DB's guide to plots and gameflow

[DragonBlaze]

DB's guide to making a plot.

Well I made a 'DB's guide to making an epic ending' and a 'DB's guide to making an intro', so I thought I might as well as make one for a story as well. It may have a lot of good info for you to look at, or it may just be me rambling on about nothing, I don't know, its up to you how you want to look at this. I want to note that this tutorial is just a guideline and not actual 'rules'. Each game is differant and unique, and this guideline will not apply to all game. I also want to note that this tutorial is just based off of things I have seen, so basically this is just my opinion, as opposed to actual facts.

Introduction: Most would agree that in an rpg game, the most important part of the game is the story line/plot. Now I believe that ALL aspects of the game are important, but the story is the heart of every rpg game. Generally good storys are complex and have various plot twists, they should keep the player on their toes and guessing what is going to happen next, but they should also make sence.

The problem: Every game needs a problem, and that’s the basis of the whole game, and without the problem, they’re wouldn’t be a game, or at least its going to be a very boring game. Seriously, what would it be like? “Hey, it’s a nice day outside, I think I’m going for a walk!” After walking through some forest maps, you return home to.. a house! OMG. I doubt many people would really enjoy playing a game like this for more than a few minutes.

The problem: Every game needs a problem, without a problem, its going to be a very boring game. Seriously, what would it be like? “Hey, it’s a nice day outside, I think I’m going for a walk!” After walking through some forest maps, you return home to.. a house! OMG. I doubt many people would really enjoy playing a game like this for more than a few minutes.

Problems are important, and just having any old problem won’t be good enough. A guy wants to release a great evil to take over the world! That’s a pretty crappy problem. The problem has to be something complex, something unthought of, something original. The more you stay away from some mystical object giving someone power the better. Its hard to think of a great problem, so I’m just going to use FF7 as an example. If you don’t want me to spoil the whole game for you, don’t read the next paragraph.

Well you have the standard psychopath, Sephiroth. He wants to take revenge on the planet because the people ‘stole’ it from his mother. But he just doesn’t just look for some object that will give him tons of power. He finds the ‘promised land’ with all sorts of maco energy. Then he calls a meteor to fall on the planet. When it hits, the planet will spend its energy trying to heal itself, and Sephiroth will be right at the center where the energy is gathered, making him a god. It’s a brilliant plot, much better than just searching for some object or trying to release some great sealed evil.

The problem has to fit in with the game as well. It has to be built in with the setting (or the setting has to be built in with the problem). Everything in the game should contribute to why the problem is a threat, it should all fit together and make sence.

Characters: A big part of the story I see overlooked in many games are the characters. Every story has characters, the people involved with the story. In a game, these would be the heros, important npcs (non-playable characters) and villans. In order for the story to be successful, the characters have to be involved and intertwiened with it. No playable character should 'just be there' and not add to the story in some way. Take Chrono Cross for example, it had loads of characters, but most of them were just there, you could never really connect with any of the characters. If a character won't be involved with the story, they might as well not even be in the game because they're not contributing everything.

When I say a character has to be involved with the story, that doesn't necisarrily mean they have to be involved with the MAIN story. The main story would be like you trying to stop the bad guy from taking over the world and blah blah blah. Not every character has to know about and want to stop the main bad guy. But somehow, their actions in the game should affect the story by the end.

The BAD guy: With every save the world plot, there has to be a bad guy wanting to destroy or take over the world. If there wasn't one, you really wouldn't be saving the world from anything. The most important thing about the bad guy, is that he has a good reason for destorying the world, and no, "being evil" isn't a good enough reason. If you think about it, what could posses anyone to WANT to destory the world? Reasons for wanting to take over the world are a little easier to think of, but still in order to have an effecting bad guy, they have to be BIG.

Mission Hierarchy: The mission Hierarchy is something I made up. A hierarchy is basically a set of stairs. The bottom step is where you start, and its pretty low, with each step, you get a little higher and higher until you reach the top. In a story, you start off with something low and not very important, but you keep on building and building and getting more important until you're at the top and reach the 'epic' level.

The first step in a story would be the intro. In an intro, you want to familurize the player with the character. To do this, often a small mission or quest would be done such as going into the woods to collect herbs, hunting, or meeting someone in the park. The first mission doesn't have to affect the story, but it leads you into the second step. For more information on intros, you can read my DB's guide to making an intro'

The second step is what I call the 'secondary mission' of the game. The secondary mission is the thing  that your characters are going to be primarily concerned with for a great deal of the game, but its not something thats going to end the world if not solved. An example would be the Shin-Ra in FF7. In the begining of the game, you're concerned with stopping the Shin-Ra, your concern in them led to the primary mission. The secondary mission, in most cases, should hint and tie in with the primary mission. Often the primary mission is also the cause of the secondary mission as well. However, it always has to lead into the final mission. Once you're through with the game, you should be able to go through and look at the secondary mission why things happened that way and realize why things happened. In short, the secondary mission should be tied into the final mission.

The next step is the "primary mission". The primary mission is that epic quest you go on to save the world and what not. When you go on to the primary mission, you don't have to solve or abandon your secondary mission, it just becomes lower on your 'to do list'. Often, the jump from the secondary to primary missions have plot twists, you can think something is going one way, then BAM, it twists and everything becomes bigger and more important. I'll use FF7 as an example again, the secondary mission (shin-ra) led you to the primary mission of following/stopping sephiroth. After you took upon that mission, you stopped worring so much about stopping the shin-ra.

The Final step would be the ending. How everything comes to an end. It should tie everything together and what not. For more information on endings, you can read my DB's guide to epic endings.

In a lot of games, there are a lot of secondary missions that build up to the primary mission. You can add as many as you like, but remember the stairs. Each mission should get more and more important and epic along the way.

It is VERY important that you don't jump from the intro to the primary/final mission that you're going to be working on for the rest of the game. Remember my stairs analogy, you can't just jump from the bottom to the top. You have to build your way up. In any plot, you have to work your way up. Jumping right will make your game seem shallow and won't give it the depth it needs. Through building your plot in a secondary mission, you're able to see and realize how the primary goal and last threat was worked into the game.

Another very important thing is that you don’t twist the game from something epic to something not so epic. This was the biggest mistake I’ve seen in Star Ocean 3. They had something very epic going, something that got you intrigued and even worrying about the planet and the whole universe, and then they twist it into something that hardly seems worth fighting for. The ONLY way a game should go from epic to not so epic, would be if you solve a problem. Like if you have an army trying to take over the world, that’s pretty big, if you twist that idea into something more epic, great, but you could also step it down by stopping the army. You would solve the problem and continue with a bigger problem later.

Item hunting and mystic objects: You should NEVER have a plot based on mystic objects/people/items or anything IF your goal for a great deal of the game is to go out and search for them. They can be there, but going and searching for all of them should never take up any big chunck of the game. A big part of a story is that it has to keep the player guesing what is going to happen next and it has to keep them curious. If your game has you searching for objects for a great amount of time, the player knows what he's going to do next. Even if there are other parts of the story going on, the player knows that no matter what happens, he's going to be searching for these objects, he knows whats going to happen next, and he can often predict a great deal about the game until you've found them all. In Final Fantasy 1-5, after you hear about the crystals, you KNOW you're going to have to find them all, and for that big chunk of the game, you know what your mission is and what you're going to be doing. If the player can predict that much, its a BAD thing.

Part II - Gameflow

Background: A very important factor in every game that I often see overlooked is the gameflow. There are two main aspects of gameflow, one would be the story flow, progressing up the "steps" until the ending, which I (hopefully) covered in the story section of this tut. The other part is the mechanics mechanics part which is how the player progresses through the game. The gameflow can determain how much the player gets connected to the game and how much he/she understands whats going on. A game can be ruined by going too fast and losing the player, or it can go too slow and bore them to death. The idea is to slow it down enough so that the player can get connected to the setting, but not too slow so that it becomes an uneventful pile of crap.

The right speed: By 'speed' I'm not talking about slowing down walking speed or making the battles slower or anything along those lines that just legnthen the time it takes to do things in the game. Speed means how fast you progress through areas and the story. The most common example I see of gameflow going too fast would be having towns and such, but not having the player actually spend any time in them and just breezing though that whole area. Every town and area should be important, and you should keep the player there long enough for them to get a feel for it.

Towns: Always have mission and stuff the hero has to do in a town. Maybe they go to the town looking for someone, they have to go around asking people where this guy is. You figure out he’s in a club or something, then in order to get into the club, you have to do some ‘favors’ for the bouncer. After you get in the club, you can ask the guy for the info. Being the type of guy he is, you have to get something for him before he’ll tell you. You get the item, give it to him, and then he tells you what you want to know. Doing something like this is much better than just walking up to his house and asking him, then being the nice guy he is, he tells you. Doing all this other stuff will get the player familiar with the town, and it gives the game more life.

Areas: Areas, like towns, should be important, and the player should spend time in them. Instead of making a game have a linear world where everything you have to do is ‘on the path’ to your goal, make it so that you have to go back and forth through some areas of the world. Require the player to go to a dungeon, get what your looking for or require the player to go back for some reason, then have the player have to go back again later for something else. Have different areas of interest spread out around a couple of towns in the area, and the player has to go back and forth through these areas of interest and the towns so the player gets a feeling for the area.

The ‘clover’ effect: Ever look at a clover? It has a stem and 3 or 4 balls for a leaf. You’re probably asking what a clover has to do with gameflow, well it was the best example I could think of so deal with it :p Anyway, in a game, you have to get from point A to point B. A and B don’t have to be the beginning and the end, they can just be any two parts of the game. Now, lets say you want to get to the next point, it seems easy, but then a loop is thrown in the mix and you have to go out and do something, well then while doing that another loop is thrown in, and during that, another loop is thrown in. The more you try, the further you get away from your goal. And that’s where the clover example comes in, to get from one side of the leaf to the other, you have to go around, you go through the first loop, only to encounter the second, and only to encounter the third from there, but in the end, you finally reach the other side.

I saw this A LOT in Breath of Fire IV. It seems that every little step you take in the plot, you have to go out and do a whole ton of stuff. Going off and doing a lot of petty work to move a little in the story is an example of the gameplay going too slow, its alright if you do it from time to time, but not throughout the whole game.

The purpose: The purpose in having the game flow at the right speed is so that its more enjoyable, more understandable, not too rushed, and not too slow. I've stated this before, but now heres another great reason why the game shouldn't just fly by. If every area you make you walk through and you're done, you could work for months and months on a game, and not have much game play because you're spending days making maps, and then spending a minute or two on those maps. If you slow down the game play, have the player spend more time in the areas you spent a long time making, and then sometimes having the player backtrack and visit these places multiple times, you can add a lot of playing time without too much work, well at least without AS much work.

[shadus]

Nice X 10000000.

[WarxePB]

Another excellently written tutorial. If no one has any objections, I'll add this to the toplist.

[DragonBlaze]

Thanks guys

Originally posted by Warxe_PhoenixBlade
Another excellently written tutorial. If no one has any objections, I'll add this to the toplist.

Well I don't have any objections :p

[Ace of Spades]

Ace: I object!
Some guy: -_- No, go eat your dog.
:p

Great tutorial, DragonBlaze. This should be a great help for those who are not so good at story writing.