Procedural Storytelling in Game Design
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Book Description
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
Table of Contents
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
Editor(s)
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.