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How to tell a good story in a video game: Episodes or no episodes?

Started by Thunder-squall, 03, January, 2014, 08:02:18 PM

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Thunder-squall

Playing the ReCap adventure in Dark Dawn (you know that theme-park thing, where you relive the previous games?), I'm reminded of how a lot of RPGs seem written as if they'd fit into an episodic structure, as an anime or something.  I often kind of look at that and say "oh, I see what they're doing there," and I think it's neat, but I've never really thought of whether it was a good idea or not.  I mostly wasted too much time being impressed with the fact that mediums reflect each other.  I never questioned whether they should.

But since y'all are story-driven RPG folks, I figure I'd ask you guys what kind of story telling you like in RPGs.  And I guess I've been thinking about how your "community project" could've been broken up into interchangeable parts (to avoid failures, bottle necks, disagreements, etc.), and I thought: "hey, just break it up into episodes!"  But perhaps that's actually a bad thing when it comes to telling a good story?

Or like a good tv show, do you want there to be both long and short story-arcs?

AND (ugh, I guess I'm just thinking out loud now) I kind of realize how I *love* filler, and atmospheric stuff, but other people hate it.  Are RPGs best when they have lots and lots of filler, or when they have no filler?