Unique Plots (part 5)

If you're unfamiliar with concepts like chaos theory or the butterfly effect, suffice it to say that the smallest variety of factors can have very far-reaching and unexpected effects. If two people wrote about the same exact plot, they'd end up with very different stories because of their choices in setting, style, and the characters involved. Giving two writers the same plot is like telling two composers to both write in the same meter and key--they'll still both produce something unique. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a basic plot in mind when you write—stories that lack a plot often suffer for it; I'm just saying that your plot probably isn't going to be what most impacts people through the story you tell.

Unique Plots (part 4)

Are you a writer suffering from writer's block? Start writing! Your block is likely because you are demanding of yourself a totally original plot. Chances are, your plot has been done before in some shape or form, and inevitable comparisons will be made despite how unique you thought your plot was. In fact, when sending a submission to a literary agent or publisher, sometimes it's a good idea to let them know what your story is similar to. Movie producers listen to countless movie pitches and their experience allows them to quickly compare pitch ideas with several other similar movies to judge the merit of a pitch. Yes, a plot is an important factor in a story, but often it develops during the journey of writing. If you are striving for a truly unique plot, you're probably wasting your time trying to design it that way before you even start. Just get writing!

Unique Plots (part 3)

For a moment, think of your favorite books, movies, and TV shows, and try to condense a basic plot into a single sentence. Here's an example from a TV series I just watched: people are disappearing in a small town because a deadly creature has been released from a parallel dimension and it can only be stopped by the young girl that accidentally opened the gate to its world. This very plot is from the first season of a popular TV series that spans roughly 8 hours. A simple, single-sentence plot was woven into an 8-hour story, and done in such a way that I and a friend of mine separately watched all 8 hours straight through—we couldn't step away, it was so engrossing! The plot on its own isn't incredibly compelling, though, but the way the story was told, the pacing, the characters and other elements that were involved made it something I couldn't walk away from.

Unique Plots (part 2)

Many would argue that it is more how the story is told than the story itself. In the case of books, it might be the author's writing style, full of descriptive and flowery prose. Clever wordplay, impressive vocabulary, frequent use of thought-provoking metaphors and similes, and an assortment of other writing techniques all make up an author's style. We see this in cinematic storytelling as well, because a director's style can turn a simple story into a masterpiece, just like a talented conductor can interpret a piece of music and bring out amazing results from an orchestra. Style does contribute a great deal to the overall reception of a work, so is a unique plot really that important?

Unique Plots

How important is it that a story is unique? When you think about a story you've enjoyed and try to explain it to someone else, do you find their lack of enthusiasm frustrating? As you tell the story that impacted you so deeply--whether it was a book, TV series, movie, or even a story from a game--it seems to fall flat in the telling as you often realize the plot was not as profound or complex as you thought it was. When we really think about it, most plots have been used over and over again, and these days, a truly unique plot is a rare exception. Yet despite this, there are so many stories that still have a large impact upon a wide audience. Is the plot what makes a good story, or is it something else?

The Villains of Solar Echoes (part 5)

Although they can't exactly be called “villains,” the Union Guard must also concern itself with non-sentient threats, such as robots and alien lifeforms. There are thousands of planets in the universe with a wide variety of alien lifeforms, and quite a number of them are dangerous. Though these lifeforms are rarely the target of an investigation, it is not uncommon for agents to have to traverse the wilds of alien planets and encounter the deadly denizens along the way. Robots are also a common threat to UG agents, especially those used for security by criminal organizations. In some cases, robots could arguably even be considered “sentient,” because rogue or illegal AI programs have sometimes resulted in robotic monsters that must be put down and thoroughly dismantled. Innocent service bots can sometimes malfunction, or even be repurposed and weaponized. It is a dangerous universe out there—are you ready to join the agents of the Union Guard?

The Villains of Solar Echoes (part 4)

Yet some of the villains that Union Guard agents will face are not even among the seven sentient races. Sightings and encounters at the Edge or beyond known space have shown that the member races in the Interstellar Union are not alone. A powerful, crystalline alien known as the Arunox that lives on worlds uninhabitable by the other races has occasionally encroached upon the territories of others, and their strange technology and resilient nature have shown them to be impervious to the cold vacuum of space, making their attacks on starships with controlled interior environments truly devastating. Worse, however, is an elusive alien foe that has been kidnapping people from all races and has—at least twice—sent in small but extremely powerful probes to test the Union's defensive capabilities. Though information on these aliens is classified, the secretive “Immortals” cult actively seeks the aliens and has repeatedly shown themselves to be extremely dangerous. What other alien threat lies beyond known space? What powerful foes have simply not deigned to concern themselves with us yet? 

 

The Villains of Solar Echoes (part 3)

Some say that the three major crime organizations in the universe are behind every lawless, nefarious act in known space. Though that is unlikely, it is understandable why the assumption can be made when seeing just how much crime leads back to these three enormous organizations. Some suggest the three are at war with each other, while others assert that their occasional skirmishes and conflicts are merely a show to hide that they are working together to control the entire Interstellar Union. The diverse specialties between each group does have the Union Guard concerned, however, considering that the Blackstars specialize in information acquisition and manipulation, the Quass'eth specialize in illegal finance, and the Blood Reach specializes in assassinations. Not a single government has remained untouched by their influence, nor has the ISU itself completely managed to avoid all entanglements. If not for the efforts of the Union Guard to disrupt their consolidation of power, the three might have merged into a nightmarish and unstoppable criminal power.

The Villains of Solar Echoes (part 2)

During the course of their investigations and the various missions they are assigned, Union Guard teams will slowly begin to connect the dots and find that many of the seeming minor criminal groups are actually tied to larger criminal organizations. Instead of what seemed like a few independent small gangs, they'll discover a much larger mafia organization orchestrating the activities of several gangs. Lone-wolf hackers are often part of a larger crime syndicate, operating as a web-like group, attacking from hundreds of different locations at once. Smugglers and pirates are usually in the employ of a mafia or syndicate that wants to extend its influence into space and neighboring regions. Sometimes they only way to find a connective thread is to bust the small-time criminals first. But even when larger groups like mafia crime organizations or corporate syndicates are revealed, there is yet another layer to be unraveled...

The Villains of Solar Echoes

Most stories need an antagonist opposite the protagonist, and this is even more important in Solar Echoes—a game where you and your team play as Union Guard special agents on the side of the law. Just who are the villains in Solar Echoes, though? To get to know the major players, we have to start small. In a universe that involves FTL (faster-than-light) speed travel, known space is a very, very large area. The further one gets from civilized, well-traveled areas, however, it becomes more likely that the outer reaches of known space are a haven for criminals hiding out from the law. Small colony worlds far from populated regions and law-enforcement are more likely to be plagued with crime—unless the local population manages to establish their own crime-fighting forces. But it's safe to say the initial threats that UG agents will face involve your basic criminal elements: pirates, smugglers, hackers, gangs, and other fledgling criminal enterprises.

Enhancing Old Missions (part 4)

In addition to the mall map icon advice, I also recommended the use of Legos for the various mall robots, and included pictures of some of my creations. Who doesn't love playing with Legos? I bought a few sets that looked like they had the pieces I wanted, then began to build each of the robots in the mission, from the Janitor-cleaning robot to the giant Delivery-bot that carries huge packages around. My daughter actually designed the freakish and hilarious Delivery-bot, with it's gigantic, scary claws to it's funny googly eyes. These models may not be exactly to scale, but there's nothing better than putting a logo-robot monstrosity down on the map and seeing your players' excited and fearful expressions. When preparing this mission, I know I liked the excuse to go buy some legos and then try to construct the robots in the mission. I also bought some small Hotwheels cars for the car chase in the mission. Solar Echoes gives you a great opportunity to tap into your youth and play with toys again!

Enhanced Seeds of Chaos mission at RPGnow! 

Enhancing Old Missions (part 3)

Although updating format, colorizing, and adding in the new art borders was the biggest change, I've also added in some new content for the shopping mall. I realized that every time I ran this mission, I unfolded my giant grid map (wet-erase) and drew a few hallways. I then positioned several paper cut-out objects around the grid map for obstacles such as a water fountain or some crates to represent mall sales kiosks. I decided that for this mission update, I wanted to provide the same thing, rather than leave it entirely to the MC to figure out. The problem with making a map for a shopping mall is that it would be huge. Player's should be able to explore wherever they want to, so I've always left the mall as a more open-ended, improvisatory map. Even though malls have a lot of wide open space, characters will need to have options for cover when they battle the rampaging mall robots. I made some color map icons that MC's can print and cut out to use on a large grid map. I also included some instructions and photos detailing how I've done it and what to keep in mind. The sale kiosks were especially fun to design, as each one targets a specific alien race. For example, there is a “Buckles & Baubles” kiosk for Archaeloids, “Hydropontific! Wearable Organic Systems” for Erwani, and “Sweetasties” for the sugar-loving Chiraktis.

Enhanced Seeds of Chaos mission at RPGnow! 

Enhancing Old Missions (part 2)

The end result for the art borders was fantastic! But why did I want these borders for stat blocks, other than to add a little aesthetic polish? One reason was because the old missions didn't have a lot of artwork, and these art borders compensated nicely for that. The other reason was that it made it a lot easier to instantly look at a page and recognize what challenges the players were going to be encountering. You can now page through a mission and quickly get a great idea about every single challenge the players will be dealing with. In the Seeds of Chaos mission, you'll see quite a large number of different robots initially, later followed by a number of different NPC's. There are some vehicles for a car chase, as well. Now it is easier for the Mission Controller (the Game Master) to quickly locate what he needs to reference across multiple pages. Ultimately, though, I wanted to add in art borders because it really pops out and has a lot of character. Vehicle borders have wheels, anti-grav lifts, thrusters, starship cockpits, engines, and other machinery. Lifeform borders include all kinds of organic creature art such as claws, eyeballs, hair, scales, tentacles, etc. Robot borders have gears, lights, and other tech-looking details. Character borders include each alien race's emblem and equipment typically used by each race. And hacking grid borders have a more digital look with various polygons representing the nodes in cyberspace. The borders turned out great!

 

 

Enhancing Old Missions

What exactly is new with the enhanced edition of the 3-year old mission, “The Seeds of Chaos?” For one thing, I've added in a lot of color. Originally, when Solar Echoes released in 2012, I was avoiding color as much as possible because I was working on printing the books (and color is more expensive.) Now that I'm focusing on digital sales, I've colorized each of the few art pieces in the mission, added in John Fell's cool new page borders, and this is the first mission featuring John's great new stat-block borders! Stat-blocks are the little colored blocks that include all the details for NPC's, vehicles, robots, alien lifeforms, and even the hacking grids. I used to highlight these areas in the missions with a grey background color, and more recently, I added a drop-shadow colored border. They didn't look bad, but I wanted something with more character. I've looked at a lot of other RPG game books and was surprised that everyone is doing essentially the same thing I was: different colored backgrounds but no artistic border. So, I contacted artist John Fell and talked with him about my idea—I wasn't sure it was even possible. He sent me a few rough ideas and I experimented with sizing, sending him images of what I was able to do and how much space I needed to make it work. He adjusted the sizes, left the interiors blank so I could add in whatever color background I was happiest with, and then began working on designing the art for each border type.

Enhanced "Seeds of Chaos" at RPGnow! 

Enhanced Edition Now Available!

New Update! I've been working on improving the old Solar Echoes missions and have just finished the Enhanced Edition of The Seeds of Chaos. If you've already purchased this mission, you can download it again for free to enjoy the improvements. If you haven't yet tried out this fun, beginning-level mission that involves investigating and stopping malfunctioning, rampaging service robots in a shopping mall, then check out this fun mission!

Enhanced "The Seeds of Chaos" Mission at RPGnow! 

Story writing: Games and Books (part 5)

Where do the writers for games come from? Often, these writers have already written and published several novels. Game companies seek out and hire established writers, not only because they hope they'll draw from the author's existing fan-base, but also because an already established author is going to have the necessary skills for writing engaging stories. Gamers, especially gamers that enjoy RPG's, demand great stories from their games. They're paying upwards of $60 sometimes for an RPG, and are planning to sink 50+ hours into the game, so a sub-par story is going to earn the game some very bad reviews. Are games the pseudo-books of a new generation? They certainly engage the reader in a dynamic way, allowing the reader to make choices and influence the outcome. Some people that play these kinds of games do so because they want to actually be “doing” something at the same time they're enjoying a story. Books and story-driven games are different and attract a wide range of people, but in the end, a good story can be told in any form. That's great news for writers, because it means that their skills are in even greater demand!

Story writing: Games and Books (part 4)

The difference between a story-heavy RPG and a game genre called a “Visual Novel” is that the RPG involves other elements beyond just making choices between reading segments. Other types of games involve expansive story lines where the gamer passively absorbs story segments which occur at certain intervals, temporarily interrupting actual gameplay. Some games don't bother, though, and just focus on the gameplay without putting much effort into a “story mode.” Interestingly enough, even in games like “Star Wars Battlefront” that are understood to be purely action games, story seems to be an element players demand. The Star Wars Battlefront game that released in 2015 was online multiplayer only, without a single-player story mode. The game was widely criticized for lacking any story, and the developers at EA are making certain that the 2017 version of the game will definitely have a story mode. The very same thing happened with the “Destiny” game, which was considered one of the best first-person shooters with one of the most pathetic and almost non-existent stories. Destiny 2 is due to release soon, and the developers at Bungie are now aggressively advertising that they've taken gamers' complaints very seriously by including an involved story. Not all gamers like to read in their games, but it does seem that most gamers want a good story!

Story writing: Games and Books (part 3)

Though RPG video games usually require a lot of hours to complete, it's unfair to suggest that a game that takes 100 hours to complete means that 100 hours of writing content goes into it. Games involve a lot of different elements to be successful, including things like combat, crafting, inventory management, puzzle solving, platforming, and exploration, to name a few. Often, these activities can make up the bulk of the time spent playing a game, but each RPG is different. Torment: Tides of Numenera is an RPG that requires a LOT of reading, and it involves some of the most impressive writing I've ever seen in an RPG, with excellent character development and a fantastic, broad, intriguing story. The best part? You play a large part in writing the story when playing the game, because you make choices that lead different directions. After solving RPG's like this, you can always replay them and make totally different choices. Depending on the writing and the game developers, sometimes this can result in entirely different stories unfolding, producing a new experience each time. Remember those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books? It's like those, but infinitely more complex.

 

 

Story writing: Games and Books (part 2)

Granted, I've not yet seen a game based on a book, though there might be a few out there. I've seen games based on movies, and maybe there are even games based on movies that are based on books. Regardless, I think that the story experience in video games could possibly be on par with--and in some cases better than--reading an actual novel. At the very least, the stories in some games are usually much more developed than they could be in a 2-hour movie. That's really the shortcoming of movies, when you get down to it—movies just don't have enough time to build characters like books and games do. TV series that last from 12 to 24 episodes (sometimes with multiple seasons) usually do a much better job at character development because they have the length to do so. Consider now that games, especially RPG's, are often expected to last a player anywhere from 20 to 100+ hours to complete. That is an enormous amount of time for developing interesting characters!

Story writing: Games and Books

Last week I talked about some of the positive aspects of the “Tokyo Xanadu” RPG video game. RPG's usually involve very engrossing and expansive stories, and legends like “Final Fantasy 7” leave memories that some of us will remember for the rest of our lives. Those of us that love reading books know that the same is true with a good book—the memories of well-written stories leave us with deep experiences that stay with us. But do the stories in games even compare to full-length novels? Consider, for a moment, what happens to novels when they are made into movies. You always hear people saying that such movies were not as good as the book. We even have a little rule in my family: my daughter is not allowed to see a movie based on a book unless she's read the book first. When “Ender's Game” was due to release in theaters a few years ago, I went out and bought the novel and read it. Once my daughter had read it, I took her to see the movie with me. Although the movie was well-done, it wasn't as good as the book. Based on this, can we assume that a story told in a video game can't really compare with a novel?

Analysis/Review of a new JPRG (part 5)

The last two elements that really make this JRPG work are story and gameplay balance. A good story is a given—any RPG that lacks story is not going to be very successful--players like to lose themselves and become immersed in an involved storyline that has consequence. I’ve seen some games tack on a story to the gameplay, but the gameplay, in my opinion, should proceed from the story. In Tokyo Xanadu, advancing the story through the different gameplay modes feels very natural. For instance, (without spoiling anything!) some of the characters have to go into a mode that involves exploring a dungeon-like maze while dealing with a variety of enemies. Even the combat stays fresh, with the game rewarding you for using the proper elemental attack strategies against each of the enemies, in addition to the variety of attacks you used and how fast you cleared the stage. Each character in your group has an elemental specialization, but you can only take 3 characters into a dungeon, so you need to strategize and choose characters that would be the most helpful, depending on the monster types in each dungeon. But there's more than just combat and walking around for the different types of gameplay: there is a skateboarding mini-game in the park, an option to advance your character’s wisdom by reading books you can find (which further develop the backstory of the game), there’s a strategy card game you can play, and even a fishing game. One review I read about the game criticized the number of different things you can do in the game, but I don’t see how that’s a detriment—you can do what you want during the unlimited “free time” during the game, and advance the story when you’re ready. There’s a lot more that I didn’t mention, but overall, Tokyo Xanadu does so many things right that I can see myself ranking this game among my favorites. This is the kind of game I’ll be playing for a long time, and enjoying every minute of it!