Story and Plot Design

- by demagogue

Dark Mod FMs, like the long tradition of Thief FMs before them (which we should all take notes from), allow for a much bigger role for story and plot than other first person genres, and most players expect a good story to come as part of their experience playing FMs. It's not really sufficient anymore to build a mission first and try to throw together some plot or story to fit it without putting a little thought into what makes for good storytelling in an FM first, and ideally designing the mission's architecture, objectives, gameplay, plot, and story all as a coherent whole from the beginning. One story that inspires me is that, as is well known, Terry Pratchett (the famous fantasy writer) was a long-time player of our FMs and would often post questions and comments (like all of us), and *he* said that *our* FMs were among the best story-telling going on in all video gamedom! High praise from a master, and something we should all strive to live up to!

The purpose of wiki entry is to give a mapper some good methods and things to think about when working out the story and plot-progression of their FM. It's about the mechanical side of how to construct a plot that works in terms of gameplay to tell a story, as opposed to giving story ideas per se. It will walk through a number of ideas mappers can think about when plotting their FMs, although of course since storytelling is a creative thought process, there is no universally "right" way to design a good story and plot. But hopefully some of these ideas can inspire your own thoughts on the issue.

NB, For the next few days or weeks, this is going to be work in progress and probably subject to serious revision and complete re-writing. So it's not really a trustworthy tutorial until it's done.

Introduction: Plot, Story, and "Making Progress" in FMs

"Plot", in the context of an FM, really means two things that are interconnected:

(1) The gameplay plot, the progress and logic of the gameplay from the start of the mission to fulfilling all the objectives and winning the FM. E.g., sneaking past guards-A & B allows you to get into room-A, that gets you key-B, that opens door-B, which lets you into the room that gives you access to the attic and cues that going through the attic gets you closer to your goal, etc ... that finally lets you swipe the holy golden trinket of summoning, fulfilling objective-1; etc. The purpose of each step just has meaning insofar as it makes progress towards your ultimate goal of meeting your objectives; and

(2) The narrative plot, the progress and logic of the FMs storytelling from the briefing, to story details the player gathers as he explores the FM, to finally the "narrative climax" of the FM. E.g., if you had a FM with 10 rooms, various rooms will contain storytelling elements (readables, overheard conversations, visual-storytelling elements like finding a body or fighting an important NPC, etc), which the player will see or hear in the order he or she explores those rooms. The "narrative plot" would be the progress and logic of how those story-elements reach the player, e.g., the player reads readable-A before readable-B because the room with readable-B requires a key you found under readable-A, whereas readable-C is in an open room and could be read at any time, and altogether A, B, & C dole out the story to the player in an interesting way that carries the player in a "narrative flow" through the story, start to end, etc (this time A->B->C, another time A->C->B). The purpose of each storytelling element has meaning insofar as it contributes towards making progress in the (or a) narrative flow towards the ultimate goal of the narrative climax (the engine of the flow; the player can feel that "all this is going somewhere").

The two are interconnected, as one could guess from those descriptions, insofar as (1) the progress of the storytelling will flow primarily from the progress of the gameplay as the player explores the FM and opens up new areas, and (2) in turn the "storytelling" directs gameplay by giving directions to players what to do next or how to get past some gameplay barrier they face. Both sides of the coin are driven ultimately by whatever gameplay events or narrative information gets the player closer to fulfilling the objectives of the FM (which also usually plays the secondary role as fulfilling the story of the FM, or a subplot, as a climax). The two are connected at the hip and often there isn't a clear distinction between gameplay and narrative plot, and we capture both ideas in the shared concept of "making progress" in the mission closer to the objectives/story-fulfillment.

In fact a good test of what's part of the FM's plot is to ask, does the player in this scene get closer to fulfilling the story-game objectives he or she is after? Finding a key to the important room you have to visit to get closer to your objective, or reading a readable with key information about the NPC running the show and his intentions and where you might find him, can both be considered part of the FMs plot, because you feel like you've made progress in the FM when you find them. They're "useable" to getting deeper into the story-gameplay plot (what I'll call narrative-space below). On the other hand, finding a key to a beautiful but empty & useless room or a Builder prayer book can set the scene and be entertaining, but you don't feel like you're making any progress finding them and they're not really part of the plot per se (although there can still be good story-telling & even gameplay reasons to have them, as explained below. That does raise the important distinction, however, that "gameplay" and "story" do not equal "gameplay-plot" and "narrative-plot". The former are mechanics; the latter is the structure of those mechanics as a working whole. This tutorial is largely about plotting, so remember that distinction.)

One quick theory point if you want to have a broad picture of how things work. Somebody wrote a thesis on the relationship between story and gameplay (or interaction), and the basic punchline was that affordance theory is a good way to frame it. Affordance theory basically says that features of a thing open up various opportunities for us to interact with that thing in a structured way, like the handle on a coffee cup affords us the possibility to pick it up and drink it so we don't touch the hot cup because, in the way it's shaped and placed and because of our cultural familiarity with handles generally, it cues and invites manipulation in exactly that way. Anyway, the basic thesis is that "interactive story-telling" is most relevant towards gameplay in offering affordances to gameplay possibilities. When we get story information that some NPCs are "good guys" and other NPCs are "bad guys", that offers affordance to the types of interactions we can expect to have with those NPCs when we meet them later on, e.g., whether we're going to have a conversation with them or a fight. That's the "interactive work" the story is offering to the gameplay.

The affordance thesis is a very general principle and so broad a person could spend a long time looking at every single mechanic and type of story-telling to see how the principle works out. It's also too narrow in that it leaves out the traditional roles of narrative plotting in just telling a good story that the player has fun uncovering for its own sake, similar to watching a movie or reading a book (although unique for each playthrough). So while it's an interesting concept, the rest of this tutorial will just be focused on a very specific and practical concept of story-gameplay plotting as making progress towards the goals/climax of the FM in a structured way (in both its gameplay and narrative guises), and more specifically on what mappers need to know when designing their mission and its plot. And even more specifically, the core of this tutorial is the specific technique of spreading story into the FM's space that I'll describe in the next section.

Spreading Story out in Time and Space & the Concept of "Narrative Space"

Control and the Flow of Information

Unlike a movie where the filmmaker can control all information to the viewer, narrative plotting has graded levels of control of information-releases, which has pros and cons; some things the mapper can enforce (like you MUST read this book), some aspects the mapper can try to direct (putting things in earlier rooms makes it more likely they'll be read early on), and some aspects the mapper has little control over whether or how or when the player gets the info.

A Method for Story Writing

More Detail on Story-Telling Elements

Before getting to the actual plotting part, I think it's worth a brief look at the typical elements that go into FM storytelling.

- Readables

Journals, letters, books, etc, readables do storytelling obliquely. They don't usually narrate directly "X"; they are the writings of an NPC in the game-world thinking about "X" (unless that NPC himself is narrating something he saw). I think all of us have played enough FMs to know how readables work to get out the story and plot elements.

One thing I want to mention about them, though: A common criticism with FM readables are that they are "too long" or have irrelevant information. What I think this criticism really boils down to is exactly what I was talking about above. I don't think it's the length per se that's the issue. I think the feeling of "making progress" in the mission (or its lack) also applies when a player reads a readable. ...

- Conversations

Conversations happen when NPCs speak and act and the player is in proximity to listen and watch, usually either 2+ NPCs talking to each other, or an NPC and the player talking. The nice thing about conversations over readables is you can add some action, gestures, have the AI walk around a little or perform some action, and also it's a part of action live right in front of the player, so it's imminently relevant to the world & gameplay. The downside is the conversation can get interrupted or the player can wander off, so they're harder for the mapper to enforce.

- Visual Storytelling

Visual storytelling is any method of conveying narrative elements without using words, in effect, showing the player rather than telling. A classic example is finding an NPC body in a room. The player knows something dramatic happened that's probably relevant to the story he's wrapped up in.

- esp take advantage of sneaking gameplay (eavesdropping, events acted out around the player)

- Revelations

At its core, storytelling is mostly about the controlled (or uncontrolled, as the case may be) release of information in a structured way, where later pieces of information contribute to a narrative flow on top of the previous pieces in a directed way towards the goal or climax of the story, which lets the player feel like they're getting caught up in a dramatic flow and they can have a sense of making progress, and a sense of accomplishment when they arrive at the conclusion after a well-delivered build-up. (As we all recall from playing FMs with great stories, even if it's somewhat smoke & mirrors, it's a real feeling of fun when we're in a world we don't understand at first and we feel pieces start coming together in really interesting ways, and we want to push onwards to see what they're leading to; even if we can guess, we still feel that drive to discover more. Good plotting sparks that feeling.)

Essential to this picture are two things, (1) all the information pieces add up to an interesting and dramatic story when put together and (2) the player doesn't have access to all the information at the start, but they are revealed over time, and the new pieces must be important revelations or discoveries about the plot to really count as progressing the plot.

Now people sometimes complain that "plot twists" are cliche, or "I could see the end coming a mile away", and I think as a reaction that sometimes makes some mappers shrink from really writing in dramatic revelations into their plot and you get the opposite problem of a watery story where not much really happens at all.

- World or Character State Changes (or Apparent Changes)

- NPCs

Like a lot of games, it's sometimes useful to distinguish functionary AI (like guards) who are mostly there for gameplay reasons, and NPC AI, who play a role in the FM's story, although of course an AI can play both roles or switch between them.

Specific Techniques and Story-Types FMs have Used

- Jobs & Events

- Reconstructing Past Events and Leading them to the Present

- NPC-Relationship Webs

- Private Spaces in Proximity: Storytelling in City & Mansion FMs

Common Problems and Things to Avoid in Plotting

- Does the plot make sense? Does it pass the sanity or straight-face test?

- Is your plot breakable? (And is that so bad?). Can specific game mechanics screw up the plot flow?

- Is there a good balance between free gameplay and directed plotting?

- One plotting problem I encountered in my FM. In order to get the player to see an important event in one room, the mission design led him away from the path that continued the mission, requiring them to backtrack to get back on the "main path" of the plot flow. In retrospect this was a design mistake. ...

- Be wary of game-y puzzles and gameplay (which isn't to say you can't have fun). Game-y is when you leave the goal of gameplay moving the plot forward and move into the territory of just having the player do crap because it sounds cool on paper.

- Avoid "premonition" puzzles, avoid situations that bust or kill the player without fair warning (especially for ghosters), or require lots of reloads

- Never leave your player stuck without a way to win.

- Cuing. Try to let the player always have an idea something to try next. Use cues. Consider graduated levels of hints (so a puzzle is found early on and open throughout the FM, early things give loose hints, as you open up more areas conventionally other rooms can give increasingly detailed hints). If the puzzle has multiple states, use the failure states to give hints about the success state. Something somewhere should be obvious the way through. It should be possible to complete an FM without having to post a question. Avoid cultural or language puzzles (or math puzzles). Remember that a large number of our players are not native English speakers. Be sensitive.

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