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, etc ... that finally lets you swipe the holy golden trinket of summoning, fulfilling objective-1; 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 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, etc.

As this last example intimates, 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 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 driven ultimately by whatever events or 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, 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. Finding a key to a beautiful but empty room or a Builder prayer book can set the scene and be entertaining, but you don't feel like making any progress finding them and they're not really part of the plot.

- A little affordance theory

Story-Telling Elements

- Readables

- Conversations

- Visual Storytelling

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

- Revelations

- World or Character State Changes (or Apparent Changes)

- NPCs

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 LOL 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.

-