DISPATCHES PERSPECTIVE
Narrative Engine
Write it like you stole it
JON INGOLD
So I was working on a game today which simulates a storyworld with multiple characters. They have agendas, interests and timetables. They intersect and affect each other. (The game’s holding page on Steam, by the way, is entitled Miss Mulligatawney’s School For Promising Girls.)
We’re using code from 2021’s Overboard!, which we’ve polished from a hacky Rube Goldberg machine mess into a pretty good system for efficiently railing, derailing and colliding motivated NPCs. But the results are, sadly, not instantaneously magical. It’s like playing the 1980s text adventure The Hobbit: a panel of text pops up to say “Gandalf wanders in, chewing his beard” until a second panel informs you that he has muttered something and gone away. Sure, it’s reassuring to see the escapement tick, but, as with all clockwork, it’s ultimately repetitive.