Re: Defined Plot Device OR Random Small Enc.

[Morbus Iff]

>> Perhaps, in any sort of game creation, there must be two trains of
>> people: the people who make the movement of the game, and the people
>> who make the backdrop of the game. The movement is the more important,
>> but the backdrop people flesh out the world in the minutest detail -
>
>here is "is it possible to pull together any random set of unconnected
>occurrences into a story line?"
>
>I guess there's really two questions: The first is "is it possible?",
>the second "is it desireable?"

Hmm, is it possible? Well, you'd have to be very good at what you're
doing... heh... It's easy enough to have the morning news describe the
mysterious death at the exact same apartment you were at last night, but
it's harder when you're just making idle detail - like changing the days on
the newspaper, or so forth.

Importantly, perhaps we shouldn't worry about necessary connecting all of
the random events together into the story line, but rather enhancing the
story line. Meaning that if we know (work with me here, this is a rough
example) that Thomas Sumner is a character in the game that we interact
with, the newest book to be released at a store we walk past is called
"Twin Summoner". Twin Summoner is a loose translation of what "Thomas" and
"Sumner" mean. Whether the character makes note of it or not, we know that
we've foreshadowed the fact that Thomas has a split personality, or that in
the future of the game we'll be talking about cloning and so forth.

Or perhaps a shop owner has a sale on two items:

	Guave Beans!               Russian Antiques
	  2.24 lb                    75.99 and up!

This isn't immediatly important nor desirable to know. But perhaps in the
future of the game we learn that one of the numbers of our contacts is
224-7599 and that we have to call them.

They're totally random fluff events, and dont tie in with each other, but
in their own respective ways, they are part of the story, whether it be
through foreshadowing or a clue (player could then go to the store to find
out if the keeper has any information about the called and so forth).

>I think there are stories where a tightly fleshed out backdrop is
>necessary. But I wonder about creating stories out of thin air.
>
>But I'm still an old-fashioned believer in art as an expression of an
>artist. I haven't bought into the postmodernist philosophies that art
>is defined by the viewer. From that perspective I'm concerned that
>I'll be creating the medium of the sit-com, mindless events which have
>all the social content of heroin, but aren't illegal because unlike
>drugs they can be used to fan consumerism.

Although I would never have said it so elegantly, this was one of things
that I was trying to "fix" when I was thinking about the HTML world I had
planned to create. There would be a definite plot device for people to work
into, but if they didn't, or did something I wouldn't expect (all to easy,
not because of my forgetfulness, but rather their ingenuity), then I would
have the ability to add onto the portion of the HTML world when they
weren't looking - making it seem like they were choosing their own
definition in a vast world.

We have the expression of the artist, which is my defined plot device, and
we also have the defined by the viewer, since they can totally ignore my
expression and move on. The nicety of this is that although they ignored by
initial plot device/expression, they go into their definition, still being
created by myself, as I go along.

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