Ludonarrative Resonance: The Game

 All the ganz mespuchah came to town for the office summer party, and we had narrative workshops. These were in no way silly fun games, they were Very Serious. Okay, they were silly and fun, but they were also serious.

One game we like to play I dubbed Ludonarrative Resonance. I don't claim it's original -- my friend Shelly made a similar game for movie pitches, and probably lots of people have something like it. It's a card game for breaking folks out of their familiar tropes.

What you do is you take index cards, or blank playing cards like these and separate them into four piles:  Setting, Main Character, Goal, Mechanic.

You write a mess of cards with the word Settings on their backs, for example:

• 
  Paris, in the 20's, sort of
• A city with a dark secret
• Zombie apocalypse
• The dreams of a dying scientist
• A decayed city in a faithless empire 
• A forgotten town in the Deep South
• Sparta!!!
• Renaissance Florence
• A volcano island

Then you write a bunch of cards with Main Character on the back:

• An apologetic Englishman
• Member of an arcane order of assassins
• A mysterious circus girl of unknown age
• A sly fox with poor impulse control
• The Monkey King
• A beginning witch
• A not entirely harmless lamb

Next, Goals, for example:

• Become a Real Boy
• Bring back the Old Ones
• Bring your beloved back
• Get the MacGuffin
• Survive
• Heal the monsters
• Go to there

Some of these are a bit specific; ideally the cards should be ideas you can interpret in different ways, but also evocative. By now you've probably recognized the games, movies and fairy tales I stole these from (some of which I wrote).

Finally, Mechanics:

• Social stealth: pass as one of them
• Deck builder
• Walking simulator
• Parcour
• Battle Royale
• Romance simulator
• Enter dreams and alter them
• Soulslike
• Punch them in the face
• Time loop

Now, the dealer deals three of each kind of card, and someone else picks one from each three. There shouldn't be two cards from the same source material.

Then everyone collaborates to pitch a game using the selected setting, main character, goal and mechanic.

Initially, this will seem ridiculous. But with a little thought, the ridiculous becomes plausible -- and original.

In our workshop, for example, we had:

A lamb

A volcano

Go to there

Puzzles

We ended up with the idea that The Lamb is solving puzzles to climb the volcano to get to Mary. The puzzles come from spectral lambs. Over the course of the puzzles we discover that Mary has been abusive towards the Lamb, and we're worried that we are in an allegory of someone returning to their abuser. But it turns out the Lamb is there to kill evil Mary and set the spectral lambs free.

We had:

An apologetic Englishman

A zombie apocalypse

Bring back his beloved

Social stealth

That turned into a game pitch where the apologetic Englishman has to rescue his beloved, who has become a zombie. That means he will have to infiltrate three groups:  the zombies (to get to her), the lab guys (to get the cure) and the kill teams (to prevent them from killing her before she can be turned back). Being an apologetic Englishman is a nice impediment to passing as any of these groups, and failing to pass will result in him being eaten, killed, or used as an experimental subject.

Both of those are perfectly cromulent games, right? I would at a minimum watch the trailer for these games, and probably wishlist them on Steam. 

Aside from exercising your ludonarrative muscles, which is always good, you quickly learn how many possibilities there are. When we were thinking about our next game after We Happy Few, we only seriously discussed two possibilities. We should have been discussing twenty! I mean, if you're planning to spend a couple of years making an indie game, or five or more making a AAA game, would it kill you to spend a month or two pitching crazy ideas? You don't want to be making a cookie-cutter fantasy game because that's what's at the front of your brain.

Make randomness your friend!

A Misconception or Two I Had About Escape Rooms

For some time, I avoided playing escape rooms. Being trapped in a room with a limited time to escape seemed stressful, and I'm really good with the amount of stress I already have in my life. 

I have since discovered that almost no escape rooms are about escaping. The genre is stuck with the name, though. 

I just finished playing a baker's dozen of escape rooms here in Montreal, courtesy of a tour run by the fine folks of Room Escape Artist. (They also run the excellent Reality Escape Pod.) They also run tours of escape rooms in various cities that are hubs of escape rooms. Turns out Montreal is one of the top eight cities in the world for escape rooms. I did not know that.

I've been intrigued by immersive experiences, including escape rooms, for a little while. There are a bunch of ways in which they are not like video games. They are local -- if you want to play an escape room, or experience immersive theater, you have to go to where it is. You can't download it. They are tactile:  you are physically in a space. There may be be actors who will improvise based on your responses. 

There are of course many ways in which escape rooms are like video games. You are the hero of your own adventure. There is a mission that only you can accomplish. There are characters who are there to help. There are obstacles, and sometimes antagonists. You have to solve puzzles. You often have to platform. You can theoretically win or lose, but you really only lose if you are dead set on testing yourself in hard mode. 

Some games are very heavy on the problem solving. Some make an effort to create a convincingly real environment that tells part of the story. Some are there more to tell an emotionally truthful story, and the puzzles are there more to engage you in the story than to present a difficult challenge.

Escape rooms have been flowering for only about the last ten years. Folks are still figuring out what the genre can do. 

According to Morty, the Yelp of escape rooms, there are on the order of fifty thousand escape rooms. 

In the past three days, I saved a magic forest, saved the world from vengeful Poseidon, released souls trapped by a witch, broken into my high school to get out of having to go to summer school, helped a Lego man succeed on his date, stopped a mad bomber, stopped a mad poisoner, helped an agent shut down a drug operation, saved another magic forest, rehabilitated myself after having been arrested for tampering with an android, and broken a curse.

Turns out, Montreal has the top-rated room in all the world, Magnifico, at Escaparium, itself probably the top escape room studio in the world. Magnifico is Not Cheap -- it's $200 Canadian, not $30-$40 Canadian like most other rooms. But it is a 2.5 hour masterpiece. The Cirque du Soleil of escape rooms. The Punchdrunk of escape rooms. It brings together stage magic, spectacular special effects, actors, puzzle-solving, wit, music and tragedy. It took me to another world, and got me in the feels.

Come on up to Montreal and check it out! We also have circuses.

Get'em While They're Hot!

Lore Should Read Like Someone Wrote It

We're working on lore for Fragpunk, and as we refine the lore pieces, one thing I keep asking the writers for is translucency. My book (now out from Routledge!) talks about "translucent liars," where you know an NPC is lying, and their lies tell you something about them. But they don't have to be lying. They can be telling the truth -- but telling it from their distinctive point of view.

That way, there's two layers of lore. One is the facts that they are presenting -- oh, there are lizard people in the hills, no one knows where they came from, don't go there or they'll eat you. The other is who the NPC is:  a cranky old blacksmith who's a little hard of hearing, who isn't getting along with his second wife, and now you know that in this culture a man can have two wives.

(They say that France is the only country where you can complain to your wife that your mistress just doesn't understand you.)

Every bit of lore should have attitude. Even if it's meant to be from an encyclopedia, who wrote it? Who was the encyclopediarian? In Samuel Johnson's dictionary, you will find this definition:

Lexicographer. n. s. A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge...

Which defines lexicographers, but also tells you what Samuel Johnson thought of himself. 

Every bit of text in our world has an attitude. We are so used to some of them that we think they are "neutral," but the New York Times is not really neutral, and neither is the Encyclopedia Brittanica. 

So give your lore attitude, and tell us who wrote it. 

What's in the book?

Look at all the stuff you get in my new book!
Coming April 28 -- you can preorder now!

 

 

South of Midnight, Fragpunk and my new book, Crafty Game Writing!

 Wow, it's been a little while since I posted last. And it's looking to be a busy Spring.

SOUTH OF MIDNIGHT dropped! It looks great:

I worked on South of Midnight for about three years as the first narrative director, before moving to Highdive (aka Netease) and FRAGPUNK. It was and is an extremely ambitious project:  a Southern Gothic third-person adventure story set in the Deep South, about a young Black woman who discovers the creatures of Southern folklore, and her own magical powers. At one point I think I might have suggested that we were about to go running with scissors through a cultural minefield. 

I'm excited to see if Compulsion pulled it off! You can check the game out on Xbox GamePass as of April 8th. 

Oh, yeah, FRAGPUNK. FRAGPUNK dropped last month! 



This is a multiplayer shooter I've been the Narrative Lead on since I left Compulsion. We have terrific gameplay, a fresh mechanic, and outrageous characters who are a hoot to write.

And... my book drops April 30. The best place to buy it seems to be the publisher's site, where it's about US $50 (minus 20% off through April!).  It's about, what else, game writing. If you liked my books about TV writing and movie writing, you'll probably like this one, too. And if you haven't, you'll probably like it anyway! I mean, you're here, aren't you? 

My name should also be on some indie games later this year, so watch this space...

A Stick of Time

(Spoilers for Shogun)

Episode 7 of Shogun sees the wily central Japanese character Toronaga surrounded, defended only by a weakened garrison, at the mercy of his enemies. The Regency Council has summoned him to Osaka, where he will surely be commanded to commit seppuku. It appears he has no choice but to obey.

But the episode is called "A Stick of Time." That refers to the length of time requested by the madam of a high-class "tea house" (brothel), Gin, to talk to Toronaga: the time it takes for a stick of incense to burn down.

What is so important about this interview, that it gets the episode named after it?

Gin has a request. Toronaga is building a new city, Edo, in the Kanto Plain. She has a tea house in the woods. She wants permission to create an entire district of tea houses in Edo, to give her people a world to belong to.

"My hardships taught me ambition and guile,
and made me the most successful Lady in Izu,
just as your hardships made you into
the cunning man you are today."

Toronaga is dismissive. He does not expect to live long enough to give or deny her permission.

She says, in the nicest possible way, don't bullshit a bullshitter. How has the wily Toronaga been caught with his pants down. Did his scouts forget to tell him an army was surrounding him?

He says, you think I let this happen intentionally?

She says, oh, hey, what do I know, "I'm just an old whore."

One problem in dramatic writing is dealing with characters who have every reason to conceal what they are thinking. How does the audience know? In this case, how does the audience know to watch episode 8, given that it is presumably about Toronaga and all the characters we love being killed?

You can, of course, give the secretive character someone to unburden himself to. But in Toronaga's case, he is too wily to unburden himself to anybody, at least anyone we know well. It would not be in his interest to tell his butler what his plans are.

Instead we have this madam telling Toronaga, "You're up to something, aren't you?" so Toronaga can say "who, me? Never." Which tells the audience, Toronaga is up to something. They can safely watch episode 8 to see how he gets himself out of this one. 

(Act 1: get your hero up a tree. Act 2:  he tries to get down from the tree, but only ends up further up the tree. Act 3: he escapes the tree.)

When you have a secretive or dissembling character, consider having someone else say what is on his mind. The audience won't know if they are guessing correctly, which creates much more suspense than if the character reveals himself to someone trusted. 

Of course, if you know a bit of Japanese history, you know that this district will be built. It will be called ukiyo-e "the floating world," and artists such as Hiroshige will make a zillion beautiful woodcuts of it. You may also have figured out by episode 7 that Toronaga is based heavily on Tokugawa Ieyasu, who outmaneuvered his enemies to make himself... Shogun. You know that Edo will later be named Tokyo (literally "Eastern Capital"). So his eventual success will not come as a complete surprise. But this is a fictionalization, and for all we know, Toronoga's end is not Tokugawa's end. 

So the scriptwriters (and perhaps the novelist -- I haven't read the book in decades) trot out Madame Gin to pull the curtain back just a bit on Toronaga's machinations.

Nicely done!

Life and Trust

We went to Life and Trust in New York. It's a wild Martha Graham-esque dance performance taking place simultaneously on five floors of a fabulous Financial District skyscraper. Like Sleep No More, which Emursive also produced, the actors/dancers do a scene and then scurry off to another floor to do another. You chase after them in a herd, or if you're quick, you chase after them and the herd chases after you. Or you wait around to see what else will happen in the space you're in.

There are zillions of characters and theoretically there are interlocking plots involving deals with devils and a suspiciously addicting syrup, all happening on the night of Wednesday, October 23, 1929. (Guess what happens on Thursday!) I had almost no idea what was happening in the plots, but the dancing is spectacular, and the site-specific set is, too. Go see it if you can get to New York. It may spoil you for proscenium theater, though. It's hard to get excited about theater you watch from a single chair for the whole performance, in a space that has nothing to do with the story. 

 (The set is ADA-compliant, but you can't chase after people on stairs if you're not very abled indeed. But you can guess where stuff is going to happen and they'll give you a guide, if you like, to make sure you're there when it happens.)