We all love games that tell stories and the more game studios hire
talented writers and narrative designers, the more we're seeing games with the story that emerges through gameplay
Instead of having a plot tacked on through the occasional cutscene
But sometimes the mechanics we use in games end up telling a different story than the one we intended
They can put a different cast on a situation or end up completely deforming the narrative and making things
Well, a little weird. So today we're going to talk about how mechanics shape your game's story.
Big thanks to World of Warships for sponsoring this episode.
Download the game at the link below and command your own fleet for free. New players should use the code PlayLangley2019
for a bonus starter pack. Before we start, a quick shout out to our returning guest writer for this episode, Eddie Webb.
He's worked on video games and tabletop RPGs for over a decade. Thanks for helping out Eddie
Let's start off our discussion with Pokemon. That well-loved franchise of
lighthearted games about children wandering through the world, trying to be the very best like no one ever was,
casually stealing animals from their natural habitats, and training them to fight in brutal contests for personal glory. You know,
that sounds a little weirder when you say it out loud
Huh? I mean sure the games themselves don't actually say any of this
in fact
each of them goes to great lengths to position the Pokemon as being friends with the trainers in the world and
even when Pokemon fight each other, none of them ever die, they just
Quote-unquote "faint." But the mechanics here tell a different story.
Scratching the family-friendly surface, we find underneath the beating heart of a turn-based
JRPG
concepts like hit points that measure a character's health, attack that decreases those points, and
potions that replenish health through unspecified means all stem from the heavy combat focused nature of those games and if you look that
Fundamentally violent core is still in the Pokemon games as well and while Pokemon never die
they still do get sick and hurt from fighting and there's a wide variety of
Medicines you can use to help them recover from their wounds. The old-school mechanical systems that comprise the underpinnings of the Pokemon games
Says something about the violent nature of the world, even if the characters in the game say something completely different.
In fact, let's go back even further.
JRPGs themselves were originally inspired by the granddaddy of tabletop role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons.
You might not realize it now with the modern editions of D&D, but the earliest versions went something like this:
character goes to a dangerous place to hunt down monsters and take their treasure, treasure allows characters to buy more powerful weapons, and
experience from killing monsters
Increases a character's fighting potential. Then, with better equipment and higher levels,
characters can hunt down more powerful monsters to get even more treasure and even more experience and
so on and so on and so on until your character either dies or retires.
In the early days of D&D, this brutal and violent cycle wasn't a small part of the game.
It was the entire point of the experience.
This kill loot level cycle is what we call the core gameplay loop or the thing that players do the most often in the game
And of course back, then you could have a D&D game that doesn't focus on killing monsters and stealing treasure
but those activities were the easiest and most
Efficient way for your character to grow. And that progression helps you be even better at killing bigger monsters and taking more treasure
That core gameplay loop informs everything you do in D&D, even if you're trying to ignore it
So if you change the story to be about say, I don't know, children making friends with cute animals
That kill loot level loop ends up telling a different story
But just because you choose to use a core gameplay loop, doesn't mean your game has to be shackled by it
For instance, Eddie is the creator of a tabletop role-playing game called Pugmire,
which is about dogs living far in the future trying to reclaim a world abandoned by humanity
He wanted Pugmire to use the well-established mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons as a basis
but more so the game had to tap into the values of friendship and being a good dog over violence and theft
So the first thing he did to address that core gameplay loop was removing currency and experience points
You go up in level when your dog learns something noteworthy and you can pick and choose whatever
Equipment makes sense for your character with no way to earn experience points or money through killing monsters,
the mechanical incentive shifts to simply tell a good story.
Now, bluffing enemies or running away from them are
viable options for progression, and as a result, players explore those options more and so a different kind of story can take shape.
It's still a heavy fantasy game with plenty of opportunities for action against the monstrous foes, but the story that emerges is quite different.
Sometimes though,
the core gameplay loop is the entire game and if that loop syncs with the concept perfectly,
it can really tie the whole experience together.
Sticking with tabletop RPGs, let's look at Dread. It's a horror game that uses a Jenga tower as its main mechanic. Yes,
You heard me correctly. I said a Jenga tower. Do not play that game with Zoey.
Whenever a character wants to do something, the player makes a number of pulls from the tower if the tower stays stable the action succeeds.
But if the tower falls, for any reason, the character dies.
What makes Dread so brilliant is that the players start to feel more anxious as the story progresses.
Every action could be your last and the later parts of the game has players trying to convince each other to take even more
risks so they can cause the tower to fall instead. That anxiety
resonates between character and player, keeping the tension of the gameplay and the tension of the horror genre tightly entwined.
So as you're developing the story you want your game to tell, think about what the players are doing most during the course of your game.
If your core gameplay loop and your emerging story are lining up, they're going to notice that feeling of harmony and at the end of
the day that can really help deliver a truly cohesive and enjoyable experience.
Okay, Eddie. I've always wanted a good boy dog-o, let's roll one up. Uh...
Or we could do it another time.
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