This platform seems decent for actual discussion which t’other place never was so I’m going to try something - open #GameWriting questions. Please reply with your ideas, and reblog to widen the net!
First up, semi-topical: banter. Most games feel they need to have it, but it’s often awkward, weirdly paced, or interruptive. What games have done it really well? What’s their secret? And can we ever tell stories via banter, or does it have to be disposable dialogue?
One thing I've done in my WIP is have players choose a banter gear which can be scene or character specific. There could be a snarky gear, an angry confrontational gear, a romantic "sweaterboy" gear, etc.
This actually takes away subsequent player choice. They're not getting line by line control but they get a more coherent conversation and frees up design space to make subsequent choices about something else in the conversation.
@Jollyspaniard that's interesting! So are you being like - a "director" here? - rather than a character? (We tried something similarish in HV with our "question / statement" dialogue choices that didn't tell you what you were going to say. Some people vibed with it; some were just stunned and horrified.)
To make something like this really work, I think, you need to deliver a main character that is clearly both (through mechanics) not a 100% surrogate for "the player", and clearly their own *engaging* person.
Even if the character does and says something the player didn't expect, it should be an interesting experience for the player.
I'm catching some flak right now for writing lines that sometimes contrast with player commands...
@Scriv @joningold @Jollyspaniard
It sounds like you are describing a setup where the player is a deity/voice-in-the-head of the main character. I vaguely remember hearing about games that tried that; do you think anyone pulled that off in a convincing fashion?
@Scriv @robryk @Jollyspaniard Agreed. It's more like it helps me to write it, than it's something I want to make explicit.
@Scriv @joningold @Jollyspaniard
Hm~ in a way you could think of all games through the lens of deity-and-human:
There are people who think that descriptions of voice of gods from ~ancient Greece were describing what we'd call now our "internal narration". https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/01/book-review-origin-of-consciousness-in-the-breakdown-of-the-bicameral-mind/ is a sort-of book review of a book that touches on that topic.
@robryk
(Baten Kaitos did that explicitely, iirc ; led to some plot points where the protagonist you controlled could refuse to follow your decision. Depending on who you asked it was an elegant or contrived and frustrating way to remove narrative control from the player, but I found the idea interesting)
@lertsenem @robryk @Scriv @Jollyspaniard There was a fabulous text IF piece called Rameses (https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=0stz0hr7a98bp9mp) which presented you with multiple choice options, and would consistently let you pick brave ones only to then present you with the same list with that option struck-through, because you were playing a timid teenager who wasn't brave. (It had a genius payoff to the idea, too, but twenty years on and I still don't want to spoil it so next post:)
spoilers for Rameses + suicide
@lertsenem @robryk @Scriv @Jollyspaniard After several rejections, the protag slopes off to a cliffedge (or something similar) and he's thinking about awful life is, and how he doesn't want to carry on, and the option is "Jump off the cliff / Go back and try again". And you choose "jump off" because it seems like one of those kinds of stories... but then the protagonist isn't brave enough to do that *either*. It was incredibly effective.
spoilers for Rameses + suicide
@joningold @lertsenem @robryk @Jollyspaniard
It sort of made me tear up in that moment, not gonna lie.
But this is a great comment on how certain character traits could be designed as a double-edged sword, both "solving" problems and "causing" them.
Really does make me want to try something in the vein of @Jollyspaniard's and HV's idle chatter thing with choosing a disposition/speech act and just let small character-sketching vignettes play out from there.
spoilers for Rameses + suicide
@Scriv @joningold @lertsenem@mastodon.lertsenem.com @robryk
One way to use double edged traits in a mechanical sense is to make the players own attributes (or a goal progress stat) the difficulty score in a test.
I find this is really good for generating tension in romance subplots where an NPC has turn offs or conflicting goals.
@robryk @joningold @Jollyspaniard
It doesn't have to be explicitly part of the premise, unless the line's content explicitly breaks the fourth wall.
One of the eight characters in what I'm working on IS that way, actually (because he gets confused sometimes and things spirits are talking to him), and some specific lines in others' scripts can absorb a more metafictional stance.
I personally think that, overall, it works better if that's not a specific premise.