Quests, stories, and spaghetti

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Quests, stories, and spaghetti

2 January 2007

Recently, I've been pondering methodologies used to design virtual worlds (and avatar games in general). I've seen the following methodologies used in games:

Myst-like - The author writes a linear story that has already happened (except for the ending) and divides it into six parts. At the same time, six regions are created in a world, each region containing thematic puzzles (or even monsters). The first region relays the first part of the story through cutscenes and journals. It also connects to four independent regions, each with part of the story, also expressed through cutscenes and journals. Once all four independent regions have been completed, the player is allowed into the final region, where they make a choice and determine how the story ends.
Linear story (such as Syberia, traditional interactive fiction, and Fable) - The author writes a linear story that the player partakes in. Puzzles and/or monsters are used as gates, preventing the player from advancing in the story. Ideally, the puzzles and stories immerse the player in the story and create sympathetic goals. Linear stories might include a few different endings, but an alternate ending is only chosen at the very end of gameplay, and has little real impact.
Spaghetti (such as Oblivion) - The author produces fifty (or more) stories, also known as quests. The quests are scattered throughout a world. The player can approach the quests in any order they wish, except for a few quest-arcs, which contain a sequence of quests. Each quest is basically a linear story. Because of all the quests thrown at them, players don't realise (as quickly) that they are really partaking in linear stories.
Typical Diku-MMORPG (such as World of Warcraft) - The author produces a world and populates regions with monsters of a specific level range, along with attractive loot. Quests are introduced to encourage players to explore different areas of the world; the quests' stories are secondary and usually shallow. Monster levels are used as a device to control which parts of the world players are allowed to enter, and when.
Pre-Diku text MUD (such as MUD I/II) - The author comes up with an idea for something the player might like to do, which can be more than just killing monsters (as opposed to a typical Diku-MMORPG which is almost exclusively about killing monsters and/or harvesting). New areas are added to the world, and obstacles are introduced to prevent players from achieving the "something" too quickly.
World-like world (such as Ultima Online) - A world is created as a sandbox. The author comes up with a sub-game that players might like to participate in, and augments the world's physics programming to enable the subgame. The world's geography, NPCs, and monsters might also be updated, but these are secondary since players have significant power over the sandbox geography, NPCs, and monsters.

I happen to like stories, but I don't like the way they're handled by any of the existing methodologies. Myst-like and linear-story games are very limiting as far as choice. The spaghetti (Oblivion) methodology creates a lot of freedom, but ends up being a homogonous entanglement of quests. Diku-MMORPGs only have token stories. Pre-Diku text MUDs and world-like worlds don't need any story whatsoever.

Here's an alternative that I'm currently thinking about:

Stories/quests with meaningful and reconnecting choices

For the moment, I'll just discuss quests (sub-stories), but they'll tie into the quest-arc(s) that control(s) the game's overall story.

To produce a quest:

The author writes a story that the player will participate in, much like a game based on a linear story.
Unlike a linear game, each quest includes meaningful choices that allow for branches within the story that ultimately change the story's outcome, just like Choose Your Own Adventure books. Unfortunately, meaningful choices are a lot of work, particularly if players are offered several meaningful choices in a row. If each meaningful choice has two branches, and there are three meaningful choices throughout the quest/story, then there are 2 ^ 3 = 8 outcomes. With four choices, there are 2 ^ 4 = 16 outcomes! Thus, don't expect stories/quests to have any more than two or three meaningful choices.
Choices that reconnect don't produce as many branches, such as the choice of travelling to Inviroth by land or by sea. Each choice produces a different experience, but ends up back at the same node. Consequently, quests/stories may include several reconnecting choices early on, before there are too many branches (a consequence of meaningful choices).

If a quest/story only includes two meaningful choices, then each quest would have a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning only has one alternative (or branch). A choice is made at the transition between the beginning and middle. There are two alternatives/branches for the middle part of the quest. Another choice is made at the transition between the middle and end, creating four alternatives/branches for the end-quest.

Add in a few reconnecting choices at the beginning and middle of the quest/story, but not the end, and the author then has to write two beginning branches, four middle branches, and four end branches (with no reconnecting choices). That's a total of ten branches.

A quest with no middle would only have four branches, two reconnecting choices at the start, and two meaningful choices at the end.

Procedural choices

For some reason, Choose Your Own Adventure books aren't very satisfying (to me). I've spent a long time trying to figure out why, and (I think) I finally have the answer:

Players like to make frequent choices, as often as one choice every few seconds. It's part of what makes the world immersive.

CYOA books "fail" because players only make infrequent choices; they spend a minute reading a page, make a choice, spend another minute reading, make a second choice, etc.

Theoretically, if a CYOA book could offer me a choice every sentence or two (minus the hassle of reading the choices and flipping to the next page), the experience would be quite compelling. It would also result in several quintillion branches for the author to write!

Procedural choices (managed by software algorithms) can easily offer players frequent choices. Unfortunately, procedural choices tend to be shallow and less interesting than the hand-created choices in CYOA books.

The solution (or rather, a solution) is to fill in the time between meaningful choices (CYOA-book choices) with procedural choices. Procedural choices might take the following forms:

Movement - This is a very cheap form procedural choice.
Combat - There's a reason why combat is an important sub-game.
Resource allocation - Having players monitor and control what equipment they're carrying, their hit points, how much money they have, etc.
Gathering - A traditional MMORPG sub-game.
Puzzles - While only a few puzzles are procedural, most puzzles either allow players to make frequent choices, or to make the virtual choices in their mind and hypothesise a result.
Tightrope game - As per Neverwinter Nights 2, the player needs to keep their personal NPCs happy.
Discussion with other players - Having players discuss which meaningful choice to take keeps them occupied and entertained... an old dungeon master's trick. Obviously, everything a player says to another player involves a choice about what to say.
NPCs are the game - Top secret! If I discussed this here I'd have to shot you. :-)

Some elegant uses for procedural choices are:

A series of procedural choices might implicitly result in a meaningful choice, such as the PC's alignment, how much a NPC likes the player's character, or whether the player travels to Inviroth by land or by sea.
Procedural choices are used to immerse the player into the story. For example, if the player character is lost, don't just say that the PC is lost, but put the PC in a forest and make the player find their way out, making the player feel lost.

The three-act game

The three-act story is well known. There's a beginning, middle, and end, each with distinct boundaries and each act having a different theme. In the Hero's Journey, for example, the first act is about the character's "call to duty", followed by trials in a distant land, and completed by the journey home with the boon.

Most games with linear stories have three acts. Even some MMORPGs have three acts; for example: World of Warcraft's first act is about the player doing quests for their village and race/clan (at the request of NPCs), the second act is hoarde vs. alliance (often at the request of NPCs), and the third is guild vs. guild.

Basically:

Each act has a separate theme, or sub-theme.
There are transition events/quests between the acts. These transitions are excellent locations for meaningful choices that affect the story in the next act.

Not coincidentally, quests (as I described them) have three acts, with a meaningful choice between each act. Thus, the entire game can be seen as one large three-act quest. Or, it can be seen as a fractal-like construct with three-act quests within three-act quests.

Tailoring quests to each act's theme

As I've written before, players should have (as much as possible) a choice about which quests to undertake, and a choice about what order to undertake them.

Oblivion does an excellent job providing such choices, but at a cost. While players can undertake (almost) any Oblivion quest at any time, Oblivion only has one act. It can't have more than one act because it doesn't place limits on what order players complete the quests.

At the other extreme, completely linear games like Syberia have three (or more) acts, but no choice about which quest to undertake.

In the middle is World of Warcraft. Quests are level-limited, so a player character's level (aka: progress through Act I, II, and III) affects what quests can be taken. To get to the next level, a player must complete (to pick a random number) 20 quests. Since WoW provides 40 quests per level, players can choose which quests they wish to complete, and in which order (to an extent).

Personally, I'm interested in producing a game without levels. It will have skills, but the difference in power between a low-skilled and high-skilled character is minimal. (Skills are actually used as a time-based resource, but that's for another article.) Thus, I can't use levels to limit access to quests, much the same limitation as Oblivion, which automatically adjusts all quests to suit the PC's level.

However, I don't want Oblivion's homogonous mass of intertwined quests (aka: spaghetti). I actually want to have acts.

My current solution is:

Some quests will be act-specific, and won't be given to players unless they're in the proper act. (Again, similar to WoW.)
Some quests will change depending upon the player's act number. Ultimately, this means that some quests will require three thematically different versions, one for each act. The version handed out depends upon the what act the player is in when they accept the quest.
Players won't have to complete all of the available quests for an act. As in WoW, they'll have a choice of quests.
The game's story allows a transition from Act N to Act N+1 only when enough quests from Act N have been completed (much like WoW). In order to complete the transition, the player will need to finish a transition-specific quest, such as a travelling quest, from the hub-town for Act I to the hub-town for Act II.
Taking a page from Oblivion, there will be one main quest-arc that progresses through all of the acts, and it (potentially) includes sub-quests that cause the transition between acts. These sub-quests won't be available unless enough act-specific quests are completed (as above.)
There may be a few secondary quest-arcs, also like Oblivion.
There may be many one-off quests, like Oblivion.

Storylines (large games)

Although I don't expect to have the resources for this, a large game might include several different storylines. Each storyline is the equivalent of a three act game, but they share the same world. For example: One storyline could be "default the evil overlord" while another might be "become the mayor of the city".

Filling the world with multiple storylines has the advantage that players are never entirely sure what the motivations of other players are because they might be on a different storyline.

To reduce development expenses, most quest-arcs and quests would be shared amongst all storylines.