Multiplayer Interactive-Fiction Game-Design Blog

Storylines II

22 December 2005

by Mike Rozak

In Intertwined storylines, I talked about the ability for a virtual worlds to cater to several different "storylines", the most obvious being World of Warcraft's Hoard versus Alliance, or good versus evil, etc. However, more complex storylines are also possible. I will spend this topic discussing some more storyline ideas.

But first, I want to illustrate why storylines are important:

Stories, single-player games, and virtual worlds

In a linear story, you can have: Bob, a farmer in 1930's Okalahoma, experience the dust bowl. Over the course of the book, Bob does X, Y, and Z, with the aid of his loyal wife.

Basically, in a linear story, the author controls:

• 
  Specifically who the character is, Bob.
  
• 
  The character's storyline, a farmer.
  
• 
  The location of the story, 1930's Okalahoma.
  
• 
  Important and transient events, such as the dust bowl.
  
• 
  A specific linear narrative, X, Y, and Z.
  
• 
  Include NPCs that are engaging and interesting in their own right, Bob's loving but tough-as-nails wife.
  

• 
  Specify the player's character as Bob, although most players seem to prefer to control a "generic" farmer, not Bob in specific.
  
• 
  Specify a single storyline, although many players would prefer to have a choice of storyline, such as the ability to alternatively play the town mayor, or a farmer's wife.
  
• 
  Set the location, such as 1930's Okalahoma. (Same as a story.)
  
• 
  Set important and transient events, such as the dust bowl. (Same as a story.)
  
• 
  A single player game cannot set a linear narrative without annoying most players.
  
• 
  Due to contemporary AI limits, NPCs can be somewhat engaging, although not nearly as believable as in a story.
  

• 
  Cannot specify that players will be a specific character, such as Bob, namely because there are so many players.
  
• 
  Cannot specify a specific storyline, such as a farmer. If designers do, problems occur. See below.
  
• 
  Can set the location.
  
• 
  Can set important and transient events, but with difficulty. The difficulty exists because players begin the experience at different times, and quit playing at different times. This means that a cyclic dust bowl would work, but a one-off dust bowl would only be experienced by a small minority of players. As soon as the dust bowl is cyclic, the nature of the experience changes.
  
• 
  As with single-player games, AI limits NPC believability.
  

If a designer can't rely on linearity to make the player's experience "fun and enjoyable", he needs other tools and devices. One of the devices that virtual-world designers have that story authors and single-player game designers don't have, is the ability to enmesh other players in the player's experience. Of course, this is an obvious statement, but it's worth pointing out.

Why virtual worlds need many storylines

One very important "crutch" that single-player game designers rely upon is the ability to specify the player character's storyline, which is basically the character's role, what the character does, and why the character does it.

1. 
   As a player, when you encounter another player, you automatically know that the other player is a farmer.
   
2. 
   If you know he is a farmer, and following the same storyline, then you know what the other player has already done and/or will do, since they're experiencing the same basic set of events as you are.
   
3. 
   This makes you feel like you're on a ride at Disneyland, and have no real control over your destiny.
   
4. 
   You have an incentive to always work with other players to accomplish a task, since they have the same goal.
   
5. 
   A clever designer makes some sub-games/quests zero-sum, so that you win at the expense of another player losing. Thus, some encounters with other players result in conflict.
   
6. 
   Even with this, most encounters will be win-win or zero-sum. There won't be any ambiguity.
   

1. 
   Define the storyline as the character's growth from a 90 pound weakling to a super hero... Player characters start out as pathetic level 1 newbies and gradually work their way to level 100. This is called the "Hero's Journey".
   
2. 
   The world is divided into zones. Zones have monsters placed in them so that they encourage level N characters to visit the zone. Low-level characters won't enter a high level zone because they'll be slaughtered right away. High-level characters won't enter a low-level zone because they won't earn enough XP and loot for their time investment.
   
3. 
   Of course, as characters kill monsters, they get XP and loot, which makes them more powerful, and eventually encourages them to leave their current zone to visit a higher-level zone.
   
4. 
   If a world hands out XP and loot slowly, players will be forced to visit every zone and complete every quest in order to earn enough XP to advance to a higher-levelled zone. Players will feel like (a) they spend all their time grinding, and (b) they have no choice in what zones/quests they visit because they have to visit them all.
   
5. 
   If a world hands out heaps of XP and loot, players will never visit most zones. They will feel like they have plenty of choice, and won't be grinding, but will be annoyed that they didn't experience all the content. At the same time, management will complain that the designer wasted money producing content that players don't use.
   
6. 
   World of Warcraft seems to have a happy medium, allowing players to skip half the zones as they advance. This allows players to chose what quests they will undertake, while not wasting too much content.
   

Down with levels

Notice the correlation between "levels", "storyline", and the "Hero's Journey". Levels are also linked to other techniques; see Experience points.

Imagine, for a second, that you got rid of experience points and levels... I know, it's difficult to imagine, and induces the frightening feeling of a loss of security. You still have a storyline, but can't use levels as the way to drive the player forward.

Instead, a storyline is a series of quests.

Because players should have choices, players can chose to take different branches within the storyline, which lead to different series of quests. The choices are either explicitly made by the player ("Do you want to open door A or door B?"), implicitly made (Does a player's actions make him good or evil?), or are based on success/failure. (Failing to rescue the princess leads down a different path than success.)

To add another dimension to choice, several quests will be on the player's plate at once. Completing a quest sometimes spawns two quests. Some quests are initiated based on a timer (or random event). Others are purely optional side-quests that player can chose to accept or ignore.

Contemporary MMORPGs use zones with level-N monsters in it to prevent characters from taking quests out of order, or bypassing all the quests and ending the game by killing the evil overlord in the first ten minutes. A level-less storyline system prevents players from skipping (too many) quests by not allowing players to undertake new quests until they have completed prior quests; this may require that certain areas of the world be inaccessible or hidden until the necessary quests are completed.

A level-less storyline has the advantage that friends can help each other out. In MMORPGs, friends might have characters of vastly different levels, preventing them from playing together.

Another way to think about this is to view storylines like a Choose Your Own Adventure book where each page not only involves a choice of A, B, or C, but also a quest that the player needs to complete. The quest inevitably involves sub-games. See The game loop.

If you already read Personal NPCs, you'll notice that the scheme for storyline quests is almost exactly the same as the scheme I proposed for personal NPCs. Bother personal NPCs and storylines can be handled using the same mechanism, and both should exist in a world.

An example storyline for a farmer during the 1930's might be:

1. 
   Personal NPCs introduced for the character's siblings.
   
2. 
   Option to buy a pet. (Acquire a personal NPC).
   
3. 
   Buy a horse or a Model T. (Acquire a personal NPC).
   
4. 
   Rent or buy a farm. (Acquire a personal NPC. Buildings require maintenance, etc.)
   
5. 
   Find a wife. (Acquire a personal NPC.)
   
6. 
   Have kids. (Acquire a personal NPC.)
   
7. 
   All of the personal NPCs bring their own quests. Meanwhile, the player deal with the trials of the early dust bowl, trying to get crops to grow as well as possible. Have the player experience three to five years, each year getting successively harder and brining new challenges.
   
8. 
   Decide to stay or leave. This produces a branch that lets the character to scratch for a living from the dust, or travel to California.
   
9. 
   The storyline ends when the player survives the "boss" dust storm or finds a new home in California.
   

As I stated earlier, a single-player game can rely on just one storyline. A virtual world must provide at least a handful of storylines. Some other storylines might be: Be the wife of a farmer, be a child of a farmer, be the banker, be a merchant in town, be a hobo, be a thief, etc.

Some issues arise:

1. 
   When a player creates a character, they may be given a choice of which storyline to play. Contemporary MMORPGs do something similar by allowing players to select their race and class.
   
2. 
   Some storylines may not be available until the player has played through others. For example: A player may not be able to play a banker until he as played a farmer.
   
3. 
   Some storylines are "earned", as in The peacock. Maybe the option of becoming a thief or hobo can only be "earned" by the player's actions as a farmer.
   
4. 
   When a player finishes a storyline, they may wish to continue playing the same character. At that point, the designer can (a) forcefully terminate the character, (b) allow the player to continue with the character but not do anything except side quests, or (c) transfer the character over to another storyline.
   
5. 
   A player might get part way through the farmer storyline and decide he doesn't like being a farmer. The design might allow the player to suddenly (and without any real in-game reason) switch to being a grocery store owner. Or, the design could require that the player start a new character.
   
6. 
   As with personal NPCs, each storyline might have several variations. When a player decides to be a farmer, they won't know if they're getting farmer storyline A, B, or C.
   
7. 
   Players may opt not with to be a part of any storyline, in which case they can spend their time acquiring personal NPCs, playing optional quests, or chatting.
   

A designer can obscure levels by replacing them with skills, which are basically a vector of levels. A player that focuses on a specific skill also focuses on a specific storyline; a player that invests in "accounting" will probably follow the banker storyline, while one with "animal handling" might follow the farmer storyline. Star Wars Galaxies does/did this.

The end

My intuition and thinking says that virtual worlds should have an end, as described in the anti-MMORPG. This means that at some point players will be told, "You're done. You might want to leave now."

• 
  What happens if the storyline ends while there is still some content left in the player's personal NPCs? Perhaps the personal NPC story arcs should be sped up, or the storyline slowed down, ensuring that they end at the same time. This is exactly what a novel's author does.
  
• 
  What happens if the player wishes to continue to play his character for social reasons?
  
• 
  What happens if the player wishes to use his character to explore more storylines? Does the game allow the player to switch to a new storyline (if possible), but warn the player that the storyline may be less fun? (The experience may be less fun because the storyline has been game-balanced assuming new characters, not ones that have already acquired wealth and skills.)
  

If players can daisy-chain storylines, then the overall concept is somewhat weakened. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way around the daisy-chaining. The designer of a single-player game can conceivably say, "You're done. Get out of here." However, this isn't possible/wise with a multiplayer game (as shown above).

In a multiplayer game, daisy-chaining produces a series of mega-quests (aka: the storylines) that can only be played one at a time. The ending of the mega-quest (storyline) is a good time for the player to quit the world, if that is what they wish. Players that quit immediately after a storyline finishes will leave on an up-note; they will have defeated the evil overlord, or rescued the princess. This positive ending will encourage players to recommend the experience to other players.

To use a food analogy, storylines in a multiplayer world are like a link of sausages; players break off as many sausages as they can eat, and leave the rest on the link. Occasional miscreants take only half a sausage, but most people take a whole one. Theoretically, players will take their favourite sausage flavours first (curry, chilli, or rosemary and thyme), and won't bother trying flavours they like less. Most people will eat one or two links in a meal, while some die-hards will go for three or four.

Look ma, no levels!

I haven't gone into detail about all the quests and choices needed to make a farmer storyline, but they're fairly obvious; just imagine you're a farmer in the dust bowl and imagine all the tasks you'd have to do, as well as unfortunate events that might require a response. I can think of oodles. For one: milking the cow. You could make a sub-game out of milking the cow, just don't make the player milk the cow more than a few times or they'll get annoyed with the grind. Milking-the-cow even has variations in the sub-game; the cow may become more difficult to milk as the drought worsens, or a player's only bucket may get damaged and be more easily tipped by the cow.

You can do it all without levels, and without monsters.

Some additional points:

• 
  I suspect storylines work best with an anti-MMORPG.
  
• 
  I didn't want to muddy the waters before, but you can still have skills and/or levels in a storyline system. However, characters with a high skill/level can't be infinitely more powerful than characters with low skills/levels, as is typical in MMORPGs.