Some Thoughts on Story Presentation, NPC Dialogue Structure, and Alignment, Etc.

I have written numerous versions of Fruella's dialogue and I use her in a lot of my modding experiments. I would totally re-write her dlg to a adventurer type scenario and get rid of the stupid marriage scenario. She's 3rd level and has experience. The family are loner outcasts not doing well at farming and have like 5cp. There is potential for a good storyline.
Meleny is another potential prospect. Poor farmgirl becomes well-known,rich druid.
One of my lines for Fruella is:[pc] Come with us. We'll get rich and famous;or dead.

 

Hehe try to do the same with a language that has over a hundred different inflexion markers.

Though, I must say that you did a splendid job. Take the encounter with Turuko, Kobort and
the gnolls for example. The first time I played Co8 I thought it was a vanilla encounter (note:
I played vanilla ToEE a long time ago and had both of them in my party).

 

I'm in favor of good dialogs. i'm the official babbler, so i like lots of blah blah.

But you should have in mind that lots of players also don't want to lose time chitchatting, so maybe an option to go straigth to the point could be done?

"-Dammit woman, i have a a temple to raid! Are you going to marry or not??-"
"-You're ugly, smelly and of different species!! okay.-"

 

We could liven it up a bit by focusing on each NPC -- some may babble, some may be "just the facts", etc. Also, rather than just random rumors, put good rumors (for free) into lengthier conversations. Not necessarily different ones, but players who want to keep it moving and get rumors the old-fashioned way (paid for to a comely wench in a bar) can do it their way, and those players happier with digging for grains of sand should get equally rewarded.

LOL, maybe reward characters who role-play (e.g., putting high scores in dialog skills) by not making them work as hard to get the info. A player who gives a PC a high CHA/Diplomacy may expect that the PC does the work, not the player.

Just a thought.

Alternately, we could control this by initial dialog options setting "play-style" flags.

And finally, maybe make better use of the log book (or log items) to distribute info without making players walk through dialog trees.

--thearioch

 

I'm fine with expositions in general, but I'd really have to see some examples to pass judgment.

It means content generated on the fly, according to a set of rules, as opposed to hand-crafted content.

For instance, Spore, instead of having pre-made creatures, animated and textured by hand, lets you piece together organs and members, and the game calculates the animations and behavior according to the creature's physiology.

Dwarf Fortress creates a randomly generated world, and populates it with various creatures who build communities and go to war based on AI, creating a virtual world complete with its own history on the fly.

Facade tries to do something similar with conversations - you type sentences/keywords, and the game characters react intelligently. There are also numerous chatbots around the web that try to mimick intelligent conversation, but there's still a long way to go. (I also hope that someday, advanced voice synthesizers will also be available that could replace voice actors, or perhaps rely on human input to shape the voice and emotion and then generate synthesized speech according to the guideline)

 

I think that (I believe this was the original question of the thread, although I'm not too sure...) a set dialogue that then turns into choices is the way to go within video games. I think it would be far too demanding to the scripters/writers to have to take into account all variables and decisions of past actions when writing dialogue and events for later on in the tale.

I understand the realm Game producers are heading in now, but I don't particularly care for that style of story telling. I think games like TOEE, Fallout, Kotor have the correct method down - where you have a set of ends you need to acomplish, but your means may take you in different directions - but ultimately you are still killing Zugg, finding the water chip and fighting Revan. I dont think having hard, rail-roaded paths occasionally are bad. Being linear isn't evil, and for myself personally - linear stories are often times better written and supported.. and it's all about the actual experience for me. *What* happens in the cave you are forced to go into is what makes an adventure fun, not how I talked my way out of going to that cave.

I think the integrity of the story suffers when you attempt to make it too malleable, changeable, crafted on the fly. I want strongly written characters and events, rather than content that is spread thin in efforts of supporting every possible outcome/choice.

Choices are fine, and make the game more enjoyable - but I've never been the kind of gamer to get all huffy when my computer screen (or GM) tells me "The king offers a reward for finding the source of evil plaguing the caves to the north. He emphasizes it's in your best interests to take his offer etc"

The creator is clearly telling you - "To keep my story going, you need to swallow this hook". That is acceptable, because RPG's while by definition need your varied responses and decisions, are still a story and the characters shouldn't be dictating the universe.. merely influencing it I think.