Monday lecture – Narrative Design

Make a storyboard of the player experience
You can also start making a flowchart of the narrative design

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What goes on a narrative design? Choices matter.

• Choices in your game matter
• Impact for choices, it is the measure of players believing
• your choices matter
• All comes down to player emotions
• Cascades, callbacks, heuristics

Narrative designer
Why do characters gain abilities in the world and how does gaining more abilities inform the protagonist’s adventure? Does the protagonist gain an ability every time they realise something about their own personal journey so the player and the character grow together?

A story-let is a ‘piece’ of a story that can be embedded into the larger narrative, and that the game’s systems decide which one to use depending on the current situation.
Narrative choice can influence the workflow – it might even create a new game .You can have multiple endings…

What are the players doing in the story world? Searching? Scavenging,shooting, talking, exploring, investigating? The narrative designer is responsible for those game mechanics that are used to convey the story

The design in narrative design

• Choice architecture
• Mechanical and fictional sides of the game; fiction gives the game meaning
• Storytelling skills embedded in all areas

The Design in Narrative Design (GDC talk, 2015, Horneman).

Designing narrative choice :

• Narrative choice can influence the workflow – it might even create a new game
• You can have multiple endings

Scene structure :

• Outcome (then reached by requiring change from the player/characters 
• Objective (target player goal or experience)
• Conflict (something that makes the objective more difficult to reach – you can Use narrative/mechanics/both

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Thursday notes – Amber booth

On Thursday we had another guest talker, Amber Booth an Escape Room maker from Nobody’s Fool Mystery Games. In this talk she went over on how she dissects her murder mystery games into sections and help with characters design along with the structure…

TYPES OF MURDER MYSTERY:
– Immersive theatre
– Role-playing
– Scripted

ELEMENTS OF A MURDER MYSTERY:
– Concept
– Plot
– Characters
– LOGIC

Concept : A murder mystery game inspired by X for Y players .

Plot : Twist: X is actually Y Set up: A ragtag band of pirates are at a sailing cursed waters because they are searching for treasure. (e.g Twist: The treasure is actually deadly Set up: A film crew are at a haunted house because they are filming a documentary Twist: Ghosts are actually real)

ESSENTIAL CHARACTERS:

• Victim (NPC)
• Secondary victims (NPC) – the motive for murder
• Can be people, animals or concepts (i.e. a successful career)
• Mastermind – architect of the twist
• Murderer – person with means, motive and opportunity

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS :

• Lover – agent of chaos motivated love, lust or obsession
• Fool – clumsily or carelessly wreaks havoc

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This workshop I worked with a few people on my table to create our own murder mystery whilst using the same format given to us. Whilst I don’t think I could use this in my game I still liked how in depth she went in each section and gave us ideas on how to spin the narrative.