Plan for Gareth Fouche

Inspired by Joes latest .plan.

Joe talked quite a bit about the role of stories in games, and the difficulties, and he raises very good points, points that I have myself thought about, so I'm going to ramble on a bit on that topic.

He is absolutely right about the underlying gameplay activity being the most important thing in any game. What is the underlying activity of an RPG? Some might be inclined to say uncovering the storyline, but in essence it is a combination of gambling/acquisition and exploration. Its the infamous treadmill! You overcome challenges in order to get 'stuff' (levels, skills, items) which in turn allow you to take on bigger challenges to get more stuff.

And on and on in a big loop! Weeeeee!


Now, despite the flak the treadmill gets, people don't realise that it is actually fun (as long as its done right), and it is present in most games. FPS : Fight through monsters to get new guns to play with that make bigger booms which allow you to fight scarier monsters. RTS : Beat this stage to go to the next stage which unlocks new units/tech which allows you to fight bigger armies to get to the next stage. Etc. These treadmills have been around for ages, yet even today, they are still fun. It forms a continous reward system. You get a reward dangled in front of you, then when you jump through the hoop to get it, you see a bigger reward dangling just out of reach, this time you must jump through 2 hoops, etc.

The folks at blizzard recognised this with Diablo. I have a friend who isn't much of an RPG gamer. When asked what RPGs she likes, she listed Diablo, and said that she had no real idea what the storyline was about, but played to get cool stuff.

It's actually quite bizzare, if you think about it. We will invest hours of our lives to collect virtual stuff. The only use that stuff has is in the virtual world we are playing in. We keep playing, keep going around "one more corner", killing one more monster, in the hope of finding something cool.

In fact, interestingly enough, the harder it is to acquire an item, the more its percieved value. Old school games used this principle well. You had a big bright high score list, and people would sink their money into those machines to beat that high score. The points meant absolutely nothing in real life. But that was irrelevant.


Anyway, so the core mechanic in RPGs is well known. That is where I will focus my initial efforts. Forget storyline, or creating characters or whatever. The kill-loot-level-repeat cycle. That must be tight, fun and continously refined. If it sucks, no amazing storyline can save this ship from sinking. People must want to get the next shiny thing.


Now, all this seems to refute my previous statements about storyline being important. It wasn't really in Diablo, right?

Ah, but coming back to the example of my non-RPG friend. We recently got her onto playing KOTOR. I got an sms from her a little later exclaiming over how good KOTOR is, much better than Morrowind.

(Some people might not agree, but bear with me here.)

So, although I agreed with her, I wanted to know WHY she thought that, and her response hit it spot on. KOTOR draws you in, the storyline and characters are set up to pull you along, whereas MW just dumps you to find your own way. Compare the start of both games. MW dumps you off a ship, tells you to go 'that way, and talk to some guy', then leaves you to bumble around.

KOTOR in comparison : You wake up. Sirens are going off, the spaceship is shaking, you can hear sounds of firefighting. A soldier rushes in, telling you to put on your gear and follow him to reinforce the jedi on the bridge. Immediately you are pulled in. Who is attacking, why, what are you doing on the ship, who is the jedi? As you are pulled forward, fragments of the storyline or presented to you, which in turn draw you further in. An engrossing storyline combined with a good underlying mechanic is a potent combination.

Ironically, it is a pretty similar mechanism to the treadmill. As you uncover more parts of the story, you are presented with further questions, further hooks to drag you in. Its just a different type of reward. Story fragments instead of game items.

That is actually where I think a lot of people go wrong when designing storylines. This is going to sound really, REALLY geeky, but I have actually been a Game Master for a DnD group for quite a while, and the key to getting people interested in uncovering your story is not to write a huge document with pages and pages of background lore and character information and history. It is simply to slowly but regularly dish out those story 'hooks', breadcrumb style.

I will give an example, off the top of my head, of something I think would be easy to do using script :

Player walks into an alleyway, through a trigger. 5 characters come out of hiding. All dressed identically, all wearing masks, all with a red symbol on their shirts. You try to talk to them, but they give no response, no matter what you say. They attack you, and they are challenging.

About 20 seconds into the battle, just long enough for you to realise this is going to be tough, a character dressed in black, long cloak, hidden face, appears at the end of the alley, and begins firing arrows at your assailants. Together you overcome them. But just as you kill the last one, without saying anything, the mysterious ally dissapears round the corner. Who where your attackers, what is that symbol, why did they attack you, who was your ally, why did they help you, have they been following you? These are 'hooks'. People will carry on playing because they want to find out the answers.

Part 2 : Later, as you walk through town, you see a big building, with the same red symbol painted on the door. Aha! The player might try to enter the building, enquire with people what it is, sneak through a window etc. To make it even more interesting, you could make them catch a glimpse of their strange ally, ducking round a corner. Was he watching you, or the building? How are you involved in this?

As the player progresses, you unveil more of the storyline, and give him glimpses of how it weaves together. They must feel like archealogists uncovering a mystery.

For this reason, I am not going to start out writing more than a rudimentary storyline. As I create the game I will flesh it out, just as I will flesh out the underlying mechanic. I will put in what works, tinker, and simply rip out what doesn't.


Its a tricky undertaking, no doubt, and few people can pull it off, but can't you say that about all game development? I don't want to say it can't be done without at least trying.