The Great Conversationist Spoiler Thread

Please don't read this thread if you want to experience all player created quests in the game!

This thread is for players to share their stories to get critical artistic feedback to better develop their skills as a story teller through conversationist.

The only reason this thread was created was to create an open ground for people to share ideas and commentary without taking away from the in-game experience. Having a thread titled as the spoiler thread should be enough to deter players not developing conversationist. I was about to ask for a separate forum category not in the default searches, but the developers have enough to do and I am not sure there is enough demand to justify it.

 

This past weekend I asked Lord British for advice when creating stories with conversationists. I stating my concern with the lack of control over rewards when creating a quest line. He told a story about a quest that was created which involved marking yourself for open PvP as a test of courage. He said people were reluctant, but in the end took the challenge and nothing happened to them. That it was the player being compelled to take an action that made it rewarding for them. I found that highly inspiring, because rewards are not really the goal. The goal is to make something interesting for the player to engage in. Maybe its a great emotionally compelling story, or just participating in the story, or a story that is intellectually compelling that has the real value. Experience, gold and trinkets are not what we should be targeting as storywriters.

I just wanted to put that out there before sharing anything.

BTW: I remember doing that quest myself long ago.

 

This is my first share, but just to be clear, I know it it not awesome. I am just trying to hone my skills

Setting: A wounded guard in a small lot in owl's head guards a portal to/from Broken Ground (an elven POT) and behind her is a death trap of a tower.



Here is the conversation. I intend to add a lot of other conversation threads which intertwine with other conversationists later. But being the first one, here is the entire dialog.

Please provide feedback. I am using the spoiler tag below to hide my comments until after you read it.

Spoiler: Post-read Feedback Notes

I was trying to go for an ambiguous context in which the player would contemplate the morality and virtues associated with these actions. It is never revealed what Sasha would do with elves the player delivered to her.

I was also trying to tie the story as a reason for the portal and death-trap tower to exist along side the guard. I realize that this linkage is rather weak, being trapped in the virtue choices. But I did not want the story to be about them, just bring a cohesion to the scene.

This also ties into the poetry that is memorialized in Broken Ground which is told from the elves' perspective.

 

In Inky, there is a challenge between first and third person conversations. And there are user interface limitations as well when it comes to the conversation. For example, you could just dump an entire story into the dialog, but the player has to scroll up to read it, leaving immersion behind. And there is a scroll back limit as well. I think it makes sense to do 1-2 paragraphs at a time.

Finally, players don't like to be stuck to NPC's for very long, so the stories either have to be concise, insanely masterful, or with occasional escape options in the dialog. I think the right mix for long stories is to feed it over time. For example, use multiple conversationists or multiple entry points (chapters) within a conversationists.

 

I am a little surprised and disappointed that there was not a couple others that have something to say on this. And a couple more that want their own samples to be judged. This is NOT a thread for patting each other on the back. This is certainly not a thread for yes man.

Maybe I need to start...

The wounded guard story is short, too short. There was a ton of opportunity to build characters which was barely even scratched. It could have told more of the commander, the comrades, and Sasha herself. Did any of them have families? Did they fight together before? What did Sasha eat that morning? Why did Sasha join the Calvary?

For a story that was intended to invoke the avatar to make a virtue choice, it was too leading.

The sentence structure is too concise like a technical brief. It should describe more of the environment.

While it may be true that avatars are not going to read a book from a NPC in one sitting, that is not an excuse for not spending more time to develop the story.

Conversationalists should be sloppier in their speech, even error prone.

....


At least some of those criticisms are correct. I would really appreciate some opinions of what about it is trending in a good direction and what isn't. For me this is like an MTV commercial, with only seconds to capture a reader and fewer to keep them. But I am not sure I am correct about that. I wish I knew. The game's quests are super short as well, just benefiting from the fact it make the avatar go do something.

 

Hi @Tahru, excellent thread! I want to participate!

The quest @Lord British refers to is Courage quest in Vengeance by @Violation Clauth (Duke Violation) several years ago! Many of us took that quest, including LB. Vengeance was a PVP-enabled POT at the time and one had to go to several places, people played NPC parts, and you had to make decisions along the way. It took COURAGE to get through the quest.

I have not done much Ink work yet however, I have written dialogs in books in UO and led random player quests where some people said: "That was the most fun thing I've done in UO in months!" (versus their constant monster-bashing and dungeon romping). -- not patting myself on the back -- simply illustrating this can be FUN and the audience can have even MORE FUN!

I have some comments in general and specific (just my opinions):

• Short Active Dialog with Punch and Feeling: NPC dialog should be very short in structure. Like you said, even grammar/spelling is wrong at times. After all, they are "talking" to us, not reading a book to us with lots of description. I remember reading Dragonlance Chronicles a long time ago. Much of the scene, setting, information was in "dialog" between the characters/companions. You visualized the situation and scene based on what they said, not what the author described in prose. Also, the dialog needs to be the very "active voice". That's how people talk. I suggest drafting the dialog out fast, to get the concepts, ideas of what information is said/revealed. Don't worry about form and fit yet. Then make 1 or 2 passes over it to finalize it.
  • Example:
    • You wrote "We traveled for many moons looking for the elves. Every time we thought we were close because we found a fresh track, a torn cloth, or a spot of fresh blood, they were nowhere to be found. Our search took us deep into the hostile unexplored mountains. As rations ran low, we grew tired."
    • Suggestion: "We looked for the elves for many months. At times we got close! I knew it -- fresh tracks, torn clothing, blood spatters ... but alas, they slipped away ... again and again and again. We searched into the hostile mountains where we'd never gone before. It was scary. We were running out of rations, and we were tired ... so, so tired."
  • There's a lot packed into that one dialog. Too much? I think that is okay. It reads fast, and pulls the reader along the journey, not allowing time for the reader's mind to wander with detailed descriptions or long sentences. We need "punch" and "feeling" in our NPC dialog. You can almost hear the NPC "sigh" at the end, without using an emote *sigh*.
• Use more resources for backstory, description:
  • Books: Perhaps the NPC would say "We had a really tough battle one night. We lost 8 men! May they rest in peace where we quickly buried them. Well, I wrote what happened in my Journal on the table over there. Gosh, it was terrible! Go read it ... it will turn your stomach!"
    • I threw in something to entice/tease the person to read the book with "it will turn your stomach!". People may then think "hmm, I best read this or I might miss something and I want to read about the gore."
  • Structures and Objects: Get the reader to LOOK at the structure or object and pose questions in their mind. We want them to look or search or discover things to cause player "movement" in your scene. Let's get the players to "move" too, not just talk to an NPC. Lead them through your house, deco, dungeon, etc. looking for things.
    • You wrote: "The construction tower here could provide a swift judgment for the enemies among us."
    • Suggestion: "See that construction tower here? Look closely. It's all set to bring our enemies to a swift and permanent judgment, don't you think? Go on, check it out if you agree." (Then perhaps have a paper on the tower like a bill of materials or instructions to execute the enemies).

Does this help? It gives me ideas too.

You are brave to post your dialog for critique. I'm very interested in participating in this! It may take me a few weeks to write some dialog here (I'm busy, but getting more free time soon). I know where to go now -- I'm following this thread.

Thanks!
-- Winfield, a fellow traveler and storyteller (especially about fish tales!)

PS: your video, is that just an unlisted video? I have a channel on YouTube and I want to post similar very short videos as examples of things and not clutter my main channel; I guess unlisted video links work well to include in our posts?

• https://www.youtube.com/c/WinfieldPaxLair
• https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=31198917

 

Thank you so much my friend. I truly appreciate that feedback. I agree completely with them. I am going to take a stab at improving the dialog and the scene and I will repost it.

I want to improve my skills and feedback like this gives me a lot to think about. I also loved your ideas of including more props to back it up or extend the story.

I really look forward to reading your work!

Yeah, I like unlisted YouTube for stuff I am just presenting something without taking the time to clean it up or stage it.

 

NPC conversationalists is something on the "back burner" for me, but I am interested in your process. SotA is my first foray into RP, but I do find the NPC stuff interesting even if, as you note, it is limiting.

I don't think that's a bad thing because it will force you to be focused.

Just as Winfield suggested, use an active voice. Try and speak normal. I know I've gotten caught up in the "Hail"'s (which is succinct and still useful) and the "Many moons ago....", the "Wilst thou...", and all the old English style trappings. I opted to drop it, primarily because I skipped old English in college (trying to be funny here) and just realizing that no one is grading you an "F" because you don't use it.

I participated in some forum RP with Boris and the gang. There I had a lot more space to be creative. But I realize with these NPC's you can't be long-winded (as I tend to be). I do, however, believe I can string together a story across multiple NPC's. They don't seem hard to acquire (dressing them up should be easy enough). My goal is to try that - having multiple NPC's carve out something. It might make it easier to tell a story, as well as provides a method of "progressing". Certainly having one keyword on one NPC being used by a player on another, that in itself (if this is technically possible) could help, maybe. What I would envision is one person saying "apple" but then you'd have to know to go to another NPC and type in "apple". Not sure if Inky would work with that, meaning if the word choices HAVE to appear on the bottom of the screen.

Another thing I am unabashed about doing is "stealing" ideas from others. I have visited a few player-made areas to get ideas.

The one thing I am stuck on, and not that it's required to have a "reward", is to have some mechanism whereby there is a trigger that signifies the end, which is (duh) a reward. This is where things could get interesting because to entice players to try your stuff, you are giving them an Uncommon or Rare artifact (these days, it's easy to grind a bit to collect what you need to make one - what is it, like 16 commons to make 4 uncommons to make one rare - and this isn't accounting for the times you either get an uncommon or are lucky and get a rare). Again, forgetting that the goal is to reward players with a nice experience, I think it's a nice touch to give something they may find useful at the end. Because it's icing on the cake, the cake being the experience of a well-done "quest", for example.

I'm not suggesting giving out 100 rares in a day, of course, but I think you get the idea. My own intention is to do something that is "seasonal" or of a limited time - again, something that sparks urgency for people to try "before it's gone!" The cool thing, to my mind, of having a lot of different NPC's is that you can leave some that tell the basic story of the quest around, but then use "main" one's for something that is temporary and that you are actively curating.

These are all just "thoughts". There's no right/wrong way I imagine, just different ways of doing something. Start simple and build on that as you gain more experience with it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, as I went in on forum RP and then continued on with my original thoughts, but you could consider other things aside from NPC's to weave a tapestry. So you could have the fluff in, for example, forum RP/stories, but then tighten the grip with the NPC's.

 

@Magnus Zarwaddim those are pretty much the lines I have been thinking as well. Which is why I have been stuck because the only way to really reward anyone is to be there in person or have someone mail you in the game. Chests and vendors are just too easy to cheat your way through. Although a good reward will attract some players, I am not sure its for the right reasons. What I mean is that the vast majority of questers don't read the story, they just click on every link, or follow the quest tracker, and search for solutions online, until it pays out. With conversationalists, I think we have to really raise the bar (not the reward).

I wish there was analytics for the conversationalists, so we can tell if they have traffic and how long an avatar engages with them, ... I have no idea if anyone ever engages mine, or if something I changes improved anything.

In any event, it is going to be a fun skill to develop, to bring life to these NPC's even if it is just for a few of us.

 

While I'm not counting it out, rewards are not the endgame in my current thinking within my own abstracts coming into focus.

"Theme Mystery", an over all continuing group of stories which all hint into directions of wonder in not only what comes next, but wonder in if it's good or evil.

Good or Evil...
In Ultima's Gargoyle questing storyline https://ultima.fandom.com/wiki/Gargish_Virtues was seen such a thing, where the player did not truely know, but came or was brought to know that these demon looking creatures were actually just a race not unlike our own.

Lingering Wonder...
The Guardian https://ultima.fandom.com/wiki/Guardian is another important to such a wonder, because the guadian was described slowly from hints and findings throughout quests surrounding him or those effected by him.

Avatar, you will need this...
Yet I think rewards should not seem like rewards, such as in Ultima VII where the Avatar aquires a "Caddellite Helm" https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Caddellite_helm . It's not a reward, it's something the Avatar needs in order to continue forward in the storyline.

How such things can be accomplished is the trick ,

a trick I have yet to fully answer for myself
~TL~