ok...heres the problem and the difference between stories...and games. in a game, the player will always win...will always live through the entire game and so forth. sure they will die a few times along the way...but that doesnt change the story at all. they just start over again...so there is no worring about if the player will see the climax or not. because they always will (assuming that they play the entire game) now in a book or a story...you have many characters. some of them may reach the end or their journey, some of them wont. its part of the story that events happen to the characters. for example...me and my friends are going on a road trip to omaha nebraska. now whos to say that we will ever make it there? maybe our car breaks down...we are stuck in utah for a couple of days...and decide to turn around and forget about it. good story huh? now lets say that 2 of us want to continue on to omaha from utah, and the other 2 want to go back. in a game...the player will always be one of the 2 to continue, but in real life, i might be one of the ones to go back home. now i know that that still isnt a good story...but its real life. maybe i just play a part in a much grander story. maybe i am just a sidekick...who knows? maybe im just the brother-in-law of the hero. it doesnt matter... now the way to get around this problem and make it into a game...would be to be able to choose your character at the beginning of the game. lets take my example of 4 people driving across the country. at the beginning, you are able to choose which one you want to be. you play through as one character...and there is no way that that character will ever see the end of the game...its impossible for that character to make it. he will die in colorado every time....its inevitable. now another character will see an entirely different "ending"...because all characters will be different and see different things the end of the game will be different for each of them. basically you are making a game similar to the movies where they follow one character through his events for the day. then they switch to another character, and see his events though the day. each one in itself is only part of the grander story...so basically its a non-linear story...kinda like pulp fiction. anyways...thats my idea...and i came up with a great way to implement this into a story (an no its not about 4 people driving). so i just wanted some opinions. and ideas or comments are very welcome. -Luxury

of course if they stay with one player they''ll miss part of the game. Perhap you could break up everything that happens into scenes (perhaps ten minutes to an hour long). Then for each scene the player picks one of the people present and plays him, the others become npcs.

Why can''t someone make a game where you get to play the roll of the bad guys who mission is to kill the good guys?.

!!

You could play a Kobold character in Baldur''s Gate and get killed as you cross a 6 10th level hero team!

You could play a peasant, and earn your life harvesting a crop after 1000 hours of play...

Or maybe, you''d play a sidekick character, so limited you''d never make it to the end anyhow...


People play games to become heroes, to slay monsters, and become legends! Maybe they''ll play baddies, to slay innocent people and heroes...
In many RPGs you start as a farmer, or even less, but you always end up beeing a hero (knight, wizard, cleric, ...).
What makes you a farmer, a second role character? Because the game is shaped around the player character, because you get rewarded after your action, because you gain strength, experience and special abilities, you cannot be considered a second class character anymore. A farmer who can kill a giant dragon with a single glance is not a farmer anymore, he''s a slayer, a blademaster or a fearfull wizard!

Whatever you do, the player is the central character. When you write the story board, you write it for the player.
If you write a global story, in which the player can be any character (hero, peasant, bard, ...) then the player might get lost, the story will not be interresting enough. But if that''s what you want to write, write a novel, not a game!

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster

of course if they stay with one player they''ll miss part of the game. Perhap you could break up everything that happens into scenes (perhaps ten minutes to an hour long). Then for each scene the player picks one of the people present and plays him, the others become npcs.

thats basically what i am saying...you would have to play through the game a few times as different players to get the entire story. but each person would go through different experiences, and have a different perspective on the game. each time you play through...the other characters are npcs.

-Luxury

Ummm... hasn''t anyone of you played Harvest Moon? That''s a kind of a role playing game, where you are a farmer and have 365 days to run your farm. So don''t speak bad about farmers in RPGs

Love,
Christer

quote:Original post by phueppl1

Ever played

HL - Opposing Force, Anonymous poster?

thats a good point...although they were 2 different games...they basically told the same story from 2 different perspectives. now if they could get a few more perspectives, like maybe the guy in the suit...and put them all into one game...then thats what im talking about.

-Luxury

I think the key to this idea is that each of the endings need to be satifying. For instance, if I play as the sidekick and then die halfway through, I''m going to be pissed off . The side-kick''s ending would have to be just as interesting as the main heroes, even if it''s different.


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Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant and she fell on me? Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny.