ABSTRACT

This edited collection of chapters concerns the evolving discipline of procedural storytelling in video games. Games are an interactive medium, and this interplay between author, player and machine provides new and exciting ways to create and tell stories. In each essay, practitioners of this artform demonstrate how traditional storytelling tools such as characterization, world-building, theme, momentum and atmosphere can be adapted to full effect, using specific examples from their games. The reader will learn to construct narrative systems, write procedural dialog, and generate compelling characters with unique personalities and backstories.

Key Features

  • Introduces the differences between static/traditional game design and procedural game design
  • Demonstrates how to solve or avoid common problems with procedural game design in a variety of concrete ways
  • World’s finest guide for how to begin thinking about procedural design
  • section 1|62 pages

    Introduction

    chapter Chapter 1|14 pages

    Getting Started with Generators

    chapter Chapter 2|6 pages

    Keeping Procedural Generation Simple

    chapter Chapter 3|13 pages

    Generated Right in the Feels

    chapter Chapter 4|12 pages

    Adapting Content to Player Choices

    chapter Chapter 5|14 pages

    Ethical Procedural Generation

    part 2|114 pages

    Structure and Systems

    chapter Chapter 6|9 pages

    Retrospective

    Murder on the Zinderneuf (1983)

    chapter Chapter 7|15 pages

    Designing for Narrative Momentum

    chapter Chapter 8|12 pages

    Curated Narrative in Duskers

    chapter Chapter 9|9 pages

    Uncanny Text

    Blending Static and Procedural Fiction

    chapter Chapter 10|13 pages

    Dramatic Play in The Sims

    chapter Chapter 12|13 pages

    Amplifying Themes and Emotions in Systems

    chapter Chapter 13|10 pages

    Emergent Narrative in Dwarf Fortress

    part 3|92 pages

    Worlds and Context

    chapter Chapter 15|14 pages

    Generating Histories

    chapter Chapter 16|15 pages

    Procedural Descriptions in Voyageur

    chapter Chapter 17|17 pages

    Generating in the Real World

    chapter Chapter 18|14 pages

    Dirty Procedural Narrative in We Happy Few

    chapter Chapter 19|15 pages

    Beyond Fun in Frostpunk

    chapter Chapter 20|12 pages

    Procedural Storytelling in Dungeons & Dragons

    part 4|68 pages

    Characters

    chapter Chapter 23|8 pages

    Plot Generators

    chapter Chapter 24|14 pages

    Generating Personalities in The Shrouded Isle

    chapter Chapter 25|20 pages

    Dialog

    part 5|39 pages

    Resources

    chapter Chapter 26|12 pages

    Tarot as Procedural Storytelling

    chapter Chapter 27|10 pages

    Things You Can Do with Twitterbots

    chapter Chapter 28|15 pages

    Creating Tools for Procedural Storytelling