Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Story Telling and the Dynamic Nature of it in Gaming

When I was a kid I got into role playing games. I think it has helped me a lot in my study of mathematics, as well as my communication skills in group based technical development. But what I think is most interesting is when I am preparing to have players go into a violent encounter, that can go in numerous different directions.

Firstly, I need to provide my definition of some words if you haven't read role playing games before:

NPC

Non Playing Character - Something that has intelligence that can interact with players.

Creature

Any object, animal, evil/neutral/good NPC, etc. that can attack players

The Dungeon

This is a good example of how things can be dynamic. Most adventures will have a creature in each room of a castle, underground cave, luxurious mansion, etc. But I always feel that once the players start fighting loudly with the first creature, all the other creatures will join the fight! So I often will have something that I think should be a bunch of small fights, into one large one. I'm not sure if this is right or wrong with may adventures I prepare for, but its how I run games. And the players normally enjoy it much more since it is more realistic of how those creatures would react to the combat situations.

The Story

This is often pre-defined by an adventure path, book, scenario, etc., but I think this should be very dynamic as well based upon the players and/or parties motivations for playing in the first place.

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