What I am trying to do by giving you thes poitners, is to make you think deeper. Maybe it''s not the way ou work, and in this case I would apologise. But for me, I jsut can''t do it otherwise (they say it''s because I am a Scorpio).
My belief is that if you can go down to the roots, to a level so deep that it just doesn''t make sense with the product anymore, then we can start from there.
From those simple 36 plot *skeletons* you can build all the meat that you want.
My point is not to emphasize the importance of the writer here, rather to emphasize the fact that we can model plots in a simple, modulable way. A way that would allow putting it into a computer.

My goal is not to generate random plots. I don''t see the point in this, rather I would love to ''code'' a plot using this kind of simple structure, and allow more variety to be grown on those basics. This is what I am trying to deal with in the threads I started here (Quests analysis and another).

I''d like to point out that the link given by MadKeith is even better, as it is more aimed at RPG (but essentially, those RPG plots can be constructed from those 36 Situations).

youpla :-P

Laws sake, people! Have you read Chris Crawford''s library site? If not, do. Now.

I am extremely psyched. Now we are getting down to some nitty-gritty.

Could I, incidentally, whine for a moment? [whine] I was hard-core proposing this a few months ago, when I was brand newbie to this site, and I was shot down. repeatedly. by some of these people now saying ''oh, we can do it, shit, w/ our eyes closed even''. hmmph.[/whine]

Ok, I''m done. I''m going to go smoke a few cigarettes and read some of this mound of material people have linked to here. I''ll be back.

But before that- Responding to the last two posts in turn:

MadKeith- I''ve been thinking about this. For a first project attempting this kind of non-linear interactivity, I think it would be more realistic to tackle a story w/ a very limited cast of characters, in a small setting. W/ something this new, I think its going to be a program/playtest/program/playtest/program/playtest kind of thing, because it''ll be extremely hard to predict what the output of these algorithms will be, unless you make them so simple it would be hardly worth the effort.

ahw- I''d like to ask your particular purpose in doing this: Replayability, more Interactivity, Immersion? I''m sure its a little bit of all of these, but narrowing down to a focus could be helpful, even if you''re just brainstorming.


If you see the Buddha on the road, Kill Him. -apocryphal

I think it comes down to give more depth to NPCs ...
I''d like to have NPC that are more than signposts.
Yeah, I guess you are right, this must have been said before. I guess it''s jsut me trying to see the problem from a story point of view.

BTW, who the heck did tell you that this kind of stuff is *EASY* ?!?!?! (I ask because I don''t recall reading anything like this)

agreed for the format, if I can do something like that with 3 characters, I''d be happy, and it could then be extended. Start small, then grow it, definitely my method.

quote:Original post by Landfish

S&S, you''re pretty cool.

Why thank you Landfish! I like you too!

Keith: I just don''t trust Machines to tell stories. Maybe I watched Terminator too many times, but once they start telling good stories, they then have an unterstanding of metaphysical quality. That''s not something I''m in a rush to see.

Again, I don''t want machine to do our job as writer/designer/whatever. i''d like to see a skeleton of story being generated and then we would put all the meat on it...
the idea being to be able to quickly create new subplots by messing with the basic skeleton and modifying accordingly the meat (the details) of the generated plot.

You "writers" will never be able to generate interactive stories...
When a player is playing your game, there is no human to intervene in the course of the story as there is in a real-life roleplaying game. There is only ONE entity to take that place, and that is the CPU. As long as the CPU isn''t making story decisions, you do NOT have an interactive story... you have a prescripted pathed story.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

Forget randomization, probabilities should work better!

You have a cirtain set of ''story building blocks''. each building block references to each other, with a probabliliy.

to make a story, go. (would this be a goodish workaround?)

Pick up first piece
do until dead-end found
x = 0
if all pieces referenced have not already been used then
do until random number between 1 and 100 <= x
take the last pice and find a probability
set this to x
loop
add lastpiece to story
piece = the reference with that probability
else
dead end found, exit.
loop