Rubes over at The Monk’s Brew has a few thoughts on the tricky problem of trying to have a realistic protagonist that fits into the story… who is also controlled by an unpredictable player. The problem is of course that all too often a game’s mechanics will allow the playful player to do something ridiculous, something the protagonist would never really do. Should we just make a game and, as Jimmy Maher once said, expect the player “to accept the premise and situation of the story she is in, and to behave in a reasonable manner”?
I don’t think we should ever expect anything of the sort. Let’s face it, there shouldn’t be a right and a wrong way to play a game. If it’s within the limits of the rules, then why shouldn’t the player be expected to do something that conflicts with the story? The answer isn’t, I don’t think, in having sophisticated enough AI to respond to a player’s inanity and keep the fiction going. The work required is just too astronomical.
It may some day be possible, but until then there is a solution that can be implemented in games today. The answer is to have game mechanics that are coherent with the story being told. Instead of having “all player actions [...] interpreted by the game within the context of the character performing the action (his or her personality and relationships) and the situation within the narrative”, the game mechanics can be designed to only allow player actions that are coherent with the story. If every game mechanic is coherent with the story, then any version of the dynamic plot generated when playing the game will be coherent with the story being told. That’s the key.
How do we do this? Well, I’ve mentioned character creation before. Instead of first coming up with the character’s history, personality, or even their name… craft the character based on the function you want them to have in the story. Once you’ve established that, create game mechanics that coherently express this function. It’s easier said than done, which is why you rarely see it. But it isn’t by any means impossible, it just requires some forethought.
Spake gian mancuso, tagged as: dialectic
