Story webbing (an idea in progress)

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Story webbing (an idea in progress)

Lots of games will give players options, when it comes to interacting with the story.

PREFACE: The Elder Scrolls games offer a huge world with tons of storylines layered into different areas. KTOR and the Mass Effect games offer multiple ethical choices that effect game play. Alpha Protocol, Dues EX, and Planescape: Torment all offered involved (and somewhat clever) options for avoiding combat while progressing the story.

Lifepaths were a system introduced in the cyberpunk series. Simply, lifepaths were your past until the character was made (vaguely similar to the first Dragon Age game) which were rolled off a series of charts that narrowed down to your present situation.

Almost every RPG nowadays has some sort of party based system, or followers if nothing else. These characters have backstorys, feelings, and possible futures with the PC, depending on the player. These characters are somewhat customizable, and can offer points to progress the story (Alistair from Dragon Age comes to mind).

Character creation is highly important to players, as well as the degree of customization offered. In a cyberpunk world, where appearance and style were so important they were made into stats, I cannot stress enough how important this is.

Player Roles (also called Classes in other systems) offered a set of class skills, as well as features specific to each Role. Each Role would be able to react to a given situation in completely different ways.

IDEA: Story Webbing.
This is combining the character creation system with the party system, including a lifepath system influnced by PC interaction in game.

EXICUATION: Pick a Role, design your character, and choose lifepath. Game story would start relative to customization, story progresses to (EVENT 1)
At (EVENT 1) depending on PC input, the city is altered, and System data is saved. At this point, another perspective of the city (another Role) unlocks and the player is able to design the character and choose lifepath fir the new role. This role becomes a PC until (EVENT 2), when the 2 characters possibly team up (also possible they never encounter each other).
Each (EVENT) could also have an effect on the city itself (perhaps disarming a bomb or killing a certain NPC) that has multiple outcomes, each able to alter the game world. The alterations would enable or disable storylines, dialog options, even prevent access to areas or possible party members.

Still kind of working on this, what do you 'punks think?
 
Hey! First of all, I want to say great thread, it's awesome to see the community come up with ideas, makes the end product so much better. And story webbing sounds like a good idea to me. Combining the party system and the character creation system would be an epic mix.

It would greatly improve the replayability of the game, I could think of thousands of different character combinations this way. It would make the game a unique experience for everyone and every new character you create and would make for a much more interesting and dynamic story. Not to mention the great depth it would add to the PC and characters around it.

It would be great to see how the devs will implement this idea if they believe it would fit within the game they are making. But, I can see this becoming a difficult task to pull of, it's a lot more complex than your average system. If they do however decide to go on with it, it would be great.

Keep us updated on your idea, I would love to see it fully worked out.
 
MORE IDEA INFO:

This idea would require a VAST amount of programing, but could make for quite the unique gaming experience. There would have to be a starting Character Creation Engine (CCE), which would have several (but not all) Roles available to the players.

These starting Roles would begin the 'randomizing' of the game.
-i.e. Create a Fixer, Male, story starts out needing to find some top secret parts from Arasaka or else Boss Hoggins is gonna kill you.
-OR create a Fixer, Female, story starts out owing money to Boss Hoggins, need plan to make cred, find out about top secret parts shipment Arasaka is doing tonight.
BUT the point is that the same areas (boss hoggins bar, the Arasaka building) are used regardless.
(you can easily change the Role, Sex in this list to Anything in the system and have this continue to pan outward)

NOW here is where this starts getting complicated...
The Story webbing idea wants each aspect of the CCE to matter on some level of GAMEPLAY, not just backstory. If your lifepath has you coming from a well-to-do upscale family, there should be a very good (or at least totally logical) reason you have given that up to become a Nomad (no, the cool outfits, bikes, and girls don't count... although just a girl mabie...)
Using the above setting with 2 fixers, Im going to try to run the whole process (without choices) here:

{any P&Pers might recognize this, others might wanna look at the info below)
Lifepath
-Spyder: Female, Fixer, no surviving family from the last war, no relationship, Major debt
-Kilo: Male, fixer, fought as child in last war, has ex-wife(hate each-other), Minor debt
-name: sex, role, 1,2,3,4,5*

Players would choose each aspect of the above examples, BUT each Role would have certain aspects preset. The player would be able to choose from a selection of options that would count as pieces of the lifepath. Just as an example, the solo Role can choose to be a war vet, but the netrunner cant. I would hope for multiple variations on this idea, including exclusive(based on age, sex, role, ect) and non exclusive pieces to include on your lifepath.
* I put this in there for additional parts of your lifepath (more/different stuff happens, please reference the CP2020 core book for fine details, just wanted to imply a bunch of them)

Whew, lots of reference on this post, and were just now getting to the good part...

PUTTING ALL THIS TOGETHER

So, how does all this connect? This just sounds like a CCE to me, I don't see any gameplay effects coming out of this..
Well, that's cause were still getting started

GAME: Processing lifepath options:
-Male (Remove getting pregnant chain, include baby ransom chain)
-Solo (Remove [other role] missions,)
-War vet (remove Sewer rats chain, include Old War Buddy chain)
-Ex-wife (include ex missions, remove [random babes] chains)
Major debt (change start quest,)

Now, as silly as my example is , the idea is that this solo will have a completely different opening then one made with different path options.
(kinda like dragon age, but not as simplistic, and some choices will not effect anything till later in game) We will call him Pierce, and this is a little story that starts with him.

Pierce game starts with him owing money (to who? not important now) Lots of it. So much that only a suicidal kind of contract will make enough money for him to get out of debt. He hears about a new shipment of Arasaka chrome coming in, and he thinks that this sounds like a good plan to get outta debt. So he has to find out where the shipment is coming in at, and then he has to get it and get out again. He successfully get 1 crate of new tech.

This (oversimplified) idea would be the first chapter, lets say. Story-webbing enables this same collection of core events (in this case, new arasaka shipment gets stolen, winds up in the hands of some criminal types) to happen even though the HOW(Pierce) and WHY(For money) will change dependant on Player choices. Using this idea, Spyder would have to find a someone to steal it for her, or perhaps her part would have NOTHING to do with the theft, but that theft would still have to happen.
Arasaka getting robbed is the idea we are webbing here, so each Role (and possible lifepath options) would have a different way or inter/re-acting to the event of the robbery.

Taking this a step futher:
Lets say a Nomad can stop the robbery, and a Media can live report on it. Would this have any effect on the overall story?
YES, that's one of the parts that makes this idea so hard to program. That's not webbing though, watch this:

The first character made in the CCE would only have 3 Role options (Solo, Nomad, Fixer) Each Role option would have 3(or more) ways to go about dealing with the first event (Arasaka robbery).
Solo (perform robbery, guard storage to stop robbery, SPECIAL: find Mob Fixer instead)
Nomad (Stop robbery, Fight dude in bar, help little girl)
Fixer (Find random place, person, thing)

With these choices, the robbery might not even be effected by the player, but it still happens. Depending on which of the choices are followed, the following story would be altered, but the core event (robbery) still happens.

Webbing starts when we get to chapter 2, and we get to make another character. It followes the same ideas, but with different role options.
Media (Report on robbery, stalk pop start, SPECIAL find drug deal)
MedTech (Random emergency, ect, ect)
Depending on your new choice, you may or may not interact with the character from chapter 1 (physically or just the results of the choices made) and there will be some kind of relative issue (equal problem to chapter one, may or may not be directly connected) which will count as additional core event.

Webbing truly happens when the choice to robbery turns out to not be connected to the main issue, unless the string of robberies is something the cop has to solve or something. It will enable the player to directly alter the way the game progresses, while enabling a "new" experience each time.
 
Overall I'm actually really interested by the idea that the actual initial set of of missions/context you begin gameplay at narratively reflects the lifpath character creation system. The nice thing is the combinations are complex and pretty infinite and it'd be challenging, but that would be a REALLY fresh way to make it super exciting to re-roll characters and replay the game.
 
Are you saying that we will control more than one character or that we abandon the character from chapter 1 when we get to chapter 2?
If that's the case then I don't like it. I would really like sticking it out with one character I've created through the whole game.
I really like the idea of having the different roles approach a mission in a completely different way though.
 
Nice idea and CDPR did something similar in a smaller scale with Witcher 2. Occasionally you controlled different characters. Not sure though how much impact they those situations had on the world.
Personally I'd prefer to play one character most of the time, but don't mind occasional distractions.
 
What would be cool's is if the Player Roll "Class" have one or two side missions designed only for that Roll type. Give the players some unique replay value to try out each Player roll. Even cooler is how these special side missions entwine to a bigger hidden objective only can be seen if you have completed all different Character Rolls story.. Then the player could see what he really did when he had finished easter egg. XD Maybe a special cut scene to show his ending?
 
Love this idea!

Maybe it can be set up as a open structure where expansions or mods can add content and scenes to existing events and characters.

What you would need would be a robust editing suite that allowed developers or mod community to edit game events, text and most importantly - movement and actions /motions of characters in game.

Then you could add motorcycle races scenes, jumping from moving train to train, climbing onto the back of a huge statue or cyber weapon or the like.
 
Jaworowskii: My idea was that any given role would be a different character, and you would switch roles when the story needed it. The different PC's could also team up depending on the situation. The overall idea was that the player would create multiple PC's (one for each role), which each would explain part of the overall story from different perspectives. This would (hopefully) enable the story of the city to be told multiple ways. My above examples do seem to imply the idea of "losing" the first PC, but as the story progressed you would swap control between them depending on what chapter your in. I seem to have left that part out of the last post, sorry.

As well as everyone else: Thanks for the imput! The real world prevents me from posting as much as I would like to, but I will keep trying to update this as life allows

UPDATE:

Seeing how this is starting to get a small amount of momentum here, thought it was time for some new stuff

Reviewing some old games, I came across Saga Frontier again. This game had 7 'main' characters, and each one had a different story. The stories were NOT connected (or if they were it was a loose connection at best) and finishing one didn't have a noticeable effect on the others. The game had something called system data, which kept track of all the various little data involved with the players progression throughout the various storylines (level, what characters you recruited, number of storylines beat) and once you beat all the storylines then you would get a "special" ending.

Now, if system data could track that kinda stuff, then what about something more like this:

Night City. What is this place? Is it 'just' a game world? (granted, there is a WHOLE bunch of stuff involved in that) Is it a static concept inside of which the story occurs? Or is it another character in the actual story?
The idea of a main character in any story is "this is the perspective we will use to tell the story." What is the City was the main character?

The story webbing idea would require that the city itself is the perspective the story is told from. The characters the PC controls would have to change at times, as is needed to explain a different part of the city's story. As the story progresses in the city, each 'chapter' (I use this term loosely) would take place in another part of the city itself.

Allow me to fake a story for a moment to explain this a little better (I hope)

(THIS IS COPYWRITE TO SOMEONE ELSE, BORROWED (poorly) FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY)
At a boxing match, a fighter named Butch has been bribed by a local crime boss to throw the fight. Butch takes the money, but refuses to lose the fight. the crime boss loses his suitcase with a prized possession inside of it on the way home. The crime boss sends his prized hit men to find the suitcase. And kill butch. Butch kills one of the hitmen, and tries to run away. While running, the crime boss finds him on the street. They fight. They get captured by a crocked cop. Butch kills the crooked cop and saves the crime boss. The crime boss lets butch go if he agrees never to come back to the city.

in this example we have Butch's perspective from pulp fiction, in mostly chronological order. and the rest of this part may not make sense if you have never seen this movie.
There is nothing in the above example about what happens with the boss's wife, the wolf, or the diner scene at all. Because Butch would have no knowledge of those events, his storyline would not show these parts.
Where as Vincent's storyline wouldn't end in the diner, but in butch's apartment.
So even if out of chronological order, this movie is the city of LA telling the viewer about the story of Vincent and the story of Butch.

Now, Night city telling a story about the people (each role with its own completely different progression) and events (the different choices affecting overall progression) that happen in it, but in a somewhat more liner fashion? That's story-webbing.

Remember Pierce? he's back to help explain. (and he's using this threads system data for his example)

So, Pierce stopped that Arasaka robbery with some well spoken debate, mostly spoken by his fully automatic grenade launcher. Now, this prevented Spyder from getting her hands on some brand-spankin-new stuff that was in those crates (the player was unaware that the fixer option at that point can get the tech FROM the robbery in the first chapter) This also means Pierce wouldn't be in chapter 2, since the city needs another perspective to flesh out the story.

Each chapter would have several roles to choose from, and the system data would enable you to possibly encounter the other PCs in there "off-duty' hours. When the player gets the option to play as a Solo in chapters 1, 3, 7, 11, and 47, they would get Pierce (The PC they made for that role) .
Including a long term damage system would alter options dependent on gameplay would create another dynamic to this concept of selective roles.

Long term damage: if the player is allowed to choose between a set number of roles per chapter, then what happens if the player takes too much damage in the chapter? would that shut down the ability to continue the storyline until they healed? Most games just assume that didn't happen and return the player to a checkpoint. But what if taking too much damage had an effect the storyline as it progressed, taking into account the 'mission failure' that the player performed? Would death be permanent? Or just classified as 'massive damage', placing the character in a 'healing tube', ending the current chapter and preventing play as that character until the following chapter is finished?
More on Long term damage in another update...

This ('chapter' system as told by Night city) would enable several things if done correctly:
1. all Roles from the series could be incorporated into the game (however, not all at once, or at the same time)
2. Character creation could have a much bigger effect on the gameplay and story development.
(Side-note: if you only get 3 role options at each 'chapter' the which role you choose and WHEN you choose it could have a different effect on the game as well. {instead of making a solo, make a nomad in chapter 1 and end up with a different effect in chapter 3 if you make the solo at that time or continue with the same role} )
 
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