1st Edition

Procedural Storytelling in Game Design

Edited By Tanya Short, Tarn Adams Copyright 2019
    408 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by A K Peters/CRC Press

    404 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by A K Peters/CRC Press

    408 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by A K Peters/CRC Press

    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
  • FOREWORD: CHRIS AVELLONE

    SECTION 1 Introduction

    CHAPTER 1 ■ Getting Started with Generators

    DR. KATE COMPTON

    CHAPTER 2 ■ Keeping Procedural Generation Simple

    DARIUS KAZEMI

    CHAPTER 3 ■ Generated Right in the Feels

    JILL MURRAY

    CHAPTER 4 ■ Adapting Content to Player Choices

    JURIE HORNEMAN

    CHAPTER 5 ■ Ethical Procedural Generation

    DR. MICHAEL COOK

    SECTION 2 Structure and Systems

    CHAPTER 6 ■ Retrospective: Murder on the Zinderneuf

    (1983)

    JIMMY MAHER

    CHAPTER 7 ■ Designing for Narrative Momentum

    JON INGOLD

    CHAPTER 8 ■ Curated Narrative in Duskers

    TIM KEENAN AND BENJAMIN HILL

    CHAPTER 9 ■ Uncanny Text: Blending Static and

    Procedural Fiction

    KEVIN SNOW

    CHAPTER 10 ■ Dramatic Play in The Sims

    DANIEL KLINE

    CHAPTER 11 ■ Memorable Stories from Simple Rules in

    Curious Expedition

    RIAD DJEMILI

    CHAPTER 12 ■ Amplifying Themes and Emotions

    in Systems

    DANIEL COOK

    CHAPTER 13 ■ Emergent Narrative in Dwarf Fortress

    TARN ADAMS

    CHAPTER 14 ■ Heavily Authored Dynamic Storytelling

    in Church in the Darkness

    RICHARD ROUSE III

    SECTION 3 Worlds and Context

    CHAPTER 15 ■ Generating Histories

    JASON GRINBLAT

    CHAPTER 16 ■ Procedural Descriptions in Voyageur

    BRUNO DIAS

    CHAPTER 17 ■ Generating in the Real World

    MX. LAZER-WALKER

    CHAPTER 18 ■ Dirty Procedural Narrative in We

    Happy Few

    ALEX EPSTEIN

    CHAPTER 19 ■ Beyond Fun in Frostpunk

    MARTA FIJAK AND JAKUB STOKALSKI

    CHAPTER 20 ■ Procedural Storytelling in Dungeons

    & Dragons

    STEVEN LUMPKIN

    SECTION 4 Characters

    CHAPTER 21 ■ Maximizing the Impact of Generated

    Personalities

    TANYA X. SHORT

    CHAPTER 22 ■ Procedural Characters in State of

    Decay 2

    GEOFFREY CARD, JØRGEN TJERNØ, AND MATTHEW BOZARTH

    CHAPTER 23 ■ Plot Generators

    ADAM SALTSMAN

    CHAPTER 24 ■ Generating Personalities in The

    Shrouded Isle

    JONGWOO KIM

    CHAPTER 25 ■ Dialog

    ELAN RUSKIN

    SECTION 5 Resources

    CHAPTER 26 ■ Tarot as Procedural Storytelling

    CAT MANNING

    CHAPTER 27 ■ Things You Can Do with Twitterbots

    GEORGE BUCKENHAM

    CHAPTER 28 ■ Creating Tools for Procedural Storytelling

    EMILY SHORT

    Biography

    Tanya X. Short is the director of Kitfox Games, the 4-person studio behind Moon Hunters and Shattered Planet. Previously, she worked as a designer at Funcom Games on The Secret World and Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. In her spare time, she acts as the co-director of Pixelles, a non-profit helping more women make games.

     Tarn Adams is best known as the developer of Dwarf Fortress since 2002 with his older brother Zach. He learned programming in his childhood, and has been designing computer games as a hobby. He quit his first year of a mathematics post doctorate at Texas A&M to focus on game development in 2006.