[Divunal-author] imaginary design

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

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On Sun, 29 Sep 2002 15:46:00 +0200, Christopher Armstrong <radix@twistedmatrix.com> wrote:

> I really enjoyed this short introduction. It's kind of like
> sci-fi/mystery, from what I gather, based on the "solve the problem" 
> style. Very IF-ish, anyway :)

Yes.  It's almost as much a game-design document as a work of fiction.  I'm
trying to imagine what people like the characters we're designing would really
be _doing_, what their emotional tone would be like, etc.

Notice that they don't understand the world they live in in very concrete
terms, but they are pretty fearless in experimenting with it.  I am pretty
happy with how I captured that in the first few pages and I hope to take it
further.

> So I strongly encourage you to continue it.

Thanks!

> It would be cool to develop stories like this in parallel with the game
> world, although I wonder if it would interfere with the zero-story philosophy
> of the game.

No, I don't think so.  See, this isn't a story about primal or world-defining
characters: just some divuen going about their daily lives.  In fact, they're
not even members of an older or more powerful civilization; they're "regular"
people. :).  So it's not _THE_ story of the game world, it's _A_ story in the
game world.  Perhaps some of the story will tangentially affect the game world,
inspire the design of puzzles, etc.  It will not drive the design of the game.

> From what I can gather of your past descriptions of the idea, it was that the
> story developed in the game, and this is story developed outside of the game.

It's not where the story develops that I was trying to change: in fact, my idea
was that most of the story would actually happen on message boards and in chat
rooms, as players discussed the ramifications of the things happening to their
avatars.

It was _how_ the story developed that I wanted to change.  Rather than creating
a single, global, compelling story, and then deriving mechanics from that, we
create compelling mechanics and then derive a whole multitude of stories from
it.  Hopefully a lot of those stories will be good -- I also expect some of
them will contradict in their explanations of the significance of various
features of the world.

> I like it, and I doubt it's a bad thing, so I'm just playing devil's advocate
> in order to refine the philosophy in my head :)

Well, I'm glad you asked.

I hope that the story that I've started to tell hasn't been a violation of the
basic tenets I put down: I am trying to keep the basic mechanics and aesthetic
sense of the game world that we have described elsewhere consistently
represented and not really explained.  The story is designed to be a character
study into a few typical people with the bodies and minds of young immortals
hungry for new experiences.

If it has been, I'd like to try to clear that up, and eliminate any sense of
primacy or cardinality in the world among the characters in the story :).  I
don't think it's even long enough for me to have screwed up that badly
though... so we'll see if I can keep it up.

(I would highly recommend the trade paperback comic series "Planetary" for
anyone who has not read it, speaking of "immortals hungry for new
experiences"...)

-- 
 |    <`'>    |  Glyph Lefkowitz: Traveling Sorcerer   |
 |   < _/ >   |  Lead Developer,  the Twisted project  |
 |  < ___/ >  |      http://www.twistedmatrix.com      |

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