Emergent Narrative and Imposed Narrative in Game Design


When I design a strategy game, my primary goal is to create emergent complexity. That is, a game easy to learn, but soon branches into multiple options, deep tactics, and long-term replay value. That's great for a strategy game, especially an abstract strategy game. If your game has a strong theme, your mind starts filling in that abstraction with aesthetic details.

This topic came up in a conversation with Sage LaTorra about For the Fleet. He looked over the alpha draft and had the following comments: "I feel like the game I was hoping for had more narrative than FtF currently does. FtF is pretty much a pushing your luck game with some extra cool dimensions of how and where you push that luck, which I dig. I just like the Zap Brannigan feel so much that I wanted more."

Eventually this settled into the notion of a Mission for each ship. Essentially, each ship gets a mission with three thematically related objectives. Each objective offers additional glory for your ship. Accomplishing the entire mission earns an upgrade for all ships in the fleet. For example:

Objective 1: Start at Sector 1, RAID one Target in each Sector. / 2 Glory
Objective 2: Be the first to WARP to the Imperial Capital. / 5 Glory
Objective 3: RAID the Imperial Capital twice. / 10 Glory
Mission Accomplished: All ships in the Fleet gain Experienced Crew.
Experienced Crew: You may declare three standard actions instead of two.

That is an imposed narrative. It presses a narrative structure on a system that doesn't naturally create one on its own. This is a valid solution, and one with many possibilities for play scenarios. I can see prison breakouts where you're ferrying POWs from the Imperial Capital back to Sector 1. I can see missions that call for you to pillage key Memes from specific Targets, bring them to another Target, so the Fleet can upgrade to faster engines.

Contrast this with Sandy Petersen recounting his first test of Call of Cthulhu's Sanity system 30 years ago: "My players found a book which enabled them to summon up a Foul Thing From Otherwhere. At the moment they completed the spell, the players suddenly chimed in with comments like "I’m covering my eyes." "Turning my back." "Shielding my view so I don’t see the monster." ... I had actually not realized that the Sanity stat, as I had written it, would lead to such behavior. To me it was serendipitous; emergent play. But I loved it. The players were actually acting like Lovecraft heroes instead of the mighty-thewed barbarian lunks of D&D."

That's classic emergent narrative. The rules didn't directly say "Play your characters like neurotic cowards." They simply provided a structure where that was the most natural course of action.

Sage offers some more references: "My points of comparison here are primarily Lord of the Rings card game and Death Angel. I can kind of sum up my gameplay in those games as a story with a distinct ending. My reading of FtF sounds like the narrative summary would always be "We went and raided some planets, then made it back home." (Or "ran our of fuel" or "got stuck")."

Imposed narrative isn't a bad thing, nor is it necessarily preferable to emergent narrative. They're just two very different solutions to the same task. Emergent narrative is simply a more difficult butterfly to capture.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results that ar
Read more

The Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge

Image
UPDATE: The submission period has closed and here are the entries. If you're an entrant, continue sending pics or vids of people playing your game. The first step to a game lasting a thousand years is for people to play it today. UPDATE 2: And here's the winner! To support games designed for longevity – that can be learned, played and shared for hundreds of years – we offer this challenge to any game designers, artists and imaginative people who also share this desire. Challenge Create a game. The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a "new classic," like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years. Prize $1,000 to the winning entrant, to be announced and awarded January 1, 2012. Entry Deadline Entries must be submitted before midnight July August 31st, 2011. ( Update ) Entry Guidelines Enter by posting a comment below with a link
Read more