform some
"action".  I think an open-entry fishing competition would be more
interesting.

There was once a game on the C64 called Adventure Construction Set, made by 
Electronic Arts.  There were two prebuilt adventures, and the construction
set, plus an option to let the program generate its own adventure games
for you to play.  This took an ungodly amount of time (probably half an
hour to generate a "short" adventure) and the adventures were always
"If you bring me X I'll give you Y," quests.  These adventures, needless
to say, became quite predictable (and further suffered from speed and
memory limitations of the 64).  But it was quite a brilliant game for
the time.  I can't remember why I wanted to bring this up.

>Example:  Let's say that the randomly selected plot is "rescue someone."
>It's slots are "who to rescue," "who to rescue them from," "where are they
>being held," and "where to return them to."  "The princess Esmerelda" might
>be randomly chosen for who and "the evil wizard Dolor" for who from.  These
>choices might then force "a cell in Dolor's castle" to be used for where
>from, and "King Varain's castle" to be used for where to.

How does the character figure out the story?  Do they have to do a brute
force search of Dolor's castle?  And most important, is the intended
solution to have the character defeat the evil wizard Dolor?  Maybe you
would want to customize the story around the player, a thief or a wizard
might solve the story in different ways.

Here is a story: everyone is on a quest for a magic object.  Along the way
many of them are told that the object has already been found, or doesn't
actually exist.  Eventually someone finds the object but it is too late:
the kingdom has fallen into ruin, the object doesn't work they way it was
supposed to, and all the important characters die.  

The theory here being, as the storyline has an increasingly significant
affect on the world the potential lifespan of the world gets shorter.
If King Shortcake has all the Trolls killed there might not be anything
interesting left to do in the world (for the next dozen years).  Is
that the end of the mud?  Shouldn't it be?

- Brandon Rickman - ashes at zennet.com -
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