Eric Lang (with Pat Harrigan) explains the advantages writers have in crafting adaptations of literary franchises into collectible card games. Lang maintains that, while attempting to remain true to the original, when turning narratives into games, one must "respect the medium."
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by Eric Lang
"There are a fair number of games in the hobby industry based on literary licenses. I've played most of them, and designed a certain number myself. For almost every license, there is a divergent theory about just how a design can capture the essence of the literary property while maintaining its integrity as a game."
"Mythos, the resolution of any individual tale is often reliant on whether the forces of humanity or the abyss get the upper hand (and there are plenty of examples of both in Lovecraftian fiction and Chaosium's RPG). Therefore the resolution of AGOT's plots is only a step on the road to victory, while the successful resolution of COC stories is an end in itself - in fact, it is the very way victory is achieved."
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Eric Zimmerman describes his interactive paper book as "an inverted exquisite corpse," and although a digital version of the book would be easy to produce, he argues that an electronic edition would not produce as meaningful an experience as the printed volume.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by Eric Zimmerman
Life in the Garden (1999) is an interactive paper book I created with graphic designer Nancy Nowacek. The fifty or so pages of the story are cardlike sheets to be shuffled, picked, and placed between the covers of a tiny book, temporarily creating a story. The first page ("Adam, Eve, and the serpent lived in the garden") and the final page ("The End") are always the same, but the rest of the text and images are selected and ordered randomly.
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James Wallis uses genre as the fulcrum for balancing game rules and narrative structure in story-telling games, which he differentiates from RPGs through their emphasis on the creation of narrative over character development.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by James Wallis.
"In the ongoing debates about storytelling and narrative in games, the various commentators often overlook a key point: even in the most cutting-edge examples of the state of the art, it is not the players who tell the story, it is the game. Whether computer games with a narrative element, board games, card games, or face-to-face role-playing games, the essential plot and structure of the narrative is predetermined before the game begins, and cannot be altered."
"Human beings like stories. Our brains have a natural affinity not only for enjoying narratives and learning from them, but also for creating them. In the same way that your mind sees an abstract pattern and resolves it into a face, your imagination sees a pattern of events and resolves it into a story."
"the game's mechanics must take into consideration the rules of the genre that it is trying to create: not just the relevant icons and tropes, but the nature of a story from that genre. A fairy tale has a very different structure and set of requirements than a horror story or a soap opera, and a game must work to replicate that. "
"In most games, the structure is simply the way the game is played. In story-making games, it is also the principal way that the narrative shape of the story is formed (...)."
"Structure is not the same thing as rules. (...) That's how the game plays. It's not how the game works."
"The key to a successful story-making game, at least in the ones that have been released so far, is simplicity of design. (...) it does mean that rules have to be integrated with structure and genre to form a coherent package. I am a self-confessed proponent of "elegance through simplicity" in game design, and I realize that this doesn't fit every taste, or every style of game. "
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Paul Czege explains that he aimed for My Life with Master to be an engine for story creation rather than just another variation on the traditional role-playing game system.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by Paul Czege.
"Telling stories about your experiences is a process of selecting, organizing, and presenting a relevant subset of the superset of all possible information you could include in the story."
"I began to play, widely, regularly, and experimentally, mostly free and self-published games. And from this I began to understand how powerful role-playing experiences that produce story with less noise could be delivered by game rules that consciously mediate play as an endeavor of collaborative authorship."
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Jonathan Tweet explains how, unlike highly narratively structured games such as The Call of Cthulhu, the free-form, character-focused Everway includes a matrix that allows for the creation of coherent characters and productively constrains the otherwise open-ended game-play.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by Jonathan Tweet.
Everway is a free-form tabletop fantasy RPG in which players take the roles of heroic figures that travel among countless parallel worlds. Action resolution uses cards drawn from a Tarotlike deck rather than dice. Character stats determine the likely outcome of an action, and the card draw provides a conceptual result that the gamemaster interprets creatively to determine the actual result.
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Keith Herber discusses how in his "Haunted House" scenario for Call of Cthulhu, characters are driven insane by their attempt to unravel the game's mysteries. Herber's explanation distinguishes his work from many other role-playing games in which the goal is to develop characters and acquire power and/or wealth. In contrast, characters in Herber's scenario are rewarded with mental instability.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by Keith Herber.
The original Call of Cthulhu "Haunted House" scenario that appeared in the book Trail of Tsathoggua was written in 1983, when Call of Cthulhu was still a relatively new game and role-playing was still in its early stages. Seeing the light of day in 1981, Call of Cthulhu was unique to RPGs in that it didn't rely on experience points, treasure, or other tangible rewards to induce players to participate. CoC investigators would not find hordes of gold or powerful weapons, nor would they gain fame or respect for their daring exploits. Quite the opposite, in fact. Investigators usually finish adventures in worse shape than they began, with less money, less sanity, and possibly a lowered social standing. Like cats, investigators are driven by curiosity, not by material gain.
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