Interview A Decadent Interview at RPG Dot

[Vault Dweller]

I definitely have, and if that's what you're going for, then I retract my statements regarding that particular screenshot. However, in a real conversation you would, like you said, be able to ask who "they" are. If that was the intention, you might want to put that as a dialogue option wherever there are ambiguous referents.

I've thought about it, but it would have been a pointless option leading nowhere, from the dialogue design point of view.

Are they all of dialogue screens? If so, I'll take a look.

Yes.

http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=6763
http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7403
http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=9616
http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=11598

 

[Azarkon]

Okay, having read through most of the screenshots, some comments:

1. Comma usage is definitely a consistent issue. Consider this statement:

"I talked to Neleos, the assassins' guildmaster, he will send someone in at midnight."
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/7913/cado10aq.jpg

If I were to say this out loud, I'd do one of two things. I'd either say "I talked to Neleos, the assassins' guildmaster" first, in which case there'd be a break in-between worthy of a period, or I'd say "I talked to Neleos, the assassins' guildmaster, who'll send someone in at midnight." Subjects should usually be separated by periods.

2. Another stylistic issue is word and phrase choice. Consider the following:

"The Hall is lacking in any decoration and flamboyance..."
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/230/neleos24lh.jpg

I think you'll agree that the phrase "is lacking in any" sounds awkward. A much easier and clearer alternative would be: "The Hall is undecorated and devoid of flamboyance" or, closer to your sentence structure, "The Hall is in lack of decoration and flamboyance," though some would interpret that as awkward as well.

A similar issue:

"Someone at the inn has a trinket they want me to look at. As my apprentice, why won't you handle it?"
http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/4163/feng19mm.jpg

Not sure if this is a typo or not, but it should be "don't," as "won't" implies that you've rejected Loremaster Feng before, and that doesn't seem the case since he's giving you the quest for the first time.

On second thought, given the foreign name, maybe you're trying to create an accent? Hmm.

Regardless, most of these issues of awkwardness (along with whatever typos you might have) can be easily pointed out and resolved by a proof reader. I highly recommend one for your next project in order to avoid being criticized over the writing.

 

[Claw]

Screenshot 6: I had to read the first paragraph several times in order to figure out that "*they*" referred to Imperial Guards because of the way the sentences are set up.

Either that or you're just dense. It didn't even occur to me that there was anything that needed to be "figured out" in that dialogue. Linos is talking about the Imperial Guard from the beginning to the end. Even in the second sentence, where the Merchant's Guild is the grammatical subject, the real subject (or in other words, what the sentence is about) is the Imperial Guard's agenda.

In short, it's "Them, their agenda and they" - how doesn't that flow? How is that hard to follow?

"They," at the end of the third sentence, refers to the Merchant Guild, not the Imperial Guards, and it obviously makes no sense to repeat what was just said.

What are you talking about? The third sentence in that screenshot is "Do you want to know why?" and no matter how often I read the dialogue, the only time I find "they" being used is the instance you found so hard to relate to the Imperial Guards.

 

[bryce777]

In lack of? You have to be fucking kidding.

The hall LACKS any decoration or flamboyance
The hall IS LACKING decoration and flamboyance


in any is awkward, but not horribly so - is in lack of is not even engrish.

 

[galsiah]

With many of VD's "awkward" sentences, there is actually a quite reasonable way to read/interpret them so that they don't sound awkward. However, I think the point here VD is that the player might often need to read a sentence twice in order to hear things with the right intonation.

There's an important difference between written dialogue and speech. With speech, you automatically hear the sentence said in the correct way. With written dialogue you have to pick an interpretation as you read. In general, the longer the sentence, the more possible interpretations there will be - and the higher the chance you will get it wrong the first time.

If you want things to flow smoothly, I think it makes sense to prefer shorter sentences most of the time.

For instance, take the following:
...a corrupt guard here, a few smugglers there; those who sell stolen goods and those who buy stolen goods, and many, many others.

Reading it though fairly straight leaves me thinking that it should be:
... those who sell stolen goods, those who buy them, and many, many others.

However, with the right pauses and emphasis, what you have originally is perfectly acceptable. The trouble is that I don't read it with the right emphasis the first time through. I can only make it sound convincing by reading it through more than once, making a conscious effort to get it sounding right.

When I do get it sounding right, it's better than my "corrected" version - since it needs to be said in a very individual way to come off properly. In a way this is a good thing, since I can't just read it through without knowing how it is said - I really have to hear that character say it. However, it does mean I need to read it twice.

A lot of players probably won't read it twice, but will instead continue with a "that's a bit odd" thought or two.


On one other particular point, I think Azarkon is right on this:
Like a parasite, it sucks gold, the lifeblood of trade, getting fatter on it and corrupting people.

The "and corrupting people" just seems a bit out of place style wise. I think the following is a little better, but doesn't exactly preserve the meaning, so might be no good:
Like a parasite, it sucks gold, the lifeblood of trade, getting fatter on it {and/,} corrupting all it touches.

EDIT:

Not sure if this is a typo or not, but it should be "don't," as "won't" implies that you've rejected Loremaster Feng before, and that doesn't seem the case since he's giving you the quest for the first time.

Whoa. Deja vu.

 

[Azarkon]

bryce: "in lack of" is a very common English phrase. I don't know where your wtf is coming from. But whatever - I already said that the second phrase is likely awkward as well. The Hall lacks any decoration or flamboyance seems to be the most succint way of putting it.

What are you talking about? The third sentence in that screenshot is "Do you want to know why?" and no matter how often I read the dialogue, the only time "they" is used is the instance you found so hard to relate to the Imperial Guards.

Actually, upon re-reading, you're right. I was a bit hasty and ignored the connection between the previous screenshot and this one. Assuming that the player got to this screenshot by "What about the Imperial Guards?" then yes, *they* would refer to the I.G. However, taken by itself the paragraph implies that *them* (as in "What about them?") refers to the Merchant Guild that immediately follows in "A powerful Merchants Guild guild...," which created the confusion in the first place.

Scratch that one off.

 

[Hazelnut]

A lot of players probably won't read it twice, but will instead continue with a "that's a bit odd" thought or two.

I often do this, but I never really thought about why. I think you just explained it, cheers. :D

I don't mind in the slightest doing this - I'm quite used to it, and obviously don't even think about it. I don't think it's just getting written speech said in a fitting manner though. Thinking about it, there are often parts of deposition that trigger a link and I re-read to cement any associations/implications I think.

I wonder if this is why I read slowly compared to my wife? It's always bugged me that I manage ~50 pages of fiction an hour and she's done double that in the same time. Hehe I have a reason for my slowness now! :twisted:

Anyway, I think apart from obvious errors, editing the dialogue should be very low down the priority list - below the definitely gotta do threshold.


@VD: Interesting to hear that you've had offers of publishing deals. Are they large, famous publishers? I thought that the problem with the RPG genre is that devs don't get the publisher funding for these types of games? I suppose it's a different proposition something that's already being done at fairly low costs - they probably didn't offer what they's have to offer for a full time dev studio of 3-4 times the number of staff. Good news on the publicity front though... news has obviously spread further than the codex.

 

[Dhruin]

It needs improvement, VD. Sorry. Dismissing comma usage as unimportant and arguing that stylistic choices are different to errors is doing you a disservice.

 

[bryce777]

bryce: "in lack of" is a very common English phrase.

...which is not used the way in which you are attempting to use it.

 

[Vault Dweller]

With many of VD's "awkward" sentences, there is actually a quite reasonable way to read/interpret them so that they don't sound awkward. However, I think the point here VD is that the player might often need to read a sentence twice in order to hear things with the right intonation.
...

However, with the right pauses and emphasis, what you have originally is perfectly acceptable. The trouble is that I don't read it with the right emphasis the first time through. I can only make it sound convincing by reading it through more than once, making a conscious effort to get it sounding right.

When I do get it sounding right, it's better than my "corrected" version - since it needs to be said in a very individual way to come off properly. In a way this is a good thing, since I can't just read it through without knowing how it is said - I really have to hear that character say it. However, it does mean I need to read it twice.

I guess that's the problem. When I wrote the dialogues, I created characters in my mind: personalities, speech pattern, traits, etc, thought of what such a character would say and how, and then wrote *what he said* down. So, like you said, when you get it "sounding right", it suddenly makes sense. If you don't...

@VD: Interesting to hear that you've had offers of publishing deals. Are they large, famous publishers?

Not the top 3, but you've heard of them.

I thought that the problem with the RPG genre is that devs don't get the publisher funding for these types of games?

That's what I thought. Granted the development costs are small, but they still need to print boxes, burn disks, package, ship, etc. It aint cheap, and I don't think that the game has a lot (if any) of mainstream appeal for that kinda deal.

Good news on the publicity front though... news has obviously spread further than the codex.

Yep. Getting a lot of interest even from the mainstream sites. More coverage is coming.

It needs improvement, VD. Sorry. Dismissing comma usage as unimportant and arguing that stylistic choices are different to errors is doing you a disservice.

Ok, ok. I didn't dismiss comma usage and didn't claim that the dialogues are fine as they are. It was important for me to understand the nature of the errors though to decide what to do with them.

 

[themadhatter114]

Okay, having read through most of the screenshots, some comments:

1. Comma usage is definitely a consistent issue. Consider this statement:

"I talked to Neleos, the assassins' guildmaster, he will send someone in at midnight."
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/7913/cado10aq.jpg

If I were to say this out loud, I'd do one of two things. I'd either say "I talked to Neleos, the assassins' guildmaster" first, in which case there'd be a break in-between worthy of a period, or I'd say "I talked to Neleos, the assassins' guildmaster, who'll send someone in at midnight." Subjects should usually be separated by periods.

The only thing that sentence needs is a semicolon instead of the last comma.

 

[Azarkon]

Semicolons work, but periods are better.

I talked to Neleos, the assassins' guildmaster. He will send someone in at midnight.

 

[Roqua]

I don’t get it. Should he try and be grammar king or try and write dialogue as he envisioned the characters he invented as sounding.

If this was The Empire strikes Back you guys would of shit yourselves when Yoda’s dialogue popped up.

Yoda reads difficult, nonsense like “son of a nerf herder” reads difficult, and VD’s characters read difficult. Who cares? Am I the only one that wants this game sooner with some mild mistakes rather than later with less commas? Man the fuck up, bitches.

 

[ad hominem]

Just to throw my hat into the ring, here...

I agree with the idea of giving each character their own voice, and it's always nice to see thought put into various characters' idiosyncracies. However, in real-world speech when you try to communicate with these kinds of people there's a lot of "can you repeat that?" and "I didn't quite follow..." which I don't think we really pick up on too much. However, if you're having to do the same thing in written dialogue it can seem ponderous. For example, I'm a born-and-raised southerner while my wife is a yankee. There are some people in the south that she has to constantly ask to repeat themselves (unless I'm there to translate).

I would second the notion that you might want to hand it to a few select "English as a first language" people just to tighten the wording up a bit...I just skimmed the screenshots and while you're getting your point across, it doesn't quite "pop off the page" like it really could.

Now lead on, O Kinky Turtle.

 

[ad hominem]

Semicolons work, but periods are better.

I talked to Neleos, the assassins' guildmaster. He will send someone in at midnight.

Either works, it just depends on what you're tryinig to say. With slight alteration the period can be read as a sense of urgency, whereas the semicolon gives more of an indifferent tone to the statement.

 

[Azarkon]

I don’t get it. Should he try and be grammar king or try and write dialogue as he envisioned the characters he invented as sounding.

If this was The Empire strikes Back you guys would of shit yourselves when Yoda’s dialogue popped up.

Yoda reads difficult, nonsense like “son of a nerf herder” reads difficult, and VD’s characters read difficult. Who cares? Am I the only one that wants this game sooner with some mild mistakes rather than later with less commas? Man the fuck up, bitches.

Saying "there are issues" is not the same as saying "delay this game until you fix this, bitch." No one can tell VD what to do with his game, except for maybe his publishers if he ever gets outside funding. All we're doing is giving feedback. His team will make the final decision as to whether the game's ready for release or not.

 

[Roqua]

I don’t get it. Should he try and be grammar king or try and write dialogue as he envisioned the characters he invented as sounding.

If this was The Empire strikes Back you guys would of shit yourselves when Yoda’s dialogue popped up.

Yoda reads difficult, nonsense like “son of a nerf herder” reads difficult, and VD’s characters read difficult. Who cares? Am I the only one that wants this game sooner with some mild mistakes rather than later with less commas? Man the fuck up, bitches.

Saying "there are issues" is not the same as saying "delay this game until you fix this, bitch." No one can tell VD what to do with his game, except for maybe his publishers if he ever gets outside funding. All we're doing is giving feedback. His team will make the final decision as to whether the game's ready for release or not.

Well, thank you daddy. Can I stay up late and watch Friends reruns if i do all my homework?

 

[Slylandro]

Some of this was already commented on but I'll try to elucidate what I meant (much) earlier when I said the dialogue is too colloquial.

First, the overuse of commas to me signifies that the writer was attempting to emulate the colloquial nature of casual conversation by inserting commas in several places where they seem like natural pauses in spoken dialogues. I fear this doesn't translate very well to writing unfortunately. A prime example of this seems to be dialogue #2. Several reasonable rewrites have already been made so I won't comment further on this.

Dialogue #4 is awkward. I'm not sure how to best improve it, here is my attempt:

From:
"The underworld exists and flourishes wherever money changes hands. Like a parasite, it sucks gold, the lifeblood of trade, getting fatter on it and corrupting people. While I don't think that it could be completely eliminated, it should be held in check. That cursed Forty Thieves Guild should never have been allowed to reign as freely as it does in Teron. It's time to tip the scales."

Hope I copied that right.

=>

"The underworld flourishes wherever money changes hands. Like a parasite, it fattens itself on the lifeblood of our trade. I don't think it could ever be completely eliminated. But at the very least it should be kept in check. The Forty Thieves should never have been allowed to reign as freely as it does in Teron. It's time to tip the scales."

Anyway, not sure if this is the best way to rewrite the dialogue, just a first try, so don't flame me. Just trying to help.

Explanation for changes:
(1) exists and flourishes seems redundant in this case. If it flourishes, it must exist, right?
(2) I eliminated "sucks gold, the lifeblood of trade," because it breaks the nice flow of your symbolism and doesn't seem to give the reader enough credit to figure it out. It's a straightforward metaphor.
(3) I removed the part about "corrupts people." It doesn't fit in well with the parasite simile you already worked up in the same sentence. Maybe you could put this in a sentence following the one about parasitism. This could be a good opportunity to use parallelism. For example, maybe:

"Like a parasite, it fattens itself on the lifeblood of our trade. Like a disease, it corrupts our noblest of citizens."

(4) The 3rd sentence didn't really have anything wrong, I just changed it because I felt like it. :wink:
(5) If the Forty Thieves Guild has already been mentioned as a Guild (the dialogue screen seems to imply that it already has), then I would strip the "Guild" part in favor of conciseness and because it sounds better. Since The Forty Thieves is capitalized, it's clear that we are referring to a specific organization instead of an arbitrary group of people. But this is a minor point and this is what you actually did in Dialogue #5 anyway.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Thanks, that helps.

 

[Volourn]

VD, don't listen to these fuckers!!!!

 

[bryce777]

Well, the biggest problem with the parasite thing is simple; from whom does it suck the gold?

"Like a parasite, it sucks gold, the lifeblood of trade, getting fatter on it and corrupting people." -> it sucks gold from us all like a parasite, getting fatter even as it corrupts all who cross its path.

 

[Azarkon]

I like the "lifeblood of trade" phrase, if it could be included somehow.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Well, the biggest problem with the parasite thing is simple; from whom does it suck the gold?

"Like a parasite, it sucks gold, the lifeblood of trade, getting fatter on it and corrupting people." -> it sucks gold from us all like a parasite, getting fatter even as it corrupts all who cross its path.

From trade in general. Goods are being stolen (lost revenues) and sold cheaper (lost market and revenues), which in turns supports independant craftsmen/traders (competition & lost revenues). It also corrupts people and like anti-virus costs money to maintain secure trade networks, etc. That was the idea.

 

[Roqua]

Some of this was already commented on but I'll try to elucidate what I meant (much) earlier when I said the dialogue is too colloquial.

First, the overuse of commas to me signifies that the writer was attempting to emulate the colloquial nature of casual conversation by inserting commas in several places where they seem like natural pauses in spoken dialogues. I fear this doesn't translate very well to writing unfortunately. A prime example of this seems to be dialogue #2. Several reasonable rewrites have already been made so I won't comment further on this.

Dialogue #4 is awkward. I'm not sure how to best improve it, here is my attempt:

From:
"The underworld exists and flourishes wherever money changes hands. Like a parasite, it sucks gold, the lifeblood of trade, getting fatter on it and corrupting people. While I don't think that it could be completely eliminated, it should be held in check. That cursed Forty Thieves Guild should never have been allowed to reign as freely as it does in Teron. It's time to tip the scales."

Hope I copied that right.

=>

"The underworld flourishes wherever money changes hands. Like a parasite, it fattens itself on the lifeblood of our trade. I don't think it could ever be completely eliminated. But at the very least it should be kept in check. The Forty Thieves should never have been allowed to reign as freely as it does in Teron. It's time to tip the scales."

Anyway, not sure if this is the best way to rewrite the dialogue, just a first try, so don't flame me. Just trying to help.

Explanation for changes:
(1) exists and flourishes seems redundant in this case. If it flourishes, it must exist, right?
(2) I eliminated "sucks gold, the lifeblood of trade," because it breaks the nice flow of your symbolism and doesn't seem to give the reader enough credit to figure it out. It's a straightforward metaphor.
(3) I removed the part about "corrupts people." It doesn't fit in well with the parasite simile you already worked up in the same sentence. Maybe you could put this in a sentence following the one about parasitism. This could be a good opportunity to use parallelism. For example, maybe:

"Like a parasite, it fattens itself on the lifeblood of our trade. Like a disease, it corrupts our noblest of citizens."

(4) The 3rd sentence didn't really have anything wrong, I just changed it because I felt like it. :wink:
(5) If the Forty Thieves Guild has already been mentioned as a Guild (the dialogue screen seems to imply that it already has), then I would strip the "Guild" part in favor of conciseness and because it sounds better. Since The Forty Thieves is capitalized, it's clear that we are referring to a specific organization instead of an arbitrary group of people. But this is a minor point and this is what you actually did in Dialogue #5 anyway.

Both paragraphs communicate effectively what they are supposed to communicate. Ones a little sleeker. I still don’t see any justification to put much effort or time into changing anything. Just as I don’t see any reason to spend more time on the graphics. I would rather see more quests or more features than have any more time spent wasted on superficial bullshit.

I, and everyone, perfectly understood what I was supposed to get from the first paragraph. The second paragraph did nothing but add a little gloss. I’m not knocking your argument; I just don’t see it as a problem at all. Not even a little problem. I guess graphics whores needs a new partner—enter the grammar/composition whores (or dialogue whores for short). Keep sucking on your superficial dicks.

Yes, I know my second and forth paragraphs are fragments (yet I some how communicated my point well). Just a year ago i couldn't even spell gradeiate. Now I is one.

 

[Azarkon]

The underworld sucks my gold wherever I go, yo. They like mosquitoes. Get outta here and teach da Forty Thieves some manners. I give you big bang for it.

Underworld. Takes gold. Mine. Like parasite. Go. Restore the balance. Kill Forty Thieves. It is time.

Either should work fine, right?