What you think about ingame readables

[Sotha]

I just got curious how TDM players deal with books and other readables.

 

When you see one, what do you do? What do you expect? What would be fun? What would be boring?

 

As a mapper, this is important information, since it tells us how much effort mappers should put in their readables. There is no point in writing Builder Scriptures if nobody ever reads them, right?

[Springheel]

It depends. Somewhere between #3 and #4.

 

To be honest, most of the readables I've come across in TDM missions are not very engaging. More often than not they take me out of the story rather than keep me in. Poor writing or gimmicky humour destroys my suspension of disbelief right away and I wind up just scanning for clues.

 

Even "Flavour" texts need to have a specific purpose, however. They should support the overall theme of the mission and help give specific backstory. In Builder's Influence, for example, there were some Inquisitor records scattered around. These had no mission-related clues, but they did serve to illustrate how vicious the inquisition was, so the player had a better sense of who they were dealing with.

 

I wouldn't be that interested in a generic readable that had no real connection to the specific mission, to be honest. Reading about Builder scripture during a Builder mission is ok, as long as the scripture is well-written and helps to flesh out the attitudes of the character you're engaging with. But I wouldn't be that interested in the same mission in reading generic newspaper stories of what happened in some other ward of Bridgeport.

[STiFU]

I like readables, as long as the author was not too enthusiastic about writing them. If I want to read a long book, I'll go to the library, you know? Sometimes I also have a tiny bit of difficulties understanding the texts, due to unusual and antiquated wording. I am fairly familiar with the modern English street-language, but I didn't read any Shakespeare et cetera, hence the trouble with such language. If there are many long texts in such a style of writing, it becomes rather tedious to read all of it for me. I love it when readables contain cleverly placed hints, though. It feels really rewarding to discover a secret (loot, hidden passage) due to the information acquired from the readable.

 

My vote would be something like "I read all readables, but I don't necessarily like doing so". I am too afraid to miss out on the one important clue in the 10 pages readable...

[Fidcal]

I had to vote mission-related only because few FMs do story well, probably including myself.

 

The ideal is a great immersive story that the player is already wrapped up in then short one-page bursts of story-related story (even if no clues or directly helping with mission.)

 

Actually reading two or three page or more fiction that is not essential, mostly not well written is rather like someone with a transistor radio on the beach or in the country - I might like the tranny and its music another time but not in that situation. In a game one is somewhat forced to read, even study, obscure irrelevant fiction just in case it has a clue.

 

In a game I get immersed in the action. I loved Oblivion but read very little of the copious amounts of universe fiction.

 

That said, I know that a proportion of players love them so the trick is to find a way to mark them so those who wish to avoid them can. This is one reason I developed player notes - if they don't pop into the inventory then you know that readable has no clues so read it not as you will.

 

That said, my next FM has a substantial 10 page picture story book that has nothing to do with the mission story or clues. So go for it! (but signal somehow that it is not critical.)

[nbohr1more]

Copied from the other thread:

 

 

One of the problems is that the Builder religion is painted as VERY dogmatic. This means that "by character" any readables with a Builder's words will be a droning recitation. Long spells of reading that stuff will be authentically as sleep inducing as reading actual sermons from the same period. I suppose religious historians would eat it up but anyone else will struggle.

 

Then we have the Lords and Ladies, their correspondence is necessarily imbued with the dry passionless trivialities of spoiled people. Here, there are more opportunities for dry humor at the expense of the servants of the house (etc) but these folk are often the primary ones to relay clues.

 

It's these caricatures that are meant to make the act of Theft amusing. You are stealing from boring, dogmatic, or inane people.

 

The Dark Mod has it's claim that in comparison to Thief it's a "gritty universe" yet the caricatures persist here as well... except without much of levity and thus it often has a bleak or depressing feel rather than "gritty". If you wanted to make the universe feel more real and grounded it needs some light. The "bad people" you steal from must laugh, listen to music, tell jokes to their friends, etc. In short, they must be portrayed in more ways than the "people who deserve to be blackjacked"... A difficult path to follow...

 

 

[grayman]

To me, readables spice up the mission. They texture the environment. The only time I skim one is when I see it's another collection of Builder dogma.

[demagogue]

I like readables, but I'm always conscious of the reader's attention and patience, so I'd strip it to the absolute bone and just get the taste of an idea rather than spell it all out.

 

I'm beginning to gravitate towards letting more world flavor come out in conversations and in-game scenes. Why have a readable going over the minutiae of Builder practices when you can have a Builder service going on in the background of one of your jobs? A service, a wedding, a funeral, a holiday ritual... If you have a second you can stop and watch the practice for a bit, or you can just sneak by. Also conversations, dreams, little in-game scenes... I like the idea of more dramatization.

 

I think that calls for better voice acting all around though... I'm also thinking it's better to find a good voice on YouTube from a stranger than another Darkmod fan just because they're a fan; not to disparage the talent of our community which I'm very happy about (and if the perfect voice comes from in-house all the better). But if you open the field you can find exactly the right voice for a character and also someone with drama experience. Just my bias, though. I don't like cheesy writing or voice acting either. I mean if you're going to slave over getting the brushwork just perfect, you should put that same kind of no-compromise attitude into the writing & voice work too IMO. That's an ideal anyway.

[DeTeEff]

As I said in another thread, I think it's good if the mapper gives the player some hints after closing the readable so it's possible to just skim through it but still pick up the essential information. But it may be "dumbing down" if compared to a good designed text with small clues that the player HAS to read in order to benefit from. I mean, it may be perfectly ok to reward the carefully reading player with hints to aid in the mission, rather than pumping out hints to the folks that just plows through everything...

 

But as always: Put a note in the readme about things important to the player, as "much of the clues will be inside readables". I will certainly have lots of those hints in my upcoming mission

[nbohr1more]

I suppose my statement was a side-topic but it cuts to the core of why someone would be dreading readables. I always hope that the mission author finds some way to inject some life into the readables and thus make the experience more compelling. The trap that is often fallen into is to follow the Thief mold and make the victims as deserving of Theft as possible with boring pompous communication. Even if this is another layer of deadpan it doesn't translate without a voice actor hamming it up. When read dry from the page, the archaic language of the period and reserved topic matter are often deathly.

 

Now, if we talk about dark magic, blackmail, fear of ghosts or thieves, more blood pumping topics... then readables can be a joy of themselves (even despite the narrator's linguistic formality).

 

I would still vote that readables are enjoyable but I always get nervous when I think a long boring letter to a fellow noble or big Builder tome will greet me.

[DeTeEff]

Haha, I suppose Nbohr would enjoy a mission where you play as an asshole, robbing a young girl from her savings for a horse or something

[Sotha]

Wow. This thread has got replies so fast I didn't anticipate it. Thanks guys! There is a lot of good points here...

 

Maybe after a while this could be distilled into a 'tips for writing readables' wiki article...

 

Since FMA's make their missions for the audience, it is good to know what people want and expect.

[Baddcog]

The thing about excessive texts in Morrowind/Oblivion is that it's an open ended game, you can go anywhere/do anything.

AND, the books have NO in game purpose.

 

So if you don't want to read a page, half of them or every book in the game it's your choice and it doesn't matter either way. A lot of people really get engaged in the world stories. Other people want nothing to do with it, and those games don't punish you either way. If you want story it's there, if not go swordfight...

 

With Thief the readables are to expand the story, give humor, info, etc... all mission specific stuff. So the player knows they have to read them, they might contain clues, they make the story more interesting.

However, long winded texts, clues buried on page 10, readables that don't have anything to do with the specific mission are annoying imo.

 

It's funny that it seems the same people who don't want to have players walk to a door to check the handle want to have the player wade through pages of text that have nothing to do with the mission. Checking that door could take 5-20 seconds, reading a 10 page history book could take 5 minutes.

Having to frob every other book on a shelf wouldn't be fun either, that's worse than checking a few door handles by far.

I personally would not find it engaging or fun to check every book on a shelf to see whether or not I recognized the name 'Builder Omega Eptiome 25' as a 'history book'.

 

One thing Elderscrolls did was showed the text book name for the book. All you had to do was look at it and you knew it was the 3,000th copy of 'Wolves at Midnight' you'd seen. I'm not suggesting we implement that, bat even in that game if the objective was to find a book for a bookseller you didn't even have to pick books up, you just scanned them.

 

I'd rather have the map tell me most of the story, some texts to add depth and leave everything else out of mind than to have superflous texts of any nature.

--------------

I didn't vote the poll because 1-3 make it sound like you players have no patience for books , just in different ways.

3 is the only difference in that you have a choice to read or not based on previous knowledge of what the book contains.

 

The only way you know if it's mission related or not comes from reading the book to begin with.

 

So 3 should be 'I read all texts hoping they have something to do with the mission but am annoyed after reading it to find out it has nothing to do with said mission.'

[nbohr1more]

Haha, I suppose Nbohr would enjoy a mission where you play as an asshole, robbing a young girl from her savings for a horse or something

 

LOL

 

Only if the girl is some hilariously cute, puppy-eyed, cartoon character who is just too innocent to be believable

 

...

 

Actually there's nothing wrong with the caricatures if they the readable author is clever enough about things. But it's tough to sneak in interesting material for these tropes and remain authentic to their character. Actually, it would be better still to have some of these folk essentially take their characters' dark leanings to the extreme and actually reveal (for example) a Builder documenting his torture of an unbeliever or a Lord beating his servent (etc) so we have a legitimate motivation other than "these dumb sods deserve to have their stuff stolen".

[Neb]

I've got a confession to make: I don't read a mission's intro text unless it gives a terse description of the scenario. I've come to a point where stealing object x from person y is routine.

 

I will happily spend time on a readable if it is directly mission related, or if it gives the world motion, and a vividness or charm that is hard to achieve in game.

 

 

[Bikerdude]

I choose the last option..

[7upMan]

It depends on the mood, but yeah, usually it's number 4.

[SiyahParsomen]

it depends on quality of the mission. If it's simple one, I don't read it unless I stuck. However, when it's a beautiful and interesting mission, I open and read it right after I find one.

[Glyph Seeker]

Definitely 4 for me - My only caveat is that if the thing I'm reading can be picked up, then it is important to reference. If it's a recipe book or a funny diversion, don't automatically put it in my inventory. xD

[STiFU]

My only caveat is that if the thing I'm reading can be picked up, then it is important to reference. If it's a recipe book or a funny diversion, don't automatically put it in my inventory. xD

Yeah, exactly. That should definitely go on Sotha's readable guidelines. It poses a decent way to communicate to the player, if something is important or not, without breaking the immersion too much.

[Sotha]

Yeah, exactly. That should definitely go on Sotha's readable guidelines. It poses a decent way to communicate to the player, if something is important or not, without breaking the immersion too much.

 

An alternative point of view:

In RttC2 there was a bulletin board with readable notes. The board was very well lit. There was non-grabbable readables on the board, which I wanted to read, but I was lit like a xmas tree while doing so.

 

I wished I could have ripped the announcement from the wall and go somewhere dark to read it.

 

So the matter of grabbable readables is a delicate one. It depends greatly on the circumstances. Often the player might want to read the thing at a later time.

 

Since the player can drop unwanted things, why shouldn't most of tve readables be grabbable? You toss what you dont like.

[Glyph Seeker]

@Sotha:

 

Ah - a very good point, well made.

[Baddcog]

As I said in another thread, I think it's good if the mapper gives the player some hints after closing the readable so it's possible to just skim through it but still pick up the essential information. But it may be "dumbing down" if compared to a good designed text with small clues that the player HAS to read in order to benefit from. I mean, it may be perfectly ok to reward the carefully reading player with hints to aid in the mission, rather than pumping out hints to the folks that just plows through everything...

 

But as always: Put a note in the readme about things important to the player, as "much of the clues will be inside readables". I will certainly have lots of those hints in my upcoming mission

 

I'm not really fond of the notes or the 'you just got a clue' thing either.

 

Basically the clue is a shortcut to even reading the book. Just frob it, close it, note added. That circumnavigates the reason to read the book/note in the first place .

 

To FIND the clue.

 

So what's better, a short text with a fairly clear clue so the player can play/read enjoy the mission while getting the full story.

 

Or a bunch of long winded boring books that the player gets tired of and just skips all texts with a quick frob of each just to get the quick clue.

[Baddcog]

Important readables SHOULD be grabable for sure. But they should also be dropable.

 

that gives the player the opportunity to decide if they want to remember it, or take the note, or keep it until used then drop it.

 

But forced notes clog inventory and are annoying. It's like a million key mission, just with notes. And if a mission has both then your inventory gets bloated and annoying to use.

 

Authors shouldn't force anything but mandatory stuff into the players inventory.

[Springheel]

That should definitely go on Sotha's readable guidelines. It poses a decent way to communicate to the player, if something is important or not, without breaking the immersion too much.

 

I disagree with that. Reading is real-time, and there's no way I'm going to stand around reading several pages if I'm at risk of being caught, especially if I suspect there's no useful clue in it. Players should have the option of taking readables to a safe place unless there's some specific reason not to.

[STiFU]

Hmn, yeah. I see your points. But it depends on the situation, i.e. the mapper. Of course RttC is a perfect example where a system like this would never work, but if a mapper decides to try this method, he can make sure that the player is able to dim lights or climb on stuff around non-moveable readables.

 

Another possible method would be to tell the player at the beginning that a readable, that contains hints, consists at most of something like 2 pages.