How much do you want to know about the story?

[Aquitaine]

A recent thread on this board made me think of something--

How much do you all want to know about the story?

Just in case you aren't aware, FO is really two parts: the game engine (the big part) and an 'official module' or 'grand campaign.' These two are separated for a couple reasons:

- The game engine is the bulk of the programming, and it's really what this project is about. Developing content or campaign modules for it will be possible (and, I hope, easy) for everyone to do, so we don't want to devote our main development resources to this.

- Developing creative content (such as a story) is a very different process than developing a game engine. We have had success with our game design thread --> public review process for the game engine, and provided these forums don't get too out of control in the future, we'll keep that as long as we are able. Content and story development, though, is not something that works as well with multiple people working on the same piece.

Real work on the 'story' isn't going to begin until we have more pieces of the game engine in place, but pieces of it have already been written. My question is: put yourself in our place. Given that every single detail of the game engine is publicly debated, are you willing or interested to trust the development of the 'official campaign' to a smaller, semi-closed core team? My obvious question in your place would be 'does that mean we can't contribute to things like races if we aren't on this team?' The answer to that is no - the only things that are really the province of the official campaign and not the game engine are questions like:

- Who are the Orions? Where do they come from? What is their role in the game? (and this could easily change with any other module)
- What kind of game start conditions might be interesting other than your basic 'one colony ship/two scout ships' setup? Look at the scenarios in games like EU2, Victoria, or Hearts of Iron - what if we populate 2/3 of the galaxy with intergalactic states and make a scenario out of that?
- What other goals might the player have besides just taking Orion or conquering the galaxy?

I guess what I'm saying is that the reason for doing things this way, in my mind, is twofold: firstly, as I mentioned, it's very hard to operate a creative process that involves the development of fiction via committee. Writers do sometimes work in pairs or groups, but even so, each one usually has a 'sphere' or an area of expertise.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, anything that is decided for the official module means that it must, by definition, be mutable: if the folks on the story team decide 'The Orions are ancient giraffes with psionic powers' then that's all well and good, but simply by virtue of it being a module, that means that anybody else can decide something different and develop their own scenario. I recommend that those of you who are not familiar with Paradox's games (EU2, HoI, Victoria) check out their forums at http://www.paradoxplaza.com and look at all the modifications people have made to those games even without the source available.

What I'm trying to avoid in bringing this up (and being highly verbose in so doing) is the appearance of some sort of 'secret club' that gets to do all the fun stuff. Honestly, if I wasn't part of the design team on this game, I'd want to help out with the engine, but I'd want to be surprised by the story; knowing everything about everything on a project like this can dampen the magic somewhat, so I guess I want to know whether or not you all agree that is a good idea to have the story/grand campaign development be slightly more 'closed' than the game engine (obviously, when it's released, the source for the whole thing will be there, so anybody who wants to see it can -- this is just during development).

Thanks!
Aquitaine

[PowerCrazy]

Well if the story/Grand Campaing is discussed in the story thread then those who want to can follow along, and the rest can just stay out. It would be the choice of the individual. As far as who would actually develop the story....hmm. I wouldn't want to say "whoever wants too" yet it seems kind of opposed to our goal by restricting who can participate. So how about the first 4-5 people that respond to this thread? Or we just have everyone come up with a story and whosever is the best, gets to be the lead story director? Or of Course there is the "secret society" group who is chosen by you and/or tyreth and notified via PM and everyone else is just in the dark except for what is posted in the story thread.

[Tyreth]

Myself and Aquitaine selecting the story/campaign group is how it most likely would be done. That way we could select the best people for the job to build the secret content.

This is all so that when the game is released there are unknown elements, missing parts to the story, so that there is something to look forward to discovering. As Aquitaine said, all of that will become open once the game is finally released, but kept secret beforehand.

Just so it's clear, a lot of the major part of the story will be open beforehand. The backstory is already written in the story forums, with some critical details missing. So with a group writing the content in secret, things such as race development will still be open, but the selection of which races are used will be somewhat influenced by how well it fits into the game world and the hidden details. Some parts of the history of certain races will be kept a secret until later, while the majority information - such as the common history, personality, stats - will be revealed. The other part that will be hidden are a lot of the events that will occur during the course of the game.

And finally, as Aquitaine suggested, it may be easier for a smaller group to work together developing consistent creative literature than a larger community.

So the question is I suppose whether you want to take a part in development of all the story, or whether you want to leave some of it to a small group (those in it will be made known) so that you have surprises to look forward to, and a story to unfold that you aren't already intimately familiar with. If we allow those that want to participate to do so, that is the same as if we were developing it openly.

[Aquitaine]

The fact is that this sort of creative process does not work if you allow, say, 'the first four or five people who reply' to be the ones who count. Plays and movies are not directed by committee, nor are books written this way.

It is absolutely opposed to the way we're doing everything else. That's why I bring it up -- because I think it is opposed to it and I think it needs to be, or else the quality of the work will suffer. However, given that this is not a part of the core engine and that everyone is free to develop their own modules, I don't think the fact that the development process is different is a bad thing.

[dstjames]

Just my 2 cents but I think the story should be kept secret and be written by a select few that have the right talents to do a good job. If you are working on a film for instance. And you are able to see it as it progresses. The move is not nearly as much fun to watch for the first time as it is for the rest of the audience because it loses that edge of your seat, whats going to happen next thing.

[Sandlapper]

I like the idea of a suprise storyline for ver. 1.0 release. As stated, a small core group to flesh the story out.

Two suggestions for check and balance of storyline;

First, the core group, of say five or six, works on the project for x amount days or weeks, then reports to a review committee of two or three. The review commitee is SELECTED BY THE CORE GROUP, and is under the auspices of the core group. The review committee provides FEEDBACK ONLY to core group. The core group has FINAL authority on storyline. After feedback, back to work on storyline.

Second, when core group is selected, ALSO select another small review group to review storyline near it's completion, say 75-85% complete. This group is COMPLETELY out of the loop until then. And PERHAPS(perhaps not) give his group some veto power, say 3/4th of group hates storyline, then major revisions are in order, otherwise storyline is a go. Then review group can report to forums-"The storyline is a go! It's great everyone! Y'all are going to love this!" to whet everyone's appetite.

[Aquitaine]

I appreciate the idea of oversight, but given that everyone can make a module, I think I'd rather just let people change the official module if they don't like it rather than getting 3/4 of the way through and hearing somebody who hasn't been there the whole time tell me it sucks. ;P