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Finished presentation and potentially finished GDD

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How have tabletop RPG’s broken the traditional forms of narrative

Notes

      Slide 1

•Hello I am Sam Betlem

•I am going to be talking about how tabletop games break traditional forms of narrative

•And how player and designer input in these games create immersive worlds.

     Slide 2

•First you have to understand what a tabletop RPG is.

•It’s a social game played with no console or platform. It primarily requires 3-8 people, dice and paper.

•These games are set in the mind as appose to a platform

•A game requires one person to take the role of storyteller while the rest play as players

•The storyteller creates the world and fills it with quests, NPC’s items and lore

•Whereas the players create one specific character and play through the storytellers world

•Together these two aspects come together to make a dynamic world.

•What I want to look at how the narrative is formed and changes because of these two inputs working together.

 Slide 3

•I am first going to be looking into various tabletop RPG games and compare the gameplay style, setting and game world

•Dungeons and dragons is the forerunner of these games published first in 1974

•A fantasy setting with hundreds of adventure paths and novels written around the world settings

•With story's like the forgotten realm books, (R.A Salvatore) and the drizit du erden books, alongside the digital games like ice wind dale and never winter nights it has a range of fantastic settings and story's to draw inspiration from to help bring the game world to life.

Slide 4

•Another one of my favorite tabletop RPG’s is world of darkness released in 2004 it is a relatively new yet popular tabletop RPG

•A much darker aspect of tabletop RPG. It emphasizes horror and anticipation throughout the game

•Set in our world where ghosts and monsters wander the streets.

•Using a different dice system to most other tabletop rpg’s, it uses D10s and requires a bit more legwork from the storyteller to keep the game going smoothly,

•All the books are filled with fantastic little horror story's on certain races and monsters that inhabit the world, alongside some gorgeous artwork to bring the idea of the world to life.

Slide 5

•All flesh must be eaten is a much smaller tabletop RPG made in 2000. It hasn't become huge compared to games like world of darkness or dungeons and dragons. Yet the market is still there

•With heavy emphasis on survival, it works on characters needing fresh water and food, and the mechanics work around this aspect.

•The game uses a set of rules similar to dungeons and dragons played with a D20 dice system.

•While not one of the huge tabletop RPG’s it brought a new genre to this type of game. (though zombies not being hugely original they are popular)

Slide 6

•Even star wars jumped on the bandwagon for tabletop RPG’s published in 2000 it has brought even more people in on this still growing franchise.

•It is played similar to dungeons and dragons, with a choice of set classes' and races to draw from, and using the same D20 system.

•Bringing forth a sc-fi setting to these games drawing from the films and books of this huge merchandise.

•This allows the players and storyteller to draw inspiration from one of their favorite story's and have a role to play in it that is their own, as a pose to another randomer’s interpretation of the world.

•Focusing heavily on space travel, buying ships and upgrading them is a large aspect to play with when playing this game.

Slide 7

•There are loads of different aspects to take into account when playing the role of a storyteller. Its their job to keep the story going, keeping the world interesting and full of aspects for the player to interact with.

•This is a tricky skill to get used to, taking into account player goals and what you want to achieve throughout the game has a lot of challenges.

•Keeping the game fun

•Keeping combat fast passed

•Difficulty balancing

•Fudging Dice

•Almost killing the players  (killing players off isent your aim, your aim is too keep them interested)

•Description of world is very important describing vast mountains, spider webs through a cave. A street erchen begging for money, all these add to the game world that has been created)

•Being everyone else in the world can also be difficult a bit of acting and creativity is needed. Giving some characters stutters and certain voices bring the players further into your world and help them forget that they are just sitting, listening and watching dice.

Slide 8

•Being a player is normally an easier role than taking that of the storyteller

•This dose not mean that they don’t have challenges and difficulties of their own. Formulating a character can take time, to really flesh out what he wants, looks like, acts like. Alongside having an overall motive

•The real challenge for a player is to stay in character, this goes for every character. It is just another aspect of keeping the game world going rather than being plan old john from accounting you are Us’wak the orc ranger.

•By doing this you are helping the storyteller create the world. And give it even more life, it also keeps the game on track and creates unique narrative that cant be scripted by a normal game.

Slide 9

•Tabletop RPGs are games of imagination they cannot be utilized if the players aren’t free thinking and creative

•Putting yourself in a world of your mind takes time to get used to

•Yet when the game is one of imagination, it allows people to break the format of traditional rules that would come in say a normal RPG

•The tricky part of this Is if the world is not described properly, the imagination viewpoint will shift from person to person and be different from person to person

•Because of this being concise and descriptive is key and essential throughout the game

Slide 10

•Making a character is one of the most fun and rewarding part of these games

•Every character has their own motives and they are the players to come up with, you could be out for revenge, fame, money or simply just to view the world.

•You can just make a fantasy version of yourself portrayed in a make believe world

•Or you can stretch the idea further making some of the most unique characters within a narrative

•One of my favorite characters I have made was a insane priest who was paralyzed from the waste down he rode a giant spider, and collected the bones off his victims to add to his throne

•This was an extravagant character and my whole group loved him, he was hilarious yet because of it, it pushed the rest of my group to also create very unique and interesting characters.

Slide 11

•Making a world is one of the most rewarding parts of these games

•Depending on what game you are playing depends on the world design.

•The map on the left is a map I created a few years ago for a dungeons and dragons campaign I was in charge of. It later became the bases for all of our campaigns

•When making the game, first you must set the scene, give the players a clear start that is interesting and engaging failing this and players get bored before the game really gets going.

•Having a set main quest line is important as without it there is no sense of emergency for the players.

•Railroading players along this quest line is also important, however you must tie it in with the player choices, having a crossroad of choices all of which lead towards your main quest line is cheeky yet needed for a game of this style

•Of course you can create your own history for these games however there is already a huge range of other medias to draw from. Other storys, specific characters that could be used, antagonists are all in the back of the world of darkness books. Or gods which there are loads of detail on throughout the dungeons and dragons books.

Slide 12

•Compiling these two aspects of both world and character design in the hands of the players themselves, bring infinite possibilities.

•The world is static yet alive for the storyteller they must make it feel like it, letting player choices fully shape the world around them.

•Bringing an idea of a character and a world together from two different perspectives brings a fantastic amount of uniqueness and variety throughout gameplay.

•A prime example of meaningful play. Alongside that is can create some of the most unique narrative and story developments. Because it is not a simple script set out by the storyteller

•With its unique way of playing it breaks this trend and allows for an infinite possibilities of replay ability, alongside originality and enjoyment

•When you collide these two fields together it creates a narrative.

Slide 13

•A narrative can be brought to life through pure creativity or it can be drawn from inspiration

•These games have a much wider franchise to what you might think with countless books and tales to add to the world

•Digital game have also been designed around these ideas, where you could draw inspiration from digital games such as the star wars republic commander game, to help add setting for a foot solider star wars game.

•Yet there are hundreds of other medias that people draw from all of which then further a narrative

Slide 14

•“Someone becomes the narrative” – This is one of the people taking the role of a storyteller, creating the world and how the narrative is portrayed and what the world is like how it feels, looks, even smells. Because of this a tabletop rpg can go two ways when it comes to narrative. It can fall on its face or fly it depends on the storyteller. If they are not prepared to think on there feet and be very creative the world they have designed the world will feel boring and tends to ruin a game.

•“Choices of characters to effect the narrative” Now by this I mean that the story is always based on the characters, it is from there perspective. A good story requires players to not necessarily make the right choices but choices there character would make. This forces the storyteller to adapt the story depending on player decisions.

•Story's in digital games can feel restricted even when they are an RPG. Yet with the storyteller and player working together it  forces narrative to even surprise the storyteller.

•”Together, the Dungeon Master and the characters bring the game to life.” This is a quote from the dungeon masters guide. It is true, through both interacting with one another the story is shaped.

•So what do you get when you bring forth, all these aspects into one?.....

Slide 15

•A fully dynamic narrative!

•A nion impossible factor to achieve in digital games

•First we start with Creation stage, this is where everyone involves in the game creates an aspect of it.

•Next you have the collision of these two creative outlets that might or might not interact act with one another as they had hoped, for both storyteller and character alike.

•This collision of these two aspects.

•At some point this forms a narrative. Weather it was what was intended or not the narrative is still formed.

•The Narrative has then a power shift from player to storyteller to player and so on.

•This causes real emersion in regards to a narrative in a game, which then causes the creation of Dynamic narrative.

One of my favorite campaigns that I ever ran was a story about a corrupt government, however the story didn’t go down like I had planned. The game started with the group being put into a gladiator ring and fighting for their freedom. Shortly after this part of the game, the group ventured to a town. All was going to plan, however there was a character called Cockers because he was a bit insane and violent. He ended up killing the bar tender that the party was staying at. The party woke to find there bartender dead with his head caved through. They all ended trying to find out who killed the barman, in the end conckers discussed with me about framing an NPC’s making a huge elaborate plot to avoid detection of the party itself. This is an exsample of a, fully dynamic narrative I reacted to player input and they reacted with mine. Causing a Dynamic narrative that none of us could of expected.

Slide 16

•I disagree with most of this, why cant the story be the game. It is a plausible argument, people grew up with games story's, How can that there for be unsatisfying.

•Is it because they are all similar layouts.

•I do believe that restricting players freedom of action will cause a game to ruin. It depends on the game however, it depends if you want to interpreted the story as the game or the gameplay as the game.

•In tabletop RPG terms the story is the game.

Slide 17

•I believe that game designers can learn so much from tabletop RPGS.

•Storyline creation, interacting and allowing player to shape the game and to let players warp the game itself.

•I'm not saying that digital games could achieve this, not at the moment at least. After speaking to the forgotten realms writer R.A Salvatore, he told me that the “Technology isn't capable yet, to allow for the dynamic storylines of tabletop games”

•On the right we have the MDA framework from Robin Hunikle normally this works one way for players and the reverse for designers as these games require one person to take the role of designer

• In my opinion this hypotheses is slightly twisted when regarding a tabletop RPG

•The aesthetics of the game are taken out of the main chain and become something that changes from person to person. Which then creates a different form of aesthetics to what this is commonly referred to as.

•I think that these games have great potential and it is a shame that they are becoming out of fashion. I would make sure anyone who is interested in following how a good game is crafted should have tried these games for simple practice.

Slide 18

Thank you for watching

Are there any questions, query's or criticisms?

Presentation and GDD so far

Primarily i have been working on my presentation as i had to rethink the idea and concept for it due to further research. I settled on how tabletop games develop unique narrative.

GDD

How have tabletop RPG’s broken the traditional forms of narrative

We used a template on the GDD and ollie said he was going to work on adding any last twiques to it. I am going to now focus on the presentation as that needs to be done personally. Once i have finished that i will focus back on the GDD.

Gameplay Diagram

This is a quick gameplay diagram of how the player uses air current to play music throughout the game.

Reply From Salvatore (spanner in CS work)

I got a quick reply from Salvatore, which is fantastic. After this email however i am going to have to change, the layout of my presentation. Due to the final part being that he didn't have much of an input towards the game. He was more involved in the creation of the world that they braced it around the game


 "Very simply: since technology isn't at the point of "realism," where everything looks as it actually would look, where everyone reacts to situations appropriately, and where, well, you get things like "lag," the technological aspect of video games limits the storytelling and emotional immersion. 

With each not-so-subtle reminder that you're playing a game, the player is thrown from the story. Also, video games are, of course, interactive, and the idea of a story that truly allows you to change events in a meaningful way, including the lives of the characters with which you interact, is potentially groundbreaking. But the computing "reaction" power is nowhere near to that level yet, and most "choices" in video games are illusions...a side road that will take you where the designers needed you to go in the first place. 

 I didn't have that much of an influence on KoA, actually. My work was on building the world and on the MMO game, which was never finished. The BHG team did a great job with Kingdoms, and I helped a little, but all credit goes to them. "House of Ballads" blew me away - great storytelling there, I thought. They did a very clever thing: the only real choice was at the end - to kill or not to kill - and either choice made moral sense, depending upon which faction you believed in. When I completed that section of the game, I spent many hours wondering if I had done the right thing. That is good storytelling!"

 I am now going to decide weather to follow. this title or change my title, to a different topic. Before i settled on this idea i wanted to play with the idea of tabletop RPG's like world of darkness and dungeons and dragons. And how they create a ever changing narrative for the player, and how all game designers can learn from this. I want to decide by the end of the night to go with kingdoms of Alumar and R.A Salvatore or dungeons and dragons with a completely adaptable and interactive narrative.

Group Presentation

So we had our group presentation two days ago, which was an overview of what we have done so far, and our game concept. Personally i think it went badly, we overran our presentation by a short amount of time, and their were a few hitches along the way the biggest being the question on weather everyone has been carrying their weight. An awkward question as we didn't want to really talk about that topic due to our own concern. I'm not going to go into more detail on this matter but it was a problem that personally i have had. That in mind, i am going to try and choose who i work with more carefully if another group project dose come up.

The presentation was altered slightly before the pitch Title page changed to the name of the game (Spirit Sung)

Presentation.pptx

My notes and what i said on each slide.

Opening slide
Hello and welcome we are going to be talking about our game concept Spirit Sung.

Polynesia 1800-1900This was our historical reseach on polynesia in 1850, when our artifact is dated back to.

• This was around the times European colonials were having influence and impact on these small islands
• Bringing with them new materials, weaponry, and religion
• This caused the downfall of the older religion and also brought forth a range of illness to the native people

Mind Map

• This was a mind map of everything i could find around that time period
• Looking into their culture, way of life, religion, warfare, and various tribes

Narrative

• So our narrative follows a witch doctor called sung, whos spirit inhabits the flute that the player plays throughout the game.
• The antagonist of our game is another spirit trapped in a dagger this is the spirit of a rival witch doctor
• The game starts where both idols remain dormant yet become awakened by the arrival of the colonials.
• The temple is attacked and the flute escapes into the island
• Whereas the dagger becomes into the possesion of the colonial general and in turn possesses him.

Characters

• From the narrative we can get a clear outline of some of the key characters that will make an apperiance throughout the game.

Game play

• We have two sets of game play styles
• One where you play as the flute in the real world
• Playing music to get through puzzles and engaging with that world with the difficulties of being a flute
• The other style is in the spirit world where players play as the fully powered witch doctor, in the spirit world
• A fractured version of our world where the witch doctor can alter slight aspects of our own world

Different Songs

• Playing music is a key part of our game
• Unlocking different songs which have different abilities is an ongoing aspect throughout the game
• We wanted to look at how the flute would play the music and decided on the use of air currents throughout the game that the flute must utilize and play specific notes to play different songs
• Songs to change the flow of air
• Songs to possess and enthrall humans 
• Songs that allow the spirit to gain control of other artifacts
• etc

Target audience

• So as you can see this is primarily a puzzle solving game
• Directed towards the next gen consoles
• Aimed at ages 12+
• With interests in ancient civilizations and culture.

Colonial Art

• The colonial art ranges from iteration to color concepts
• I wanted a set of different iterations
• alongside that i wanted three color schemes to work with 
• One for English, one for French and one for Spanish

Final Slide

• As we are entering the last few weeks of the project we will be working on
• Game play diagrams
• The design document itself
• Thank you for watching. Any questions

Title for C.S

So c.s lecture was today where we settled and shared our title idea. My original plan was to go with the title

How the game world of "Kingdoms of Alumar" brought to life by the writer R.A Salvatore

By the end of the session i changed this title around slightly.

How is the game "Kingdoms of Alumar" brought to life by R.A Salvatore's fantasy world and works. How was it successfull.

I have emails Salvatore just now asking about his involvement throughout the game.

Hi Robert

I understand you are a very busy person with your many novels and writings. I am a student studying games art and design, i am also a DM for my DND book and a huge fan of all your forgotten realms work. I am writing an essay on if games writers have experienced changes in jobs as games have developed. 

I was wondering if you wouldn't mind answering a few small questions.

I watched a video interview where you said that the technology isn't powerful enough to create a full story on the same level of a book, could you please evaluate this point a bit further?

You had quite a lot of influence of how kingdoms of Alumar storytelling aspects and lore was portrayed, what are the most important tools at your use when trying to portray a story in a game?

I hope these questions haven't troubled you too much

Yours Sam Betlem