作者：C.Y. Reid

当考虑如何安排分支叙述结构时，有时候会困难得像选择让多少个平行宇宙出现在终结的、可玩的世界。然而，一个最简单的解决办法是，让玩家自己为你创造叙述分支。

上周，我在Twitter上邀请玩家做了一个分支叙述的实验。我首先提出以下问题：

“你在一间黑暗的房间里。这里有两扇门，一红一蓝。你会打开哪扇门？”

大约在一分钟内，我收到了约10个回复。其中有5个把故事进行到结局，但最有趣的是回复的多样性。有人选择打开蓝色的门，有人选择红色，有人打开灯，有人打开橙色的门，等等。我给他们一个新房间（一系列新的探索对象和交谈的人）作为回复。

随着实验继续，我开始把他们的故事交织起来。一名玩家困在大铁房里，另一个拿到了安全区的钥匙。最终，第二名玩家禁不住好奇打开了安全区的门，发现了第一名玩家。这样，他们的故事就交织在一起了。许多玩家没有互相跟进，结果他们通常完全不知道他们各自的故事变得越来越有关联性。

Life-Story(from buzzgoo.me)

对于作为作者的我和作为玩家的他们，这都是一个令人兴奋的实验。通过给他们完全的选择和扮演地下城主人的自由，创造了一个交互文字冒险游戏。他们的故事结束了，他们都感到高兴和满足。在他们刚被变成凶手导致其他四名玩家反对他们的不久后，有一名玩家赞道：“真是太棒了”。这是有趣的情境：一方会审判另一方吗，或者他们会互相检查彼此的时间线然后发现我的操纵导致出现这样有趣的情境吗？

之后我把他们的回复通过Storify（游戏邦注：一种社交媒体）串起来，不久我将把他们的选择和我给他们的结果情节放进文字冒险游戏引擎Twine（游戏邦注：一种用于叙述交互、非线性故事的开源工具）中。使用它的直观的流程图和简单的代码，即使是最没有经验的游戏设计师也可以创作出复杂、有深度、多分支的冒险游戏。

在某种意义上，我欺骗了Twine写作过程。我不是想出给玩家游戏的哪个部分作为新的进程方向，而是让玩家选择哪个区域来创造他们想探索的场景。这比不断地设身处地为他们着想快多了，你会发现这与设计关卡是一样的。当你看着他们探索时，你会发现一无所知的人想在你创造的世界里看到什么。如果你想奖励他人的好奇心，在研究他们下一步想做什么时，你对你自己创作的故事的无所不知是致命的缺陷。

分支叙述是复杂多变的东西，有时候会让人非常头疼。与此同时，分支叙述也是探索玩家心理的有趣办法。所以，不妨一试。登录Twitter或其他社交媒体平台，放出一段开头情境，看看你的粉丝会怎么进展你的故事。你会看到他们一开始可能会跟随你的路径，然后慢慢地脱离你的设想。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

True Intelligence: Player-Led Narrative Design

by C.Y. Reid

When considering how to lay out a branching narrative structure, it can sometimes become difficult to choose just how many parallel universes one wants to appear in the finished, playable world. However, one of the easiest ways to circumvent this, and indeed to establish which areas of each scene are the most interesting points of focus, is to allow players themselves to branch your narrative for you.

Last week, I tweeted the following:

“You are in a dark room. There are two doors. One is red, and one is blue. Which door will you open?”
I had almost ten responses within a minute or so. Out of those, five led the story through to its conclusion, but what was interesting was the variety of responses. One chose blue, one red, one turned the lights on, one opened an orange door, and so on. I responded to each by giving them a new room, a new set of objects to explore and people to talk to.

As the tweets continued, I began to interweave their stories. One player was trapped in a large iron room, and another had the key to a safe. Eventually, player two’s curiosity was peaked and they opened the safe revealing player one. Allowing their stories to mesh caused them to worry. Many of the players did not follow each other, and as a result, they were usually completely ignorant of the coming interweaving of their respective narratives.

It was exciting, both for me as a writer and for them as players. In giving them complete freedom of choice and acting as dungeon master for what became an interactive text adventure. Their story ended and all of them were happy, sated. “That was awesome,” said one, not long after they had been cast as a murderer and had the other four players turned against them. It was exciting to watch: Would they judge them, or would they check each other’s timelines and discover my manipulation of them into interesitng situations?

What I did afterwards was ran all their tweets through Storify, and I’ll soon be inputting their choices and the resultant scenarios I gave them into Twine, a text adventure engine available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Its visually straightforward flowchart and Wikipedia simple code allow even the most inexperienced game designer to output deep, complex adventures full of branching narratives, each easy to follow.

In a sense, I cheated the Twine writing process. Rather than coming up with which areas of the story to offer to the player as new roads to walk down, I gave players the option to point out which areas of each created scene they wanted to explore. It’s a lot faster than endlessly putting yourself in their shoes, and you’ll find it’s no different to level design.  You’ll only truly learn what innocent minds will want to see in your created universes once you watch them explore. Your omniscient knowledge of your own built narratives are the fatal flaw in learning where to take people next, if you’re aiming to reward someone’s curiosity.

Branching narratives are intricate, fickle things that can sometimes be the genesis of many a headache. At the same time, they’re also exciting ways to explore the mind of the player. So give it a shot, jump onto Twitter, throw out a starting scene and see where your followers take you. Perhaps follow your own path first and see how theirs diverges from yours. Don’t forget to invite me into the tale @failnaut – I wouldn’t mind doing a little less storycrafting on a social media platform, this time around. (source:gamedesignaspect)