Session 5 - 24/10/12 - Initial Ideas for Interactive Story Project

Today we were told it's time to start working towards out final projects, which will be an accumulation and demonstration of the knowledge we've attained throughout the module. I think it'll be a good test of our individual abilities and look forward to it.
I decided it'd be a good idea to start off by looking at the types of narratives that appealed to me, in the hope that making it more personal will grant more enthusiasm as well as a better knowledge to base my story off of.

Original Notes:

What kind of story do I like?:

-          Zero to Hero

-          Unassuming hero

-          Sci-fi

-          Man vs. Self

I like stories where the main character proves themself to be more than they appear and overcome an image society/an antagonist has placed upon them.

                Could this be conveyed through an interactive story?

District 9

Zombieland

After thinking briefly about how i could make the story more personal, i then allowed myself to jump on a desire i had had for some time, which was to create a story based in the universe of one of my favourite games, Half-Life. I took the opportunity to list some potential settings for my story, noting that being so vague, the Half-Life universe grants me a favourable amount of creative freedom:

Notes:

Most likely why half-life draws me in: typical nerd is gun-toting badass, breaking stereotype.

Half-life world:

-          Citizen escape from city 17

-          Rebel uprising in another city

-          Seven hour war

-          Black mesa

o   Scientists escape from black mesa

-          Portal storms across the world

-          Collapse of civilization

-          Ravenholm

-          Nova Prospekt

Notes:

-         Half life games, and by extension the universe in which they are set are VAGUE, which could be an advantage as it gives me a certain amount of creative freedom

Session 4 - 17/10/12 - Interactive Narratives, Mapping of Adventure Book

Todays session introduced us to interactive stories. We were introduced to two forms of these narratives, the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' book (or more generally interactive story books), and the Text-based Adventure Game.

We began with the latter. These types of games are based on players writing prompts into a command line style screen, such as 'Go east', 'Open cave' etc. Doing so presents the players with a description of their surroundings and the options they have, which may be to travel in a certain direction, inspect elements of their surroundings and attack monsters. We were given a list of games to choose from, i chose to try my hand at the text-based game based on The Hobbit, which came out in 1982. The first notable thing about this game was that it left less to the imagination than other text-based games of around the same time which had no pictures and left literally everything to the players imagination. The next thing i noticed was how difficult it was, you can leave the house, and go through one more screen before being faced with a pair of trolls that eat you if you spend more than one command/input on their screen, at which point you die and have to start all over again. While it was fun once you started figuring things out, the brutality made it hard to get into, and i cant imagine what it must've been like for someone dying nearer the end of the game. On the other hand, it makes completing it that much more of an achievement! (Or an obvious indication that you had too much free time/a walkthrough)

We were then introduced to the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, which worked in a similar way to their text-based counterparts, with less of the freedom as the options presented to the player were all pre-defined. Choosing an option in a CYOA book means looking through the book to find the designated passage to see what happens next. We were each given our own book to read through and play, and then after being shown our lecturers own attempt, asked to plot out the progression through our books.

 

On the left here you can see the book on which my map is based. "The Forest Of Doom" tells the tale of a mighty adventurer who undertakes a quest to find the two missing pieces of a dwarven warhammer in - you guessed it - the 'Forest of Doom'. As you can see there are many many options in the book i chose, and from looking at the lower-left part, you can see just how complex mapping them out can get. On the map you can see some of the passage numbers are circled, these represent the passages i went through during the few times i played through the book.
While the general concencus was that the majority of these books lacked a very impressive story, we all agreed that they were great fun to play. I particularly enjoyed the fact that you could try and fight the very first (and friendly) person you meet, even if it did mean the player got turned into a frog and it meant an end to the game! It seemed to me like a very early example of the freedom open world RPGs can offer. For me it evoked many memories of getting fatigued by playing The Elder Scrolls IV seriously and ending up saving the game where i was before going on a killing spree until i got killed myself or got bored of that!

This session taught me that whilst creating a narrative on its own is a challenge in itself, allowing a certain amount of freedom to the reader increases the challenge by a significant margin. I've been left with a greater appreciation for open world games which allow a HUGE amount of freedom to the player. I've also learnt how some of these challenges are overcome, such as how a branching narrative will often draw the player back to a single part of the main story line.

Session 3 - 10/10/12 - Heroes Journey, Vladimir Propp

The three act structure, 7 plot types and 5 conflicts all make it easier to design and structure a narrative.

The Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell – The hero with a thousand faces

In todays lesson we learnt about 'The Heroes Journey', another basic plot structure that was adapted from Joseph Campbells book 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces', and like the others can be applied to many existing narratives.

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

The Heroes Journey is broken down into three parts, Departure, Initiation, and Return. Each of these parts have different stages, and there are 17 in total:

Departure

·         The Call to Adventure

·         Refusal of the Call

·         Supernatural Aid

·         The Crossing of the first Threshold

·         Belly of the Whale

Initiation

·         The Road of Trials

·         The Meeting with the Goddess

·         Woman as Temptress

·         Atonement with the Father

·         Apotheosis

·         The Ultimate Boon

Return

·         Refusal of the Return

·         The Magic Flight

·         Rescue from Without

·         The Crossing of the Return Threshold

·         Master of Two Worlds

·         Freedom to Live

Vladimir Propp's Narrative Theory

Another famous narrative theory belongs to Vladimir Propp. His theory suggests that the characters in a story can all be broken down in to one of seven broad character types or "spheres":

1.       The Hero - the one who undertakes the quest

2.       The False Hero - takes credit for the heroes actions, tries to marry the princess

3.       The Villain - struggles against the hero

4.       The Helper - helps the hero in their quest

5.       The Donor - prepares the hero for their quest

6.       The Princess - the object of desire for the hero, often unobtainable until the end of the story

7.       The Dispatcher - the one who sends the hero on their quest

Rather than being a theory of how a story should be written, Propp simply makes note of a pattern, though as my lecturer put it, it is best to know these models as references when writing our own stories, and more notably, that if one knows the rules, then they have the knowledge to create something that breaks them.