Author Archives: fictorians

zork_1[1] A guest post by Aaron Scott Hildebrandt

When you start a conversation about storytelling in video games, it’s hard to not immediately jump to discussions about the writing in Halo, Call of Duty, Uncharted, God of War, and the other games that have graced living rooms across the globe. There’s a lot that can be said about the stories in these games–both how they’re written and how they’re presented. Some of these games tell expertly penned and deeply engaging stories, and there are some seriously talented people behind them. People like Ragnar Tornquist, Amy Hennig, and Chris Avellone have left their prints on the entire industry.

But at the same time, the industry as a whole seems like it’s stuck in a rut. There’s something oddly familiar about a lot of the stories being told. Since games like Dragon’s Lair first appeared in 1983, it’s been hard to avoid phrases like “it’s like playing a movie.” And that’s a pretty good summary of where we’re at with computer-based storytelling–we’ve been transplanting the movie experience and casting the viewer in the leading role, rather than leaving them as a disembodied spectator.

Of course, things haven’t always been this way. A lot of us remember the early days of computer gaming, and to compare those experiences to Hollywood blockbusters–or even low-budget indie films–would be kind of hilarious. In fact, those early games seemed like they were on a different medium entirely. So, how did we get using computers to tell stories about battling dysentery in Oregon Trail or exploring mysterious white houses in Zork to defending the universe in Halo? More importantly, where did the dysentery and white houses go? To find out, we’re going to have to rewind a bit. And by “a bit,” I mean “through most of human history.” It’s kind of a long story.

Marshall McLuhan’s phrase “the medium is the message” has gotten a nauseating amount of attention since it first appeared in 1964. There’s a good reason for that–the stories we tell are directly affected by the way we choose to present them. Some stories work across all mediums, while others are so deeply tied to their medium that it would be almost impossible to attempt it in any other. That might not seem like much of a revelation, but we’re living in an odd era that’s become obsessed with translating stories between mediums while pretending that the core of each story will remain intact.

For a while, almost every major movie release saw a companion “novelisation” released in bookstores. Some of the biggest movies (and TV shows) of the last ten years have been adaptations of popular books, comics, and graphic novels. And sometimes, this all works out. There are a handful of examples of beautiful synergy existing between the two mediums, especially when stories are translated from one graphic medium to another. Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez demonstrated this extremely well with Sin City, a movie that literally recreated the graphic novel panel for panel, shot for shot. But for each time it works, you have a hundred other attempts that are met with a shrug, followed by the damning phrase “the book was better.”

There’s always been an interplay between the different mediums we use to tell stories, and it’s pretty obvious as to why this happens. At one point, every medium is new. Early oral storytelling established a lot of the techniques we still use to string narrative together. Speaking words aloud could transport people to other times and places. Dialogue could be spoken on behalf of people who only existed in the imagination of the storyteller. But you can’t tell every sort of story with your voice alone.

When the first stories were written, it shouldn’t be surprising that what people wrote were, essentially, the same sorts of stories they were already telling orally, and the stories were told in much the same way. They transcribed. As time passed, though, we started to find new and interesting ways to tell stories. We discovered the novel, Don Quixote setting the stage for an entirely new way of telling stories that just wouldn’t have been feasible had Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra attempted to speak it aloud instead of commit it to paper.

Once we broke free from the previous mediums and embraced what made writing different, we were able to tell stories in totally new ways. Writing, as a medium, is still continuing to surprise us. Jonathan Safran Foer took a physical knife (okay, well, a laser cutter) to the pages of Bruno Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles, creating an entirely new book from its fragments (Tree of Codes). Both David Foster Wallace and Mark Z. Danielewski have written books that parody the medium itself, hiding the most interesting parts of the book in footnotes and sidebars. Even though they found their root in the same storytelling devices that preceded them, written stories evolved.

Every medium goes through this evolution. At first, we attempt to use new mediums to clone old stories, and while there’s certainly a sense of wonder and discovery as this happens, it’s the evolution that keeps us excited–the adventure of bending and twisting that medium to create something new. Every new medium opens up the possibility of telling original stories that excite and surprise us in ways we’ve never experienced before. Movies took ideas from theatre and radio and turned them into something new. Summer blockbusters would, by and large, make dreadful books, but movies can tell stories that are loud and bright and impossible to experience firsthand. They can actually show us things instead of simply describing them. They can hide details and use focus pulls to draw our attention around a scene in an extremely nuanced way. Movies like Timecode and shows like 24 played at telling stories in real-time, something that would be nearly impossible to experience if we were reading them instead of watching.

(A quick aside: I have no idea if anyone has ever attempted to write a real-time book. Essentially, every three hundred words you write would have to cover about a minute of action. If anyone knows of someone who has attempted this, please let me know, because I owe that person a beer.)

There is one medium, however, that ended up on a different evolutionary path than the mediums that came before it. When we started telling stories with computers, what used to be a cycle quickly became a rut.

Jump to From Zork to Halo and Back Again, Part Two

Guest Writer Bio:

Aaron Scott Hildebrandt is a narrative designer and animator living in Vancouver, Canada. His work can be found in a number of games, including Halo: Anniversary, Halo 4, and Remember Me, as well as the web series H+. He’s also the author of the upcoming web serial Hanna Buys the Farm.

Six Reasons Not to Turn Your Role-Playing Game into a Novel

August 20, 2013

fictorians

no dice A guest post by Kevin Pettway

As gamers, we (the author included) understand that our pastime is one of imagination and delight. We spend hours creating entertaining stories and encounters to flummox and amuse our friends.

Also, we are great students of the literature and media of our genre, be it fantasy, science fiction, horror, or something else. We use books, movies, and comics to inform our games, and provide greater heights of adventure. It would seem the most natural thing in the multiverse to marry these two similar pursuits together, to carry the magic ring back out of the game and onto the page it came from.

What could go wrong? Oh, I am here to tell you.

It’s not your world. If you bought that adventure, or used characters or settings you found in a movie or a book, they don’t belong to you. As long as your sticky-fingered thefts are limited to stocking the game for Wednesday night around the dining room table, no harm, no foul. I promise, Tolkien’s estate isn’t coming after your Fantasy Gurps. But as soon as you start looking to publish, either on your own or traditionally, you’re likely to run into problems. Problems of the You-Pay-Me variety, which as anyone knows are the worst problems of all. No one—not publishers, distributers, or storefronts (including Amazon or the like)—is going to handle Jane Smith’s Star Wars VII: the Return of Boba Fett, from Way Back in Time When He Was Really Badass, no matter how much fun it was to play with your friends.
It is your world. Mostly. I hope you play your role-playing games with others. The point is, you probably play with other people. This is great for gaming, but much less so for a novelist looking for something to write about. You see, although you spent the hard time behind the screen writing down the names of every patron in the bar (which your stupid players never even walked into), the resultant product—the game itself—is a collaborative effort. That means your success is a six-way split, or however many players you have. The sticking point for this isn’t even so much about money. If you’re writing a book about your Vampire: the Masquerade game, there isn’t going to be any money). No, it’s about control. Unless your Call of Cthulhu campaign comes with a release form, all of your players are now partners and co-owners, which is a headache you do not want to imagine. All of which leads to…
Your friends are idiots. Well, they probably aren’t all idiots. Not more than half. This does highlight the differences between writing for a game and writing for a novel, though. A role-playing character serves a very specific function. It exists to give voice to our fantasy selves, and keep us entertained, usually four to six hours a week. Without an active human being to inhabit them, they become limp as punctured balloons. The most well-fleshed-out gaming character is a two-dimensional cartoon next to any character from a book. If you’re doing it right, anyway. Take a character from out of your game and put him in a novel and they become capering idiots, dancing and leering for no apparent reason at all. That is because in the game, the players are only trying to entertain themselves. They can do any dumbass bullshit they want for no better reason that it’s incongruous and funny. The characters in your novel need to entertain and be understood by everyone. Think your players are up to that task?
We are no better. Picture this scene: a party of adventurers is on their way to drop the Magic Shoe Insert of Dr. Scholls into the Pit of Really Hot Despair-Lava, when along the way they stop in a tavern for a soda. One of your adventurers has a lengthy conversation with the soda puller guy about whether or not he’s seen any Minions of the Fairly Evil One walking around town in those sneakers with the cushioned soles.
Freeze the action!

For this scene to work in a role-playing game, all you really need to know (maybe) is the name of the town, the soda tavern, and probably the barkeep (soda puller guy). Create this same scene in a book, though, and everything changes. Now you also need the characters’ first impressions walking in. What does the town look like? Smell like? What are the people doing? Where is the bar? Why do they have soda in a medieval European setting? Who else is in the tavern? What do they think of strangers? What are their allegiances? Do they wear shoes with cushioned soles or inserts? What does the tavern owner know? Does he have family? Are other goofy details going to become involved, like what he ate for breakfast, or the age of his parents? What does the town produce? Export? Are there any power struggles? The list goes on and on.

In the game, the whole town has a limited, truncated function. Like one of those cardboard cup-sleeves they give you at Starbucks. But in a book, it has all the characteristics of a real place. It’s a ceramic mug with a double-cap mocha latte, extra foam.
Nobody wants to read about your D&D game. And here’s the sad truth. Publishers of genre fiction have been including in their submission guidelines for years now that they specifically do not want to see a recount of your bestest game ever, no matter how awesome you thought it was. You simply were not the first person to come up with the idea, and it has already been played out—like those movies where the Tuff Guy/Curmudgeonly Asshole is forced to babysit a bunch of kids and turns into a wiser, more fun-loving assassin/drill sergeant/editor-in-chief an hour and a half later. No one wants to see that, but everyone can tell it’s coming. It’s not unlike getting trapped in a coal mine for three days with someone who wants to tell you all about his favorite Pathfinder character, and you don’t have a gun.
Screw you, blog-writer-guy! I’m hearin’ a lot of can’t outta you, but I’m better than that! You don’t know me. I’m awesome! Naturally. If you were the type to be put off by some blog on the web telling you what you can’t do, you would never have read this far. You’d have stopped at number two and toddled off to finish painting your Legend of the Five Rings miniatures with brushes you made out of Cheetos. Since, on the other hand you did get this far, let’s go over some of the things you will have to do if you really do want to make this book:
- Make it your own world. One hundred percent. It’s okay to borrow concepts, but change them and make them your own before you include them.
- Throw away all the player characters. Your own characters will be much more interesting anyway.
- Flesh out your world. The places where no action happens can be just as important as those where it does. The whole world informs everything that goes into your book. It’s world-building. Build that world.
- If it’s fantasy, decide how the magic works. If it’s sci-fi, figure out how the science works. Horror? How do ghosts work? Understand the underpinnings of your world before you begin, and make it logical. The payoff is huge.
- Come up with a real plot. Tell an interesting story. No world is so wonderful that you can just describe your book. Write from beginning, middle, and end with compelling characters. That’s your novel, not a game.

In short, you may use your game as source material, but treat your novel as something entirely new. The game might be interesting and add to your background, but it is not a shortcut to a real book. Not like plagiarism. That’s a shortcut. Or finding a successful author with a new manuscript no one has seen, and smothering him with a pillow. Also a shortcut. There are probably some others, but not writing your game. Never the game.

Guest Writer Bio: Kevin_Pettway

Kevin Pettway is a web-comic creator and writer who used his campaign setting as the basis for his books. He has never plagiarized anyone, but he might have smothered another author in their sleep for snoring too loud. Visit his website to find out more.

Game Mechanics and Story Structure

August 16, 2013

fictorians

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board_games A guest post by Tom Buller

When was the last time you played Monopoly? I’m not asking if you’ve ever played, because most of us have endured that ubiquitous game. Chances are you didn’t want to touch it for years afterward. Dare I ask if you want to join me for a game of mostly random chance that drags on and on with only rare glimpses of entertainment—tiny bursts of enjoyable conflict amidst crushing boredom and steady, mild, unproductive stress?

I thought not. Thankfully, these days board games stomp all over Monopoly with its own pewter boot. The best games now play in less time and keep players engaged throughout, from first card drawn until the last roll of the dice.

The difference? Mechanics. Order. A well-constructed system. Monopoly presents a broad theme with very basic options that fail to drive the experience to its conclusion before half the players want to flee the table (or wander off looking for some wet paint they can watch dry). Modern games, like Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride, to name a couple of popular options, offer focused gameplay with play times well matched to their premise and structure.

The system and mechanics are to board games as story structure is to fiction.

One of the most compelling mechanics is the type that offers players multiple options but limits their choices. If you desperately want to do three different things on your turn but can only choose one, the tension will keep you always wanting just one more turn. Or three, or a dozen.

In fiction, we are guiding the players through the game. Outside of certain children’s books, readers aren’t making choices about the story’s direction. We choose for them. But can we create and maintain that tension and interest? Character development can blur the lines and get readers cheering for more than one character, even ones supposedly on opposing sides. Shades of gray give readers doubt and engage them in thoughts about competing motivations.

Speaking of what readers want, we can look to games like Ticket to Ride as reminders to hold off. Let the anticipation build. Two of Ticket to Ride’s game mechanics are card drafting and set collection. The former means choosing cards from a limited pool, and the latter is exactly what it sounds like. Players seek particular cards, but often miss out on them or simply don’t see them pop up on their turn, so when the moment finally arrives, it’s a big payoff. Delayed gratification. As writers, we of course want to give readers what they want, but it’s better for everyone if there’s a struggle toward the jackpot.

Then there’s the element of chance: rolling the dice. Many of the more successful games these days have stricter limits on randomness. A greater percentage of actions must be deliberate, chosen tactics part of a greater strategy. It’s a lesson for building plot—random chance can only act on your story so much before you begin to lose the audience. Coincidences happen more often in real life than they can in fiction. The author and the game designer are perfect analogs of each other. Sorry, author, you must carefully lay out the events in your story or risk writing a dice-laden game of Monopoly that drives readers away.

Remember your last game of Monopoly that just wouldn’t end, no matter how much money you pilfered from the bank so poorly guarded by Cousin Becky? If only Parker Brothers had designed the thing with a well-structured and timely end game. It’s no Settlers of Catan, which sets an exact winning bar and employs a system that allows exponential growth toward the goal, speeding progress as players vie for victory.

When crafting your story’s resolution, modern board games reiterate a message that always bears repeating: choose a specific end point and give plenty of thought to timing.

With board games, theme can take the experience to the next level, as with setting in fiction. The theme can support the mechanics, keeping players or readers engaged even despite elements of the underlying structure that aren’t quite dialed in. For example, if you love everything ancient Egyptian, you’ll probably stick with a lesser game that’s dripping in hieroglyphics and has a board festooned with miniature pyramids. Maybe you’d even play one more round of Monopoly: Sphinx Edition. But if The Great Pyramid is simply a title pasted over Park Place, you won’t be playing much longer. Systematic structure separates the games and books that sit on the shelf gathering dust from those we invite all our friends to enjoy.

Guest Writer Bio:

Tom Buller writes corporate marketing copy by day and is a freelance editor by night, juggling a toddler somewhere in between. He stumbled upon board gaming a decade ago when a friend introduced him to Settlers of Catan, forever changing his conception of what a board game can be. Favorite fiction genres: thrillers, science fiction, and fantasy.

Baby Got Backstory

August 15, 2013

fictorians

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Dragon Warrior 4 Cover A guest post by Kim May

I still have nightmares about the time we battled a trio of Mystic Dolls. Those damn things multiplied faster than we could kill them. They killed Mara and Nara first, and Brey soon after. Christo destroyed one with a fire spell before a clone got him in return. Taloon was run through before he could summon the Merchant Army. Ragnar and Alena took down a doll and three clones before succumbing to their wounds. I had to defeat the last doll on my own, surrounded by the bodies of my friends. It may have been my imagination, but I swear I heard Ragnar’s spirit cheer me on as I ran my sword through that doll with a cry of anguish. In the nightmare the last doll doesn’t die, though I know it did because I remember the solitary two day journey back to town with everyone’s bodies piled in the wagon so each could be revived by the local healer.

Are these the opening paragraphs to my new novel? No. I was playing Dragon Warrior IV on the 8 bit NES.

In my family, this was THE game to play. Everyone in the house had a quest in progress and a set amount of time every day in which to play. We had all the maps and stat sheets so we could plan our expeditions. All of us gave my sister a bad time for spending more time doubling down in the casino than leveling up. Mom and I would debate the wisdom of risking life and limb to progress further in the quest versus patiently waiting another ten levels so we could easily slaughter every beastie in our path.

So why did we play this one game over all others, including the previous installments in the Dragon Warrior franchise? This game made us care about the characters.
Dragon Warrior was like many fantasy RPGs in that you had to level up and acquire the necessary items and armors in order to defeat the villain. Where IV differed from the standard RPGs of the day was that not only could you choose the hero’s name, you could choose their gender. For the first time I could be a girl and still win the day without being penalized because heroines in this game had the same HP, magic, and strength of their male counterpart.

Another big deviation from the norm, and what I feel was the game’s best asset, was that you had to play the quests for each of the companions before you could even start the hero/heroine’s quest. At first this may sound annoying but the prologue for each of the four companion quests established who the POV character was and why they had to venture into dangerous places because of the villain’s wrongdoings. It was clear why Ragnar had to rescue the kidnapped children, why Princess Alena didn’t fit in at court, why Taloon could get better prices for weaponry, and why sweet Mara and Nara wanted vengeance.

When the hero/heroine encountered each of the companions in the final quest, each still possessed the XP, weapons, and armor that they had at the end of their individual quests. I could take pride in _________ being an asset to the party because of all the effort I put into their individual quest. It also made their enlistment a happy reunion rather than a burden since I didn’t have to spend half my time healing them in the middle of a battle.

Conversely, when one or more of the companions died it magnified the failure. It became personal. Which of course meant that the next six days were spent leveling up and getting better armor so the next time I encountered that monster I could put its head on a spike.

This is the power of backstory. Whether it’s a video game, a novel, or a bedtime story that you pull out of the aether, backstory is important. Not only does a backstory make characters more realistic, it makes their actions more powerful because the reader knows why they acted a particular way. Mara and Nara’s oath to kill the villain may be noble but it’s the fact that the villain killed their father that makes players silently root for them on their journey. If Ragnar, happened to die in battle during the final quest, the feelings of sadness and anger aren’t simply the product of a bruised ego. It’s the product of the indebtedness players felt because Ragnar was responsible for saving the juvenile hero/heroine’s life in the first companion quest. And as players, we had a front row seat for all of it.

So the next time you create a story, take some time to think about what happened before page one. Your readers/players/listeners will thank you for the effort.

Guest Writer Bio: Kim Pic

Kim May writes sci-fi and fantasy but has been known to pen a gothic poem or two. She works at an independent bookstore and dog/house sits on the side. A native Oregonian, she lives with her geriatric cat, Spud, and spends as much of her free time as she can with family and friends. She recently won The Named Lands Poetry Contest. If you would like to find out what she’s working on, please visit her blog.