(no subject)

[prog]

There's been a lot of good PKD stuff linked from BoingBoing over the last couple of days, but my favorite is this eight-page R. Crumb comic adaptation of an interview he gave near the end of his life. I guess I didn't quite realize that the events he wrote about in "Valis" actually happened to him, at least according to his own perception. These included his conviction that the Holy Spirit or Elijah or A Pink Space Laser or something had zapped him and given him powers, such as the ability to live in A.D. 50 Rome and 1970 California at the same time, or to mishear Beatles lyrics as an alarming medical diagnosis regarding his son (which turns out to be accurate and saves the boy's life).

I would have so liked to meet this man. I think that among my little fantasy worlds is one where he survives his stroke. Years later he meets my brother Ricky and they become close friends, and his family with our family. Creepy, jmac.

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It's interesting timing coz I was thinking with daerr how much I'd love to help plan a PKD-themed mystery hunt, specifically one that blended a lot of tropes from his earlier fiction.

It would start by welcoming all the new colonists to Mars, and assigning them to their workgroups in the mining company's information sector. As the teams worked on their initial task units, the company president would issue frequent video updates and its staff would make occasional personal visits to make sure that everything was running smoothly. But soon enough, the workers' perception would start to change...

I have some more specific ideas which I think I'll hold off on writing about for now. Suffice to say that I really like radiotelescope's notion of putting an actual story, a real narrative, around the hunt. Sure, it wouldn't be as smooth as a better IF game: it would still be a frame around siamese cryptics and duck conundrums and so on. But I love the idea of hunting not just to unlock more puzzles but to see what happens next, and maybe even feel like the team (being, as a whole, a character in the story) is making choices to guide the story forward, despite knowing that the story's necessarily on rails.

I also have some ideas making these "narrative interfaces" work in a puzzle-hunt setting, and tried sharing them only to decide upon writing them down that they wouldn't actually work, and instead just annoy the players. It would be really tricky thing to do right. But I'm sure it's possible. Indeed, it's probably already been done; what the hell do I know about this stuff, I'm a newbie. If that's the case, I'd love to hear about it.

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

Your idea of a theme for the mystery hunt is interesting. Creepy as hell, but interesting.

definitely been done

[misuba.livejournal.com]

online, at least. it's getting to be a longish history actually. but dickian themes would be an awesome approach.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about narrative Hunt structure all weekend (albeit in the framework of the Prisoner, rather than PKD).

The first observation: the "fake theme" that has shown up in the past few Hunts (but not this year's) is an elementary example of this. Team has a notion of the story. They solve puzzles. Suddenly, having solved a puzzle, the reward is information which transforms the story! The *narrative* has taken a sharp left, but the players don't miss it because the *game mechanics* are behaving in the ordinary way (you solve the puzzles, and get rewarded).

My next step would be to set up conflict between the two levels. Have a dark, scary storyline which the players are *ambivalent* about taking part in -- but they have no choice; solving the puzzles takes you through the storyline, and the Hunt is about solving puzzles. (In my Prisoner motif, this might be a storyline about betrayal, or collusion with the authorities. You are the bad guys! Solve puzzles to defeat the good guys!)

Beyond that it gets trickier. You'd like to add narrative choices to the game, but you don't want a situation like "Do you want to do X or Y?" where plot path X has different puzzles from path Y. That's a waste of puzzle-writing time.

You also want the narrative choices to have important outcomes -- not just changing the flavor text -- but you *don't* want a team to be eliminated from the Hunt just because they made the wrong story choice. (You don't want teams to be eliminated at all, really.) Similarly, inter-team rivalry is great, but how do you make it significant without causing a team to get screwed because some other team decided to screw them?

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I'm going to reply to myself so I can keep on blathering. (Actually prog and I chatted a little bit about this off-line.)

Here's a model, off the top of my head: the first time a team clicks on a puzzle, they hit a bit of story first. They have to make a choice before the puzzle opens up. Subsequently, clicking on that puzzle simply shows the puzzle, as per Hunt usual.

(The puzzle site lets you review all the past stories and choices, of course, but you only get one chance to *make* a given decision.)

Important UI requirement: you see the puzzle title *before* you hit the story bit. This makes it obvious that the hunt isn't switching puzzles around based on your narrative choices. (It's important not only that this be true, but that the players *realize* it is true. Otherwise they freak out and worry that they're hitting harder puzzles than the next team.)

With this setup, you should get everyone gathered around, excited to see the next story bit -- both because the story is interesting, and because a new puzzle is about to open up. However, teams *won't* (I hope) get stuck in analysis-paralysis trying to pick the "best" story choice. You gotta choose something or the puzzle doesn't appear. They might choose randomly, but hopefully at least some of the onlookers will be engaged enough to shout out a suggestion.

I think this model would have to be paired with a very multithreaded, fine-grained story. It should be *clear* that any given choice is not a central, critical Choice Between Doom And Triumph; it's a small twist whose full significance will be apparent later on. (I.e., it's *okay* to just whack a button and get to the puzzle.)

Then you want the accumulation of choices to have interesting consequences, but that takes more thought. I think you have to know more about the story before you decide that. Maybe you have a big set of goals, and one is achieved at the end of each hunt chapter; the choices you make determine the *order* of the goals, and that leads to one of N different slants on the outcome. (Even though, overall, you've achieved all the goals that the story called for.)