Revised Scene Flow

Taking from previous attempts to use storytelling analysis in the context of a game, I think most people have begun to realize that due to the dynamic state of a game, the analysis must not only be viewed on different levels, but in a different way completely.

We still have two basic breakdowns, which can be viewed as Design (Goal, Conflict, End State) and Play (Reaction, Analysis, Decision). These can be further broken down in that Goals generated by Decisions, and that Conflict and End States affect Reaction and Analysis. Finally, Reaction and Analysis affect the Decision, and Goals affect the Conflict and End State (prevention of the goal).

These can still be viewed on several levels, from Macro gameplay levels all the way down to moment-to-moment gameplay and even into the Metagame and Design levels (if a game is a living beta such as an MMO or any e-sports level pvp game). Decisions on one level can affect others as well.

Design is usually the domain of the game Designer. They set up the goal for the game and the level. The create the conflict and the End States. As a gamer gains control of this part of the game, they enter a more sandbox experience.

Play on the other hand, is usually in the domain of the Gamer. In this case it is mostly in their mind. As design encroaches on these aspects of gameplay the game becomes more linear. The player loses their autonomy, and can at times remove the game aspect of a game.

I believe that this is the better way of handling this analysis in a game. I'll take a few posts practicing it, and I encourage others to try as well (please link back to this post if you do so). If anyone has any suggestions about this, please leave a comment, or send an e-mail. Thank you.

Q&A of Scene Flow Analysis

I received a question on this, so I'd like to address them here in this post. Lets just get to it shall we (questions remain anonymous)?

1. Does Scene Analysis allow an interpretation of a player's action determining how much his future actions become guided?

Yes. At the decision point, a new goal is usually set. In a game where exploration is sandbox (take Batman: Arkham City for example), choices that alter the landscape can suddenly limit exploration possibilities (or expand it more). It really does depend on the game, and it depends on how decisions alter the Goal. Many games allow for resetting of such situations where a player limits their possible decisions to not allowing progress (at which point the decision to reset opens up more possible choices which they will consider during the Dilemma section).

Though the Action (Goal, Conflict, Disaster) and Reaction (Reflection, Dilemma, Decision) can be processed separately in games, they still form a six step loop that is shared by the system and the gamer. The fact is, that Scene Analysis works on several levels at once in game analysis. There is a level Goal, an area Goal, and even a moment to moment Goal. Decisions at the area level can affect the moment to moment Goals (flooding a room which then allows you to swim up to a ledge for example).

I think I should rework the wording to better fit into game analysis. Anyone have any suggestions?

Using Scene Flow in Video Games

A good, well flowing story scene usually contains six steps (you can break this mold, just like everything else, but since we are using these six steps, bare with me): Goal, Conflict, Disaster, Reaction, Dilemma, Decision. The point of these is to clearly point the protagonist at something, watch them fail, then watch them do something about that failure.

In a well written story, that doing something amounts to a new goal in which they no go towards. Even if the disaster does not full impede them, it still prevents them from reaching the goal. An example of conflict that is resolved but does not lead to the goal, is Mario stomping on a goomba. Though it resolved the conflict of what was happening then, it does not exactly get him to the end of the level. The game doesn't end at that resolution.

In a story, you would see the hero stop the bad guy from killing someone, but the bad guy would get away. So lets go into each step as it relates to passive story telling mediums.

1. Goal - The protagonist, or POV character in the scene (if you are doing a scene with the bad guy POV), wants something. This is what they are trying to accomplish in the scene
2. Conflict - This is something that is preventing the goal from occurring. The POV character is being stopped by this conflict, either self, person or environment, etc.
3. Disaster - This is the point where the character fails the goal. This should continue until they get to the end, at which point disaster is flipped. This does not equate to character death, but it should cause the current goal to no longer be viable.
4. Reaction - This is where the story flips from being about external factors and focuses in on the POV character. What does the Disaster mean to them and their Goal?
5. Dilemma - With the Goal no inaccessible, what are the choices presented to the POV character.
6. Decision - This is where the POV character decides on a choice presented in the Dilemma. They should choose the least bad choice of what to do next (in a comedy they would choose the worst choice).

Now, I'll go through these and break them down in parts and moments of a game. Lets try Mario 64. Don't forget, it may not have every aspect of this, and some of it (especially, the last 3, tend to be internalized with the player).

1. Goal - At the start of a level, Mario is presented with the goal, get to the star.
2. Conflict - The environment and enemies are stopping Mario from getting to his goal. This is not a disaster yet, because the goal is still within reach.
3. Disaster - This does not exist in the case of a Mario 64 level. It does occur though on the level of the player attempting to get through a portion of the level.
4. Reaction - This is the player's feelings at failing to get through a challenge.
5. Dilemma - These are the options that the player has after failing to reach the goal (in cases are catastrophic disasters, this may be restart from a previous save).
6. Decision - Again this is usually put on the player, they decide to keep playing, try their new tactic, or quit.

A good game level, will allow for these six steps to repeat enough times before the character has failed enough to make the goal something to cheer about, but not so many times, that the goal ceases to be viable.

Breaking the steps in half, reveals that the first three steps tend to be external, while the final three steps tend to be internal. This is true in both scenes and in gameplay. Switching back and forth between these moments is what allows the consumer (movie goer, reader, gamer) to keep interested in the product.

Applying this into an MMO scene, we can see where people have issues with quests and missions in MMOs. A scene in this case will be the quest. The issue with quests is that the Disaster has occurred already. The actual event that is happening for the player is that someone else has reacted to the disaster, experienced a dilemma, and found that asking the player for help is the best decision.

All of the internal player stuff is being done by the NPC. The decision of what to do about something is out of the player's hand. They are not making a decision about how to solve the disaster, instead, they are living out an NPC's decision. The only control the player has is rejecting the decision, which means that no quest, therefore no scene occurs.

To change this, The Old Republic tried making the player part of the decision making process. This works sometimes (Commando quest where the guy asks to kill the pirate instead of rescuing him). At these moments, the game succeeds in fixing bad questing.

Yet this step is not without constant and ever present failures. Quite often the game's dialogue options lead to no changes at all in what is going to happen as far as the decision goes. The issue continues to be that the more choices that are presented to the player as valid for progressing their story (not the game's story, but the player character's story of adventuring), the more time and energy and resources that get lost, and eventually the smaller the game will feel (though each play through would allow for countless choices, how far you could follow them would continue to diminish due to how expansive the choices would have to be).

So how can games allow for players to make the decision on how to deal with a disaster? One way would be more ambiguous quest directions. That means, that instead of killing 8 boars, the quest should be to thin their numbers in the forest. Then provide different ways for the player to interact with the boars.

They could kill them, trap them and sell them to a farmer or lead them away. The key is to allow the player to experience those internal steps: Reaction, Dilemma and Decision.

Scene info taken from Randy Ingermanson's website.

TMS

So I was catching up with podcasts today, and heard my request on TMS. I wanted to thank Brian Ibbott, for playing my request! Yay! Made my day.

I quite honestly have been swamped with work and school. Its all I've done for a while now. I'll try to keep everyone updated. But as you know, the first two years are essentially useless. I'm getting to the good stuff now, and I want to share if its worth it or not with everyone.

Aside from that, I'd like to open this post up for any topics that anyone has in mind to discuss.

Summoner's Quest by 4x4 Game Studio

First of all I'd like to introduce the team I was a part of during the making of Summoner's Quest. 4x4 Game Studio was one of 4 teams formed in December for Design Project I at Full Sail University. My teammates were Russell Currer, Joseph Madden, Daniel Rodebaugh. Before getting to the game, I want to talk about the history of the design of the game, which is still in beta right now.

The game started off with us listing off certain aspects of games we liked, which were Tabletop RPGs, TCGs, and Console-style RPGs. We thought of making a game that took a typical board game concept, and added in aspects of more complicated systems to allow the game to be accessible and fun for a novice, while allowing for the expansion of concepts into more complicated games, such as Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.

The other thing we wanted was to make sure the game would end. One of the biggest issues with games such as Monopoly is that it takes entirely too long (3+ hours) while we wanted a game that could end as early as an hour in. We knew that the game would still take time, but there was no reason to let it take forever. We wanted players to not only fight each other, but to be fighting for a goal within the game as well.

At first we had the game require the destruction of 4 bosses. The meant that we would have to complicate the combat rules, which we wanted to keep simple. So we then took the game to another place, which would be to have the players use Mana to unlock these temples, which would then have a way of allowing them to win the game. We still couldn't quite get it to work, because it negated the other aspect of the game: combat and summoning.

We focused on thinking of a way to make the game about combat only, but we ran into the issue of players dropping from the game, and having to wait until the end before they could play again. We did not want people to just be sitting there. Instead we wanted the point where the game starts to end, to be a point where the game finishes quickly thereafter.

We went back to the Mana Temple, and changed them into a gate that would allow access to the center of the board. The game at this point becomes a king of the hill game, where the winner stays in the middle for 3 rounds. The benefits of this is that it gets the game focuses on one point, forces combat and gets the game to a point of finishing rather quickly.

The change of the cards as well, as we started balancing the combat so that the summoner tokens were powerful yet dangerous to use in combat, while allowing summoned creatures to be useful and have a purpose for being summoned. Summoning monsters requires mana, which in turn is also needed to unlock the Mana Gate. Though a game can be played without going into a Mana Gate, it is the least optimal path towards winning the match.

Within the first incarnation of the game, we had 3 types of spaces a Summoner could land on: Focus Points (where they can draw a card), Teleport Points (to move them across the board faster) and Mana Temples (which reduces the cost of certain cards). When we finally decided to add the Mana Gates, we eventually connected them to the Mana Temples, since it made more sense to do so.

One of the last things we added to the game, was the concept of making the summons to relate to folklore from around the world. We focused on 4 folklore/myth sources: Nordic, Japanese/Modern, Greek and Amazonian/Brazillian.

The board's basic properties have remained the same for most of the design of the game, 8 spaces per section (6 focus points, a teleport point and a Mana Temple). We were using generic tokens for most of the game, at least until we decided on the theme of the game, at which point we created specific summoner tokens.

There are certain aspects of the game I'd still like to develop further, such as the combat (especially the combat). Though that could be brainstormed and thought of later. The following is straight from our Game Design Document:

Game Components

• Game board with 32 spaces and 13 spaces in the center.
• 4 Summoner tokens
• Monster Damage Counters (20 White Counters)
• 40 Summon, 20 Spell, 20 Equip, and 20 Trap cards
• Life Counters (40 Red Counters, 10 for each player)
• Mana Counters (48 Blue Counters, 6 for each player at start and a pool to add from)

Rules


Objective
The objective of the game is to become the most powerful summoner. Each player tries to destroy all other players and their minions, with the ultimate goal of trying to become powerful enough to enter the Halls of Myth and attain unlimited power. Victory is achieved by either being the last summoner standing or by entering the Chamber of Victory and remaining their for three consecutive turns.


Setup
Each player rolls a six sided die (d6). The player with the highest roll goes first, the player with the second highest roll goes second and so forth. If two or more players tie, they roll to break the tie amongst them, while still remaining within the same turn as they originally rolled. Each player chooses a starting space at one of the Mana Temples and places their summoner token on there. Each player gets 10 life stones and 6 mana stones. Play starts when the first player rolls two six-sided dice (2d6) and moves that number of spaces.


Summoning
When a player acquires a Summon card, they may expend the designated number of Mana points to place the card on the board at their location, after that, they control the Summoned card similarly to how they control their own token. A player may not cast a summon if there is another player or summon on the same square as their player token.


Cards (Your Hand)
The player can hold up to 5 cards in their hand. If they have 5 cards and want to draw a card, they must first discard a card so that they have, at most, 5 cards in their hand.


Discarding Cards
Cards may be discarded for any number of reasons. Certain cards, like spell cards, are one-time use items. Once they are used they must be removed from play by means of the discard pile. The discard pile may not be interacted with until all cards have been drawn. Once there are no more cards in play the discard pile must be shuffled and used as the new drawing deck. Once the deck is shuffled, a new discard pile is formed.


Mana Temple (Start Point)
Every player starts at their own Mana Temple. Whenever a summoner token lands on the Mana Temple space, they are able to use cards from their hands at a minus 1 Mana cost, to a minimum of 1 Mana cost. When a summoner token crosses over the Mana Temple space that they started from, they gain two additional Mana Stone. If at any point, a power or ability causes the player to go backwards past a starting point and they go through it again, they only gain additional Mana Stones while going in a clock-wise direction.


Focus Point
There are six focus points per side of the board. When a summoner token lands on the space, they draw a card unless they have 5 cards in their hand (see Cards above). Drawing cards occurs as a Space Effect, and therefore occurs after equipment, traps and combat effects (see Order of Operations below).


Portals
There are four portals on the game board. Portals are used to move to the next portal when a Summoner token or a summon lands onto a portal. If you land on a portal you have the potion of using it or not, but must move in a clockwise direction to the next portal if you decide to use it.


Mana Gate
Mana gates are unique type of space on the board. There are four of them, attached to the portal spaces and are essential to one of the two victory conditions. If a player wishes to open a gate, they must spend 10 mana points to open a single gate. Once a gate is open, any and all players or summons may cross through the gate freely. Each one of the spaces counts as one movement space.


Halls of Myth and Chamber of Victory
The halls of myth are the spaces directly past, and including, the mana gates. Each space counts as a single move space. This is a one-way path and may not be backtracked unless under the effect of a spell, trap, or ability that reverses movement direction. The chamber of victory is a single, large space that must be held for 3 turns, starting at the beginning of the following turn. Once on the space, the player, or any residing summon, may not leave that space unless evicted. If a player or summon loses a session of combat while occupying the victory space, but not the halls of myth, are evicted from the chamber of victory and placed back to the portal just outside of the gate that the player who initiated combat entered from. If a player in the victory space has a monster with them and the monster loses, the attacker moves one space outside of the victory space. On the next turn, the attacking monster may reenter but the defending player stays in the victory space. Players must still roll for movement for their summon if they have any outside of the chamber of victory. If evicted by any means, the amount of turns that they must hold the victory square is reset and they must hold the center for an additional 3 turns.


Movement
Movement is determined by the roll of 2d6 dice. The player has a few options when deciding to move. The player moves the full roll of the die when moving only the Summoner token or a summoner. If a Summoner token and a summon that player owns is on the same space, the player has the option of halving their roll and moving the Summoner token and their summon at the same time. Round down when halving the roll (if an 11 move 5). Summons have the option of moving backwards instead.


Combat (Attacking)
A player attacks when they move their token or summon onto a space occupied by the token or summon of another player. In the event that the contested space contains multiple player tokens or summons, the attacker chooses which one to attack, unless the defending player chooses to use a summon to defend their Summoner token (see “Combat (Defending)”, below). To resolve combat, each player involved rolls a d6; the one with the higher roll wins the combat and deals damage. If the attacker is a summon card, the damage dealt is specified by the “Attack” entry on the card. If the attacker is a Summoner token, the damage dealt is a base of 2 plus any modifiers from spells or equipment. If a Summoner token attacks a summon card, they deal damage equal to their current number of life stones, instead.


Combat (Defending)
A player defends when another player moves their token or summon onto a space occupied by the token or summon of the defending player. If the defending player’s Summoner token is being attacked and they have a summon in the same space, the defender may choose to defend using their summon, forcing the attacker to attack the summon instead of the Summoner. Combat then proceeds as stated in “Combat (Attacking)”, above.


Post Combat
If the attacker loses combat, they must move back one space from where they initially landed and initiated combat, and then can activate the space effect on the space they are pushed back to, as specified by the “The Order of Operations”, below . If the attacker wins, the defending summoner token or summon is moved backwards one space, but it does not activate space effects.


Summon Abilities
Most summons have a unique ability along with their base stats. In most cases these abilities require mana to cast. The cost of the ability is noted on the card. The effect of an ability is clearly denoted in its description as well as its range and damage. If for some reason, an ability has an effect that would affect another player or a summon and it does not have a denoted range then it is assumed that the ability must be used on a summon within the same space or must be used during combat. All abilities must be activated prior to rolling the dice to determine a winner in combat.


Traps
Traps cost no mana to place on the field and can be placed on any space on the field. When placed on the field, they can be tripped by anyone, even the player that placed it. When a Summoner token or summon lands on a trap, that player must roll a die which decides if the trap is activated or destroyed. The roll required to successfully negate a trap is depicted on the card. In many cases the roll is depicted as a greater-than-or-equal-to statement. Therefore, a requirement of 3+ means that the player must roll a 3 or higher on the 6 sided die to negate a trap’s effect. If a player is traveling with a summon and they land on a trap they may choose which one of them is to receive the effects of the traps. Some traps effect summons differently than they would a summoner.


Casting Spells
Spells are “at-will” cards that may be used before or after movement. They have a specific mana cost and a set range at which they may operate. A number in the range section denotes how many spaces away, starting at the edge of the occupied space, that the spell may affect or reach into. If a spell affects only a single target as opposed to the whole space it will say so in the description. Cards without a range or a range of 0 may only affect those in the same space that is occupied by the player who is casting the spell. Once the spell has been cast, the card is expended and is sent to the discard pile.


Equipping and Using Items
Equipment follows a unique set of rules. Each item has the potential for unique effects that are depicted in the card’s description. Each equipment card has a required cost to use. Some are expended upon their use and take effect immediately while others are perpetual. A player may choose to equip an equipment card before or after their move. The abilities that a card bestows (such as Mjolnir’s lightning bolt) may also be used before or after a move. Only one equipment’s “at-will” ability may be used per turn, but does not prevent circumstantial effects (such as evading one trap) from activating. After an equipment card is expended, destroyed, or the player simply wishes to remove their currently equipped item it is sent to the discard pile. Equipping a monster requires the summoner token to be at least within one space of the monster.


Mana Stones
Players start with 6 Mana Stones. Whenever they use mana for any reason, they take mana from their active pile and move it to a used mana pile. At the beginning of a player’s turn they recover two mana stones from the used pile into their active pile. Whenever a player’s summoner token crosses over their starting space they gain two additional mana to their maximum mana count into their active pile.


Life Stones
Players start with 10 Life Stones. Whenever they lose life they can discard that many life stones. Life stones can not be gained past 10. The player can recover life through card affects or summon abilities, but in no other way can you regain lost life.


Monster Damage Stones
When a summon takes damage, put a white counter on the card for each point of damage received.  When the number of counters reaches the amount of life of a summon, that summon is destroyed.


Equipment
A player may only equip up to 3 items at any one time. In order to equip a new item once a player currently has 3 equipped, 1 item must either be destroyed by an opponent, or discarded by the player.


Status Effects
Status effects may be accumulated by spells, traps, or monster abilities. A player may only be affected by up to 3 effects at once. Once an effect has ended, a new effect may be applied up to the maximum of 3 at any one time. Monsters may only be affected by one effect. Any new effect will override a previous effect on a monster.


The Order of Operations
Events play out in a specific order as a player moves. The order of operations is as follows: Equipment Effects, traps, combat, and space effects. This is the set order of operations to ensure that equipment will first negate traps, combat, or other circumstances if it can. Traps are then sprung as though any residing creature is lying in wait. Combat then resolves after traps are sprung or equipment is activated. Once the summoner resides on a space the benefit may be experienced.

Also here is the card list of possible cards to draw.

Summoner's Quest by Russell Currer, Etelberto Gomes-Montarroyos, Joseph Madden, Daniel Rodebaugh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.