Michael Steffen

Cinema School as an RPG

One of the things I've been doing the past 2 weeks is running around trying to get the necessary approval to get a soundstage reservation for my thesis project. The whole process has started feeling very much like an RPG. Here's an example from the "Cinema School RPG Hint Guide/Walkthrough":

- To reserve a stage, you must talk to Alan Starbuck at the Zemeckis Center.
- ALAN: "You must first get a production number from Joe Wallenstein, if you want to reserve a stage."
- JOE: "You must journey through the cinema school, collecting signatures from the head of each track (boss?), before I can give you a production number."
- SOUND GUY (one of the "bosses"): "I will sign yonder sheet, but if you want sound in your project, you must seek out a Qualified Sound Technician."

And that's just an excerpt.

NOTE: This entry is also meant as an FYI for anyone attempting to use Cinema School resources. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions along those lines...

Telmahre 2.0

Telmahre has undergone a structural change over the course of the summer. Back in May, I presented a branching structure based on the cinematic screenplay. I still believe that this approach has merit, but the more I worked with it, the more I found Steve Anderson's assessment to be correct: it's too rigid for the type of story I am trying to tell.

I soon realized that I needed to be very clear on what my focus was on this project. My previous focus on realistic character interaction, though interesting, was taking me away from what most interested me on the project in the first place: character development. As I tried to anticipate all the possible reactions Tobias might have to the player's actions, Tobias became less a compelling character and more a stock villian out of a generic action adventure movie.

In various conversations with Jess and Ken over the summer, the word "snapshots" emerged. I want Telmahre to be first and foremost a story about Tobias. So then, why not present the experience as a set of "interactive snapshots." That is not to say "still images", but rather physically-navigable representations of key moments in Tobias life. So here is the updated structure we came up with:

The experience begins with a navigable-but-linear intro sequence. This is followed by a "web of experience," similar to the descriptions of Janet Murray in the book Hamlet on the Holodeck. The player may visit key moments in Tobias' life in any order he chooses. The order he chooses and what he does in each "moment" will affect the overall experience. This leads to a common climax, where the player must make a key decision about Tobias' future, basing that decision on what he learned through the course of the experience.

This line of thinking also follows comments by my thesis advisor, Scott Ruston:
Your suggestion that Act III would be the same Finale (rather than having three separate ones) is a good one. It makes the progress through the narrative less about branching plot structures (which, even more than video games, evaporate any interesting character development), and more about reconsidering the past interactions that the player had with Tobias and the other characters and reinterpreting the ending. In this way, different players have different experiences of the narrative and different interpretations of the nuances of the piece, but they’ve been witness to the same plot actions.

I am excited about this approach because I believe it helps to keep the project focused on what most interests me: using interactive narrative to present a complex character. Comments are welcome!