#story stack

[lazylittledragon]

ok someone please correct me if i'm wrong but am i weird for thinking those 'audiobooks don't count as reading' posts are ableist as fuck????

[puppyeared]

littlest furth shop

@laikascomet

[zedieame]

Story Stack: My interpretation and it's translation to VNs (Co-written by @nowledgedomain on Twitter!!!)

Susan O'Conner's Website

Mainly written by KnowledgeDomain.

Takeaways from me

Hello fellow devs!

Back in early fall, I attended a workshop by professional AAA narrative designer Susan O'Connor about worldbuilding targeted towards narrative designers of all genres of games and wanted to discuss my biggest takeaway from the talk: the story stack. The story stack is a list of building blocks for a game, from most to least flexible: story, world, economy, action, and fantasy. Even if this doesn't directly apply to VNs, it's super interesting so I recommend reading the whole thing. Or just skip to the last three paragraphs for its applications to VNs.

Fantasy is the most rigid category because it is the purpose of your game: what type of fantasy do you want your game to evoke in the player? During the workshop, Susan used the Spider-man game as an easy example, so the obvious answer here is that you want the player to feel like Spider-man. But what does that actually entail? Being a superhero encompasses many things: perhaps working outside the law, lying to the people close to you about your secret identity, constantly making excuses about events you miss because you have to run off and save someone...but for the Spider-man video game, the fantasy is about how the player can move through the world the way he does, and that's what makes the game fun. This feeds nicely into Action, which is the things that you can do as a player. As Spider-man, the player wants to swing through the streets of New York City on your way to stop crime! You can further break this down into more categories: run, walk, talk to other characters, shoot webs while doing a backflip, etc.

And with all those actions the player can take, there will be an Economy, a reward system, used to promote good player behavior and discourage game behavior/choices the devs don't want. This can take the form of achievements or in-game narrative consequences. Both Action and Economy feed into the World of the game: what narrative space does the story take place in that makes all the other categories make sense? An easy answer here is “New York City,” but this can also be looked at more broadly: is the world forgiving of player mistakes both in terms of side characters' perspectives and game mechanics?

The last category is Story, the most flexible one and therefore often the last part of a game to be decided on in development. The story fills in the gaps between all of these game components and makes them all make sense. The story stack may be applied differently to different types of games, but I would like to consider it in terms of a visual novel.

Since a visual novel is mostly text, the story stack categories seem very straightforward; the fantasy and story may differ depending on the plot, but the action (unless you have another component such as puzzles) and economy essentially are the same as you write multiple endings for a game, with choices being action and achievement system or NPC's reactions being the economy. In a kinetic VN, this probably would be whatever encourages your players to keep playing. The economy would be the dopamine shot a player gets from playing the game and why they continue to play.

I believe the story stack could be most useful as an outline when writing marketing material for a game. For example, if your game is a dating sim, then your marketing points to hit would be: Fantasy: date cute people! Action: make choices! Solve puzzles! Economy: are there good and bad endings in your game? Are they violent or scary? Will the LI reject you, or maybe even hold your hands... World: what kind of setting does the game have? Story: what else is happening besides dating cute people (if anything—we don't judge!)?

Do you think the story stack is a worthwhile method to structure marketing around? Does this concept make sense? Do you think there can be other applications of the story stack?

[bamsara]

being an adult means we can buy or make as much self-indulgent shit (as we can afford) and unironically have trinkets of our fave things cause our teen years was bullied for liking things and hiding/denying we were ever neurodivergent to the point of suicide. sucks for anyone that thinks its weird cringe but I'm going to try and allow myself to love myself in little ways now

[elderwisp]

◁ || ▷ now playing

Taryn: My father used to tell me that the earth would heal our wounds. That the ground would swallow our woes and our tears would nourish the soil beneath us. Pain was no stranger to the garden. A stubbed toe. A scraped knee. A fall. Physical discomfort is a natural part of the living. But to be afflicted by another is quite the wound. You can’t heal something you can’t touch. Atlas is a different kind of hurt. Like picking a rose from a bush… Easy to admire as long as you don’t touch the thorns underneath.

[fukutomichi]

Shimmer Lake (2017) directed by Oren Uziel Benjamin Walker as Zeke Sikes

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

📚☕️🖤

[hearteyedfeelings]

That CON VER SA TION WOWEEEE. So so needed and for so so long. Just gonna type my inital thoughts cause I want to and why not.

Laudna. Dear Laudna, oh you poor loveable naive dummy. (Said with so much love). She grew up alone. Yes she had her parents and maybe the odd friend here or there but she grew up alone. And then she died in the most horrific way, alone. She woke up alone. She then spent 30 years of her life alone- but this time even more so with her own killer in her head feeding her.

And then she met Imogen, beautiful capable Imogen. A light in her lonely life, the first real light. Now she’s seen Imogen grow in power, in confidence. And she feels like her loneliness, her insecurity, her own head is bringing the love of her life down. She thinks she’s keeping her from flying but she doesn’t realize she’s keeping her from flying too high.

Imogen has been on step away from falling in with Predathos since she first felt the pull. The only thing, just like the words out of Imogen’s lips, the only thing that’s keeping her grounded is Laudna. Imogen’s heart is out walking around as a dead but not so dead woman with a rat bird as a familiar. Without her she’s, well we saw, she’s desperate. Willing to bargain with the her love’s killer to get her back. She’s sleeping with her dead body and ready to fight the Lord and Lady of Whitestone, the city of Whitestone. She tore down a city block, she exhalted, she crawled into hell after her. Laudna is Imogen’s tether, her red thread wrapped around her wrist, without her there isn’t.

Without Imogen- Laudna doesn’t have her light, her anchor keeping her from falling back into the dark.

Without Laudna Imogen flies too high never to be seen again.

They’re co-dependent. They’re ready to destroy the world to get the other back. They never want to leave one another. They want to protect each other above all else- the gods, Predathos, Exandria be damned.

They’re also scared.

Laudna is scared she’s holding Imogen down.

Imogen is scared Laudna will leave her and fall away.

They’re ride or die in the worst and best ways. I’m so curious to see how their story goes. I’d like to believe they have a happy ending though. Maybe. Probably not, but hey it’s good to have some hope and crazier things have happened eh? It’s D&D after all.

[salamispots]

mom while setting up mahjong: aren't you going to be uncomfortable sitting sideways like that in the chair?

me: do you not see me sitting like a little gargoyle in my computer chair

[ryllen]

"I decided it's my break day today, Oh coincidentally, I'm gonna sit here, and watch you work." also it's too cute how Nemo just came run at me whenever i sat on a bench

[tricoufamily]

no more than a baby back then

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[cheriboms]

call that an intergenerational language barrier 🙅

[cent-scratchnsniff]

reread tiphs dialog recently. i love them lots

[moodysullie]

ㅤ

Oh he bad, Bill had it bad.

Look how nervous he is

And also... THIS

ㅤ

[sick-ada]

main cast for the story im working on, more info under the cut

SBS (Stacked Between Stones, it/its) - debateably not even an iterator anymore. it definitely used to be one, but it lost its memories in a botched transfer into a mobile puppet and now believes itself to be a purposed organism of some kind. it avoids thinking about where it came from. instead, it takes pleasure from exploring the world and honing its own survival abilities. it experiences the cycle, but is unaware of it, not remembering past deaths as something with a mark of communication would. it's incredibly prideful of its own competence, and initially offers help to RP out of curiosity; to see if it could keep her alive.

RP (Relentless Percussion, she/her) - her creators were convinced that the failure of the wider iterator populace to create a Solution was due to some instance of flawed reasoning that had tainted their data via the sharing of research. therefore, they reasoned, an iterator completely isolated from their peers would be able to find a Solution, as their data would be free from this theoretical error. hence, RP was built without access to her communication arrays. they were still built, as her creators wished to communicate with one another, but an advanced program was created to prevent her from accessing it. she spent the thousands of cycles between the global ascension and the beginning of the story working on breaking through that program. however, she was too scared to say anything once she had access, since she had never conversed with her peers before. she instead used her access to hack into private broadcasts and spy on iterators, with the aim of gaining an understanding of how to act. she is the person who initiates the story, as through her spying she discovers a plot to kill another iterator (SOP, he/him, ive posted about him under the name 13 Vases Upon Vines). since he has all non-local broadcasts blocked, she decides to mobilise herself and make the journey to him herself, meeting SBS and WP in the process

WP (Worn Paths, they/them) - the most recently mobilised of the group, they're on a journey to visit the structure of their closest friend, who suddenly stopped responding to communications one day, in attempt to find answers or, failing that, closure. they're unaware that SBS was this friend, and SBS is likewise unaware that it once knew WP. their puppet was poorly designed, suited for quick bursts of speed across the flat plains surrounding their can, but not for the long treks through rough terrain that end up necessary. they often have to be carried by RP, whose puppet is better suited to the circumstances.

[figofswords]

somebody rec me some good books. and they do actually have to be good. don’t rec me something just because it’s gay or it’s popular, it has to also still be good. like both the story and the writing have to be good none of this good concept bad writing or good writing horrible story. fantasy or soft scifi preferred, especially if it’s nontraditional fantasy. I am bored and sick of the internet and I want to get back into reading more but I’m kinda meh about most of what’s on my shelf

*edit: when I say “soft scifi” I don’t mean cozy I mean not hard scifi, as in stories that are more fantastical than grounded in hard science. for example the Martian is considered hard scifi, so not that. Star Wars would be closer to a soft scifi bc it’s all bullshit on the science end and it’s more about the vibes