Next-Gen Storytelling

Deus Ex creator Warren Spector has written a large four-part “Next-Gen Storytelling” article for The Escapist magazine. In it, Warren talks about how to tell a better story, how to build a believable world, and what can be done to enhance character interaction in next-generation games. A snip from part three:

At JPS we talk a lot about how cool it’d be to build a virtual game master. (Heck, we used to talk about it at Origin and Looking Glass almost 20 years ago.) We didn’t do it then and we still haven’t done it. Mores the pity – we need a system that acts as our representative once players get their griefing hands on our carefully crafted works of art.

The simple truth is that you can’t get a well-constructed plot through emergence – not yet, anyway, maybe never. Good stories are constructed, not found. Personally meaningful stories, sure, but good stories with universal significance? That requires an author. The virtual game master, like a real, human game master in a face-to-face roleplaying experience, can really do some good here.

A good GM doesn’t throw out a good story because players act in unanticipated ways; a good GM modifies local actions a bit to accommodate unexpected actions while, simultaneously nudging players back onto the main story path – all the stuff I mentioned above.

Similarly, a director, rehearsing actors in a play, accepts improvisations that enhance the experience of the play, while guiding the actors along a specific path, constrained according to his or her own view of what the play’s really “about.”

Players need similar guidance as they play the open-ended story games I hope lie in our future.