Dungeon Mastering: Facebook.
*Note. I started this as a response to Luis Blondet Raul’s theory on MMO storytelling and DnD Dungeon mastering and it exploded into an informal essay on personal storytelling and the MMO.”
I was a dungeon master once.
The stories I enjoyed most when playing RPGs of the yesteryears and even RPGs now are the ones that start the player off with a clear personal purpose, only to have that quest spiral into something hugely epic, hugely complex as your progress. Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate II, Fallout series all that that single goal that starts you off in the game, but slowly build up the world around it through a series of events.
The goals there rarely fell into the easy mediocre tropes fantasy story usually comes with, stuff like, “Save the world, mercenary crew looking for money, adventurer come to vanquish ancient evil.” They were more personal; they start out more intimate; why you got resurrected in a morgue, get the water chip for your dying town, or rescue an old friend. Saving the world came secondary to the personal story that game revolved around.
So similar to when I was a dungeon master, I found it easier to herd my players when I motivated them with personal quest amidst a war torn world. No one really bought into the fiction about some Big Bad evil, but everyone bothered to play characters when some warlord they worked for swindled them out of treasure and left them stranded on a desert island, or that they were lured as convenient scapegoats into some political plot, or that they were blamed on a murder they didn’t commit.
People come into RPGs with varying different motivations. A lot just want to game the system, build an Uber powerful character to crush his enemies, see them fall at their feet and hear the lamentation of their women. Others want loot, big shiny loot they can wave around to their friends and brag, engendering e-peen envy. Some come for the story. On facebook, that some is nearly negligible.
I think most people on facebook come for the spreadsheet, the genial time wasters that are easy to understand, easy to get into, and easy to play. It’s casual entertainment, quick enjoyment in between your real games, or your real life stuff. Given the limitations of the medium, it’s much harder to tell a good story, much less a great one, that players can buy into. But telling that good story, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.
What I’ve figured out for facebook and MMOs in general, is that it’s hard to tell a specific story about a specific character for a multitude of players. If everyone is that character, than the story, and the world building loses that social gaming feel. The story feels claustrophobic, and the content generation becomes dangerously unscalable to the tech we have at hand.
On the other hand, telling a story with repetitive meaningless tasks means players simply don’t buy into the fictional world. There are only so many pimps I can kill, or pizzas I can make before I realize there isn’t much of a world, or a concept to play around with. These activities may tickle the compulsive clicker is most gamers, but it could hardly be called a decent attempt to create a world, or even a game that has more interactivity than filling a spreadsheet and hoarding virtual goods.
So, given the limitations of facebook, in terms of tech, time, accessibility and gaming conventions, how do we, as developers, write and design a game that could ideally build a steampunk fantasy world full of airships and adventure, while allowing gamers of all creed to come, click around, casually enjoy the art and gameplay while providing a deeper experience for those who seek it.
Given that this post has run its length in terms of loquacity, I’ll write that up in another post.
A good model for that lies in the game app D&D: Tiny Adventures. I suggest to have a Quest and have various random events happen in that Quest like Exploring and also have the player make decisions of some kind.
One thing that D&DTA doesn’t have is enough variety on their events, but they could change this by changing certain letters and terms for the sake of variety. Using synonyms for words and changing word structure you keep the brain from becoming bored and capture more of its attention because the mind craves New Information, even if that information is not as relevant, such as they use of a synonym, i.e. in a description that says “You know going inside could be dangerous” it can be changed to “You feel that going in could be risky”.
So, the Quests become a sort of Exploration. An Exploration that features certain unique events only in that quest. Also, you can have some events be more common than others, with highly coveted *RARE events.
The randomness of the events could be used in a mechanic similar to Mad Libs.
This would certainly be hard work, lots of variables to go over and lines to write, not to mention the scripts and possibly art, people love to feast their eyes on good art.
Despite the hard work, I think it would be absolutely worth it. You get a story telling system that keeps things fresh and new for everyone, something the other games do not have, and once you have the prototype built you can use it in other games. That’s what i would do, anyway.
Hope this helps
The thing we don’t really like about the D&DTA system is that it is ultimately inconsequential and that the events of each particular event aren’t special in the greater scheme of things. It’s a good system that allows for more flexibility in terms of creating scenarios for players to immerse themselves individually, but does little to connect them to the world they are exploring. Furthermore, the rate of adventuring updates and the passive nature of D&DTA are little different from our eventual goals.
Either way though, we did incorporate the random outcome idea for each particular quest. So a lot of the quest in the New BS will have multiple outcomes bases on chances and unique to the quest itself. Rare outcomes will of course confer better rewards.
The new system is a mixture of D%DTA, the old system and the more linear storytelling of Mafia Empire. More on that later.
Looking forward to the next post on this.
The problem of personal storytelling vs. creating a game for the crowd is why I never got interested in MMORPGs. I’m an avid roleplayer, pen and paper and crpg when they bring out a good one. What’s missing from most pc games (and all MMOs) are personal consequences for choices. Fallout and Fallout 2 have so far been the best examples of doing it right, and the morality system in Torment was deeper and more fascinating than anything I’ve ever seen from Molyneux. The closest anything’s come since to either was The Witcher.
That said, I didn’t get into BS as an MMO. I got into it as a Diablo style hack and slash – WITH AIRSHIPS! If you’re adding storyline, though, it should be done properly. I don’t really see the problem with making every player their own Chosen One – multiplayer is already more or less limited to attacking other ships and taking part in clan war.
Give us choices that cut off options as well as granting others, please. Give us choices whose consequences crop up a couple of towns later, or reveal information on what we did earlier. That’s something games need.
I see BS as a strategy game where humans compete against each other, rather than a role-playing game with a strong story line and lots of randomness. The human element is the one that makes it fun and the reason why we do same clan war and pvp every day.
It’s probably ok to have some sort of story telling as a side project but it shouldn’t distract the development of the strategy and human aspect. Else, BS could end up like some other games which essentially die off once the story telling stopped.
@Conrad
I agree. The underlying premise of BSv2.0 approach to storytelling is that every player is his or her own captain in the world of Sios. There’s a story going on, and various plots unfolding and developing around in the nations, and elements of a major conflict brewing, but the players aren’t directly involved in any of those in a special way. They can choose to participate in the ongoing story, or they can focus their energies on the clan wars, fort battles and island base building, all being made to fit within the lore of the world.
Have an idea. How about the possibility of allowing players to sign up as NPC for certain quests and “defend” against those within +/- 5 levels? Alternatively, the level could be specified in advance, say lvl 50-75 for a basic level quest, lvl 150-160 for an advanced level quest. That’ll give more variety and a new way for players to participate more intimately in the story.
For example, there could be a quest called “rescue the princess” and open for NPC recruitment. Players can sign up to be NPCs with a particular ship build and join a pool together with regular NPCs. There could be a 2-day sign up period and when the deadline is past, the NPC pool is randomly slected if the response is overwhelming.
When someone do the quest, he’ll randomly meet one NPC or player from the pool. When the player is picked, he’ll get experience from the encounter (maybe with 4 AP deducted each time so it’s not totally free? and it could be separate from the salvage status, so a player that’s sunk could still “defend” in the quest). It’ll make quests more fun and players will get more involved.
Hello, Leo. I have been reading all your post, comments etc for the past 30 minutes, while reading I have thought back to the actual gameplay of Battle Stations. I see how you want to make it such a thought out game, with such great rewards.
But how can you do this in a browser game that’s made with php, flash and ajax?
It just wont work I do not believe, I can possible see how you can do the story line, but it will get boring fast with just pictures and a little animation.
My ultimate thoughts would to actually make a game in c++ (Or something similar) and make a game combining the anime “Skyland”, it is a very similar plan, except for the magic ofcause.
-Michael.
I disagree that every player will be The Chosen One. This ultimately ruins Immersion for the story world of the game. Everyone fighting the same bosses, doing the same unique quests and participating on the same plot. It’s “Haunted House Syndrome” where every player gets to experience the same “unique” events as though they are the only ones around. This philosophy is popular, but it doesn’t mean that it is the best option, there is a better way.
You can treat the entire game and what happens within it as part of the story, instead of treating the game as a sort of Haunted House. Have quests that can be resolved, but only 1 player can resolve the quest, much like Event Monsters. You can make the entire game your PnP RPG Campaign!
You can classify the quests between vague/general quests, which would be like Exploring but with unique events just for that Quest or maybe Fetch Quests where you need to bring something to someone, perhaps a *RARE drop from a *RARE NPC Encounter, etc, etc and then you can have your Unique Quests that affect the game world, the Event Monster type Quests that can be taken by many but solved by only 1 person. You can also involve players in quests to be part of said quests, like I used to do in my old PnP campaigns, not every bad guy or big boss needs to be an NPC.
Treat the game like a huge PnP campaign and the appeal will go crashing through the ceiling. I have many ideas on how to do this since I have already experimented with this myself for many years, let me know if you need any help with the specifics.
As a long-time MMO and RPG (computer) player, I see little “consequences” both from a PVP perspective and from a RPG perspective in this game. Either by randomly attacking someone in PVP, Clan warring (although I’ve only helped a couple times so far with this) or by Questing. It’s all the typical “do X to get XP/cash/loot” stuff.
I’m not saying I don’t enjoy BS, it’s fun and I’m up in my 50s now so obviously I’ve gotten my feet a little wet, but I’m really wondering if focusing on the solo questing is really highlighting what makes this game fun.
Obviously all the successful FB games have the “treadmill” that you are on, getting XP for sweeter, more cool stuff. Ships/gear/etc. What I’d really like to see is BS turning into more of an Eve Online type game where the different corps can take territory, employ diplomacy with others, and dominate their corner of the world. Group PVP in this game seems really inconsequential.
One thing that you could do is tie in the new quest system with Group PVP events. Spawning opportunities that can be fought over. Like doing quests to build a corp outpost, or to make a new drill for a corp mine or something. These activities could not only give the player XP/stuff, it would invest them into their corp and better the corp. This of course could be lost or diminished by aggressive activity from other corps, etc. You could even introduce alliances and a corp leveling system (similar to Warhammer Online)
You have a lot of these hooks in place, a little more tweaking of them and there you’d be able to tie the player into a living world. Not by making everyone superman, but to make them an actual participant in the story of the multiplayer world.
.. A world where Scout Hawkslayer of the Dragoons saves the day by selflessly giving of himself and his ship to his Alliance.
Interactive stories are told by actors (players) doing things (activities) with stuff (ships/gear) involving other actors doing other things with other stuff.
In a truly immersive multiplayer world, players, corps and alliances would dictate world events, not a forced storyline we may or may not engage in. (or even read)
But that’s just my 2 ore.
Cheers