A nice collaborative development with Twine narrative game

 After coming to a conclusion as far as the types of challenges I might face during production of a narrative-driven game using Twine and how best to overcome them whilst still retaining a level of choice for the player to keep them immersed and believing they are having an impact within the world I've created so that any changes I wish to impart on their behavior may be more successful I've moved forward into discovering ways in which to creative as compelling and believable natural conversation methods so this can be a strong factor in the way that players make their choices.  As well as this, another full-time coursemate (Lance Muir) is looking at ways in which to produce 3D models of items of importance within fantasy games such as D&D stories through analyzing their descriptive elements, I suggested us working together since using descriptive elements within a narrative based fantasy game will be a large part of the production of my game, I could simply pass on my scene-setting elements to him like a live brief and see what he comes up with.  At the same time, I can also illustrate these scenes with my traditional methods to analyze any differences and show how my descriptive scenes may be seen by players in different ways to tighten them up for a more cohesive experience from player to player.

Going forward I will analyze the game books produced by Wizards of the Coast for D&D as well as the highly popular series from both 'Critical Role' and 'Dimension 20' during their own campaigns, also looking at message boards and forums for public home-brewed stories to see what makes a successful scene-setting piece of work and how to improve my own writing for the game as well as trying my hand at concept art and illustration pieces for the characters and settings within my game "Adventures in Soliverance: The Tomb of the Last Alliance"

Below is an exert from my current iteration of the opening of the game setting the scene for the continent in which the game takes place as well as a little background lore that may influence the player's decisions as well as how they may perceive certain characters within the game.

It was the hallowed ivory blade of a Lizardfolk assassin, from the cult of the forked tongue, plunged deep into the spine of Hjorvard; High King of the Dwarves of the Tundarian mountains, that started the Great War.

Others believe that the felling of the great and mighty Oak; Viridi Aeternum in the forests of Velunaris, a place Tovern Aber claimed was home to more than ten thousand Kenku refugees, was the initial catalyst that sparked the divide within the continent.

Whilst a select few will whisper with hushed tongues that the Great War was a political plan twenty years in the making with a direct link to the formation of the Council of Nine within Sectine Tower.

Whichever tale holds the most truth is irrelevant, The Great War existed and within it a great number of lives were lost as blood was shed across the four corners of Soliverance.

It was during the twilight years of the Great War that Thrandiel Oaksky was conceived between Wood Elf Princess Elorsai and her secret lover Kergon; paladin and First Captain of the Soliveran Empire. Once birthed their hidden partnership was brought to light and due to the love of this trinity for each other peace was achieved between the Wood Elves and Humans of Soliverance, something thought impossible mere months before, with the hope that an end to the continental war could finally be brought to every race.

However, whilst on a voyage to the Federation Isles to begin documentation of a peace treaty that could be signed between all warring factions the family and their crew were attacked by pirates, paid to do so by an unknown benefactor. The bodies of both Elorsai and Kergon were found washed ashore days later signaling doom for the would-be peace yet the young boy's body was never found, only murmurings here and there of sightings within fishing towns or rumours of a half-elf child passing through villages such as Brustick. Both the Empire and the Wood Elves sent out thousands of search parties in the vain hope of rescue knowing that the return of the child could once again start the discussions of peace in the realm but alas no party returned with the boy.

This is where our story begins in the lands of Soliverance.

Research in context report - Next essay

 So we've been given the brief for our second and final essay during this MA Game Design course. It ties in with the work we did on our first essay that covered research methodologies and had us looking into the area of our course we were interested in researching and the area that our practice was being developed in, for me this was a look into transformative and pro-social games (games that make a difference).

The essay is again 2500 words and broken down into four sections:

- Introduction - 250 words

Describe your practice and the aims of your project.

- Personal Research - 1000 words

Explore the ability to connect, network and discuss relevant appropriate issues with artists, designers and others who can inform your journey.  You must evidence you have contacted professionals. Please discuss at least 2 in relation to your own practice. (put in the appendix at the end of the essay)

- Practitioner Lecture Series - 1000 words

Explore and critically evaluate the creative practices, methods and philosophies of people in the lecture series. You must attend all the lectures and choose at least 3 of the lecturers to write about in relation to your own practice.

- Research Reflection - 250 words

Write 250 words on how networking, meetings and lectures influenced and shaped your own practice.

The list of speakers for our following guest lectures who will discuss their own practices in several different creative disciplines.

DAVID BUNTING - Animation Director

REBECCA APPLEBY - Ceramics plus fashion

CLAIRE NORCROSS - Lighting designer

JOHNNY HANNAH - Illustrator

SARAH LYNCH - Interior Designer

JENNY RUTTER - Director of Super Slow Way

ROB WATSON - Graphic Designer

As well as these guest lectures there are a series of events going on with industry specialists delivering talks an presentations that can be used for the practitioner lecture series part of the essay such as The Yorkshire Games Festival, CJam, Conference Week, Fashion Talks week.

Alongside these lectures I also have some prospective people with which to try and get in touch with in regards to the Personal Research Studies section such as Dr. Dean Marshall a lecturer of Psychology at Arden University who also runs a D&D group with streamed events on Twitch with a group called "Hot Eights" where I could discuss the psychology of using NPC's to guide or direct players in certain directions as well as avoiding reactance theory in group game settings since multiple people have different levels of rebelliousness and conformity.  Also I discovered the blogs of Emily Short the Creative Director of Failbetter Games and who specialises in interactive storytelling especially through narrative gameplay over action and discusses at length within her blog the use of conversation between players and NPC's as well as dialogue within narrative games and how to improve it to create more naturalistic conversations leading to more immersion on the players behalf which can ascertain better results from a transformative or pro-social game.

Twine - Development issues

 Starting the Adventure game in Twine I use the first couple of cells (for lack of a better word) as exposition to set the scene for the player and gently coax the player into the world they're entering before making the first major choice.

My cycle of discovering a problem with what I'm hoping to achieve and researching a possible solution to then come across another problem started to occur with the first major choice where the player is picking which possible members to add to their party.

The initial idea was for the player to have a 7 individuals within the tavern where they start the game and having the option to listen to what they have to say or not and then choose whether to add them to the party or not with every choice made taking them back to the cell with all the available NPC's but having the one they had picked removed for player cohesion and to not break continuity and thus immersion.

I started by adding statements once a character was chosen to add a score to that character and that would have enabled me to have a statement within the original available NPC cell where if a character has a score then  they would not be present within the list. However when it came to having more than one character with a score it would try adding the scores together which wasn't necessary or a function I wanted and would break the game so removed the scores for true/false Boolean statements.

(if: $batswoop is 1)(display: "partymemberchoice2.1")
(if: $sudisturd is 1)(display: "partymemberchoice2.2")
(if: $rustyguilder is 1)(display: "partymemberchoice2.3")
(if: $ulfgarfireforge is 1)(display: "partymemberchoice2.4")
(if: $rinn is 1)(display: "partymemberchoice2.5")
(if: $thokkpresley is 1)(display: "partymemberchoice2.6")
(if: $unnamed is 1)(display: "partymemberchoice2.7")

Here are the statements made for the first set of choices to show how if a character has a score a certain choice after would be displayed however after a first choice making a second would create faults and try adding scores together.

(if:$batswoop is 1 and $sudisturd is 1)[
(display:"partymemberchoice 3.1")]

So I went to the true and false statements where scores wouldn't be added.

(if: $batswoop is true)(display: "partymemberchoice2.1")

(if: $sudisturd is true)(display: "partymemberchoice2.2")

(if: $rustyguilder is true)(display: "partymemberchoice2.3")

(if: $ulfgarfireforge is true)(display: "partymemberchoice2.4")

(if: $rinn is true)(display: "partymemberchoice2.5")

(if: $thokkpresley is true)(display: "partymemberchoice2.6")

(if: $unnamed is true)(display: "partymemberchoice2.7")

However if multiple characters were set as true instead of showing the "partymemberchoice" for two characters being true it would also show the choices for them as individuals set to true as well. With the below statement made all three of the following choice cells would be displayed.

(if:$batswoop is true and $sudisturd is true)[

(display:"partymemberchoice 3.1")]

You have 4 spaces left in the team.

Who do you go to next?

[[The Warforged|Rusty Guilder]]

[[The Dwarf|Ulfgar Fireforge]]

[[The Wood Elf|Rinn of the Greyhawk]]

[[The Half-Orc|Thokk Presley]]

[[The Changeling|Unnamed]]

You have 5 spaces left in the team.

Who do you go to next?

[[The Lizardfolk|Sudisturd]]

[[The Warforged|Rusty Guilder]]

[[The Dwarf|Ulfgar Fireforge]]

[[The Wood Elf|Rinn of the Greyhawk]]

[[The Half-Orc|Thokk Presley]]

[[The Changeling|Unnamed]]

You have 5 spaces left in the team.

Who do you go to next?

[[The Kenku|Bat Swoop]]

[[The Warforged|Rusty Guilder]]

[[The Dwarf|Ulfgar Fireforge]]

[[The Wood Elf|Rinn of the Greyhawk]]

[[The Half-Orc|Thokk Presley]]

[[The Changeling|Unnamed]]

This would then require us to set characters to false once set as true so it wouldn't present individual partymemberchoice cells and just show the choice if multiple characters were set to true originally.

So the below statement would result in the following partymemberchoice screen for the player.

(if:$batswoop is true and $sudisturd is true)[

(set:$batswoop to false)

(set:$sudisturd to false)

(display:"partymemberchoice 3.1")]

You have 4 spaces left in the team.

Who do you go to next?

[[The Warforged|Rusty Guilder]]

[[The Dwarf|Ulfgar Fireforge]]

[[The Wood Elf|Rinn of the Greyhawk]]

[[The Half-Orc|Thokk Presley]]

[[The Changeling|Unnamed]]

However this would break once getting to choosing a third character using the following statement.

(if:$batswoop is true and $sudisturd is true and $rustyguilder is true)[

(set:$batswoop to false)

(set:$sudisturd to false)

(set:$rustyguilder to false)

(display:"partymemberchoice 4.1")]

Having the player already reduced characters to false when making a second choice the above statement can never exist as there will never be three characters with the true statement after setting some to false or if I did have them all set to true they would be displaying multiple choice screens again. This leads to two alternative options for a solution one elegant and one simple.

The elegant option is that when i reduce NPC's statements to false I create a new statement to true that combines their names and thus that statement plus a third character being set as true could exist and would look something like this flow of statements.

(if:$batswoop is true and $sudisturd is true)[

(set:$batswoop to false)

(set:$sudisturd to false)

(set:$batswoopsudisturd to true)

(display:"partymemberchoice 3.1")]

then 

(if:$batswoopsudisturd is true and $rustyguilder is true)[

(set:$batswoopsudisturd to false)

(set:$rustyguilder to false)

(set: $batswoopsudisturdrustyguilder to true)

(display:"partymemberchoice 4.1")]

However as well as this works from the designers side of the game for some reason having a single cell with so much information that the players cycles through repeatedly with true and false statements being set ends up messing with the format of the display on the players side of the game leaving huge blank spaces that they have to scroll through to get to the actual choice they can make so the simpler alternative is what I'm going ahead with.

The player no longer chooses NPC's one at a time to join the party but simply makes one choice of which NPC will not be part of the party and then they can continue on with the adventure. I can still set a score for the NPC who is left behind so that a later event can occur so players get the consequences to their actions and choices later on and understand how their choices impact the fantasy world around them.  This way I am starting impart the knowledge of how important having conversations with these NPC's will be as the player progresses through the game though I am still looking into ways to develop the telegraph for this in as natural a way as possible.

Progress with Twine - characters and lore development

Before getting started on Twine with the development of the game I started with pen and paper deciding what sort of narrative would take place and thus what sort of choices could be incorporated knowing that the necessary ones would reduce a number of individuals within a group that the player would join would slowly get reduced based on the players choice with the ramifications of these choices being present within the game so as to understand the consequences of these decisions.

Using the the base of D&D for characters and world of the game so I had a reliable source of information to develop the game from made the most senes for a fantasy game and allowed me to develop lore during the narrative creation that could immerse them within the game.

Races that can be used as the NPC's 

Classes that can be used for NPC's

Relying on the information available through message boards, handbooks for the games and other resources allows me to build more believable backstories for these NPC's that a player can have access to therefore making more informed decisions if they choose to read the information available rather than making snap decisions.

The above handbooks as well as others provide a lot of accurate information to keep all details of my game in line with each other i.e names/places/history/religion etc

I started by making 7 individual characters as well as a small backstory for the player character with the choice of choosing 6 of the available characters to form a group from to go adventuring on a mission with.

Bat Swoop - A Kenku Assassin

A raven humanoid being, they can only mimic sounds so conversations are limited by what words and sounds have been presented to them previously. Also the reason why they are named after the most common sound they can make and as an assassin who utilises silence and very quiet noises Bat Swoop was a lore fitting name. This character is designed to be a semi-mysterious element as they won't be willing to give away vital information about their past or why they are present in the village as it could spoil there cover for whatever mission they are on but the more they come to trust the player character through interactions the more information they could be willing to share.

Sudisturd - A Lizardfolk Cleric

Having a Cleric available to the group means setting up a whole deity narrative though in this case the Lizardfolk would have deities based on their own race, and given that they are often represented with an Aztec or Mayan aesthetic that utilising information from their religious background will be advantageous so looking at:

The top 15 Aztec gods:

• Huitzilopochtli - the supreme god of the Sun and war.
• Tezcatlipoca - the ever-present creator god and patron deity of warriors.
• Tlaloc - god of rain, water, lightning, and agriculture.
• Quetzalcóatl - god of winds and rain and the creator of humanity.
• Coatlicue - the earth-mother goddess.
• Tlaltecuhtli - the earth goddess associated with fertility.
• Mictlantecuhtli - ruler of the underworld
• Tonatiuh - god of the present and fifth Sun.
• Coyolxauhqui - goddess of the Moon.
• Mixcoatl - god of hunting, the Milky Way, and the stars
• Ehecatl - god of air and winds.
• Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli - god who represented a menacing aspect of Venus.
• Xiuhtecuhtli - god of fire.
• Xipe Totec- god of spring, seeds, and planting.
• Xochipilli - god of summer, flowers, love, and dancing

A lot of these Aztec gods seem close to earthly elements (fire/wind/earth/water) so looking at how these religious elements are represented through NPC's in other games will be necessary i.e Solaire in Dark Souls etc.

Rusty Guilder - A Warforged Barbarian

Warforged typically are not given any names except a serial number during manufacturing and production however if they from strong bonds with humans they may take on new names as part of this friendship as is the case here where Rusty is derivative of how old he is and having fought in a war centuries back formed a close bond with a human soldier who had previously worked on the manufacturing of Warforged for said war as part of his family trade hence the surname of the Human been Guilder and accepting the Warforged as a brother in arms led to them sharing the same family name.  The war was against Dark Elves so naturally Rusty has a hostility towards that race.

Ulfgar Fireforge - A Dwarven Artificer

Stereotypical nordic naming convention for this Dwarf whilst utilising a last name that fits his class type of someone who can fix and invent weapons, technology, armour etc.

An artificer can create magic items for which he or she does not have access to the prerequisite spells. Artificers receive a number of craft reserve points every level. These points can be used instead of experience points in the creation of new magic items. Thus Artificers are able to make use of item creation feats without the experience penalty that other spell casters must take.

Constructs, mechanical beasts, and particularly Warforged fall under the artificer's area of influence. Specific infusions can be cast to repair or inflict damage to any creature with a construct subtype. At fourth level Artificers may craft a homunculus companion. A homunculus is similar to a Wizard's familiar but more intelligent and generally better equipped to a single task. This could make for some interesting story beats between the dwarf and the Warforged if both are accepted as part of the party.

Rinn of the Greyhawk - A Wood-elf Ranger

In Dungeons and Dragons, Elves are given a "child name" when they are born, then they choose a name once they come of age (around 100 years old). Of course, many elves will find themselves in a transitionary stage where the people they knew, who were not at their naming ceremony, may know them only by the child name. Their last name is often derivative of  where they were born or the majority of their upbringing took place. For my Wood-elf they are still a child and this can be part of the conversations had between them and the player of understanding that under 100 years old is still considered childhood to them - or they are getting close to the age where they pick their own name and this adventure could play a part in that allowing for choices the player makes having lasting affects on this NPC that they may connect deeply with.

Thokk Presley - A Half-Orc Bard

The last name of this NPC is from the renowned singer Elvis Presley but if we imagine the sort of theatrical outfits that were worn by Elvis but put an Oak spin on it for comic affect. The bard often being the comedy element of any d&d campaign however its easily forgotten that bards are gifted linguists and can often talk their way out of trouble and thus in a game where the player gets more from the game the more they interact with the NPC's it seems obvious to have a character whose power derives from his speech.

Unnamed - A Changeling Fighter

An obvious mystery element to the game, Changelings able to take on the appearance of anything and thus struggle with identity so how the player interacts with this NPC can change their identity conversely, allowing for some projection from the player.

The idea of having such an array of characters is that as the player progresses through the narrative and are delivered choices, some of which will lead to the party being reduced in number it will become obvious that certain characters being present would have created an better or more positive outcome. some of these consequences will be quite obvious i.e there's a glowing button on the opposite side of a deep chasm, if only we had a ranger with their bow and arrow present to target the button. Others will only be as obvious if dialogue is had between the player and the NPC. I'm hoping to develop a tallying system within Twine that keeps up how many times you decide to listen to an NPC or not if such a scoring system is possible.

The next game project

 After using PowerPoint to produce a multiple-choice game with a fantasy element of making a potion the next evolutionary step is to use a game making software designed for narrative storytelling with choice elements. Twine is the software suggested to me for this.

Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories. You don't need to write any code to create a simple story with Twine, but you van extend your stories with variables, conditional logic, images, CSS, and JavaScript when you're ready.

To begin to get an understanding of he software I looked at the work of Mighty Coconut who produced a Twine called 57 Degrees North and allow free downloads of it so players can access the technical blueprint of the game and see how variables and JavaScript can be used to create diversions within the narrative based on choices made by the player.

Going forward I'm going to remain in a fantasy style setting similar to the potion making game but with the aim to allow players to realise and observe the outcomes to their choices on a more personal level rather than just creating a product, if they are asked to make choices where other characters are involved more human reactions may occur especially if they then find out what happens to characters they make negative choices towards.