[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Freeman]

From: Brandon J. Van Every

> It is a foolish goal.  You can do this job much better and much
> quicker manually. Provided you're not trying to jump over the moon
> thinking you're supposed to be writing about 2000 protagonists at
> once.

Quite a while back I saw a gameshrimp "preview" of Neocron.
Gameshrimp basically makes a few-minute long movie of the gameplay
and adds their commentary to it.  Showing off how you get a quest,
the player talks to an NPCs.

  : "Hey kid what's your problem?"
  : clicks on the NPC.
  : NPC spouts some dialog
  : "blah blah blah, and now we have a quest."

And recently Jeff K. did a pretty funny flash CRPG that opens with
the King talking about where you need to go and what you need to do,
but the entire speech is in this sort of high-pitched girly voice
and you can only make-out about every 5th world, "Blah blah blah
sword blah blah elves blah blah", etc.

I played BG2 from start to end multiplayer co-op, and recently have
been playing NWN the same way.  I talk to an NPC and zip through the
convo's as quickly as I can.  I'm a lazy gamer.  Don't tell me about
the labor, just show me the baby.  It's all written-out in
excruciating detail, of course, but about all I ever get out of
these convos is "blah blah sword blah blah blah dragon blah blah".

Sometimes (rarely) my friend asks what it is we're doing.  "I dunno.
That NPC was sad.  Something about a woman and a monster and a magic
thingie."

  "Ok."

I think that's what made the gameshrimp reference to "blah blah
blah, and that's how you get a quest!" and Jeff K's CRPG so funny to
me: That's pretty much what they all sound like to me, too.

So, talking about procedurally generating "stories" and then not
having any way to procedurally generate the *writing* to go with it:
Apart from doing it manually, there's another way, at least to
convey the jist of the conversation (And why do this?  Because it's
all many players get out of even the best-written dialog anyway).

That would be, just have the NPCs speak with icons.  Rather like the
Sims.  Talk to the NPC blacksmith and he says (by showing you
icons), that he's mad, something about a monster.  Something about
an axe.  Look in your Quest Journal and it says, "Step 1: Go kill
this monster.  Step 2: Bring the magic axe to the blacksmith."

Having done that, back with the blacksmith, oh look, now he's happy.
And money!

I realize that isn't a great example of what could be considered a
compelling narrative. You don't know backstory behind the deal and
that's an overly simplistic 2-step "quest".  But I don't think I'm
alone in, well, not caring in the least little bit *why* the monster
had the axe or why the NPC wanted it.

The enjoyable part of the story for me, in a game, is me doing
stuff.

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev