Writing rules to be broken

News & General Discussion
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My wife loves the show Once Upon a Time.

In my opinion, I find its plot-lines feel contrived and groan-worthy, its characters largely one-dimensional, and its production quality to be lacking. Yet, it is my burden to often sit and listen to the show whilst I work.

Once is quite popular. It features beloved classic characters thrown together into loosely defined plot arcs, and I do have to admit- it has some great twists. But my biggest problem- the thing that I just cannot get over- is that Once makes rules only to break them.

Case in point- there is a scene, where to protect the land, two heroes must enact a curse- the last ingredient of the the curse is “the heart of the thing you love most.” Thus, one hero must sacrifice the other to save the land. This would be a great tragic moment, except after the heart has been sacrificed, the first hero takes their own heart, breaks it in two, and gives the other half to the second hero, thereby negating the cost of the curse.

This might be clever, except the same curse was cast twice before, without the loophole.

Another example- there is great significance given to the “taking of hearts.” Wherein a magic user takes the heart from a characters chest, and can use that heart to control them, or can crush it, and so kill them. After this is used scores of times in the plot- one character uses magic on another character to keep anyone from taking their heart. Upon hearing this I thought- “Wait, if you can do that- why haven’t we done this for all the characters?” And yet, seasons later, people are still getting their hearts ripped out and crushed, despite there being a spell that costs nothing, and prevents this.

My question is this: When and how is it acceptable to break established rules in story or gameplay?

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When it actually benefits the game or story, or when it deliberately subverts expectations or raises the stakes of the experience. Not to plug a plothole or make things easier for the writer.

It sounds like that show just has a bad writer.

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Headphones! :slight_smile:

To me shows like this - and the most popular others have this unnerving inability to kill off characters that are considered popular, they fall into the soap opra trope which has been used to death in popular modern media - games included, “that was only a dream”, everybody is still alive. The experience in Once is nothing more than a creative twist on this - it was only a dream sequence, to keep popular characters of the series alive. The only exceptions being stories based around books (Game of Thrones) and stories that want to wrap up the series or season into a final moment (Lost - kind of, and Walking Dead).
I strongly dislike shows and games where the creatives behind the scene can’t kill off characters, because they or the audience is too attached to the cast.

Special request - Carol’s story line in TWD has been played out to death. Please let her brains get eaten by a zombie. The sooner the better)

When - anytime - story/gameplay has evolved beyond soap opra episodic story telling, established rules should be given only limited reference to any ‘new’ story to be told. imo
How - depends upon the story.

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That’s my gut reaction as well. But while It never did great ratings-wise, it also never did terrible. I know a whole bunch of people who really got into the show. So, I choose to challenge my preconceived notions and float the idea that maybe people don’t really care about the rules- or there are times when they care about the rules less than others.

What I’m getting from you guys is that breaking rules is totally good, and you should do it- but not like how I described in Once.

Is there a way to design rules to be broken? Should the player get a hint to go looking for a loophole? Should there be a plot explanation for the rules changing? or is it okay for the player to just go, oh I guess things are just different now!

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Most people aren’t necessarily looking for good writing.

I like Final Fantasy 13, and that game is almost universally hated by anyone who’s even heard of it, much less played it. I enjoy the game partly because many of the criticisms are simply wrong. But for a number of them–I just don’t care. The good outweighs the “bad.” “Show, don’t tell” is a rule that game breaks freely, because it has massive, massive walls of text going over intricate plot details. But I don’t mind reading, so it didn’t bother me.

There’s a visual novel series on Steam called World End Economica, and it has some of the worst writing I’ve ever encountered in my life. It was genuinely painful at times, and more than once I stopped and asked myself, “do I really want to finish this?” But I pushed through the genuinely terrible writing quality to enjoy a pretty decent story arc.

It’s possible for something to be “bad” in some sense but still be enjoyable.

This only addresses the first half of your comment. I’ll speak to the rest later when I get a little more time.

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When it comes to rules, I don’t see stories as sufficiently similar to gameplay that a one-size-fits-all decision is valid.

In a story, the viewer or reader (customer!) is just along for the ride. If a rule is broken, it’s the writer’s job to restore the viewer’s comfort level with the whole scenario.

In a game, of course, the player is an active participant who has invested time and effort in learning those rules, so breaking a rule is a much more serious design decision. Of course, modifying rules is effectively the essence of capability-driven progression in many games… new abilities, temporary buffs, etc.

I suppose the intersection is the storyline behind a game. In a pure story, breaking rules could be a sign of bad writing. But in both cases… it could be the opening to a plot twist. But in-game itself? Strikes me as a bad idea…

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I would say yes — if there’s a loophole, there should be some sort of hint (even if it’s the sort of thing that you are likely to miss at first, and then forehead-slap yourself over later). And there should be a plot explanation for it that makes sense.

One of my favorite novels of all time is Implied Spaces. This book begins with a guy walking along a desert road, cataloging spiders and ants with his talking cat. Talking cat? OK, so it’s a fantasy world of some sort with talking animals. He happens upon a troll. Troll, check, magic sword, got it, I know what we’re doing. …Then comes a sudden shift, and it turns out that’s not what we’re doing at all — and I really can’t say more without giving away some fun, but suffice to say that the rules (or what you thought were the rules) change dramatically, more than once; and by the end of the book, hoo boy, it’s a very different universe indeed. Yet at every step it makes complete sense. I’ve read the book about six times, and loved it each time, because the initial experience of “wait, what?!” gave way to “oh yeah, that is what that was about” and both experiences are awesome.

But it’s only because it all hangs together with rock-solid logic and a believable plot.

To contrast, the book I despise above all others, I will not even honor by naming, but it was a sci-fi story about alien invasion. It was a bit ho-hum, the aliens were just bipedal dogs with guns, but oh well, I’ll stick with it and see how it turns out… and then, in the next to last chapter, just when things are looking really bleak for humanity… the world is saved by… wait for it… friggin’ vampires. Including Count Dracula himself. I am not making this up. I literally threw the book to the ground and stomped around the house in a rage. I have never been so angry at a book or author (whose work I will never read again), because I felt betrayed — he had set up the rules one way, and then at the very end, changed them to something completely different, without warning. I didn’t sign up for a vampire story; I signed up for a hard SF story.

Oh, and maybe this raises another metarule: if you’re going to change the rules, do it early. Don’t wait to the next-to-last chapter. Do it in chapter 2. Had he introduced vampires in chapter 2, I would have said, “wait, what? This is a vampire story?” And then I would have either continued with the new rules, or quit then. But waiting until the very end, and then springing it on the reader/player, is just mean-spirited. It breaks the contract between writer and reader.

(But seriously. Go get Implied Spaces right now. You must read this book!)

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One thing I would love to try one day is a magic system where there is a gap between how the setting understands magic and how magic actually works. Like the lore around magic, and subsequently how the player is taught it, is all built on flawed assumptions.

At least as far as gameplay is concerned, this sort of approach seems like the only way to do it. You aren’t breaking real rules so much as the perceived rules.

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One thing to point out, that MV10 addresses, is that there’s a difference between breaking “story” rules and breaking gameplay rules. And there’s a different between “writing” rules like you have in your title, and “story” rules, which is more what you describe with the show. Breaking story rules is more along the lines of the idea of retcons, and contradicting lore. And of course, there are good and bad ways to do it.

The Tale of Anders and Karl, or good ways to retcon:

You may or may not have played dragon age. I’ll write this as though you haven’t.

Anyway, in Dragon Age there are mages. They’re people born with inherent magical ability. Their magical ability is like a superpower–and they can’t shut it off. And using it attracts demons which, if the person is sufficiently weak of mind (like say a child), can possess the person and make them a monster. So in the DA universe, there’s understandably a big stigma against mages. Because of the above, the mages are kept in closely guarded colleges (or “Circles”) where their every move is watched. And if a mage is sufficiently dangerous, or does not prove themselves strong enough of mind in some mental tests, they are made “Tranquil.”

“Tranquil” mages no longer have their superpower. They no longer can use magic. They are also no longer susceptible to demonic possession. On the other hand, however, this procedure completely severs their emotions. They’re not robots, they can still think and use logic–but they can’t ever express joy or sorrow.

So understandably, in the DA-verse there’s a ton of controversy over all of this. Now, in the first DA game it establishes very plainly that the Tranquil process is irreversible. A mage made Tranquil is stuck that way forever. Forever cut off from the rest of the world. However…

In the second game, you have a party member named Anders. Anders is a mage, and one who is very indignant about the plight of mages. His indignation leads him to take some extremely drastic measures at the end of the game. Anyway, he has a “friend” who is in one of these Circles in the city that the game takes place in. Anders corresponds with him and other mages over the course of the game, and with the player can aid some mages in escape from the Circle.

At one point in the game, however, Anders finds out that Karl is going to be made Tranquil. So he and the player rush in to save Karl. But when they get there, it’s too late. Karl has been made Tranquil.

Now, let me step back for a moment and talk about Anders. Anders is…different. I mentioned demonic possession before. It’s also possible for someone to be “possessed” by a benevolent spirit, such as a spirit of faith or a spirit of compassion. And Anders is…“possessed” you could say, though it’s more symbiotic than that, by a spirit of justice. This is part of what makes him so indignant about the plight of the mages, but it also causes him to go too far sometimes. Anders describing justice: “Since when is Justice happy? Justice is righteous. Justice is hard.” At a different point in the game, when leading escaped mages, a demure mage who refuses to run away causes this spirit of justice to rise up in Anders, and nearly makes him strike her down.

So in this case, when Anders sees his “friend” like this, a Tranquil–he loses control. The spirit of justice (vengeance?) takes over. His eyes start glowing blue and he starts talking in a deep voice. At this point the player goes into a fight.

After the fight, Anders is back in control again–but Karl is suddenly connected again. The spirit within Anders coming to the surface caused Karl to be able to feel again. But it only lasts for a little while. It begins to fade, and he begins to return to his Tranquil state. In his last moments of awareness, he begs Anders to kill him. A moment later he is completely returned to his former state, and completely unaware of what just happened. The player has the chance to urge Anders to kill him or keep him alive.

This part is already long enough, so I’ll just briefly describe the next part: the next game in the series reveals that Tranquility CAN be reversed. That game is focused on something else, so little is done with it, but it is revealed for future knowledge.

This is a retcon. This is taking previously established information and saying “Surprise, that’s not how it works!” But this is a good retcon.

This is a good retcon because of what it does for the game or story: it adds a layer of complexity to an already controversial subject (mages vs. Templars is possibly the most iconic Bioware debate, and certainly the most iconic DA one–it’s been debated back and forth to a ridiculous degree). It opens up the lore in whole new ways that challenge your preconceptions about the past, and your expectations for the future.

This is a good retcon because it is NOT used to give a “happy go lucky” ending, or to make things easy for the player or the characters. The game doesn’t make Karl Tranquil and then suddenly backpedal by having Anders turn him normal again, and leave things that way. It doesn’t lower the stakes–it actually raises them: it tells you that the real Karl is trapped inside this shell, unable to escape. It challenges the player to either kill him to save him from a “fate worse than death,” or let him live trapped inside his own mind.

This is a good retcon because it isn’t actually a retcon. The DA story is somewhat unique in that all information is presented “in-character,” through the writings of some well-known characters in the world. This means that their information can be wrong. And in fact, the third game does this with a number of established “facts” in the game world–deliberately subverts expectations and previous understanding and removes the shroud covering the truth, adding (as previously mentioned) layers of complexity to seemingly simple things.

In fact, let me just make an aside here and praise the DA series for doing such a masterful job of establishing lore and carefully orchestrating the expressions and subversions of what was established. David Gaider did an amazing, amazing job.

Well, I was going to talk about Mass Effect as well and present an example of breaking the rules that was poorly done, but I wasn’t expecting to write so much about DA, and that wasn’t what you were asking about anyway.

But good ways to break the rules (in terms of lore and “retcons”) should probably have those three elements, at least: it adds a layer of complexity to your understanding of the universe, it isn’t used to make things easier for the viewer/player (and occasionally raises the stakes rather than lowering them), and it isn’t really a retcon (because the story was crafted with it always in mind–it was just hidden from the viewer initially).

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If you’re like me and you’ve never heard the term “retcon,” I looked it up: it comes from the comic book world, and is an abbreviation for Retroactive Continuity.

EA mentions “contradicting lore” which sounds a lot like Rocko’s breaking “perceived rules” idea and to me that sounds like a more legitimate plot device. It’s one thing to establish a rule then completely wreck your “contract” with the player by breaking that rule. As a player, if rule-breaking isn’t handled very carefully, I tend to think at that point, well, where else is this game cheating behind the scenes? Or alternately I wonder if I misunderstood something, or if the game will turn out to have other inconsistencies. But contradicting lore or breaking rules that the player was clearly led to believe (but perhaps never actually witnessed in practice) is a fairly common way of throwing twists into storylines (the revered king is actually evil, etc.).

One specific subset of rule-breaking (in my eyes) is when you reach some storyline climax and you’re forced to fight some Heavy Duty Bad Guy and you alllllmost beat him (often expending lots of valuable resources and nearly dying yourself) – then they cut-scene away. Sometimes it’s even worse, they cut-scene away, the Bad Guy miraculously heals, and you have to fight again. The “rule” is that I know how combat works and breaking the rule is that I could have easily won but was denied that win. Those are rage-quit moments for me.

I’ve had this specific idea before … not really about how it is taught or how it works, but what the player must do to use it properly. First at a basic level, then later as ways to combine things already learned for more powerful effects. Unfortunately whenever I try to flesh out the idea it just feels too complicated to implement – and possibly too complex to actually be fun. But then, I don’t really like crafting mechanics (let alone crafting games) and it starts to look like crafting pretty quickly.

With careful design, though, I think that discovery process could be a lot of fun. And in keeping with the topic, I think some light-duty misdirection or research dead-ends could be fun, maybe as “lore” of questionable veracity. Sort of a highly detailed, interactive tech tree…

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Sorry, I’m so used to saying it that I didn’t even think it would be unclear.

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Cut scenes are the biggest culprit of rule breaking for me. Here are some examples:

  • You are prevented from striking the killing blow on a boss
  • You are prevented from using a potion to heal an ally
  • You are forced into a fight you could otherwise avoid

The second one is common in fantasy games. Throughout most of the game a sword thrust to the chest can be fixed by chugging a potion, or with a handy resurrection spell. Except in a cut scene. The characters manage to ignore the potions they’ve been chugging like candy, and let allies bleed to death.

The third is common in stealth games. Just played through Deus Ex: Human Revolution. With care you can make it through most of the game without fighting a single enemy. The PC is the master of stealth. Except in a cut scene, during a cut scene he just walks up to the bad guy and introduces himself before pulling out the guns.

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This thing you guys talk about…
I hate it so much with a passion.

Specifically when a cutscene breaks the suspension of disbelief.
It’s just poor writing and storytelling.
Especially when the story is the only thing holding a game, or movie, together, then I just don’t bother wasting my time.

I don’t know why it bothers me that much, or if it gets worse the older I get, or the more experienced I get with storytelling.
But it bothers me a lot, probably more than it should (according to my girlfriend).

notable moments of frustration,
Mass effect 3, Shepard says something my shepard would not say, because forced drama, and lazy writing.
Dying Light, (a game about making guns) when push comes to shove, you are stripped of your important skills, and weapons, and forced into a knife fight with the final boss… because… reasons.
Tomb Raider, emotional cutscene about limited resources, gameplay resources everwhere, emotional cutscene about killing, gameplay be a mass murderer without flinching.
Total Warhammer, set the gameplay under a set of strict rules, discover after 10 hours that the npc’s don’t follow those rules… because… no reason given.

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I agree. I’ve never worked in any professional game dev environments, but I did manage the developers for a training software company (back when “multimedia” was still a new term and a separate category of software). We had professional writers and professional teachers collaborating on the instructional design and “story” scripting. There was a lot of animation and voiceover involved. I saw frequent disconnects between the writing and the technical necessities (part of my job was to rectify those things), and thinking back to that, I wonder how often that plays into what you’re describing. Perhaps the people writing the overarching storyline simply aren’t gamers, or aren’t serious-enough gamers to understand how this type of thing is a real problem for some players. And I imagine the storyline changes far less often than gameplay mechanics and style during actual development.

Probably no way to know for sure, unless this brings some of the professional game dev vets out of hiding, but it feels like a fit with my partially-relevant experience.

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You don’t even mention the worst part: every Kei Leng scene ever (I was going to say Cereal Leng here, but remembered that most probably don’t know what that’s referring to).

I believe you’re right, that there’s a disconnect there. A tangential example related to (again) Dragon Age: In the series there’s a magical type of ore called lyrium, which is used to power magical abilities or infuse magical effects onto weapons. It can only be crafted or worked with by dwarves, people with absolutely no magical ability. If anyone else gets near it, they go insane and starting bleeding from their eyes and stuff…not a good day.

But in the first game, there’s a series of fights down where the dwarves live, and in the fight there are open “lyrium veins” which the player can use to instantly top off their mana/stamina (I think health too).

Now lore-wise it doesn’t even make sense (because most of the characters would die when they got near the stuff). And when someone asked David Gaider (the man in charge of all of the lore and story for the DA series) about how that sequence was possible, he gave a frustrated “space magic?:face_with_spiral_eyes:” response.

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Always.

Breaking the rules does not mean it will guarantee success. In regard of plot holes, they can be accidental or by design. Examples of plot holes by design are the ones in The Matrix and Harry Potter. There are too many to sum, but a little research will proof my case.

The accidental ones are caused by writing screenplays; chapters might follow the main path, but sometimes details get scrapped/changed at the very last minute. And some people wouldn’t care about the accuracy of detail. In a game, a detail like that would definitely trigger some comments from players - and I wouldn’t even place them in the region of breaking the rules, but simply as they are - oopsies.

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Definite proof that you don’t need to be internally consistent in order to make a best seller. Sometimes telling a good story is enough. And once you’ve started with a good story, you can eventually drop that for brand recognition.

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I’m not a big fan of setting out rules then purposely going against them.

It’s pretty lazy writing, you just created a set of rules why would you then go out of your way to break those rules? It doesn’t make a character any more intelligent looking.

A good way to smartly “break the rules” is to make the rules a little ambiguous. The most obvious one is in lord of the rings with the witch king “No man can kill him” a woman kills him.

Stuff like that makes you go “oh that’s clever” rather than “Oh really come on! How could I guess that!”

For example: The wand of death kills any it casts its magic on. Legend does speak of a holy necklace that stops this awesome godly power. The characters acquire this item somehow but you never make it obvious WHO has it. The whole cast gets blasted and should be dead, oh no! Turns out they all took a chunk of the necklace and kept in on there person therefore they all get the benefits.

This is breaking a rule but using logical reasoning which makes your characters look far smarter than “love stopped you dying” (looking at you Harry Potter!)

You can logically figure out why this worked, no one said you had to wear the necklace just you had to be touching it.

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The wand of death example is surely a “cheesy” example of breaking the rules. But even though, the “loophole” can make sense if the story elaborates that the substance inside necklace can stop that amazing power, and not so much the necklace as a whole. Breaking the rules because of loopholes can even be a good business model - ask any law firm.

I don’t see how a character would look less intelligent by breaking the rules; in fact, by breaking the rules, if done not in a super cheesy way, makes the character more human to me - finding a way when all hope is lost. Imagine stories without loopholes. A world without Bruce Willis saving the day… -sob- -sob-

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I think what @JessieK was trying to say, was that if a story has to resort to changing the foundation of the world in order to resolve a character plot, then that character is portrayed with limited depth.

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