Editorial RPG Codex Editorial: Without Map, Compass, or Destination - MRY on RPG Writing

[Azarkon]

The aspect of RPG writing that is hardest (or most susceptible to the concerns I have) is the design aspect. Simply writing segments of dialogue or fiction is not some esoteric skill in a domain that lacks training methods.

Right, game design is interactive creative work, and requires thinking in ways that are alien to traditional aesthetes. As you say, people who can do this successfully, without training - which does not exist - are in short supply.

Fifty years later, the game development industry is still basically nerds "flying blind" in their basements, except the basements have become corporate offices, the budgets have risen to hundreds of millions, and the nerds must now answer to and occasionally wear suits.

And this is relevant, because many people in this thread have this idea that we don't "need" high quality writing in games - that it's all a fool's mission to make games "art" - and so the problem doesn't exist, it's made up.

But the problem doesn't just apply to CRPG writing. It applies to game design as a whole.

There are no easy solutions.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Same stuff.

Just another consequence stemming from root cause of misunderstanding what "writing" in games actually is.
Im not saying this as if its some kind of personal fault of MRY. Its just a globally unrealized thing made worse by big money moving in and mass market adoption because those meneagers, CEOs and producers understand it even less then devs who are naturally pushed to see the connections. So they establish a coding department, a writing department, art department, design, this director, that director, - and you end up with different departments not communicating to each other while owners and managers search for scape goats.

 

[Azarkon]

You can get rid of the dialogue boxes, the flowery prose, the romances and deep characters and attempts at poetry; you can switch out writers for screen writers, novelists for directors, poets for graphic artists, but the argument still applies to everything that's left. Game design suffers from all of the problems MRY mentioned and more - more, because actually, what makes a game "fun" is even less well-defined than what makes CRPG writing strong. With writing, at the minimum you have guide lines from other mediums. With game design, well, the best you can do is minimum pay play testers.

Pillars of Eternity didn't fail because of the writing, not primarily in any case; it failed because Sawyer, an industry veteran, thought, surely, he could do better than a twenty years old game based on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - and proceeded to totally miss the mark. Same with Larian, who managed to screw up their own formula in the sequel because, for the same reason, they didn't understand what made it work in the first place. And despite the Codex's best efforts, we've only figured out a fraction as to why. You can't teach this, the critics are no help, and revisions to base design are expensive to near impossible. Add in the management problems and business cycles and it's easy to see why the industry is in decline.

 

[MRY]

But the problem doesn't just apply to CRPG writing. It applies to game design as a whole.

I'm not sure I entirely agree. In many areas of game design, it is possible to iterate constantly and scientifically, and in many genres, the gameplay structure is sufficiently consistent -- and the quantity of games sufficiently great -- that the body of work you can study (and the market can evaluate) is much greater. For instance, I would say it is much easier to know what does and doesn't work in Metroidvania design that to know what works and doesn't work in RPG dialogue, and for that reason we now have -- if rather same-y -- mass-produced and well-balanced Metroidvanias. To give a homegrown example, it was much easier for Vault Dweller to iterate and hone AOD's combat system than its dialogues -- you could start with a combat demo, and you can make little adjustments with significant impacts until you get things that feel right. Much harder to do that with writing.

 

[Azarkon]

But the problem doesn't just apply to CRPG writing. It applies to game design as a whole.

I'm not sure I entirely agree. In many areas of game design, it is possible to iterate constantly and scientifically, and in many genres, the gameplay structure is sufficiently consistent -- and the quantity of games sufficiently great -- that the body of work you can study (and the market can evaluate) is much greater. For instance, I would say it is much easier to know what does and doesn't work in Metroidvania design that to know what works and doesn't work in RPG dialogue, and for that reason we now have -- if rather same-y -- mass-produced and well-balanced Metroidvanias. To give a homegrown example, it was much easier for Vault Dweller to iterate and hone AOD's combat system than its dialogues -- you could start with a combat demo, and you can make little adjustments with significant impacts until you get things that feel right. Much harder to do that with writing.

You can iterate on a design, but not throw it out entirely. AoD is an exception in this regard, because with ten years in development, it could do a lot more than the typical game. And you're right about certain formulas being discovered - Metroidvania, for one - which are understood enough that we can consistently produce quality designs. But the overwhelming majority of genres do not fall under this umbrella. CRPG systems are an excellent example. You can copy the successful systems, but that's about it. Figuring out what to change is exceedingly hard, such that successes feel like dumb luck, with companies unable to reproduce their results. Yet, you can't just copy, any more than you can tell the same story repeatedly: because people get bored of it.

Also, being able to turn out a quick technical demo is no different than being able to offer up Sagus Cliffs during alpha. The fraction does not reflect the whole. Game play like narrative is also progressive - the further along you are, the more complicated it gets, and a system that works well at the beginning of the game could fall very flat later, or vice versa. Take Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, as an example: terrible at level 1, but comes into its own in the higher levels; Pillars of Eternity is the opposite.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

If some game managed to work well across many sequels its because the company figured out the correct language (as i explain it above) and iterated by using the same overall design language to create more such games.

The first POE failed in trying to change too much of the language that made core of the experience of games it was trying to emulate. The second game improved many things but failed again at the grand story level and many of the dialogues.

Same with Larian and DoS. Instead of iterating on and improving the good parts of the design - language of the first game, maybe removing a few things that didnt work well, they decided to add more new stuff and change what worked well.
I mean, Larian certainly did well financially so they probably dont care at all and think about it all as success.

Also, as far as i know AOD iterated a LOT on the writing too. As far as writing as typing text, story, characters and dialogues is concerned.

 

[Nalenth]

Same with Larian, who managed to screw up their own formula in the sequel because, for the same reason, they didn't understand what made it work in the first place. And despite the Codex's best efforts, we've only figured out a fraction as to why. You can't teach this, the critics are no help, and revisions to base design are expensive to near impossible. Add in the management problems and business cycles and it's easy to see why the industry is in decline.

It's pretty clear what they've screwed up compared to the first game (the armor and initiative system), but it isn't a game breaker for me personally (it's still functional and "fun" overall). It's their most successful game to date, by the way.

 

[Freddie]

This is an article about issues in cRPG's.

This is painfully clear explanation why cRPG's are shit with few exceptions, and those few exceptions appear to come from people who played p'n'p games.

In p'n'p sessions there is game leader, who has no active part in player interactions, usually referred as Dungeon Master (or DM). Back in my day that title appeared to stuck no matter if campaign involved any dungeons or not.

My way to be a DM was to learn, not only from the books, but from the DM's. How they tell the story? What is happening? How are NPC's? What kind of interactions are possible? Is the campaign good? (sometimes journey is indeed more interesting than conclusion). I had all the possibilities to learn when I was a player.

There were some very practical stuff, like random encounters that made sense, city layouts that made sense, NPC characters whom had motives and personality, that good DM can deliver. We had all the possibilities to learn.

The whole article is good at one thing. Pointing out that there are people who don't really understand that line between an RPG and cRPG is limitation, not the desired outcome and about people who think they want to make an RPG, when they should be doing adventure games of films.

I have lurked here for about decade, and this is among worst decline I'v seen, including people applauding for this. Shit, has the Codex changed.

 

[SniperHF]

The whole article is good at one thing. Pointing out that there are people who don't really understand that line between an RPG and cRPG is limitation, not the desired outcome and about people who think they want to make an RPG, when they should be doing adventure games of films.

This is all fine and good in a world where those transcendent RPGs don't exist, some of which were noted in the post. But they do exist.
It is possible to get beyond many of these limitations. It's just really really rare.

What may not be possible within the current state of the industry is to set out to do it. Every example we end up with may always be lightning in a bottle.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Thats another general delusion. That misunderstanding that cRPGs should emulate PnP in exact same way or as close as possible.

The truth is the two are completely different mediums which use too many different basic tools in their "language" with which they create the gameplay-story-experience.
The video games and especially cRPGs dont have limitations in that sense at all - because they cannot ever fully become PnP games. What is so wrongly considered limitations by many should be seen and understood as specific possibilities, options and style that PnP games cannot have, use or emulate.

Kinda like TB combat was considered a result of computer limitations, but is actually a whole world onto itself with possibilities other types of combat just cannot provide.
Kinda like limitations in gameplay options achieved through character abilities is what differentiates RPGs from other genres.

Of course there is a meta overlap between the two, like between a parent and an offspring, but there cannot ever be a full transmutation.
Trying to achieve it is a fulls errand, a Sisyphus toil, absurd in on itself and most often just a marketing shtick.

cRPGs should be considered a separate evolutionary fork. A seed from that tree that become a hybrid in a different substrate and environment that mutated into another form of life and needs to be allowed to grow in its own way instead of being hammered into a shape it cannot posses. In that way the PnP games themselves can continue their own evolution further in their own way.

 

[sser]

Game writers should be sentenced to at least 1 day of hard labor a week.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Torment spend 5 years in development. 5 years. If that's not enough of a time frame to provide some internal coaching and critique, that's a colossal failure of management, producers and the creative leads. Hey, wait a second, the entire justification for running another Kickstarter was so the writers can get enough time to get vexxed and polished and to put their work through revisions. Remember that shit?

That was the sales pitch. Meanwhile evidently everything was so rushed that "audition" ended up going straight into the game. So much about those famous iterations Fargo loved to brag about.

You can't blame the failings of Numanuma on natural workings of games industry and inherent challenges of a job, when it was obviously a poorly run, poorly planned and poorly executed project with absent CEO, incompetent producer and self-fellating lead writer.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

IHaveHugeNick You insensitive toxic male! Welcome back

 

[2menLeefs]

TLDR
Your argument is constructed on a non existent presumptions and hence is hot air.
Writing in vidya sucks cause its done by talentless suckers.


--- Relatively Few People Can or Would Be RPG Writers - and they suck...

It is thanks to ... passion for RPGs that there are good writers in the genre

What are you talking about? Chris A literally cannot comprehend how to play Arcanum.
People like Hamburger Helper literally hate video games.
YOU have not played a game in years!
Have you seen the picture of Obsidian writers? These women love their stories, but not games.
Its like developers not using their product - which is often the case - but is never good.

To write for RPGs with robust dialogue trees, one must be able to: (1) write compelling dialogue; (2) design an interactive, branching, reactive conversation; and (3) operate the software to implement that conversation.

This is such a apologist stretch. You can literally daydream in a shitbox about branching interactiveness. You have to be dead inside not to be able to create interesting paths to glory.
And the tools in use are not some arcane commandline scripting terminals held together by spit and tears.
Its point and click.
The only thing to do is write above fanfiction level.

With Torment, the nature of structuring the dialogue meant that the writing was chunked into nodes and each node required a deliberative act. The fugue state was impossible. Every labored step was a conscious and conscientious act of discomfort.

You are doing it wrong...
You have to write what you want in a classic way and look for breaking points later. Managing branches is easier when the real ones are few.
Isnt that what famed, fired Chris A is doing? Just chucking out page after page and letting someone else enter it into boxes...

I think there is a reason why you don't see RPG writers stick around for long: most do three or four games, tops, before switching to some other role.

How do you know? What role?

Given that the job demands competence in two different fields of endeavor

Repeating this argument wont make it true.

and given that the pay is worse than what one can make writing software documentation or teaching SAT test skills

How much did you get paid for TTON?

Nevertheless, the number of people actively seeking it out can't be that great, and the number of those who are realistic in doing so is even smaller.

And they all suck because they dont have any skills beside writing fanfics.

The people who wind up doing this work do it because they love RPGs; otherwise, why not do something else?

Because they suck at anything else. And flipping burgers is not an alternative.
Didnt you hear a single english major joke in your life?

--- RPG Writers Cannot Meaningfully Develop Their Talents Before Their Work Goes Into a Game
This is bullshit because it builds on the previous assumption that RPG writing requires certain specialty talents. Which is just bullshit.

--- But All That's Also True of Interactive Fiction Games, and They're Great!
But isnt it exactly the available talent development that you wanted to see previously?
You dont need to compare CYOA quality to vidya. Arguably they give you the exactly required practice to
form structure in branching dialouge. You dont need reference some ancient IF games either.
There are modern CYOA that read well and are critically well received.

--- It Is Totally Unclear What RPG Writing Should Be
Yes it is.
Form and Content.
The form should be good. Read "On Style" or some shit. Copy Hemmingway, idunno. You are the writer.
The content should be interesting. Harder to achieve. But still, copy and rearrange what you know.

But the heart of RPG writing is not the node-or-smaller level execution, but the overall structure.

BBbullshit. Its not the structure. To the player, the structure is practically invisible - if it exists in any categorically recognizable state at all!
Its the ideas (hopefully stolen and metamorphed from older, better works).

Should conversations be long or short? How many options is too many or too few? Should dialogue choices be ordered according to consistent logic (as in Bioware games) or have organic chaos (as in Arcanum)? Should NPCs be romanceable? Should the game offer broad and deep lore that goes beyond the four corners of the player's adventure? Should dialogues include prose elements like description, or just the spoken word? Should paraphrasing ever be used (i.e., "He tells you that X, Y, Z happened" rather than "He tells you 'X, Y, Z happened")? Should there be a narrative voice or should any narration and description be neutral and detached? Should characters speak in the "high mimetic" heroic mode typical to fantasy until 30 years ago, or should they speak naturalistically according to modern diction, as is more common in the grimdark fantasies of today? Should stories be epic or personal? Should NPCs invite you to opine on their moral quandaries? Are more words better or are fewer more careful words better? How predefined should the PC be? How active and interactive should companions be?

All those questions have obvious answers... And they are mostly not structure either...
In fact, you are mixing up form and content in there too...

--- The Classics Offer No Formula
They do. Buts its the content, the ideas, not the form that makes them your favourites.
The form barely qualifies them.
The good thing is, you dont need great form! But you are not allowed bad form and bad form is visible and trainable and a failing writers problem.

--- Criticism Is Doomed
I dont think there is a single creative individual who listened to professional critics...
And you are lamenting their absence, calling it a big problem...
And then disprove yourself even!
I find you lack of "structure" disturbing.

--- The Market Is Too Multivariate and Too Limited

I find myself running out of steam, and I suspect this point is fairly obvious, so I will be brief.

I dont think you have a point at all here..

If there were a thousand BOOKS a year, and somehow customers knew what each one offered well enough to choose among them, it might be possible to isolate the good writing variable from the others and use the market as an experimental laboratory. And there are, but it isn't.
Or is it?
The "market" does not decide quality.

--- Exogenous Influences Can Only Take You So Far

There is a reason why good games make such terrible novelizations and movie adaptations, and that is because so much of what is going on in a game is not the telling of a linear story.

*doubt*
What games narratives where novelized and filmed? Doom and ResEvil? And run he did?
Its not interactivity that creates shit. You can reduce games down to one path, one protag and make an interesting narrative.

In conclusion, you shovel so much distraction on top of your thesis as if to dilute the message and core.

--- The Production Cycle Does Not Allow for Major Revisions
Do you remember how certain companies advertise nr of lines of text as a feature?
How many lines does Fallout 1 have?
Is Fallout a benchmark for possible full revisions?
Was Dostoyevskis "Poor Folk" in a production cycle?
Whats your point? That revisions would save PoE?
Didnt you start this thinkpiece claiming that greed/money was a nonfactor?

--- Bottom Line
Vidya writers suck, as you properly recognized, because its a shit job and it attracts low brow shit.
A modern english major does not even make them well read... Let alone practitioners of writing.
At best they write YA content in YA form... But I am not YA...

You know, if you actually follow your argument - good RPG writing, in fact writing and its improvement, becomes borderline impossible!

Why did all the great TTON writers write shit?

 

[2menLeefs]

Tldr rpg writing is hard

That actually is the thesis.

Btw, this is not the thesis as argued. The argued thesis is that the writers are not responsible for shit writing because.
Verdict: NOT GUILTY!
Great lawyer!

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

It makes no sense to discuss bad cRPG writing if you do not know what good cRPG writing is. You need to provide examples of good cRPG writing and discuss them in a detailed manner.

These discussions tend to put cRPG writing in a bad light because they are unconsciously compared to classic novels and such.

That does not make a lick of sense because (1) you are always picking the best representatives of the genre, but 99% of the world literature is garbage; (2) literature is a different genre and cRPG writing need to be analysed by its own standards.

cRPGs involve a series of tropes of gameplay that would represent bad writing in literature. For instance, any cRPG worth of its salt will force you to walk around talking to random people and making stupid questions such as: “How is life?”, “Did you hear anything strange?”, etc.

It is not clear what cRPG writing is even when we avoid the temptation to make comparisons with different genres. Should we include item descriptions and quests as elements of cRPG writing? Or cRPG writing should include only the story and the main quest? I never read any piece on the subject that made an effort to clarify this problem, much less acknowledge it.

It is hard to identify what cRPG writing is because the writing text is tied to the gameplay, and we do not know when one starts and the other ends. This also means that the very notion of cRPG writer as a profession is misguided and betrays a poor understanding of the genre. You cannot have a good cRPG writer that does not think as a developer and ignores the importance of gameplay.

The fact that is a common practice among cRPG studios to hire different writers to make a single game should give you reason to stop and think. Different writers have different sensibilities, styles and abilities and this will impact negatively on the game. cRPGs should have only one writer.

 

[Nalenth]

cRPGs involve a series of tropes of gameplay that would represent bad writing in literature. For instance, any cRPG worth of its salt will force you to walk around talking to random people and making stupid questions such as: “How is life?”, “Did you hear anything strange?”, etc.

It is not clear what cRPG writing is even when we avoid the temptation to make comparisons with different genres. Should we include item descriptions and quests as elements of cRPG writing? Or cRPG writing should include only the story and the main quest? I never read any piece on the subject that made an effort to clarify this problem, much less acknowledge it.

It is hard to identify what cRPG writing is because the writing text is tied to the gameplay, and we do not know when one starts and the other ends. This also means that the very notion of cRPG writer as a profession is misguided and betrays a poor understanding of the genre. You cannot have a good cRPG writer that does not think as a developer and ignores the importance of gameplay.

In the end, it's still a videogame and not a novel. The writing should be coherent and closely tie-in with the gameplay. This is much more important than the literary quality of the prose itself.

 

[2menLeefs]

It is hard to identify what cRPG writing is because the writing text is tied to the gameplay

Its not and its not. Vidya is the same as any story. Reductionist - its plot and characters. It follows the same rules in episodic form.
Imagine Fallout as a TV mini series.

 

[Nalenth]

It is hard to identify what cRPG writing is because the writing text is tied to the gameplay

Its not and its not. Vidya is the same as any story. Reductionist - its plot and characters. It follows the same rules in episodic form.
Imagine Fallout as a TV mini series.

No, it's a completely different medium. You can't compare the two with the same standards. If Fallout would receive a TV mini series, it wouldn't resemble the original game in any way other than the setting.

 

[Infinitron]

Don't you undermine your own argument when you accuse developers of not playing video games, and then say, actually the unique structure of a video game doesn't matter anyway?

I've always thought one reason why Kickstarter-era throwback RPG developers struggled with writing is a lack of recent experience with the structure and pacing of text-based isometric RPGs. They just did not have good enough intuition about what to put where to make things "feel right", an intuition that game developers in the 1990s could take for granted.

 

[2menLeefs]

If Fallout would receive a TV mini series, it wouldn't resemble the original game in any way other than the setting.

And the writing... I am not comparing mediums.
You create a jack of all trades protag and drive him/her?roffles through v13 to mil base.
You could literally copy quips from dialogue out of the game.
Same plot. Pick the most interesting quest resolutions. You'd get a great playthrough. Your only problem is establishing a believable, skilled protag and good motivation...
e01 - out, finding gun on skeletton, ambush by huge rat and critting it, discovery, journey through desert, last drop of water in flask, ssands, cute gurl, fight with gang with ala jojimbo, victory, gurl saved, info about v13 from saving girl, premotion
e02 - vault13, caravan, junktown and resolution
e03 - hub
etc

You can have fairly long philosophical dialogue scenes with the junktown boss and his opponent.
Dialogue with gurl. Wiht the master. Raider boss could ask rhetorical questions about violence.
All would be very fallouty. And scenic.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

I don’t buy it. First, some things that look good in a cRPG will look idiotic in a novel or a movie. That’s why movies inspired on novels, HQs or games can suck. They are entirely different genres.

The discrepancy between cRPGs and novels is even bigger than the difference between novels and movies. cRPGs are games, first and foremost. The reader interacts with the gameworld and have obstacles to surpass; he can choose between different possible storylines, tactics, etc.

We could say that cRPGs are games that also happen to have narrative elements that are common with different genres (style requirements, good prose, etc.). But they also have some structural elements tied to gameplay that are a world of their own. cRPG writers tend to fail in both tasks: they are not really well read people and they tend to suck at this design stuff.

 

[2menLeefs]

I don’t buy it. First, some things that look good in a cRPG will look idiotic in a novel or a movie.

Obviously, but thats not the argument. The argument is that RPGame writing is just writing. Just different versions of an "event" in parallel and are written as such.
Whats the name of that Netflix CYOA.
As far as I know rpgwriters write quests and those are just classical and not so classical narratives. 1000 year old plots. Those plots are driven by characters. Those have backgrounds and a way to do things, a way they stand, walk, talk. They have motivations. All the same as in movies, books, whathave you.
You are writing multiple possible events if you are ambitious! And how many rpgs are actually ambitious? Most rpgs have no CnC and their dialogue is flavour quip. Can rpgwriters write quips? Or are they even not capable of that.
Like most of good Bioware writing is a flavour quip that leads to the same well written response by the NPC.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Those plots are driven by characters. Those have backgrounds and a way to do things, a way they stand, walk, talk. They have motivations. All the same as in movies, books, whathave you.

But the way the characters do things in cRPGs is conditioned by gameplay conventions that bears no resemblance to other genres.

You look at the written text as the writing part of a cRPG, but the writing part of a cRPG also involves gameplay conventions that require a proper understanding of game design and has nothing to do with literature. For instance, whether the player has a huge inventory on his ass or not, or whether the player can kill a whole city or not, is cRPG writing. People will put this stuff in the design territory, but it is also writing because you are structuring the laws of your game world.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Don't you undermine your own argument when you accuse developers of not playing video games, and then say, actually the unique structure of a video game doesn't matter anyway?

I've always thought one reason why Kickstarter-era throwback RPG developers struggled with writing is a lack of recent experience with the structure and pacing of text-based isometric RPGs. They just did not have good enough intuition about what to put where to make things "feel right", an intuition that game developers in the 1990s could take for granted.

If this thread has taught me anything it’s that CRPG writers face an additional challenge: the audience does not have a uniform level of reading comprehension...

Being over a decade out of practice must have had an impact. The corollary here is that the text does a lot more heavy lifting in a mostly unvoiced isometric game compares to the cutscene dialogue driven games Obsidian had been making for the entirety of its existence pre Pillars. Watching a story that’s not engaging feels like much less of a chore than reading a story that’s not engaging.