Narrative Design

This week looked at primarily using narrative design to sustain and promote the essential experience. We received another guest speaker, Amber Boothe from Nobody’s Fool Myster Games, a games company that offers immersive team-building murder mystery events.

She went over the basics and her formula for creating effective murder mystery game plots as well as solid character designs. Regarding the structure or designing a good murder mystery game, we were prompted to answer these four foundational points (Concept, Premise, Characters and Logic):

• Concept – what the game is
  • “a murder mystery inspired by x for y players.”
    
• Premise – logline, explanation of the game
  • Setup: characters are at (location) because…
  • Twist: x is actually y
    • Dont give away the plot!!
    • The twist is distinct from the muder plot line. The shorter and more succinct the plot, the more succesful it will be
      
• Essential characters – who the players are playing as
  • Victim (NPC)
  • Secondary victim (NPC)
  • Mastermind – the architect of the twist
    • They cannot be the murderer
    • they carry the burden of knowledge
  • Murderer – the person with means, motive and opportunity
    • Keep in mind: sometimes murders can be difficult to solve in a way thats not fun
• Supporting Characters
  • Lover – agent of chaos motivated by love, lust
  • Fool – clumsily or carelessly cause havoc
    
• Logic – how and why does the game work
  • Need very clear logic otherwise the game feels wrong or falls apart
  • Red herrings that lead to complete dead ends are annoying and hard to enjoy
  • People expect murder and drama, not tragedy – steer away from overly depressing storylines
  • The player should be able to get the gist in 5 minutes – expect people to play unprepared
  • Tell the players what they don’t know

Workshop

So, now that we have the formula outlined for us, we had a go at constructing our own small murder mystery games in groups.

Title: Siren Night
Logline: It’s on a boat.
Inspired by sea mythology for players who enjoy petty pirates.
Setup: The boat is compromised of humans and a secret siren. One day, the Captain falls dead!
Twist: The Captain’s Daughter killed her father to be with the Siren, whom she fell in love with.
Double Twist: The siren doesn’t even love the Captain’s Daughter, but unbeknownst to the rest of the crew is steering the boat towards her Siren friends for a feast.

Name	Character Profile
Captain Miranda	The victim and Captain, dead from jellyfish poisoning
Eliza	The Captain’s Daughter and murderer
Maria	The Siren in disguise as the Navigator (steering them off course)
LOVE (the concept)	The secondary victim
Dr. Hook	The Doctor who assess the body
Mr. M. Binder	The First Mate, the closest person to the Captain, had a recent disagreement with him [the Captain]
Mr. Howard	The Quartermaster, maintains day to day life on the ship

Logic
* The Captain hurt the Captain’s Daughter by telling her she could never be with the Navigator.
* The Captain’s Daughter cares deeply for the Navigator, having fallen in love with her.
* The Captain’s Daughter kills the Captain to be with the Navigator

The twist makes it harder to catch the killer, because nobody except the Captain’s Daughter and the First Mate knew that the Navigator was actually a Siren. Double Twist: The Siren as the Navigator doesn’t care for the Captain’s Daughter, and is intent on steering the ship towards rocks to kill and eat everyone on the ship.

Extra Plot Points:
* The Captain left a note that said “BEWARE THE SIREN”, indicating that one of the players are not what they seem to set up the doppleganger twist.

Feedback
Groups then quickly debrief another group of their narratives and receive feedback:
– How does the love plot affect other characters?
+ The secondary twist is good and surprising; not where you’d traditionally expect the twist to be

This workshop was not only super silly and fun to do but also really insightful in terms of being able to breakdown the construction of a good story and also analyse a formula that works. Although the workshop didn’t directly relate to my game, I still gained skills that will help deal with my game in easier, smaller chunks and it was nice to have a go at something new and have a break from the GDD work.