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alias_sqbrThis is inspired by the post Representing Video Game Mechanics in Fanction. It made some very good points (and has a nice glossary), but focussed very much on Japanese RPGs (JRPGs), and I thought it might be interesting to think about how I've approached the problem myself for Western RPGs (WRPGs), specifically the Bioware games Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
So, as I said in my comment to that post, I pretty much agree withshinsengumi's take on hit points, magic points, and curable in-battle "death", and I think WRPGs and JRPGs apply these concepts pretty similarly. Here's a few extra topics I have thoughts on.
The writers were constrained by the fact that they were writing a game. One justification for ignoring certain parts of canon is the idea that the characters "really" did things a different way, but the game couldn't show it for practical reasons. Exactly how far this logic can be taken is a matter of opinion.
In general, I like to stick within the limitations of the game when they create interesting conflict or variety, but will ignore them when it seems unrealistic or overly restrictive. Like everyone having the same body type and height.
Do you give your characters exactly the same abilities as they have in the game? I tend to be lax about this, eg assuming that all mages know SOME healing even if the character has no healing spells. Similarly, a character who is supposed to be literally unable to wield an axe would in practice be able to pick it up and a flail about, but wouldn't be able to use it anywhere near as well as someone who has the relevant skills. You might even want to consider letting some "non-magical" (or non-biotic etc) characters have mild, fairly useless magical abilities. This is already kind of canon in Mass Effect, where Vanguards and Sentinels are "half biotics".
Also: apart from genuine differences like "does this person have magical ability" real people don't divide neatly into groups like "rogue" or "warrior", especially outside regimented places like the military. I think this is dealt with pretty well within Dragon Age: Origins. When a rogue or warrior asks to learn a specialisation only possible for the other class, Alistair/Zevran etc says something like "Ah, I would love to, but you haven't trained in the right sorts of techniques. Being a templar requires more brute strength."
Different characters have different skills, and if you bring a party of all healers, say, you're not going to do very well. I think this would work the same way in real life, but again don't think anyone would literally say "Well, we have two rogues already, so we need a warrior" etc.
A lot of RPGs have official movies or books etc. The writers of these works face a lot of the same questions we do in terms of making the dry, practical constraints of gameplay more fluid and realistic for fiction. This would probably be really useful if I had read or watched any of these spinoffs myself :D But I'd be curious to hear from anyone who has. (This is different from questions about how much of the backstory etc revealed in these works count as "canon", which is an issue for any extended fictional universe containing works in multiple media)
Really I'm comparing Final Fantasy to Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Oblivion, since that's all I've played enough to get a strong feel for. I'd be curious to hear about anything I'm missing. I know Persona has a little more customisability, and there are presumably a whole raft of extra issues MMORPGs (I'm assuming Glitch and Echo Bazaar aren't representative)
Anyway. The main difference I've noticed is the customisability. In a WRPG you design your own character, including name, appearance, class, background and gender. There's also more control over the plot and dialogue. Overall, this means that any two players may experience fairly different stories from the same game.
This provides a challenge when writing fic. You can't rely on readers knowing the full plot of your "canon", but the story isn't entirely original and many scenes are the same for all playthroughs. Conveniently Bioware games are largely defined by a relatively small number of variables: gender/name/class of protagonist, their decisions for certain key plot choices etc, and anyone who's enough of a fan to read fic has probably familiarised themselves with all the major variations. I get the feeling it's more complex for Bethesda games but I haven't read fic for them.
Some writers choose to retell the entire story from start to end, assuming that there's enough originality in their combination of choices and added content (internal monologue, missing scenes etc) to keep things interesting. This is controversial, especially when fic uses dialogue from the game. Certainly there is a lot of mediocre, unimaginative fic that basically takes the script and just adds stuff like "she said, her heart breaking", but there are also some gems.
I've written canon playthrough fic that uses game dialogue myself. Sure, I think it's better to write original scenes and dialogue where possible since it will be more interesting for the reader, but some significant events only happen once and if you change the dialogue you're contradicting canon and I get thrown out of the story.
In either case, I think the key is to create something interesting. I've never written fic for my female Shepard from Mass Effect, since her story is pretty much exactly what you'd expect for a flirtatious, slightly melancholy Paragon who romanced Kaidan and Thane, and I can read a bazillion very similar stories on fanfic.net. However I found it challenging to explain everyone's internal motivations for my male Shepard playthrough (he's an utter arse, yet everyone loves him) and since I haven't seen anyone else write this kind of thing feel that my fic does have something new to express.
Usually I prefer to write and read canon playthrough stories from the POV of the minor characters, off having their own adventures with just enough mentions of the "canon" plot to let the reader know what the defining player choices were.
You can also mix and match canon from different playthroughs, real or imaginary: I once wrote a story about a trans PC who identified as male but generally experienced the female PC dialogue, and have seen lots of Dragon Age: Origin fic which combines characters from one origin with those from another (the commoner dwarf PC meeting the human noble PC, say), even though in any actual playthrough they never meet.
Another option is to tell stories set before or after canon. This allows for a lot more originality, and also allows you to, say, have parties of just two people or whatever if that's what you feel like writing.
Another choice is alternate universes where events take a different turn. In the game, no matter what choices you make certain events always happen, while others are impossible. Some writers are quite comfortable writing stories where events change just because they find the canon options too restrictive, but personally I tend to find this jarring unless there's a very definite branching point and things go differently from there. The question is: how differently?
For example: in Dragon Age 2, whether you spend the game ignoring the serial killer and causing trouble or spend it hunting down the serial killer and trying to broker peace, it makes absolutely no difference to the Mage vs Templar conflict or serial killer deaths. If you write a fairly minor AU (eg I wrote the main's sister staying home all game instead of leaving after Act 1) is it "canon consistent" to have these details change? I decided yes, because I wanted to change them, but I can see the argument for no.
An unrelated thing about alternate universes: I like to use canon dialogue (where it applies) to show where things are the same, and then increasingly change or call back to that dialogue to show where things differ. This is again a mildly controversial move, I know other writers prefer to make all the dialogue entirely original.
And I have run out of things to say, so shall stop there. I'm sure I've missed things! What are other people's thoughts?
So, as I said in my comment to that post, I pretty much agree with
shinsengumi's take on hit points, magic points, and curable in-battle "death", and I think WRPGs and JRPGs apply these concepts pretty similarly. Here's a few extra topics I have thoughts on.Issues which apply to both WRPGs and JRPGs
Ignoring anything you feel is just game mechanics
The writers were constrained by the fact that they were writing a game. One justification for ignoring certain parts of canon is the idea that the characters "really" did things a different way, but the game couldn't show it for practical reasons. Exactly how far this logic can be taken is a matter of opinion.
In general, I like to stick within the limitations of the game when they create interesting conflict or variety, but will ignore them when it seems unrealistic or overly restrictive. Like everyone having the same body type and height.
Abilities
Do you give your characters exactly the same abilities as they have in the game? I tend to be lax about this, eg assuming that all mages know SOME healing even if the character has no healing spells. Similarly, a character who is supposed to be literally unable to wield an axe would in practice be able to pick it up and a flail about, but wouldn't be able to use it anywhere near as well as someone who has the relevant skills. You might even want to consider letting some "non-magical" (or non-biotic etc) characters have mild, fairly useless magical abilities. This is already kind of canon in Mass Effect, where Vanguards and Sentinels are "half biotics".
Also: apart from genuine differences like "does this person have magical ability" real people don't divide neatly into groups like "rogue" or "warrior", especially outside regimented places like the military. I think this is dealt with pretty well within Dragon Age: Origins. When a rogue or warrior asks to learn a specialisation only possible for the other class, Alistair/Zevran etc says something like "Ah, I would love to, but you haven't trained in the right sorts of techniques. Being a templar requires more brute strength."
Party Balance
Different characters have different skills, and if you bring a party of all healers, say, you're not going to do very well. I think this would work the same way in real life, but again don't think anyone would literally say "Well, we have two rogues already, so we need a warrior" etc.
Seeing how things are written in non-game spinoffs
A lot of RPGs have official movies or books etc. The writers of these works face a lot of the same questions we do in terms of making the dry, practical constraints of gameplay more fluid and realistic for fiction. This would probably be really useful if I had read or watched any of these spinoffs myself :D But I'd be curious to hear from anyone who has. (This is different from questions about how much of the backstory etc revealed in these works count as "canon", which is an issue for any extended fictional universe containing works in multiple media)
Western RPG specific issues
Really I'm comparing Final Fantasy to Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Oblivion, since that's all I've played enough to get a strong feel for. I'd be curious to hear about anything I'm missing. I know Persona has a little more customisability, and there are presumably a whole raft of extra issues MMORPGs (I'm assuming Glitch and Echo Bazaar aren't representative)
Anyway. The main difference I've noticed is the customisability. In a WRPG you design your own character, including name, appearance, class, background and gender. There's also more control over the plot and dialogue. Overall, this means that any two players may experience fairly different stories from the same game.
This provides a challenge when writing fic. You can't rely on readers knowing the full plot of your "canon", but the story isn't entirely original and many scenes are the same for all playthroughs. Conveniently Bioware games are largely defined by a relatively small number of variables: gender/name/class of protagonist, their decisions for certain key plot choices etc, and anyone who's enough of a fan to read fic has probably familiarised themselves with all the major variations. I get the feeling it's more complex for Bethesda games but I haven't read fic for them.
Retelling canon
Some writers choose to retell the entire story from start to end, assuming that there's enough originality in their combination of choices and added content (internal monologue, missing scenes etc) to keep things interesting. This is controversial, especially when fic uses dialogue from the game. Certainly there is a lot of mediocre, unimaginative fic that basically takes the script and just adds stuff like "she said, her heart breaking", but there are also some gems.
I've written canon playthrough fic that uses game dialogue myself. Sure, I think it's better to write original scenes and dialogue where possible since it will be more interesting for the reader, but some significant events only happen once and if you change the dialogue you're contradicting canon and I get thrown out of the story.
In either case, I think the key is to create something interesting. I've never written fic for my female Shepard from Mass Effect, since her story is pretty much exactly what you'd expect for a flirtatious, slightly melancholy Paragon who romanced Kaidan and Thane, and I can read a bazillion very similar stories on fanfic.net. However I found it challenging to explain everyone's internal motivations for my male Shepard playthrough (he's an utter arse, yet everyone loves him) and since I haven't seen anyone else write this kind of thing feel that my fic does have something new to express.
Usually I prefer to write and read canon playthrough stories from the POV of the minor characters, off having their own adventures with just enough mentions of the "canon" plot to let the reader know what the defining player choices were.
You can also mix and match canon from different playthroughs, real or imaginary: I once wrote a story about a trans PC who identified as male but generally experienced the female PC dialogue, and have seen lots of Dragon Age: Origin fic which combines characters from one origin with those from another (the commoner dwarf PC meeting the human noble PC, say), even though in any actual playthrough they never meet.
Post or Pre canon
Another option is to tell stories set before or after canon. This allows for a lot more originality, and also allows you to, say, have parties of just two people or whatever if that's what you feel like writing.
Alternate universes
Another choice is alternate universes where events take a different turn. In the game, no matter what choices you make certain events always happen, while others are impossible. Some writers are quite comfortable writing stories where events change just because they find the canon options too restrictive, but personally I tend to find this jarring unless there's a very definite branching point and things go differently from there. The question is: how differently?
For example: in Dragon Age 2, whether you spend the game ignoring the serial killer and causing trouble or spend it hunting down the serial killer and trying to broker peace, it makes absolutely no difference to the Mage vs Templar conflict or serial killer deaths. If you write a fairly minor AU (eg I wrote the main's sister staying home all game instead of leaving after Act 1) is it "canon consistent" to have these details change? I decided yes, because I wanted to change them, but I can see the argument for no.
An unrelated thing about alternate universes: I like to use canon dialogue (where it applies) to show where things are the same, and then increasingly change or call back to that dialogue to show where things differ. This is again a mildly controversial move, I know other writers prefer to make all the dialogue entirely original.
And I have run out of things to say, so shall stop there. I'm sure I've missed things! What are other people's thoughts?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-16 12:59 pm (UTC)I also like the point about rogues being unable to learn templar skills due to personal characteristics, rather than a menu popping up saying "oi you're a rogue you can't turn undead".
Part of the reason I'm rarely drawn to WRPGs, I think, is the customisation. It requires more work on the part of the player to be engaged in the story; it asks the player to build a character from a blank slate and drops them into a world with only a few plots constraining them. For all I talk about exploring the world and enjoying it, I come too much from novel culture to be comfortable with something that doesn't set out many definite routes and lines for me. I remember being a bit uncomfortable with Dragon Age for this reason; I kept leaning towards choosing the 'lawful' choice, but forgot that I was meant to be building a character as I went.
Personal experience aside, I expect you're right—probably the biggest difficulty in writing WRPG centered fic would be telling your audience about your particular character's experience. This is really interesting, and I'm sure it's going to distract me from work for most of today...
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:43 am (UTC)