What makes a good FM story?

[Fidcal]

An issue has been raised about what makes a good story in an FM. This is for both players and FM makers. Your views are welcome.

 

A quick search at ttlg only finds:

 

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122058&highlight=story

 

but this seems to be mainly pre-occupied with what specifically makes a good Thief story, eg, why is Garrett an interesting 'hero'. But obviously a really good story is not so restricted and I thought T2X was a good story for instance, not to mention the great classics of literature even without Mr. G.

 

My ten cents: The topic actually breaks down into three parts: Grammar, actual story or story design, and story telling 'Story telling' is the methods used to convey a story. A movie director will (has to) tell a story quite differently from how it is told in a novel. In FMs we use readables, audible conversations, actions and what might be called 'stage setting' - eg a room with broken furniture strewn about, an open safe, and a dead body, tells part of a story at a glance. So we are somewhere between the novel and the movie.

 

Readables carry both story and clues. Short and quickly grasped is generally reckoned to be best but sometimes one cannot help but take many pages to explain something. I'm guilty of that in my next FM. I am very expert at abbreviating text having worked for years writing ultra-compact text and graphic pages. Give me ten lines and I can usually reduce them to five and say almost exactly the same thing. Nevertheless, my next FM includes some text I cannot reduce less than 8 two-page spreads! I might have to somehow produce a summary so players in a hurry can just read that while others who like to read or who want a fuller explanation can read the original. How to do that?

 

In Nightwatch I provided player notes. After reading anything of significance, Garrett made a brief note. Get blue key from red desk in 3rd room. But it is technically difficult to *add* notes especially if the player finds them in a random order.

 

But another trick I might try in my next FM would be another character has read the lengthy account and for some reason made brief notes.

 

Quality of story is something that can only partly be taught and only a tiny number of graduates will have best-sellers.

 

Grammar is straightforward and if we didn't pay attention at school then we need only ask for someone to proof-read and correct our efforts.

 

The impact of a good story depends somewhat on the player. The gung-ho hack and slayer will probably not get too involved with story. Others can immerse themselve more deeply and this is the only way I can endure testing my own FMs over and over ad nauseum. I confess I have choked up a few times (too rarely) in some Thief FMs when I occasionally get a deep sense of what I call 'being present'. And once I was actually unable to steal some poor girl's ring such was the power of the nearby love letter. Good job I had my loot quota right?

 

The possibilities for good story telling are infinite. I see no reason why a great literary classic might not be produced as an original video game. And I don't mean converting a literary classic but the game is a classic story in its own right.

[aidakeeley]

Short and quickly grasped is generally reckoned to be best but sometimes one cannot help but take many pages to explain something. I'm guilty of that in my next FM. I am very expert at abbreviating text having worked for years writing ultra-compact text and graphic pages. Give me ten lines and I can usually reduce them to five and say almost exactly the same thing. Nevertheless, my next FM includes some text I cannot reduce less than 8 two-page spreads!

 

To me?

 

This sounds great.

 

If the story is that 'dense' then it has real potential. I'm glad you cannot reduce it any further. And, but, however, I'd actually be cautious with the idea that you must reduce or abbreviate the text to accomodate those that don't want to play the kind of game you seem to want to produce. Part of what makes a good story good or a great story great is of course the descriptive and poetic telling of it!

 

So do get lavish! There is plenty of room for all the styles in all the world. I for one would appreciate the hell out of a good long Thief's Tale.

 

(You know what I liked best about the time I did spend playing Oblivion? Getting each volume of certain histories and arcana, and going back to my Frostcrag Spire and reading -- "The Mythic Dawn Commentaries" were especially brilliant for instance.)

[Fidcal]

I don't reduce in the sense of cutting out anything worthwhile - I simply know how to say the same thing with less words. So you get concentrated goodness - rich info density rather than rambling prose that says very little. Compare a typical 30-minute TV documentary which is deliberately padded out to save production costs. I analysed one and found after removing intros, lead-ins, adverts,summings-up and coming-ups there was less than 10 minutes of pithy material that I reduced to two minutes of any substance.

[aidakeeley]

I can appreciate that, the coming-ups REALLLLLLY piss me off, btw, because yes they are filler BS and more-to-the-irritating-point !?W!T!F!?! I don't need to have what I'm watching spoiled as I'm watching it.

 

Err... got sidetracked there...

 

Anyway... I can appreciate what you are saying about tightening up a written piece, and hopefully you appreciate what I was saying about not overdoiing saidsuch and squeezing the hell and beauty out of it.

Edited January 9, 2010 by aidakeeley

[Subjective Effect]

I appreciate something that whilst giving the player clues as to how to complete the mission also tells a compelling story itself. And if it has emotional impact that is all the better.

 

Case in point: The 7th Crystal.

 

This is one of my favourite FMs and not just from a gameplay POV. In fact the map and the gameplay are just ok. Its a solid mansion mission but that plot adds such a great flavour to it all. I'll put up a summary here with spoiler tags. Only read if you have no intention of playing it, please, because you don't want to spoil this for yourself.

 

Briefly

on your way into the mansion by the back way you get spoken to by the ghost of a child who appears lost. Its pretty spooky. It transpires that she was the daughter of the nobleman and woman who's mansion you are breaking into. You find notes, letters and diaries detailing the breakdown of their relationship from each person's point of view - and its all due to the death of their daughter which neither of them can come to terms with. This is intertwined with the nobleman's hunt for a "treasure" hidden in the mansion somewhere and the discovery of some hidden ancient underground parts to the building.

 

His obsession with this treasure has been his salvation by distraction from his quilt about the daughter's death, which was accidental, and it becomes clear that there has been quilt, but not blame, on both parties part. There has also been miscommunication and the wife has misinterpreted her husband's coping mechanism as coldness or blaming her and she has started an affair with one of the senior staff members at the house.

 

Its a classic case of men are from mars, women are from venus and its worse because they clearly still love each other but have got themselves past the point of no return.

 

During all this you get the ghost communicating with you, which really sets off the bereavement plot and is very sad, and getting angry with you when you steal which is pretty spooky/freaky.

 

 

This is told through multiple small readables. There are no 8 pagers, I don't think, and it was much easier to digest this way. In addition it's almost like an evolving story because you put the pieces together yourself. If I ever get around to making my 2 FMs you'll get the plot delivered this way and to me the plot is actually as important as any other aspect of my FMs plans.

 

Anyway, 7th Crystal is a fricking masterwork imho and the level of detail, the care and attention, and the emotions it stirs are right up there. I need to play some more Thief 2 FMs because some of the plots were :drool:

 

This was always one of the great things about the Thief FM scene - there were people doing interesting stuff with it, not just sneak and steals. Benny's Dead is another one with an interesting side plot (the scientist's discovery of the "sewer people") which is both spooky as hell but and incidental, yet somehow integral, to the main story.

[7upMan]

I don't reduce in the sense of cutting out anything worthwhile - I simply know how to say the same thing with less words. So you get concentrated goodness - rich info density rather than rambling prose that says very little. Compare a typical 30-minute TV documentary which is deliberately padded out to save production costs. I analysed one and found after removing intros, lead-ins, adverts,summings-up and coming-ups there was less than 10 minutes of pithy material that I reduced to two minutes of any substance.  

 

That superfluous stuff in a movie, show, book or article was called "the lard factor" by my professor (for Technical Communication). Meaning: normally, if you have, say, a sentence, and you analyze it, you can cut the lard/fat out and keep the meat. The sentence will be to the point and without filler words and all other superfluous stuff that we normally use. The same is of course true for any other filmed or written material.

[Fidcal]

Yes, 'tightening up' is a good way to put it and I do strive to shoehorn my readables into one 'screen' only. Just quickly counted out up the num_pages in my next FM and I see roughly:

 

34 readables of 1 screen only (though some may be open 2-page spread books)

9 readables of 2 or more screens (mostly 2)

 

Mmm... then there is the briefing which is several screens, 6 or 7 I think. Oh yes, then there is the title page which also has something for you to read while waiting for the FM to load.

[aidakeeley]

Yes, 'tightening up' is a good way to put it and I do strive to shoehorn my readables into one 'screen' only. Just quickly counted out up the num_pages in my next FM and I see roughly:

 

34 readables of 1 screen only (though some may be open 2-page spread books)

9 readables of 2 or more screens (mostly 2)

 

Mmm... then there is the briefing which is several screens, 6 or 7 I think. Oh yes, then there is the title page which also has something for you to read while waiting for the FM to load.

 

Can I have this tomorrow?

[Springheel]

I like missions that give a sense of the environment being part of a larger world. To me that is more important than plot. Readables that give the impression that the people walking around the place have lives, goals, and personalities are important. Not every readable needs to be directly related to the mission at hand...in fact it feels artificial when that is the case.

[aidakeeley]

I know what you mean there too, Springheel. I love red-herring type elements in adventure games. It presents more of a challenge in a way to not be sure that whatever you are reading is a huge (obviously 'contrived' - though that does sound harsh) hint. I totally agree that incidental stuff is a hugely effective way to make any kind of story telling more immersive.

[Komag]

Just want to third Springheel's point. When playing Bafford for the first time, I was truly fascinated by the texts, the collection ledgers, the talk of the jewelry box maker, etc, all hinting at a living breathing city out there. It REALLY created a ton of cool fantasy immersion for me, something that made me love Thief much more than I would have otherwise. It wasn't kid console-friendly stuff. It was serious and real. And I, as the thief, got to secretly discover this stuff, learn about people's hidden interactions, stuff like that. Very cool.

[demagogue]

I've posted on this before, but I'll add some thoughts.

 

Looking back at SE's description of 7th Crystal, I realize how common that trope is that I also used in Patently Dangerous (there are a few other FMs that have used it), of the man obsessed with a project while the wife feels increasingly alienated. Now that doesn't sound anything like the FM builder's experience, does it? I sort of copied the trope as an inside joke because I understood exactly where it was coming from. On that note, I like to browse through the tvtropes.com site sometimes, just soaking up different story-telling devices that have been used before and twisting them to my own needs, or just to get me into a good frame for thinking.

 

Anyway, as for the art of story-telling itself. My thinking is it's good to construct a story in the opposite direction as the player uncovers it. So you *start* with one or a few big revelations, then think of a way to connect them, then you work backwards in your mind to increasingly add details and flesh it out in the reverse order the player will disclose things, so he starts with lots of little bits and slowly discloses the story as a grand whole.

 

Another trick I like is to make a rough outline with like 10 or so bullet points of events you want to happen, like actually write them down, then you try to consciously knit each bullet point to the next, or to the others (like a line for a linear story, like a web for a more open story), actually write out little arrows with little boxes of text. Then I can look down at it and it's a little picture of the whole story and how it unfolds. I find it helps direct my mind to make it so visual.

 

What I like about story-telling with FMs is that, in a normal story, a book or movie, the narrative structure is (usually) spread out in time. You read from start to finish. But in an FM, the story is spread out in *space*; each room holds a different piece of the story, and the player can visit any part he wants in whatever order he wants, and then you uncover more bits of the story by opening up new real-estate and can control narrative-dependence with that (so a person doesn't learn B before A because A-room holds the "key" to get into B ). I like to think about spreading a story through space pretty consciously.

 

I have a lot of other ideas, but this is good for now.

[AlarusLOL]

One thiefly plot device I enjoy that hasn't been mentioned yet is the ol' plot twist. You set out to accomplish "objective X", and the rug gets pulled out from under you. The story suddenly changes, and objective X becomes objective Y.

 

I typically like this as it makes the world seem more dynamic and less contrived.

[Springheel]

Only if it's done well. I've played several FMs with very contrived plot twists. Some mappers seem to feel that throwing a plot twist or "unexpected reveal" into the story is all they need to do to make it good.

[AlarusLOL]

True. It does have to be done right.

[demagogue]

Ideally you'd want a twist or development that's pleasingly surprising but absolutely inevitable in retrospect. It wouldn't be just a twist for its own sake, but the story isn't so predictable that you can see the whole arc from the start either. There's a sweet-spot between those that I think works well (when it works).

[Serpentine]

While this thread is more focused on the story aspect, a lot of ideas and good discussion can be found in this old thread on a similar topic, found it while looking for something else :

Linkage

[Crispy]

Some mappers seem to feel that throwing a plot twist or "unexpected reveal" into the story is all they need to do to make it good.

Hehe... been there, perpetrated that. (Though not for TDM or Thief. And I did learn my lesson pretty quick, after getting feedback. Not doing that again!)