I have been working slowly toward a new game, which exists only in my brain. It’s not groundbreaking. Recently, I realized that the game alone would be worthless. I need a story. So now, I am playing with a story. But, I want the player to experience making some tough choices and then dealing with the consequences. I feel this will keep the player involved. Hopefully, they will gain a feeling that their actions matter.
I feel like this dynamic story will turn “yet another retro/pixel art action RPG” into something people might really find interesting.
The player’s choices will choose who lives and dies, the fate of the world, etc. But also little things, including which spells he masters and so forth.
Does anyone have any random thoughts about the idea of a story line with dynamic plot points?
Dude, haven’t you been on these boards long enough to know that “hey i have an idea for a game with a dynamic story… thoughts?” is a non starter. Especially when the player not only gets to choose the fate of the world, but which spells he masters!
You can’t choose the villain. You can’t choose the central conflict. The basic direction moves forward along a sort of “track”. The final dilemma will have a few variations, depending on choices you have made. But that’s really all. Much of it will still be linear. You will just end up paying for your choices (or reaping your rewards) toward the end. It will be like a “heeere’s KARMA!”
So is it an ‘on rails’ story like those old make your own adventure books (some of which never had anyway to get to the ideal ending (I used to start at the end & work backwards but some never had pages that linked to the last one, there was always a break in the chain somewhere)) but instead has variations on “you lost this badly…” Or is it really multi branching with consequences?
Well, some parts–like traveling through a cave to reach the next town–that will have to be linear. No matter what, that will always happen. Most of your time playing will be spent powering up your little character and collecting things you need to complete your quest. The main dilemma will revolve around a handful of important characters, where you will have to make some hard decisions. Getting the ideal ending will be a result of thinking about the situations you end up in, and making the most moral/wisest decisions. It should be easy, but I want to tempt the player to choose to do the wrong thing by offering them power in exchange. If the player makes enough bad decisions, they will essentially be indistinguishable from the villain when he finally meets him face to face. And he will inherit the villain’s horrible, unsolvable problem as his own, the same exact thing that happened to the villain. But if you make the right decisions, sacrificing power to do the right thing, going out of your way to help NPC’s in need, giving up hard-earned money to people in desperate need, etc. the player can get the perfect ending. The theme will be, one kind act inspires another. One unkind act inspires another. With our actions, we are literally shaping our own world.
A good deal of the game is linear, but like I said, at the end if you took the easy way out and took the slippery slope into darkness the game will be much easier. You will even feel cooler. But in the end, you will have the saddest ending ever. And how it could have all been avoided. But if you do the right thing, Karma throws you some bones.
I plan on showing little flashbacks of people explaining how “when you saved the orphanage, it inspired me to go into the world and do good. As a result, I ended up saving a far off kingdom from a dragon. There was a handsome reward, and with my new life as a knight’s errant, I don’t need material things. Here’s a chest full of gold, Hope it helps.”
I hope that gives a better idea of what I’m thinking.
You could provide decision trees based on previous answers so for example they get 5 options, good, slightly hood, neutral, bad & real bad. As they progress the number of any previous selected answers start to weight the number of each option they are provided, & maybe in some circumstances the system is storing perhaps 10 options but only 5 are shown based on a sliding scale of good/bad?
Eventually they may be given options from very minorly bad through to really good but that could slide down if they begin selecting more neutral options? So the players behaviour starts to dictate the options they are presented with so it begins to reinforce their behaviour by limiting options at the other end of the scale.
It will be in battle,for example, literally do they choose to help a character or go after the bad guy before he gets away with an item you want?
Or when you enter an early town, someone begs you for whatever you can spare… and you can give any amount you want, or nothing at all. That will really impact you in the end. It will be a very curious game to the average person.
In other words, I’m not going to hold the player’s hand and say, for instance: “PLOT DECISION POINT: CHOOSE YOUR PATH” but rather, it will be hidden in the code. Anything can affect the game, your progress through the game, etc. You are experiencing this story as you play, not treating the story as just another mechanic to be exploited.
That would be interesting, especially if early on in the game the player is given some feedback to show that their recent action had some consequences. They’ll really think after that before making any old choice. Of course some decisions should have no impact as well if there is no one else around to witness it e.g. they kill a person & no body knows they did it - but maybe they run across an orphan whose dad was killed at a certain place by an unknown bandit?
As for story ideas I guess it will depend on how much you want to moralise. Do you base it in a parallel universe where the player is working their way up through a political party as a lowly volunteer wheeling & dealing to eventually become party leader or do theystay in the background & put in puppets? Leading protests, rigging party ballots to get nominated, discrediting opponents etc. As they rise up in the ranks their behaviour influences those that witness it so that they end up competing with NPC’s who may react in similar ways as they see that as the way to progress within the party?
Or are they a young prince that you are shaping as the guardian?
Or is it a traditional rpg of the young orphan finding their place in the world?
I think Skyrim tried to do something similar with things like the thieves guild & assassins guild but given I normally try not to kill everything in sight (I prefer stealth) the assassins guild quests did nothing for me & I eventually finished & got all the cool stuff. Even the quest where I ate people didn’t mean much as nothing had real consequences, which is where yours could stand apart.
Great point, I will have to show people early on that the seemingly meaningless choices they make have very real consequences. I will stick to basic morality. Don’t kill. Help the poor. Stuff that generally everybody agrees with. Some very early karma will be enough to show them. Maybe three separate events before the difficulty level begins to rise, before they really enter the world of danger and adventure. Something as simple as having a chance to take something that doesn’t belong to you, having a chance to come clean about it and then having a chance to admit you’re wrong or choose to fight the person who it belongs to for it.
All of this without altering the course of the character through the main plot.
Yes, I think where this simple, humble game with retro graphics can stand out is by offering people with meaningful and interesting decisions without them even knowing that they are determining what will happen to them down the line.
Dogs, don’t forget dogs. Everyone wants a companion dog in a game. So make one of the moral things about a starving dog on the side of the road, maybe it barks when you are trying to steal something or in some way warns bandits you are coming. It later creeps into your campsite & tries to steal what little food you have. You can kick it, chase it away, or feed it.
If you feed it you get a companion that you then need to care for (where do you get extra food? What do you do if you have to climb a sheer cliff? Do you abandon it if things get to hard? Give it to a family with children who can care for it in its old/wounded state? Do you have to put it down if it is to injured or do you watch it struggle after you as it tries to keep up? Etc),
If you kick it maybe next time you come this way you are attacked by a pack of feral dogs led by the one you chased out.
This character, in particular, will not have any challenges in dealing with a pack of feral dogs. But, the point is well received. I may just add some part where a dumb dog follows you, and you have to feed it and protect it in battles, healing it. The dog maybe belongs to some old timer, and the dog was his only friend.
I haven’t yet read the whole thread because I’m in a hurry. But I wanted to quickly drop in a link and suggest you look into Chris Crawfords work in general:
I only skimmed the article, but it mentions an “open source interactive-storytelling engine”.
I don’t have the time to study a man’s life works, but I did read that article just now. I don’t know what they are going for as far as an interactive storytelling experience, with a whole engine behind it and whatnot. But I do have plans to build my own “engine” in Unity that will allow for scenes and dialogue to be created pretty easily in the inspector, thus allowing me to add story components on the fly. It won’t be all about dialiogue. Like I said, I want to make a game but I want the game to tell a story and for you to experience the story by basically using something you care about (items, money, the threat of wasting your time or having you have to backtrack a lot) to make the player feel involved.
This is the easiest and the worst way to go about doing this. If you are going to force the player to face the consequences of what they have done (for good or ill), the player should understand this is a conflict and should have taken several conscious steps to resolve it in their way. Just giving the player some random kick or pet the dog event will likely be meaningless over the course of the actual game.
I think this depends on the type of player. Some players want total control…they want to know what they are doing and how what they do affects the game play. They like to be in control.
Other players like randomness, surprises and they like to have things happen that they don’t expect.
As long at the future events have ways of changing them after you have done the so called meaningless event, I think it would be fine.
So…you kick the dog and later you need to get around the dog somehow but it is growling at you, because you kicked it. Now the easy way, such as giving the dog a steak, is no longer going to work because the dog won’t let you get near enough so you have to find another way. Another way exists, but it is harder/more dangerous/etc.
I would delight in this sort of thing because it means I can’t predict what is going to happen, I can’t resolve it ahead of time, instead I have to deal with the consequences of my behavior.
Sadly, we tend to think every player is the same and all like to be in control constantly, but a little “out of control” can be exhilarating and if you manage to deal with the situation, it can be even more rewarding.
I should preface by saying I was referring to binary choices. At this point, I’m sure we’ve both played enough games that put you somewhere on a one dimensional slider between total douche nugget and nice dude to know 95% of either playthrough is the same, with most of that remaining 5% being the end cutscene.
Direct consequences are a very different thing than accruing enough asshole points in some system in the background. Never mind that it totally skews the notion of good or bad. Say you come across a wounded raider in the wastes. Would giving him a stimpack be good? A benevolent gesture certainly, but given any other situation he would have been trying to shoot you in the face. Now let’s say there is an NCR mission some time later that requires you to acquire something from a raider’s fort. Thanks to helping the wounded raider, you can casually stroll up to the fort and peacefully resolve the conflict, but how does the NCR see this? What you’ve done is tantamount to witchcraft since no one in the NCR would have been able to approach the gate without being full of lead, much less peacefully negotiate. What kind of treachery have you worked to be in league with these devils? You could jeopardize your relations and future with the NCR, because you thought solving things peacefully was a “good” thing to do.
All I plan on doing is making different events pan out differently based on things you’ve done in the past, and showing you how this happened through brief explanations.
There’s no evil points. I am going to come up with intertwining stories and different characters and make key points different based on choices you have made.
If anyone thinks that is easy to do, and that just anyone can do that, I’ll let you know when I finish scoffing at you–it might be a while.
Thing is there will also be people that think it is a brilliant game. Some people will like the story that has consequences & some people won’t. If you are going the way of having consequences then having a binary choice at the start with the consequences obvious a few minutes later, & then maybe a choice with 3 or 4 options shown soon after the player should see that they will have an impact.
If the player does as you said & walks into the thieves den unmolested then maybe they should have to defend why they were able to. Someone not knowing they had done a good deed earlier would normally be safe in assuming that the player was in league with them, it happens all the time in real life - look at people caught up in police investigations just because they know someone who did something wrong. Maybe for the game the player may need to be given the option, in a bar or something, to say how they helped someone & some npc’s will link that. That sort of thing happens in real life.
It will depend on how the system is managed, how arbitrary some actions & outcomes will be, & how quickly it is shown to the player at the start of the game & how consistently it is applied throughout the game that will be a big challenge.
