[MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling

[Lee Sheldon]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu
> [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> Brandon J. Rickman
> Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 6:58 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling

Brandon, with all due respect, you work from such prejudiced assumptions,
it's difficult to know where to begin.

> It sounds like Dreampark.  All of the technological wizardry
> aside, you've
> got a team of writers turned into stage managers.  You support them in
> every way you can, with random number generators and prop masters and
> actors, but your relying on the talent of one or a few
> brilliant writers
> to make the whole thing work, to turn "a collection of
> concepts" into a
> "narrative".

Please don't make the mistake of throwing out competence to chase
brilliance.  I'm arguing for the education of professionals, none of whom
may be the next Shakespeare.  There aren't enough brilliant writers in the
world to support ANY entertainment medium.  We settle for competence all the
time.  It's not a bad thing.  Neither is supporting writers "...in every way
you can..."

> 1 - This really is a structure grounded in film, and even
> though it may
> produce a complete and viable new genre I don't see it as
> actually solving
> any of the current problems of interactivity.

It is a staffing structure that predates film by a good many centuries.  You
think the aforementioned Mr. Shakespeare had no help?  That all his fellow
actors sat around silently while he (or Francis Bacon) came up with one
exquisitely turned phrase after another?

> 2 - I really don't know if writers can become stage managers.
>  The writing
> process, with all those tricky nouns and verbs and vernacular
> dialog, is
> only remotely related to the seat-of-your pants logistical problems of
> being a stage manager.

The stage manager assumption is yours, and I don't agree with it at all, but
I'll try to respond to your conclusion based upon it.  Writers work with
world runners all the time, often writing on demand, just as in other
ongoing media.  In daytime drama I had actors leaving for an attempt at
movies, actresses getting pregnant (Including one who was playing a virgin
for crying out loud), studio fires, all sorts of interesting "seat-of-your
pants logistical problems" that required massive tap dancing and rewriting.
Writers handle this kind of stuff on a moment's notice.  I remember hundreds
of times being called to the set in primetime to write by the seat of my
pants.  Imagine discovering part way through shooting an episode that the
damn thing is going to be too short.  Now imagine it's approaching midnight,
and you're already into golden time.  You write sprawled on your back on
America's favorite sofa while a hundred people sit around waiting, and the
money ticks away.  It may not be the way Chaim Potok works.  But it's part
of what many writers do.

I'm afraid you're looking at a profession from the outside, without really
understanding much of the nuts and bolts of it.

> 3 - If I'm one of your "talented writers" I'm not sure I want
> to be a part
> of your interactive commercial fantasy world.

Sorry, I have no idea what you mean by this.  Talented writers don't want to
do interactive?  The WGA is forever holding seminars and lectures packed
with writers trying to figure this out.  It's pretty much the blind leading
the blind right now ("Hey, I just invented something I call branching!  It's
the key to interactive entertainment!"), but that will change.

There are major Hollywood writers routinely taking far less than their usual
fees because they're attracted to what we're doing.  Not many, no, lol.  But
I know 3 personally.

> 4 - If I'm a player in your interactive commercial fantasy world, I'm
> still a puppet on a string.

Puppets can be a perfectly good thing as long as the puppets can't feel the
strings.

>You provide me with an endless murder
> mystery, where if I miss a clue I'm sunk.  It is win or lose.
>  It may be
> interactive but it probably isn't interesting or fun.

If I created a murder mystery where I allowed you to miss a clue, I'D be
sunk.  As a game designer who first made his mark as a mystery writer, I'm
baffled by the assumed game story structure that is necessary to support
that statement.

> Adventure Construction Set.  Yes, the automatically generated
> games were
> dull because they weren't well authored.

That sounds like the one, yes.  Not well authored?  You mean a lack of le
mot juste?  Well yes, but repetition had far more to do with the boredom
factor I believe.  If not well authored because the repetition should not
have been so obvious?  I agree with that, too.  And that's far more serious.

> >And since most
> stories/quests/interesting things
> > to do ARE repeatable, and only an important few alter the
> world either
> > locally or globally, you fast build up a backlog of
> adventures ANYONE can
> > experience.
>
> Yay, so none of the stories are significant.  Because the
> game world must
> go on.  Like a prime-time drama.  Fun for third graders.

Oops.  How did "only an important few" become "none?"  If you have too many
world-shaking events, you really do run the risk of leaving your players in
the dust.  "Few" is a good thing.  But even the smallest story can be
significant.  A haiku can be as significant as an epic poem.

Lee

(Very happy to be writing for persistent worlds, and scrambling at a much
slower pace than he's used to)




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