Splinter Topic: 'RP-Frames' (mostly about quests/oneshots)

A Splinter for some ranty information that probably shouldn't go directly into the Feedback Thread. Plz merge if considered better there.

An RP-Frame for my group is 'a set of conditions or lore that give context to an action'. It does not require actual Roleplaying, but it doesn't exclude it. The purpose is to increase immersion for those who like storyline. Here are some random examples of recently used ones and mild explanation for why they worked.

Throne and Liberty:
There is currently a visual bug in some clients of TL where under certain conditions, the sun is black. The light source itself doesn't vanish, the skyglow around it is fine, the sun itself is just black.
There are also at least two 'Ocular' bosses that 'could be responsible for this', Grayeye and Malakar. Their lore is provided to us in game in small blurbs that are easily accessible to everyone. The current RP-Frame is quite strong, able to lead us along a multi-pronged path of investigation, theories, diverse roles, and 'fear', based on just these two things.

The requirement for this to work, other than RP-skill, is the strong worldbuild, but also the large 'empty space' allowed by not pushing too hard on the specifics of these bosses. We know a reasonable amount about them, both through blurbs and through battle, but the game has not 'told us a very specific, locked-in story' for them. This, afaik for most of my group, increases immersion.

Not simply because 'we can RP stuff', you could do this with anything, make up anything about any character in the game, etc, but because it's connected to something, and it's flexible enough that you could probably describe it to someone else, both the reason for your RP, and the reason you took X action, without having to worry that the Game Canon will clash super hard against it, so even if that person is 'more knowledgeable' than you for some reason, it doesn't apply to these enemies as much.

Final Fantasy 11:
The Grauberg area contains a roost of Wyverns, and a Dragon who can communicate with people if you befriend her in various ways. It is geographically above an area where sheep graze and people could, somewhat realistically 'raise' them.

For various reasons I won't go too much into, this mentally lends itself rather well to the idea that if you somehow 'didn't see enough sheep' in that area for a while, or 'certain Elite/Notorious Monsters weren't spawning for a long time', that the Wyverns might be overhunting (for example) and the Dragon might ask someone to help deal with the more aggressive ones. This tier of thing could be an ingame quest or event, but then it would probably be less fun because it'would be so unlikely to be triggered by something that people would accept being so random, with so many prerequisites. (FF11 does have quite a few quests or situations that are that random/dynamic/rare, but we do not expect these in modern games).

It is more than enough that some dynamism is involved, enough to get this feeling oneself. Are the Wyverns starving because they're grounded by a recent spate of summer thunderstorms? Emboldened by some other change in the world? Is the Dragon even in the area and not visiting a City at the moment to be able to know this? Did she 'bring this quest with her' when she came to your city to visit a different friend?

This one really 'feels like it could work as a normal quest', in a game where the Devs somehow have the time to spare to make content that only 1-5% of people will even know exist, but the important part is that creating just the components required for this RP-Frame is so much easier and such 'relatively incidental work' that it is enough to increase immersion on its own. Other than that, the same thing from TL applies.

If you go up to the Aery and find another group there, you have a grounded, ingame way to reference and explain the reason you are there, and one that they all have access to the pieces of. It's not just random stuff in your own mind. They 'could have noticed the summer thunderstorms', they 'could have someone who is also friends with the Dragon', they could 'understand that this is what has led to the higher prices of Ram Leather lately on Auction'. They could absolutely not care whatsoever. But they are no longer as likely to be a threat to immersion 'just because they don't Roleplay, themselves'.

Elite Dangerous
https://inara.cz/elite/squadron/1568/

Those folks literally worship aliens we just got out of a humanity-wide war with, though I guess they weren't technically on the same side so that term is wrong.

Their star system can be analyzed to get all the information you need for coming up with a way to interact with them, and they clearly have some intent, or at least, present one to other players in a way that prevents your immersion from being automatically broken unless they intend it. 'Automatic OOC indicator' basically.

This isn't really a case where the Background Simulation is incredibly important to the RP-frame, though, most of the information is available already. Without the Thargoids ever having any specific interaction with this group (there's some information in the link though), you have all the context required for immersion. It does not matter if the players actually fought on their side in the war, only that there was enough dynamism (the war itself, and any aspect of the BGS changing during the time then or since) for context.

The requirements for these that I have learned as RP-Lead, especially within my group of people with differing levels of skill and investment into the RP itself:
1. No rigid set of actions that must be taken in response to the world change or 'frame trigger' (strong suggestions are fine, so this is hard to really explain without another Elite Dangerously long essay)
2. Enough lore information to give various players context for engagement, even if they choose not to, because somehow this works for immersing even those who have poor memory/relational skill
3. A limit on that lore information so that the space can be filled at all instead of 'everyone worrying that there's some discordant canon that will be jarring later' (I've been told by multiple group members that this fear of being 'squashed by canon' is almost crippling in terms of being imaginative, for them)
4. Enough universal dynamism in the worldsim that is very clear and strongly canonical, for a foundation. Basically, don't let 'real, repeatable things that happen' be too open to interpretation. If a minor event-state spawns 'for no reason' it has to be something that seems like it should (or a bug, or a weird patch, at least then most people experience it the same way).
5. If #4 is not possible, some ecological/meteorological tie-in that can be observed by everyone, and I mean 'everyone period', not 'everyone in a specific Roleplay group'

Quests are a great way to deliver all this, or they can be a terrible wrecking ball to destroy it all even when it already exists.

Since the Quest/Narrative/World Manager team surely knows how they want to approach most/all of this already, it's just a rant that seemed just about worth typing up, but not directly relevant to the Feedback Thread since it's moreso about a tangential experience to Quests, than anything about Quests themselves.

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Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

the sun is black

Does it take away the rain?

And on the topic itself, sounds like you prefer open-ended narrative hooks that allow for player minds to wander in almost any direction from the narrative itself (be this intended or a bug-related "narrative"). So here's a question. Does the RP fail or stop being applicable if the devs decided to hook something onto that narrative open end?

So, say, if TL devs decided to play off of that bug and actually explain it in proper lore that also didn't include those 2 bosses. Would that be an ok move for them to make and acceptable by the RPers or would you want them to not even attempt that kind of thing, cause it'd just be too overexplainy?

JustVine

Ludullu wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

the sun is black

Does it take away the rain?

And on the topic itself, sounds like you prefer open-ended narrative hooks that allow for player minds to wander in almost any direction from the narrative itself (be this intended or a bug-related "narrative"). So here's a question. Does the RP fail or stop being applicable if the devs decided to hook something onto that narrative open end?

So, say, if TL devs decided to play off of that bug and actually explain it in proper lore that also didn't include those 2 bosses. Would that be an ok move for them to make and acceptable by the RPers or would you want them to not even attempt that kind of thing, cause it'd just be too overexplainy?

As the lead rp designer for our group my main thought about that is that it is a double edged sword. I think the most important part of drawing inspiration from player driven lore is that the agency of the creative direction of the game is preserved while equally valuing the agency of the players creative efforts.

For example, in Elite Dangerous someone used an exploit to kill an npc that wasn't supposed to be killed which undermined a bunch of community effort for the npc's storyline. FDev went along with it anyway and that basically rewarded a bad actor and it left a sour taste in the fairly community driven part of the rp community.

On the other hand, the death of Lord British is probably one of the most famous deaths of a character in mmo history and many would argue this was a large positive. Importantly, the only person's efforts undermined by the Ultima example was Richard Garriott's. Ultima would later embrace the 'flawed impenetrability of Lord British' as a result of this interaction.

I think players tend to value things very differently from developers and not necessarily for the better. For example say the players have made a big achievement to make something and wanted to call it Boaty McBoatface. Boaty McBoatface did a lot of public good in real life, but calling something like that in an mmo with a living breathing world would certainly break the immersion and congruity of a lot of players and newly on-boarded people who don't know an in-joke. The developers would be in the right to ask for a different option more within the games general setting and feel because they have to value future players not just current ones. On the other hand denying the right of the community to name the thing after putting in the effort would be equally tragic. It's collaborative story telling and collaboration means you respect the effort and position of both parties.

I say all that to answer the question regarding the sun. Making something like that explicit in the lore would be cool. It'd show the devs were paying attention to the community and the state of their own game. Not all bugs can be hand waved by story telling, but the ones that can always feel like missed opportunities. Especially when they have little impact on actual gameplay. If the devs have an alternative explanation, that's actually part of the fun. Speculation is part of the fun and finding out the 'real answer' can also be fun if the person doing it knows what they are doing. It doesn't matter if a specific community narrative get's picked up, more so that it's incorporated in the process of making the lore. For example, the character that figures out the true nature of the black sun could have been looking at one of the bosses but arrived to a different conclusion.

As for the other half of your question.... TL in particular has little bits of lore all over the place through 'journal entries' you collect. In fact, a lot of the lore in TL isn't told through quests/cutscenes but picking up these notes and journal entries through exploration as well as item descriptions and environmental narrative. Nothing really needs to be 'over explained' as you look for it on purpose or encounter it during exploration where the 'explanation you find ' is the 'reward' for the gameplay. You'd just put a note or two in various places in the game that refer to the event in question. So TL has a lot more wiggle room than most other more 'quest and npc' heavy games.

If the only way to relay information about a setting was through npc interaction however I figure it'd would as you say get 'overexplainy'. That is more so fixed through environmental story telling. In the case of the black sun style thing it's a little harder to do. I'd expect Ashes, given Steven's style, to make some 'black sun cult' if that happened and they wanted to do this type of thing.

Azherae

JustVine wrote: »

I'd expect Ashes, given Steven's style, to make some 'black sun cult' if that happened and they wanted to do this type of thing.

@Ludullu - obviously the answer is different for each situation, but in this case the Black Sun RP-frame is most fun for us because it isn't deep narrative, and it can therefore incorporate a lot of theories.

Since Throne and Liberty already has their equivalent of a 'Black Sun cult', as well as at least 4 other groups that could theoretically be at least tangentially involved, it is a situation where adding a 'canon solution' from the Developer side is not necessary or strong positive for us.

It wouldn't hurt too much though, especially if it 'adds a whole new group or something'. That comes down to RP style though. There are RP-ers who would 'take the reins' and absolutely canon-ize their 'ending/conclusion' and then be thrown off by a Dev-provided one (e.g. Armored Core 6 ending), and others who just 'allow the world to keep mystery' (think moreso Elden Ring lore).

I'd say the good thing for a really fleshed out MMORPG is that it can split those things into 'Quests and Main Story' and 'Environmental Storytelling' for the most part, because I believe personally that Roleplayers tend to roughly split themselves across those lines. I don't have enough data though, because I don't spend a lot of time with 'Quest Driven' type Roleplayers outside of TTRPGs and Neverwinter.

tl;dr for me personally, I prefer that, and TL therefore works for me because I can skip the 'very directed' quests they give me until I encounter them entirely naturally as part of my own RP, which massively increases my appreciation for them.

On the other side they put in at least FF11-tier effort on the world dynamics (and they've reassured us that we've only seen maybe half of what they have planned, TL has more than FF11 had at the equivalent stage of development).

I did the same thing in FF11, and yet I think I did most of the quests in that game eventually, with only the 'huge epics meant to make a different style of player feel good' sometimes being missed or 'just done to unlock the thing required and sorta-excluded from the RP-frame'. I think most Narrative Designers know this though, i.e. that their big epics are their stories and we player characters are moreso supporting characters (even if we often do all the heavy lifting and face-smashing).

Vyllz

Really interesting take, and honestly a lot of truth in there. Ashes has the potential to support this kind of emergent RP-frame experience with its dynamic world systems, especially if the devs leave enough narrative space for us to fill in. Fingers crossed they find the right balance between structured lore and player imagination.

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