开发者谈游戏制作中实际需要的故事的壳和情节的外衣

原文作者：Edwin McRae 译者：Megan Shieh

透过观察我发现，许多独立开发者都会掉入这么一个陷阱：想要为自己的游戏加入一个故事，但却不知道这个故事到底是什么样的。实际上，每个游戏都需要一个故事，但并不是每个游戏都需要一个情节。试图在一个只需要故事的游戏中加入一个情节，会让你陷入精神上和经济上的困境。

那么，‘故事’和‘情节’之间到底有什么区别？

情节通常被定义为“剧本、小说、电影或类似作品(如电子游戏)中的主要事件，作为一系列互相关联的连续事件，被作者设计出来并呈现给大众。”

叙事是“对多个相关事件的口头或书面描述；一个故事”。

故事是“本着娱乐性的目的，对（虚构/真实）人物和事件的描述”，同时也是“一个情节或剧情”。

什么鬼？听起来都差不多啊！

Vainglory(from venturebeat)

所以在这里，我要借鉴伟大作家E M Forster的智慧。老实说，我从来没有读过他的作品，但是我很喜欢他对“情节和故事之间区别”的雄辩描述。

“国王死了，王后也死了”这是个故事。“国王死了，接着王后也死于悲痛”这是个情节。-E M Forster。

“国王死了，王后也死了。”这两件事都是戏剧性的事件，但是听起来似乎没有直接联系。也许国王在洗澡的时候滑倒摔死了，王后被一件太紧的紧身衣勒到窒息而死。因此，这个“故事”是由两个独立的事件构成的。

如果王后责怪自己之前没有购买防滑浴垫，害得国王摔死了，那么这就是一个“情节”。她的死和国王的死有着直接的因果关系：国王死了，王后把国王的死怪罪在自己的身上。被悲伤和内疚所淹没的王后，在痛苦的茫然中东奔西跑，然后站在了一辆失控的马车前…

A导致B。

“情节”是电影和电视剧的必备之物。“好的情节”是线性的，每个事件都以某种方式联系在一起。

一个事件会引发其他事件，直到某种结束性事件的发生。比如在《星球大战中》，叛军最终摧毁了死亡之星。如果你的观众高高兴兴地坐在沙发上沉浸其中，那是挺好的。但是当你的观众想要参与的时候会发生什么？如果他们想要改变情节的走向呢？如果他们说“去他妈的情节！我只想收集战利品，专注于我的角色创建，并且在PvP里大展拳脚！”。是的，有些玩家会毫不犹豫地毁掉你精心编织的各种情节，只是为了他们自己高兴。

带入游戏

现在，让我们在EM Forster的定义中加入一个玩家的角色：国王是某个关卡的大BOSS，玩家把他杀害了。悲痛欲绝的王后发誓要复仇，因此派遣王国的所有军队对抗这名玩家，其中包括一群雇佣军、野蛮人和她雇来的怪物。玩家在邪恶的军队中开辟了一条血腥的道路，并最终站立在游戏的终结者—王后的面前。她先前把自己的灵魂卖给了某个黑暗神灵，现在成为了一个强大的亡灵巫师。在一场高潮迭起的、史诗般的战斗中，玩家杀死了她，并最终统治了王国。

国王的死是因为玩家杀了他。而王后的死则是因为她想要报杀夫之仇，意图杀害玩家结果反被杀死了。你看，故事的片段都在那里，国王和王后的死，但是这个情节是玩家自己锻造出来的。

要想知道玩家如何能够将你的情节撕得稀巴烂，从而编织他们想要的情节，你可以去看看2016年发布的电视剧《西部世界》。这部电视剧完美地把所有玩家划分成了“想要跟着情节走的玩家”和“只想要玩的玩家”。有关William和Logan的次要情节完美地划分出了这些玩家的差异。

William是一个天生的角色扮演者，他想要沉浸在故事的浪漫中、他想成为穿着闪亮盔甲的骑士、他想坠入爱河、他想要了解其他的NPC和他们的世界、他想要建立关系、他想要体验在一个蛮荒之地当牛仔的真实生活。

Logan是一个主宰型玩家，沉迷在于他自己的权力幻想中。他想要跟很多妓女啪啪啪，拿着枪到处杀人。他想要统治他的NPC，感觉自己在主宰这个虚拟世界。他想要按照他自己的规则游玩，而不是系统定下的规则。

角色扮演者和权力型玩家都是非常真实的，所以你必须知道，哪种类型的玩家更可能会玩你的游戏。如果是William的话，那么你就可以考虑加入情节。但如果是Logan，那我劝你不要想什么情节了，还是专心做好游戏机制和故事背景吧。

同样的，如果你正在创作一款 “故事驱动”的游戏，那么你就需要有一个精通‘情节结构’的作家——小说家、剧本作家、电视剧编剧之类的。例如，Telltale Games工作室的游戏基本上包含的都是pick-a-path（挑选一个情节）类型的故事。是的，游戏中有很多分支情节可供选择，也有很多“选择和后果”需要平衡，但是这些分支的主线剧情仍然是线性的。差别就只是，作家需要多写几个情节而已。

同样的情况也适用于像《Oxenfree狼奔豕突》这样的游戏。它在本质上也是完全线性的…一群青少年来到了一个小岛上，不得不解开一个幽灵般的谜团。以一种“国王死了，王后也死于悲痛”（蝴蝶效应）的形式，各种事件接踵而至地发生。

《狼奔豕突》中的对话绝对不是线性的。Alex （玩家扮演的角色）对 Jonas, Ren, Nona 和 Clarissa说的话以不同的方式影响着他们之间的关系。各个角色的态度会发生改变，从而揭示他们的本质和背景故事中的不同部分。然而，主要剧情却保持不变。某些事件，例如Clarissa被幽灵附身，或者玩家会通过一个奇奇怪怪的发光三角形进入到另一个平行宇宙……这些都必须发生。它们是剧情中的固定部分，无论玩家做什么或说什么，都不能阻止它们的发生。

如果你的游戏不是情节驱动的呢？这时，你就需要一个像我这样的叙事设计师，开发出一个“充满了故事片段盒子’，然后你就可以将盒子中的内容散布在游戏中的各个角落，从而创造出一个“故事体验”。

故事体验？

这个理念很难抽象地解释清楚，所以，让我们以独立RPG《黑暗地牢》为例来解析这一点。

作为一款Roguelike RPG，《黑暗地牢》的体验全都是关于深入一个恐怖领域的故事，各种虎口脱险、死里逃生，然后在这个过程中疯掉。除了普遍的“疯狂的冒险者探索他不应该发现的地方，发掘出了一个古老的恶魔，接着这个恶魔毁掉了整个城镇”之外，没有什么“情节”。听起来一点都不新鲜，看对不对？如果它的开发者没有停在这里然后说“情节，闪开！让我们给玩家一个丰富的故事体验吧！”，这个游戏估计就跟其他游戏一样千篇一律了。这并不是开发者的原话，但是！这句话的精神绝对渗透到了《黑暗地牢》里的绝大部分元素中。

《黑暗地牢》的世界设计，古代雕纹和对话都在无形中将玩家完全包围到了游戏的故事中，根本无需要求他们去遵循任何形式的情节。一旦玩家跟随一个情节，他们的选择就会受到限制。《黑暗地牢》的限制是存在于机制方面的，并非故事方面。在与当下情形相符的情况下，玩家几乎可以和游戏中的任何元素互动。现在，让我们来具体谈论一下《黑暗地牢》的叙事方式。

玩家在《黑暗地牢》中的成就是由角色等级、角色的健康程度（生理和精神上的），以及玩家对主角老家重建和升级的程度来定义的。实际上，这个城镇本身就是一个RPG角色，就像那些把它当做行动基地的冒险者一样。

首先，冒险者本身就是你在任何“Lovecraftian式”恐怖故事中都能找到的那种有病的类型。

训犬师—“一位执法者和他的忠实野兽。一种由战争和杀戮所形成的纽带。”

病人—“这个人明白逆境和生存是一回事。”

女古商—“她在其他人不原意去的地方寻找…可以看到别人看不到的东西。”

这就是系统原意给你的所有背景故事，不过在像《黑暗地牢》这样的游戏中，这么多就够了。每个冒险家都是一块粘土，供玩家塑造。没错，不同种类的粘土带有不同的属性，但是每块粘土都有足够的空间让玩家来塑造它们的个性，雕刻它们的经验。

所有的这些个性和经验从何而来？大部分来自于冒险家们在那个古老的深渊里不得不面对的恐怖。可怕的怪物、古老的诅咒、瘙痒、恶心的疾病，以及无处不在的黑暗本身。

《黑暗地牢》不需要角色弧线，也不需要滴答的情节装置。它有游戏机制！每个冒险家都有一个压力计数器。当压力上升过高时，冒险家们就会“奔溃”，并发展出一些相当奇特的心理疾病——自私、受虐、绝望、恐惧、偏执…等等。结果呢？冒险家们在战斗中的行为开始变得不同。“受虐狂”会自己冲到敌人的前面，这样的话它就能给自己带来最大程度的伤害。觉得“绝望”的冒险家，可能会决定跳过战斗回合。一个“感到恐惧”的冒险家会躲到其他人的后面，同时以一种恐惧的方式咆哮，这会提升其他人的压力值。“虐待狂”会中伤它自己的队友，从而导致压力值的进一步提高。

简而言之，每个角色的故事背景都是通过游戏机制和简洁的文本气泡来表达的。没有昂贵的旁白(除了那个令人毛骨悚然的解说者)，也没有任何需要追随的情节，然而，“群体动力”是如此的清晰而复杂，就像在肥皂剧中所能看到的那样。

Rouglike RPG以其程序生成的环境和怪物遭遇战（MOB encounteres）而闻名。《黑暗地牢》以其由程序生成的故事而闻名于世。

但是这么复杂的东西该怎么写？我将会试着在下一篇文章中作出解释。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

What’s the difference?

There’s one massive pitfall that I’ve seen many an Indie dev tumble into, and it’s wanting a story for their game but not knowing exactly what a story is. You see, every game needs a story, but not every game needs a plot. And trying to apply a plot to a game that only needs a story will land you in hot water, both mentally and financially.

Okay, so what’s the difference between Plot and Story?

Plot is generally defined as ‘the main events of a play, novel, film, or similar work (e.g. video game), devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence’.

Narrative is ‘a spoken or written account of connected events; a story’.

Story is ‘an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment’ and also ‘a plot or storyline’.

Which is all very bloody confusing!

So I’m going to lean on the wisdom of the great writer, E M Forster. To be honest, I’ve never read any of his work but I love his eloquent description of the plot/story conundrum.

‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then queen died of grief’ is a plot. – E M Forster

‘The king died and then the queen died.’ Both are dramatic events but at the moment they’re seemingly unconnected. Perhaps the king slipped in the shower and the queen was asphyxiated by an overzealous corset attendant.  So these are two separate events that make up a ‘story’. Stuff happens.

If the queen dies of a broken heart because she failed to buy that non-slip bathmat she’d had her eye on for weeks then we have ‘plot’, a clear causal connection between one event and the other. King dies. Queen blames herself for her beloved’s demise and is overwhelmed with grief and guilt. She shuffles around in a tormented daze until blithely stepping in front of a runaway stagecoach.

A causes B.

Plot is the food and drink of film and television. The Hero’s Journey and all that malarky? It’s all plot structure, and those mediums have spent decades working out what a ‘good plot’ looks like. It’s linear and every event is linked in some way. Events cause other events until we reach some sort of concluding event, like the rebels blow up the Death Star or the beloved northern English actor gets killed for the umpteenth time, which is all very fine and dandy when your audience is happily sitting there, soaking it all in. But what happens when your audience wants to get involved? What if they want to take the plot in a totally different direction? What if they say ‘Screw the plot! I just want to gather loot, focus on my character build and kick arse in PvP!’ Yes, some players will happily set fire to your lovingly woven plot tapestry just to warm their toes.

Enter the Gamer

Let’s drop a gamer into E M Forster’s definition. The king dies because he was a level boss and the player killed him. The grief-stricken queen vows vengeance and sends the kingdom’s entire army against the player, including a whole bunch of mercenaries, barbarians and monster freaks she’s managed to hire from ‘places unseemly’. The player cuts a bloody path through the nefarious horde and eventually faces the queen herself as the end-of-game boss. She’s now a powerful necromancer having sold her soul to some dark god. In a climactic and epic battle, the player kills her and ends up ruling the kingdom.

The king dies because the player killed him. The queen dies because she tried to kill the player out of grief-driven revenge. You see, the story pieces are there, the deaths of both king and queen, but it’s the player who forges the plot.

For a fast and gritty education in how players can seriously tear up your plots in favor of stitching their own together, watch Westworld, the 2016 TV series. It beautifully divides player types into those that want to play along and those that just want to play. The subplot with William and Logan perfectly characterises these player differences.

William is a natural roleplayer, someone who wants to immerse himself in the romance of story. He wants to be the knight in shining armor. He wants to fall in love. He wants to understand the NPCs and their world. He wants to have relationships. He wants to inhabit the reality of being a cowboy on the wild frontier.

Logan is a power player indulging in his own empowerment fantasies. He wants to have a lot of sex and shoot a bunch of people. He wants to lord it over the NPCs and feel like he is dominating the virtual world, playing by his own rules instead of the prescribed rules of the game.

These player types, the Roleplayer and the Power Player are very real so you need to know which of them will be playing your game the most. If it’s William, then plot is an option. If it’s Logan, forget about plot and just focus on the mechanics and story context.

Likewise, if you’re creating what’s traditionally called a ‘story-driven’ game, then you’ll be wanting a writer who is well versed in plot structure. A novelist, screenplay writer or TV storyliner will do nicely here. Look at Telltale Games for instance. Their games are essentially pick-a-path stories. Yes, there are plenty of branches to wrangle, and plenty of ‘choices and consequences’ to balance, but a branching plotline is still linear. It’s just a matter of writing multiple plotlines rather than just one.

The same goes for a game like Oxenfree. It’s perfectly linear in nature…a bunch of teenagers end up on an island and have to solve a ghostly mystery. One event leads to another in a classic king-dies-queen-dies-of-grief kind of way.

The dialogue in Oxenfree is definitely not linear. What Alex says to Jonas, Ren, Nona and Clarissa affects those relationships in a myriad of ways. Attitudes change. Characters reveal different parts of their nature and backstory. Yet underneath the plot remains the same. Certain events like the possession of Clarissa by ghosts or the act of stepping into a ghostly triangle into a parallel universe…these have to happen. They’re a fixed part of the plot and nothing the player can say or do will change that.

What happens if your game isn’t plot-driven? Well, now that’s where things get really interesting for a narrative designer like me. And you definitely need a narrative designer for work like this, someone who can develop a whole confetti box of story pieces that you can scatter throughout your game in order to make a ‘story experience’.

Story experience?

I once heard narrative design likened to theme park design. A park ride might have a story context, a must-have for any haunted house or ghost train ride, and the ticket-holder then explores that context, feels part of that miniature world for a bit.

It’s a tough thing to explain in abstract so let’s get concrete with one of my favorite ever Indie RPGs. Darkest Dungeon.

Being a rogue-like RPG, Darkest Dungeon is all about the experience of delving into Lovecraftian realms, surviving by the skin of your teeth and going completely bonkers in the process. There is no ‘plot’ beyond the usual fare of ‘mad overreacher explores where he should not and unearths an ancient evil that then corrupts the entire place’. Sounds like a hundred games, stories and novels already, right? And it would’ve been no different to the rest had not the creators stopped right there and said, “Plot, shmot! Let’s give the player a story-rich experience instead.” I’m sure that wasn’t their exact words, but the spirit of that statement permeates almost every element of Darkest Dungeon.

Darkest Dungeon wrangles its world design, glyphs and dialogue in such a way as to totally wrap the player in story without ever demanding that they follow any sort of plot.  As soon as a player follows a plot then their choices are limited. Darkest Dungeon’s limits are mechanical, not narrative. You can pretty much engage with whichever elements you want, whenever you want, within the confines of what’s possible for you at the time. I’m going to go into the specific elements in more depth later on. For now, let’s dip our tootsies in this narrative bloodbath so we can get an overall feel for what Darkest Dungeon does.

Your progress in Darkest Dungeon is defined by character levels, character health (both physical and mental) and how much of the game’s hometown you’ve managed to rebuild and upgrade. In fact, the hamlet itself is as much an RPG character as the adventurers that use it as their base of operations.

For a start, the adventurers themselves are the sort of troubled types you’d find in any Lovecraftian horror.

Houndmaster – “A lawman and his faithful beast. A bond forged by battle and bloodshed.”

Leper – “This man understands that adversity and existence are one and the same.”

Antiquarian – “She searches where others will not go…and sees what others will not see.”

That’s all the backstory you get, and that’s all the backstory you need in a game like Darkest Dungeon. Each adventurer is a lump of clay for the player to mould. Different varieties of clay, yes, with different properties, but with plenty of scope for the player to stamp them with personality and sculpt them with experience.

And where does all of this personality and experience come from? Well, mostly from the horrors the adventurers have to deal with in those antediluvian depths. Frightening monstrosities, eldritch curses, itchy and icky illnesses, and the ever-pervading gloom itself.

Darkest Dungeon needs no character arcs nor ticking plot devices. It has game mechanics! Each adventurer has a stress counter. When that stress counter rises too high, the adventurer in question ‘cracks’ and develops some rather peculiar psychological maladies. Selfishness, masochism, hopelessness, irrationality and paranoia…this list of afflictions goes on. And the result? The adventurers actually start to behave differently during combat. A ‘masochist’ will race to the front of the party of their own volition so they can invite the most damage upon themselves. An adventurer who is feeling ‘hopeless’ may decide to skip their combat turn. A ‘fearful’ adventurer will shift themselves to the back of the pack whilst ranting in such a terrified manner that it raises everyone else’s stress counts. An ‘abusive’ adventurer will cast aspersions on his party-mates, resulting in ever further increased stress counts.
In a nutshell, or nutcase in this instance, each character’s story context is expressed through mechanics and succinct text bubbles. No expensive voice over (apart from that wonderfully creepy narrator), no plot to adhere to, and yet the group dynamics are as clear and complex an expression as one might find in a soap opera.

Rogue-like RPGs are renowned for their procedurally generated environments and MOB encounters. Darkest Dungeon is renowned for its procedurally generated story.

But how do you ‘write’ for something like that?

That I will try to explain in the next post. （Source：gamasutra.com  ）