Group 4 Project Update
We all met yesterday evening and hammered out some more concrete details about our project, so we thought it was about time for an update:
The premise we've been working from has been more or less utilizing viral marketing tactics to actually deliver an interactive story, as opposed to simply promoting a fixed narrative. We've been adjusting our model quite a bit as we discuss it more, so it's likely to change a fair bit from this before we finish.
Presently, our concept is somewhere in between a viral marketing campaign and very loose D&D campaign. There is no explicit requirement for registration or rigid character descriptions and statistics on the part of the "players," and the "non-player" characters (the ones we control) act something like the game/dungeon masters--setting general events into play as the players decide to respond to a given situation. It's a bit difficult to describe everything conceptually, so to give a better idea of what we're planing to do, here's our "plot" outline so far (sorry, this is a little tl;dr, but it sounds really vague and incoherent without talking about story specifics):
I. Prologue/Introduction:
This segment is admittedly a fairly fixed narrative, but we're using it to generate interest and establish the world and characters. Ideally, it should play out in "real time" over a week or more. Although in this segment the users won't have much say over what happens, at minimum they will have to interact by finding the pieces of the story themselves.
Our 'hero,' Frank, has super-human abilities and a stranger has caught him using his abilities on camera and posted it to Youtube. Frank responds with a video of his own, explaining himself and the story eventually ends up on the local news (all three of these items will be presented as Youtube videos as if they were produced by the characters in-story). Frank keeps up either a blog or vlog for the remainder of the introduction phase so the players can get to know him better, until he abruptly disappears. During the introductory phase, prior to Frank's disappearance, another character is established through Frank's blog/vlog posts as a friend or acquaintance of Frank.
At this same time we'll launch a couple of websites relating to the world's backstory which Frank might link to or mention in his blog (ex. a government site about new regulations for super-humans, which might give some insights into what happened to Frank/etc).
II. First Campaign: Frank's Disappearance
This is the section in which we really start to hand over control of the narrative to the players and allow them to steer the story.
At the beginning of this segment, Frank's friend steps forward and makes an appeal to the denizens of the internet to help figure out what happened to Frank, presenting them with the first of a series of clues as to his location (not all of these clues will be delivered by the same character--for example, perhaps in the initial appeal to help find Frank, the friend will mention having found some strange note in Frank's room and present that to the players). The friend then launches a website for players to help provide information and solve the clues re: Frank's disappearance. We were thinking about using a social-networking service that allows for creating a customized social-networking site for this part.
Clues pertaining to Frank's location and what happened to him will be made available through a few different non-player characters. Some information may even only be given to one or two players to encourage team-work and sharing of information and theories. The idea here is to create something of an online scavenger hunt and puzzle--sending players all over the "world" discovering more of it's backstory in the process of finding out what happened to Frank.
Aside from the moderately fixed plot "checkpoint" of discovering what happened to Frank/where he is, the story from here isn't static (the endpoint is established, but the way the players get there isn't). Once the players reach the "checkpoint" Frank's friend will make another appeal to the players, this time asking what s/he should do . What happens to Frank and his friend from this point on is entirely up to the players. We were discussing putting a selection of the user-generated ideas for how to rescue Frank (or not as it may be) up in a poll for all the users to decide the direction to take.
World background information provided by non-player characters and the additional "in-world" websites should give the players enough details about the setting to feel like they can make coherent decisions about what to do in the story.
Beyond this, the plan is effectively to work off what the players want/do to initiate additional campaigns (the story has no fixed endpoint) possibly even passing on "GM/DM" positions (in other words, control of non-player characters) to players. But for this project we're focusing on this first segment of story (essentially, it can grow from here in just about any conceivable direction--we're basically trying to build a world and present it to people to play with, but not in such a formal context as a 'game' though you could probably call this a game of some sort).
We've been discussing a lot of other things to incorporate in addition to this, so this is really just a base sketch of what we're going for right now, so, again, it could change a whole lot by the time we get to the presentation--but I think that about sums up what we've come up with so far.
The premise we've been working from has been more or less utilizing viral marketing tactics to actually deliver an interactive story, as opposed to simply promoting a fixed narrative. We've been adjusting our model quite a bit as we discuss it more, so it's likely to change a fair bit from this before we finish.
Presently, our concept is somewhere in between a viral marketing campaign and very loose D&D campaign. There is no explicit requirement for registration or rigid character descriptions and statistics on the part of the "players," and the "non-player" characters (the ones we control) act something like the game/dungeon masters--setting general events into play as the players decide to respond to a given situation. It's a bit difficult to describe everything conceptually, so to give a better idea of what we're planing to do, here's our "plot" outline so far (sorry, this is a little tl;dr, but it sounds really vague and incoherent without talking about story specifics):
I. Prologue/Introduction:
This segment is admittedly a fairly fixed narrative, but we're using it to generate interest and establish the world and characters. Ideally, it should play out in "real time" over a week or more. Although in this segment the users won't have much say over what happens, at minimum they will have to interact by finding the pieces of the story themselves.
Our 'hero,' Frank, has super-human abilities and a stranger has caught him using his abilities on camera and posted it to Youtube. Frank responds with a video of his own, explaining himself and the story eventually ends up on the local news (all three of these items will be presented as Youtube videos as if they were produced by the characters in-story). Frank keeps up either a blog or vlog for the remainder of the introduction phase so the players can get to know him better, until he abruptly disappears. During the introductory phase, prior to Frank's disappearance, another character is established through Frank's blog/vlog posts as a friend or acquaintance of Frank.
At this same time we'll launch a couple of websites relating to the world's backstory which Frank might link to or mention in his blog (ex. a government site about new regulations for super-humans, which might give some insights into what happened to Frank/etc).
II. First Campaign: Frank's Disappearance
This is the section in which we really start to hand over control of the narrative to the players and allow them to steer the story.
At the beginning of this segment, Frank's friend steps forward and makes an appeal to the denizens of the internet to help figure out what happened to Frank, presenting them with the first of a series of clues as to his location (not all of these clues will be delivered by the same character--for example, perhaps in the initial appeal to help find Frank, the friend will mention having found some strange note in Frank's room and present that to the players). The friend then launches a website for players to help provide information and solve the clues re: Frank's disappearance. We were thinking about using a social-networking service that allows for creating a customized social-networking site for this part.
Clues pertaining to Frank's location and what happened to him will be made available through a few different non-player characters. Some information may even only be given to one or two players to encourage team-work and sharing of information and theories. The idea here is to create something of an online scavenger hunt and puzzle--sending players all over the "world" discovering more of it's backstory in the process of finding out what happened to Frank.
Aside from the moderately fixed plot "checkpoint" of discovering what happened to Frank/where he is, the story from here isn't static (the endpoint is established, but the way the players get there isn't). Once the players reach the "checkpoint" Frank's friend will make another appeal to the players, this time asking what s/he should do . What happens to Frank and his friend from this point on is entirely up to the players. We were discussing putting a selection of the user-generated ideas for how to rescue Frank (or not as it may be) up in a poll for all the users to decide the direction to take.
World background information provided by non-player characters and the additional "in-world" websites should give the players enough details about the setting to feel like they can make coherent decisions about what to do in the story.
Beyond this, the plan is effectively to work off what the players want/do to initiate additional campaigns (the story has no fixed endpoint) possibly even passing on "GM/DM" positions (in other words, control of non-player characters) to players. But for this project we're focusing on this first segment of story (essentially, it can grow from here in just about any conceivable direction--we're basically trying to build a world and present it to people to play with, but not in such a formal context as a 'game' though you could probably call this a game of some sort).
We've been discussing a lot of other things to incorporate in addition to this, so this is really just a base sketch of what we're going for right now, so, again, it could change a whole lot by the time we get to the presentation--but I think that about sums up what we've come up with so far.
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