Stories in Single Player: Eleven Guidelines

Article written by Julius999
Published on 09-11-2008; updated on 10-16-2010
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Ever wondered in a random map exactly why you’re burning down a town like it’s going out of fashion? Neither has anyone else, but on the other hand if you expect people to make the effort to download, and more importantly, enjoy your scenario they’re going to want something with a bit more to it. Including some form of story is one of the ways of making your scenario more interesting, and it can go a long way to making it more memorable and enjoyable, as not everyone is into unprovoked mass murder.

Ever wondered in a random map exactly why you’re burning down a town like it’s going out of fashion? Neither has anyone else, but on the other hand if you expect people to make the effort to download, and more importantly, enjoy your scenario they’re going to want something with a bit more to it. Including some form of story is one of the ways of making your scenario more interesting, and it can go a long way to making it more memorable and enjoyable, as not everyone is into unprovoked mass murder.

Nine people out of ten here will say that the best campaign around is Ulio, made five years ago; if that doesn’t tell you a good story can be the most important aspect, nothing will.

I’m not going to tell you how to come up with inspiration for a good story or lecture you into writing great literature. You’d stop reading and it wouldn’t be helpful anyway. There are other places to go if you’re fishing for ideas. What I am going to cover are some pieces of general advice. Great story-telling, plotting and writing is helpful, but not at all necessary. As long as you put in some effort, it will show and will, if you care for that sort of thing, get you high marks in reviews. Here are the guidelines that I always try to bear in mind:

  1. Clichés are to be avoided. They are not in themselves a bad thing (how did they become clichés in the first place if there wasn’t some merit in them?) but in general you will need some kind of twist to make it interesting. By all means have creatures from hell crawl through a gateway, have a small kingdom invaded by a big, nasty neighbour, let the out-numbered heroes bravely defend their beautiful homeland, but don’t let that be all there is. Have the bad guy win, have the good guys turn out to be worse than their enemies, make the hero a coward, anything to make it more original. A really creative perspective on a hackneyed story can work wonders and can be as good as a wholly new story.

  2. Scenarios aren’t films and they aren’t books. Long descriptions, protracted one on one swordfights, climactic dialogues, and stunts don’t translate well to AoK and should be kept to a minimum. If you want to write a book, write one, but if you’re making a scenario, don’t force the player to read pages of description or explanations of your fantasy world. There is a limited, although large, number of things you can realistically do in the editor. AoK is third person and conveying facial expressions and detailed movements is impossible. Know these limits and you’re a step closer to escaping action scenes that are as exciting as fishing in the Dead Sea. The story should frame and preferably drive forward the gameplay, not replace it.

  3. Make your characters human. How many brave heroic swordsmen have you seen hacking their way through endless hordes of identical enemy soldiers in AoK scenarios? If you make your characters more interesting you’ve already raised the bar, and although the jackpot is to make a character as memorable as one from a good book, even a small amount of effort can reap dividends. Give your characters quirks, a sense of humour, some personality traits, motivation and intelligence (less of the stupid plans that only work because the plot demands that they do). I don’t want their life story (usually, and I never want it all at once, more on that below) but I do want them to be halfway credible as people.

  4. Names are important. If the player is asked to escort King Ovbkuyt to the town of Drakgpurfrydeir and meet Mayor Joklred, they’re not going to be impressed. Ignore any advice that includes random letter combinations. Ideally the names should conform to some sort of pattern (if your scenario is in England, no King Lhagdurev for example) but at the very least it should be possible to pronounce and remember them. Plunder them from sources that are similar to the feel you’re trying to achieve if you’re stuck.

  5. Use good grammar and proper spelling. You don’t have to be brilliant to achieve a respectable standard, as no one is going to mind much if you spell ‘twelfth’ wrong, or make a minor typo, but do make an effort. Do you think it does your scenario justice if your character speaks with modern day slang and spells the word ‘battal’? If it does, then there are other tutorials you should read before this one. Basically, people like to be able to read what you write without wincing.

  6. Try to make dialogue reasonable. By this I mean that characters should respond as you might expect them to, no one is ever going to say “Oh, and while you’re on the way to town to buy a pint of milk, watch out for the Vikings” or “Hello stranger, I hear there is a magic sword hidden under a bush to the South West” or “Here, have a free battleaxe”. Make it seem like the conversation that takes place actually makes some sort of sense, although don’t stretch it into the sort of real life conversations that are deadly dull. What should characters know about? What’s the first thing they would say? Would they actually say that to some guy with a sword who has just shown up?

  7. Avoid long, boring cutscenes that only exist to fill in story gaps. No one wants to suddenly have a ten minute cutscene with static units talking about the history of the area or whatever holes in the plot you’re trying to explain. Do this sort of thing gradually, let me know about the King’s plan piece by piece, not in one big lump, because by the end of the ten minute cutscene I can guarantee no one is listening. The best films don’t have scenes in the middle while the viewer catches up with the action via long explanations, and neither should your scenario. Show don’t tell applies here.

  8. When planning your story, make sure that everything that happens for a reason, not because you need it to. People shouldn’t react in weird ways to a situation with a more obvious solution simply because that’s the only way the story works. If the story is based on something happening for no good reason, the story will be no good either. If you come up with a twist, I want to think “how clever” not “insert twist here”. Have some sort of coherence in your story.

  9. Presentation is important. Ensure that your conversations don’t drag too much but don’t flash by in a microsecond. If we miss some of the story because things weren’t timed properly, or it looked like a mess, it isn’t a good thing for you.

  10. Steer clear of the all too common design traps to do with story. Most players when they see a bridge has been destroyed, will scream. There are many others and I probably don’t need to tell you what they are. Always try to do things in an imaginative way, or failing that, put a new twist on an old idea. This applied to general story ideas, and it applies to how the story unfolds in your scenario too.

  11. Humour can be effective but remember that people’s tastes are different. So try to keep it fairly subtle, so that even if the jokes don’t go down well you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Having your scenario tested by other people may help you decide what is appreciated and what is not.

What I’ve tried to make clear is that you need a balance. You don’t want a scenario like a book where over long dialogue and description interrupts all the time and gameplay is pushed to the side. You don’t (except in some mini games) want to completely neglect the story and reduce the people in it to expendable faceless units with no brain. Where on the scale you need to be depends on the project as a whole, that’s up to your judgement. But there are some things outlined above that always hold true, even if you keep the story to a minimum what there is should be good quality, so good grammar, acceptable dialogue, originality, coherence and good presentation are all musts.

If you can manage to adhere to all of this, there should be no one complaining about the quality of the story. It doesn’t take a brilliant mind or vast amounts of effort to produce a story of fair quality, and the difference it makes is an excellent return on the investment.

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