Elven Academy

This week I added six ‘classes’ to Elven Academy. You choose a class when you create a character. This was done for multiple reasons, but mainly to provide roleplay templates for both the player and for me as a designer.

I put ‘class’ in single quotes because I need to think of a better name, i.e. path.

The previous classless design led to weak player characterization. I used Charm and Cunning stats as a primary way to think about dialogue options, which equated loosely to Lawful and Chaotic. What about rogues? Rangers? Scholarly types? I didn’t have a good handle on the types of characters to design for.

Now I have 6 classes, split into 3 character archetypes. This provides a simpler framework to help design dialogue and options. These archetypes will be supplemented with Gay, Lesbian, Boss, and Serpent (i.e. Slytherin) tags etc., if the player identifies their character as such.

Bard and Fairy Witch/Wizard: charming, fun, goofy, kind, lawful, compassionate, romantic. (Hobbits, Gryffindor, Jedi)

Druid and Hedge Witch/Wizard: practical, earthy, plant-loving, animal-loving, wise. (Rangers, Dwarves, Hufflepuff, Grey Jedi)

Fate and High Witch/Wizard: snarky, cynical, rebellious, intelligent, scholarly, humorous in a dark way. (Slytherin, High Elves, Thranduil, Sith)

So now it’s my plan to go back and improve my dialogues to better support these archetypes, as well as support the individual module outcome variables I’ve firmed up and implemented. And to support this effort, I did a lot research on the internet.

It’s actually quite hard to research elements of game design on the internet. It’s a mess of abandoned and little-used websites, and decades-old posts on old school blogs, such as that of Alexander Freed. Alexander was a staff writer at BioWare for six years before departing in 2012. More recently he has written official novels for Star Wars, including Rogue One. So he’s doing quite well for himself.

Alexander has an old and abandoned blog on writing for video games, which turned up in my searches. I literally read all of his blog posts today. I took notes, a few quotes here and there, added brainstorms of my own, and re-wrote some things into just a few simple bites that I could better grasp with my relatively feeble mind. Here are my working notes and reactions.

From Notes on Branching Conversation Systems: Five Parts.
Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Part Five.  Freed’s Blog.

Takeaways:

Use branching dialogue for character development. Gameplay is knowing and understanding the NPCs and their personalities, and how they might respond.

Two main design formats for dialogue:

Hub and spoke – player makes a choice, goes down a sequence of dialogue, then returns to the hub for another choice. Example: Planescape Torment. Best implementation makes player feel in charge of how to approach the conversation. Bad is making the NPC an information vending machine, where you are just punching the buttons to get everything.

Waterfall – there is no going back to the initial hub. This is more ‘realistic’, but difficult because you need to ensure the player gets the needed outcomes and information no matter which path they choose.

Blended approach – some games end the initial waterfall flow with a hub, giving the player a choice to explore more about the lore offered by the NPC, or just leave. This can feel ‘gamey’ however.

Seeing the NPC react strongly to whatever your character said can be immersive, fun, and rewarding.

Response options can be tailored to be rewarding for specific roleplay class archetypes.

Be wary of every single forced dialogue line, and the danger of making the player feel like it’s not something their character would have said.

“Your number of options should reflect the “default” array of personalities available to the Player.”

“Most dialogue-heavy games tend to go with 3-4 options for most Player choices–two choices often feels too limiting and unnuanced, while more than four becomes slow and difficult for the Player to digest.”

Don’t hand code conversations or try to parse them into your game off an excel spreadsheet.
https://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter/ primarily intended for more prose-heavy, Choose-Your-Own Adventure-style games. Freed says this costs money for commercial use, but that appears to be outdated. It’s free.

It’s easy and common for writers to fall into the trap of using the player character’s guided interactions to develop their beloved NPC’s. This is a trap because the player should be the star, the protagonist, and the center of focus.

The player should always have the best lines and the coolest story points. The player responses should drive the flavor of the story, ideally. If they want to be naughty, then go there. If they want to be nice, go there.

Don’t forget writing fundamentals. A dialogue should be treated just like a scene. Conflict, increasing tension, climax, resolution, driving the plot, etc.

Ideally decisions are made by the player at dramatic high points. (Personal note – this can be a ‘signpost’ in itself if done consistently.)

Try for active dialog from the player, and avoid passive. Questions tend to be passive. “Tell me about the shop.” is better than “Who owns the shop?”

Forced player lines. Try to be sure that the line is either neutral enough to fit any player character type, or it is dynamically adapted to fit the players character.

Notes And Commentary On Other Blog Posts From Alexander Freed:

From: On Cutscenes And Viewpoint Changes

In general these (cutscenes) are bad in a game because they break immersion. Otherwise can be handled like a movie or novel. Can you make the cutscene interactive instead?

“Is your game comedic? Is the cutscene funny? Then you can get away with pretty much anything.”

From: Writing Romance in (non-Romance) Games: Linear Romances

A key aspect is how to make the player care about the romance at all. You can employ it just like another other subplot or theme, but it’s a lot easier to go off the rails with such a an emotionally and politically laden topic.

Don’t force the player into anything. Make the romance worth the effort.

Very good, engaging banter between the two characters helps the premise that they work well together.

Humor is good, the typical funnies and foibles of two people trying to fall in love.

An interesting idea is to write the player character as already in this relationship at the start.

Make the romantic interest impossible to dislike.

From: Writing Romance in (non-Romance) Games: Branching Romances

‘Branching’ in this context is the ability to make significant plot choices and decisions about how to treat the romance.

If possible, don’t make assumptions about how a player will react or feel in any given situation.

Make sure romance options are “signposted”. Whether to initiate a romance, or break one up, the decision should be clear to the player. Try not to surprise them with something they didn’t want, and is irreversible.

Don’t try to please everyone. Not even yourself. You can’t do everything.

Cheating. No, not cheating on your romantic interest. Cheat the NPC’s dynamically into being more what the player wants for romance. A straight character will be gay, a male character changes completely to female if the player makes a straight male to start the game, etc.. This is difficult to program, but it can work.

Some ideas I hadn’t thought about:

Gifts.
Romance that is super hot, but doomed.  This made me think of the Viconia romance in Baldur’s Gate. In a good way.

From: Player and Player Character Motivation in Video Games

“Bridging the gap between player motivation and player character motivation is one of the the most important factors in a game narrative’s success. .. Player motivations and player character motivations should, at a minimum, converge, even when they do not overlap.”

In interactive entertainment, the player has to make a lot more effort to advance the plot etc.. So even more attention needs to be paid to aligning motivations and engagement.

Ideas to achieve constructive alignment of motivation:

Hating the antagonist.

Ways to fail at this:

Force the character to do something really stupid, as part of the plot, which the player disagrees with, doesn’t like (i.e. feels is annoying busywork), or has no reward valued by the player.

Wow, that was a sparse list of ideas to achieve motivation and engagement.  We could add solving a mystery and getting a treasure.  These are all of my notes.  This is just a tiny collection of gold nuggets that I saved from Freed’s long, exhaustive essays on these topics on his blog.  Maybe someday Alexander Freed will return to making video games.  We can hope!  In the meanwhile, I hope this blog digest with links might be helpful to someone and amplify Freed’s old essays a little bit.