RE: How about "situations" as a plot abstraction?

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@3DProgrammer.com>]

> Yes, (1) (the first deal) matters to the player.  That is exactly
> why I find it more compelling to leave the details of the deal up to
> the player.  Instead of trying to secure buy-in with my idea of what
> is interesting or important, I feel I can get more buy-in by letting
> the player take control and make a deal of her choosing.

Then there had better be a deal amongst the possibilities worth his
choosing.  I've played far too many CRPGs where it's like "Gee, do I want
the item that's worth 7 or the item worth 10?"  That isn't drama.

> This gets to the essence of what the "story" is.  Is the story the
> exact details or the general outline (or something else)?

See my .sig.

> > "trying all the possibilities until something happens"
>
> This is a thorny issue.  In my ideal system, the user is compelled by
> her own will to make reasonable choices since those seem the most
> interesting.  To do this there should always be multiple interesting
> options.

An author has to provide the interest.  Either that or people are interested
in "dungeon crawling" the story, which isn't interesting to a mainstream
audience.


Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

Authoring is the sale of specific values to the audience,
*not* a general traversal of abstract categories.