A core game mechanic + something about the story

[Kaj Sotala]

http://kajsotala.fi/2014/01/bayesian-academy-game-a-core-mechanic/

This should hopefully be my last post before I actually have a playable (if possibly very limited, like it has the tutorial level or something) prototype done.

Relatedly, I notice I still don't have much of a clue about the story and such, as I've just been focusing on the mechanics. Just taking over the student council with no particular reason for it seems pretty weak, so one thing that I thought of that the main character would be doing it to obtain the resources to find her lost brother. Yeah, cliched I know, but if the tutorial in the game is a childhood prologue where the (big) brother teaches you to play the game, then it would fit together pretty nicely. Of course the brother should have disappeared some years back, so that there's no urgent time pressure and the player character has the time to get involved in romances etc.

If you folks have any good ideas, particularly ones that would give rise to goals which fit nicely to the core mechanic outlined in the above post, feel free to talk about them. Of course I just boasted about how flexible that core mechanic is, so even if you don't have any ideas that'd obviously fit into it, that just means that I'll get to figure out how they do obviously fit in perfectly. :-)

[Max Hensley]

I'm still not sure how long you're intending the game to be, and game length is a major factor in the scope of conflict that you can satisfactorily address in it, but I'd suggest that the overarching plot ought to develop into something with a greater payoff than just finding the main character's missing brother. A missing brother can be an effective segue into a deeper plot though, and I'll point out that it would take a very unusual sort of missing persons case for the most effective course to resolution to follow a path through the student council rather than, say, taking the matter to law enforcement officers or a private detective who can focus on the search full-time. But of course, an unusual missing persons case has much more potential to be an interesting plot driver than an ordinary one.

Do you have any particular preferences regarding the scope you'd like the main plot to develop into, and any thematic elements you're interested in exploring? I can probably come up with some ways that the plot could progress that I, at least, would find interesting, but it's better if I can keep my search-space focused.

[Kaj Sotala]

Good question, and good points. I'm not sure about the length either - ideally I'd like a relatively long game, but then the main constraint here is how long I/we can make it in the time I have allotted for my Master's thesis. I don't have a hard deadline, but ideally I'd like to be at least pretty close to completion by the end of spring/beginning of summer.

Of course, ideally I would also like to continue developing the game even after my thesis, so what we do here might only be the first chapter of the story, but realistically I don't know whether I'll have the time. (Which isn't to say that somebody else couldn't pick up the main developer role, of course... but I don't want to count on that.)

And yeah, it's true that the student council / missing brother connection is kinda unobvious, to say the least. :-) I was thinking something like the SC controlling major resources in this world, possibly including something that nobody else has, which would help in finding him. Possibly there's also something linking the council to the disappearance or something. I don't really know, I'd also be fine with dropping the whole "take control of the student council" part if someone comes up with something better. (But I do want to keep the general school drama thing, or we'll be back considering every conceivable setting and genre again.)

[Max Hensley]

If you want to keep both the "take control of the student council" and "find your lost brother" elements, I think it should be possible to reconcile them. I think the most natural path for any justification to take would be that his disappearance is in some way tied into the operations of the student council, and so any pursuit of resources to search for him which does not address the student council element will necessarily be limited.

I'll suggest this as a starting point; the main character's brother was also a student council member, and despite being missing for more than a year, the school's documentation officially records him as an ungraduated student whose membership in the school council has not lapsed, because while he has not been present for the last round of elections, there is a clause in the student council charter that permits students to retain their positions in-absentia if they are engaged in officially vetted long term student council projects at the time that elections occur. Among the absurd powers of the student council is this; law enforcement officers may not examine the documentation of ungraduated students without permission from the student council, permission which in this case has not been granted.

This should be suggestive to the player that the disappearance of the main character's brother is likely to involve matters of high significance, and that seeking membership in the Student Council is indeed a logical course of action to go about finding out what's happened to him. If you like the sound of this, we can work out what exactly he's actually involved in.

[Kaj Sotala]

I do like that. Sounds just the right amount of absurdly powerful to
be genre-appropriate. :)

>>> very *unusual* sort of missing persons case for the most effective

>>>> *do*obviously fit in perfectly. :-)
>>>>
>>>
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>

[Max Hensley]

It's just a small step in the direction of solidifying the plotline, but what are your thoughts on the older brother being deliberately involved in some kind of sinister activity. On the one hand, I'm afraid the idea might be kind of overplayed. On the other, if it's a matter of whether the whole/rest of the student council is involved in something sketchy, versus one or two members being so involved, then I think the natural conclusion is that the latter is more probable. As long as the selection process doesn't filter for nefarious individuals, having the entire student council preserve some dark secret requires unlikely coordination. Having the brother involved in something secret but totally benign might be more original, but is probably less narratively compelling, because the effort the protagonist goes into uncovering the secret is liable to be trivialized if it turns out to be something which would have resolved in a satisfactory way without their involvement.

Also, not having the whole student council be in on whatever secret led to the disappearance of the main character' brother means that the main character will have to continue to apply effort to forward the plot once they achieve the goal of election. We might even find a way to reward the player for picking up the hints available up to that point in the game and correctly predicting that there isn't some nefarious secret that the whole student council is privy to.

[John Lindberg]

It could be something benign except the brother got in over his head. (Caught by the bad guys without the council realizing?) Finding out what's up with him then segues nicely into the next act where you're helping to resolve whatever the actual major issue is.

I do like the game design. One interesting aspect is how to handle failure, I don't think the player should be allowed to lock herself into a fail-state, but think it's good if she's actually allowed to fail in any given task. I see two resolutions for that, either have some NPC who swoopes in to save the day when you're doing too badly, or have the content dynamic enough that there will always be another thing to try until you succeed. (Ok, I'm coming up with more options as I write: 3: Maybe your older failed attempts are effectively reset when you've failed in all of the alternative ways you could have succeeded, allowing you to try them again. 4: Maybe you actually do get a "game over" when you fail any problem, forcing you to restart it, but the truth-values in it will be randomized so the answer might be a different one this time.)

I guess the approach to take depends mostly on how large and free roaming and dynamic the game can afford to be.

[Max Hensley]

I think it would definitely make the most sense (and be easiest to work with) if the main character's brother is involved with some other figures who have an antagonistic role in the plot, rather than being the sole antagonist himself. But I think it might also make more sense if he is an antagonist than if he isn't. Rather than having the rest of the student council refuse access to his records to law enforcement arbitrarily or out of reflexive obscurantism, I think it would make more sense if he instructed the other members to cover for him in his absence himself.

While it might not be a groundbreaking idea, I think that if pulled off well, there's a lot of impact in having the character who provided the main character with their initial instruction being their final obstacle to surmount. The protagonist's brother, who first taught them the ropes of social maneuvering, uses those same skills to climb his way to a position of power, and the protagonist must learn to surpass him in his own domain. I think that it could be interesting to have the MC's brother be something of a Hansonian cynic, who, unlike MoR Quirrell, deliberately avoids public cynicism. He makes an effort to signal virtue for personal benefit, rather than behaving virtuously in service of altruistic aims. But to add at least a bit of ambiguity to the conflict, I think it would be more interesting if he really does care about the main character and take their well being to heart; after all, as Quirrell also pointed out, even Dark Lords tend to favor their own friends and family. For players who prefer to take such an approach, there would also be the option of involving yourself in whatever plot he's also involved in to reap the benefits, and/or even capitalizing on his trust in you as a family member, backstabbing him and reaping all the benefits yourself.

Thoughts?

[Kaj Sotala]

Max: Nice. :-) I think the three main ways for dealing with him could be 1) join his plan to reap the benefits, 2) betray him to reap the benefits for yourself, 3) bring him back to the "good side". I like this direction!

One thing that I might be slightly concerned about, especially with a MoR!Quirrellish antagonist that you have the option to join or betray, is the point that one person outside this mailing list brought up: that the game might end up reinforcing straw rationality memes about coldly calculating personal relationships. Which people might also find generally off-putting in the game, even if they didn't come to believe in those memes. So we should be careful to avoid giving that impression, and also to give the chance for an ending which doesn't imply participating in any evil menace in the first place.

That said, I don't think that the "cold sociopathic manipulator" impression should be that hard to avoid: as long as we remember to bring out all the different good and altruistic things that one can do with their manipulative skills, it should be fine. Still, something to keep in mind. And of course the player should still be allowed the option of being a sociopathic manipulator if they really insist on it. :-) Actually having a genuine choice about how evil you want to be makes the decision to actually be good that much more meaningful. And if someone does want to be evil, well, why not.

John: How to handle a failure is a good question, which I've been thinking about without reaching any specific conclusion. I'm not exactly sure of how free-roaming the game will be, either - that is indeed a big influence on the best way to handle failure.

[Max Hensley]

I think it would probably be good to have a fourth resolution (so that the player is offered as many "good" solutions as "evil" ones,) where the  main character refuses to cooperate with their brother, exposes his plans, and stops him, but without successfully changing his mind or redeeming him. The ending in which you actually change his mind might be one that requires you to consistently uphold an honest and compassionate playstyle, where you make consistent efforts to help people, and don't betray people's trust or take advantage of others even when you can get away with it.

One element that I think would be interesting: throughout the game, the main character has the option to question various NPCs about their brother. He was well known, and numerous characters will report their experiences with him. Overwhelmingly, he's described as friendly, considerate, fair and impartial. But if the player actually tracks what activities and decisions he was involved in, they might notice that he always made choices which cemented his own power and social standing. Any faction whose support wasn't useful to him would end up getting the short end of the stick, even as they came away thinking of him as a fair and standup guy.
(I'm taking inspiration here from a person who I recently read describe their experiences in an online community, where they had a reputation for being fair, mature, and above petty politics and bickering, and as a result, attained much higher social standing than the people who others identified as being merely partisan. People from every faction would confide in him, and he would always hand down decisions that showed understanding of both sides of the issue, because he was involved with people on every side. But while other members generally came away thinking of his decisions as fair, he really almost always sided with the socially powerful, whose support would preserve his social standing.)