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A thread about narrative states.

Suppose we have a dating sim where outcome is decided by the player's relationship stats to three characters, and the player has loads of chances to increase relationship with any/all of them. It can be tricky to reason about the design of this.
However, suppose we calculate percentage of interest in each character: darcy_percentage = darcy_likes / (darcy_likes + wickham_likes + collins_likes .

Now we can chart this on a ternary plot. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_p… ) Three suitors, four story outcomes. Triangular chart of dating outcomes.
Immediately this chart shows us where the player might get confused/frustrated about why they got the outcome they did -- because there are some points of really abrupt state transition. Another triangular graph with challenging state spaces identified.
We can tweak this a couple of ways. We could make that central solitude outcome bigger, for instance, so the player has to be more committed to one suitor in particular in order to end up with them. Triangular graph with bigger central area where the player marries no one.
We can add "warning" zones, and trigger events that will let the player know they're on the verge of changing to a new state. This can be really useful in giving players a sense of stakes. Triangular graph suggesting where the player should be warned about changes in outcomes.
And obviously we don't have to make all three suitors equally likely to succeed. The narrative chart helps us reason about how to make one outcome harder to reach than others. Triangular graph with a smaller total area allotted to DarcyTriangular graph showing a large risk of winding up with Wickham and Collins, and only a weak chance of getting Darcy
In fact there's no reason to confine ourselves to interesting outcomes at the pointy ends of the graph. We could get all kinds of blended stories out of this. Triangular graph showing six possible endings
We can also use the chart to test completeness. We might have some storylets/events/dialogue that are only accessible in particular configurations, and laying those out on the chart will help us see where we lack coverage. Apparently we need to write more for Collins-lovers here: Triangular graph for content coverage.
Finally, we can even use this to visualize different player trajectories over time. Elizabeth's canonical journey through the narrative space might look something like this: Triangular graph of narrative states with a line showing how Elizabeth starts out solitary, heads away from Darcy and towards Wickham, then undergoes an abrupt change in Darcy's favor
I've used the dating sim example because it's a quick shorthand, but in fact there are loads and loads of situations where we want to allow the player to gradually express a choice over the course of a scene, using 2-4 variables. (Rarely more, at least within a single scene.)
The two variable case is just a point moving back and forth on a line (or if you use Choice of Games terminology, an "opposed stat"), so that's not hard to understand but it's also way less expressive than the three variable case.
You could generalize this treatment for four variables in a tetrahedron, but it would have been trickier for me to draw, so I didn't. (This time.)
Indeed, you could generalize it more and do more dimensions, maybe have a thing that animates your 3D graph over time or does slices of the space. That said, the higher-variable versions would start to represent stories that are harder for *players* to get their heads around
Typically having 2-4 major concerns or goals is enough to motivate a compelling interactive story.
End of thread, but two credits here: ternaryplot.com provided the layout. And it was Graham Nelson who pointed out the possibility of doing player experience trajectories. (I may have insisted on drawing him a bunch of charts on a napkin during dinner.)
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