Recently, I follwed a link from the Endicott Studio bulletin board to the site of the Belgian game design company Tale of Tales, currently developing two seperate products that make my myth-loving gamer-girl heart palpitate in anticipation.

The first, 8, is a single-player game based on the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. I won’t relate their evolution of the story — you can go read it yourself — but I’ll say that while they incorporate multiple historic versions of the tale, they have put their own dark spin on the material that will appeal to anyone who enjoys authors like Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, Ellen Kushner, etc., etc., etc.. This is no Disney tale, to be sure!

As a game, 8 is built on the principal of playing, not gaming. The player is invited to go where they like and do what they want to do without being driven by tasks to complete or goals to achieve. While the narrative does have an ending, reaching it is not the focus of the game — enjoying yourself along the way is the whole point. I keep saying game because there is no term, really, for a narrative that utilizes the technology of a video game, including puzzles and obstacles to overcome, but does not have an objective “you win” target for the player. The term “interactive fiction” applies in the most general sense, but is so often used to refer to hypertext prose that its use for other forms of computer-aided narrative is limited. Products like 8 look and feel like games, and for the time being will continue to be called such.

Other intriguing features of the game include an avatar with a mind of her own, who doesn’t always do as instructed by the player, and a complete lack of language. With no words, the entire narrative must unfold on a visual level, a challenge that appears to be well-met, judging by the sample screenshots on the site.

The second project under development by Tale of Tales is The Endless Forest, and MMORPG where players take on the role of stags living in an enchanted wood. Like 8, this game uses no language during play: there is no chat interface for either in-character or out-of-character communication. For a social game — and the site does emphasize the development of community and interpersonal relationships over achievement goals — this is a unique experiment, and I have to admit that having been plagued with meta-game issues deriving from OOC conflict in other multiplayer arenas, I’m keen to see how well it works. Stags will be able to fight with each other to impress the females, with whom they can mate in order to produce offspring, and they can learn magical skills that can change the appearance of their avatars or to make changes in the environment. The oddest thing about it is that it will run as a screensaver on your computer: I assume the developers intend the low-key game play to be an intermittant activity, not something one sits and focuses on for prolongued periods.

Both games are still have a ways to go before release, and I can’t say that either will live up to their own hype. However, I think they have intriguing premises — both mythically, and as far as narrative gameplay goes — so I will be keeping my eye on them to be sure.

Maybe it’s because it’s spring at last, or maybe it’s because it looks like I’ve finally got some builders who won’t flake out on me, but I find myself recommitted to the pursuit of completing my Skotos stage, High Noon. To be honest, the thing feels like an albatross around my neck, and in an effort to speed up production I’ve decided to pare down the scope of the story considerably. The idea of multiple tiers of characters went long ago — I don’t anticipate desire to play this game will be large enough that we’ll have 30 people wanting to play all at once. Now I’m going to pare down the set from about 20 rooms to 4 or 5 max, and refocus the remaining cast so that they’re a much grittier set, easier to arrange tension and conflict between.

My problem now is devising a story that, first, encourages the characters to stay in the limited space without wanting to kill one another right off the bat and, second, culminates in some pre-ordained climatic moment which indicates the completion of the scenario.

I’ve been scouring the net looking for insight to this problem and happened upon the Amor Fati Library, a Swedish LARPing resource, and one article in particular (I haven’t read any others yet), on Building Dramatics. Online RP is a lot like live-action RP, especially in a stage environment where you’re working with a limited time frame and a specific scenario. While this article didn’t answer my particular issue, I did find some interesting theories and wonder how they might be applied to online gaming.

First, there is mention of the “dramatic web” that connects all the characters within a given scenario. This is divided into three levels, the first being the whole game, the second the various groups characters belong to, and the third being the individual characters. In practice, this is what I have already done, though I hadn’t labeled what I was doing. Some “official” validation of technique is appreciated. The author of the article suggests that the writer needs to start on the third level, with character backgrounds and motivations, to avoid the pitfalls of creating “main characters” around whom the plot revolves, leaving other players feeling sidelined by events. This makes a great deal of sense, but I don’t think I could go so far as to leave off level one entirely (as the author did in one LARP): given the right audience I can see how that might work, but given that the audience for HN is largely unknown, I’d be uncomfortable not providing an overall “game goal” by which players can judge their success, or lack of it. While my own interest leans toward drama and storytelling, my perception of the Skotos community is that it’s still largely game oriented, meaning achieving a goal is still the focus of playing, as opposed to strict storytelling. Maybe I’m cynical.

Next the author introduces the theory of Dogma 99, which in essence states that everyone should know everything, allowing people to focus on interaction and drama as opposed to ferreting out secrets. I admit it sounds intriguing, but I’d have to read more about how it works and how it has been implemented and to what result in order to decide if it’s something might work in online games. Certainly, it would allow for the maximum amount of cooperation in cooperative storytelling, but it would demand a high level of trust among the players participating.

Finally, the author introduces the concept of “Fateplay”, which involves creating a specific goal for each character. This is not a new idea, of course, as most LARP scenarios contain a list of goals for each character. What’s different in this articles presentation is that fates are not necessarily plot bound, but provide an excuse for the player to extend their roleplaying in ways they might not otherwise have tried. This reminds me of a techinique I’ve been mulling over for what i think will be the project that I tackle upon the completion of High Noon, another stage with an adventure scenario. Instead of providing pre-made characters, each player would get to go through a typical chargen process, choosing their character’s gender and looks and basic skills. Then, they would be offered a choice of general goal: “revenge”, “love”, “greed” and so forth. Upon chosing from the general set, a specific but randomly generated goal would be given to the character. While the same overall goal of the game would be constant each time the stage was run, the dynamics of the drama would be different each time. However, I don’t think this will work in HN without completely revisioning the stage, which I’m not prepared to do right now. I wonder, though, how fates that guide the player to a dramatic event, without telling them how to get there, would work? Could you tell a player, “your fate is to die while sacrificing yourself on behalf of someone else”? Now that’s got some interesting possibilities!

P.S. I’m going to try allowing comments again. Hopefully the spam robots won’t find me again for a while.