No, How’s It Like … Work?

What?  Didn’t I vague it up enough for you last time?  Ok, here’s the dilly in a little more detail.  The Director (a.k.a. Game Master) verbally describes the setting to the players, each of whom controls the actions of one character.  The rules describe the essentials for each character, traits like strength and intelligence and agility, which are represented by numbers.  Like, if Dori is a ten for looks then she’s a hotter hottie than Debbie who is only a seven.  

Success is determined by what you’ve got and by luck.  Sometimes in life you have to roll the dice, and the same goes here.  If Dori wants to flirt with Dave in order to crib off of his homework, then Jen who is playing the character of Dori will have to roll to see if Dori is successful.  For example, because Dori’s appearance is a ten out of ten, Jen rolls a twelve-sided die and as long as she doesn’t roll an eleven or twelve then Dori gets Dave’s homework.  If Debbie tried the same trick, though, then the player controlling her would have to roll a seven or below.

So that’s success for an individual engaging in an individual action, but who wins the entire game?  If this were Monopoly or Clue then one player would be trying to beat the other players, but thankfully it isn’t.  No disrespect to Parker Brothers, but that style of gaming can get old quickly, and doesn’t always make for spreading goodwill at family gatherings.  Instead, Interactive Fiction is cooperative.  The players work together to succeed as a group.  

Let’s go back to our earlier drama metaphor; think about your favorite dramatic television show.  It probably involves a small group of people who are trying to do the right thing.  Maybe they’re a handful of cops who work each week to put bad guys behind bars.  Or maybe they’re attorneys who struggle for justice in the courtroom.  They could be homesteaders in the days of the Wild West fighting against thieves and corrupt officials to keep their lands.  Or they might form the bridge crew of a starship whose mission is to boldly split infinitives while exploring the galaxy.  No matter the specifics, the plot of each episode doesn’t involve each staring character trying to defeat the other staring characters.  Had Captain Kirk spent all his time trying to poison Spock or push Bones McCoy off a cliff then Star Trek would have been a very different show.  

So the characters on television dramas and the ones in Interactive Fiction dramas work together, but the similarities don’t end there.  The characters in television serials, shows whose episodes link together and have continuity from one episode to the next, grow and change with time.  The young gun lawyers at the start of the season might get promoted by the season’s end, or the homesteaders might expose the dirty dealings of the bad sheriff and drive him out of  town, allowing them to finally settle down in peace.  

The equivalent of a television serial in the realm of Interactive Fiction is a campaign (more legacy terms from the days of wargaming), though some of us who were raised on TV call them series, and during the course of a series the characters are likely to change in many ways which can again be represented by numbers.  Let’s say Debbie’s friends help her land a job as a bank teller, and Debbie takes some of her hard earned cash to get herself a new wardrobe and a professional makeover.  Her appearance score of seven might jump to a nine.  By the same token, Dori might decide that she needs more than looks in life, so her friends help her hit the books each day, and she raises her intelligence score.

Next time, I’ll give a real world example of a series I created and how it played out.