Levi’s Plot Line Tutorial
QB Express Issue #1
Written by Levi
Disclaimer
This will in no way make you a better game creator. It will not guarantee excellent games, nor will it improve your abilities to make games interesting. This is simply a tutorial on the basics of writing and story creation. It is general and in no way in depth, it is meant to give you a different way to look at and plan things for your games. I might create more tutorials that will give you a better way to look at your stories and implement them into your games but until then this is all I’ve got.
Introduction
Final Fantasy, Legend of Dragoon, Dark Cloud, what do these three games have in common? They are all Role Playing Games. Though the name RPG is very confusing cause no matter which game you play you are playing as a character other than yourself. RPGs have been known to be games that allowed you to use multiple characters on a single quest to search out clues and go on grand adventures fighting enemies, monsters, and demons alike. But whether you are playing an RPG like Final Fantasy or a third person adventure game like The Legend of Zelda you always notice the same thing. A plot line. The characters have a past, the world has a history, the towns and places each have their own little part to play in the world. From the thriving metropolis to the homey little country towns and farms. You always encounter someone or something that makes the games realistic. Now not all games require such attention of course. Towers of Hanoi, the Rubix Cube, Super Mario Brothers for the NES even, never seem to have any real plot or story line. Except that Mario seems to be on a quest to find the princess and Luigi is helping by going off on his own. In fact I’ve seen and played many games that seemed to have no point or plot to them that based upon game play alone were enjoyable. But many of them are getting old, and some may just be boring with the absence of a plot line.
So knowing what type of game you are going to create is the best way to start any project. I’m not going to make a ridiculous story about how solving the mystery of the Towers of Hanoi is the only way to save a doomed kingdom just to make my users interested, though this isn’t a bad idea. I would however wish to create a hero and villain that will be the main characters in my game if I were to create say an RPG or Action/Adventure game.
And though there is so much more to the creation of a game’s plot than just the hero and the villain these two are almost always the best starting points. Besides the title that is but the title can be saved for last for you more creative people. So let’s start shall we?
1. The Hero and Villain (Protagonist and Antagonist)
Now the first thing you must always realize is that though a villain is preferred in a story, the villain does not need to be a person or something evil. As a matter of fact the villain can be anything or anyone. In Armageddon it was the asteroid(man vs. Nature), in The matrix it was the “Agent” programs in the computers, and in fact the computers themselves. While in E.T. the villains were the adults and government agents trying to get the alien. The villain is often called the antagonist, the one who antagonizes the hero. Makes the hero try to fight him/her/it that sort of thing. The one that makes things go wrong. The main villain may be the one who is doing something to the hero that causes the hero to save the world by stopping some madman who just happens to be a lesser unknown or unnecessary villain in the story. As you can see your villain doesn’t have to be the guy in the black cloak with magical powers trying to take over the world. You can even make the hero and the villain one and the same. Which makes for a fantastic twist at the end of the game.
So first decide on a hero and villain type. Remembering that there are very few rules as to whom and what they are. The main themes for villains and heroes are: Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Man (this can be anything from Gods to sea creatures the term man is simply used as a reference to another living being), Man vs. Himself, Man vs. Fate.
For the sake of this tutorial I’ll make up a story using these steps as we go along. Now remember just because you come up with these ideas initially doesn’t mean they have to be the ones you stick with. Feel free to explore and reinvent you ideas time and time again. A good plot line in a good game is never finished, its flaws are simply masked by graphics and sound.
So I’ll create my Hero Levi (who else?) and my villain is a mixture between Himself and Fate. Thus my story will revolve around my main character’s past, personality, internal struggles, and a fate to which he wishes to escape. But to add a twist I’ll make fate into an actual person as well and I’ll call him…Talin. So my theme is Man Vs. Man, Himself, and Fate.
2. Plot
Okay, So you have your hero and your villain. Great woopdeedoo! I mean what good is it? You can make two characters that fight all the time, very boring for a game, even one with excellent graphics.
So now we need a plot, a reason for these two characters to be at war with one another. But there are so many possibilities and many thousands of them are unoriginal. This of course isn’t surprising since we’ve had over five thousand years of written tradition and over ten thousand of oral tradition that is passed down from generation to generation with many different variations. So don’t expect to be original expect to be creative and tricky. Even the most unoriginal ideas can be made to seem original with the right amount of tweaking.
Now with my two main characters I have no where to go, and yet everywhere to go. I have Fate transformed into a man, and my main character Levi who has many internal struggles with himself and what he must do. But what must he do? Why is Fate bothering him? What can fate do? What’s going on? Thus the need for plot becomes even more necessary. But there are two ways to approach this problem. One is to develop the characters first and build some sort of past and relationship with them. Maybe the villain killed the hero’s father, maybe they are brothers, maybe they don’t know each other at all they simply don’t agree on how to deal with the world and its problems. The second way is to create a problem that you think the villain might try to create. Have the asteroid come hurtling toward earth, make an alien civilization pretend to be friends while destroying us from the inside. Or make it a local problem. Make it a plot against your family alone, make it emotional more hard hitting to an individual.
I’ll develop the plot using the second method. Let’s say that my main character is in love with his best friend Jessie, but Fate has designated her to die in order to stop some tragedy, now this is a rough draft so I will naturally change a lot of it. But Fate appears to these two and their families and becomes friends with them thus setting into motion what is necessary to do what he plans. And when Levi finds out, or gains clues that something is a miss he starts a journey or quest to discover what Fate is trying to hide from his eyes.
Now though this isn’t detailed it is a plot, and it’s something that can be easily worked off of. But this brings to mind, exactly what can these two do, and who are these other people who make fighting the villain that much harder to do?
3. Secondary Characters, and Character Traits
Okay we have our general plot line, we have our main characters the hero and the villain but what about these two truly makes us care about them? If Fate is so powerful and all controlling why can’t he stop the tragic even from occurring without killing someone off? What sort of limitations, physical, or mental do they have? Well it would be boring if you couldn’t defeat Fate so what if Fate was nothing more than a person this whole time? That his power to manipulate and control people was limited to only a few, and lets make it go even further that he can only manipulate those who’ve managed to see him when he worked invisibly in the crowd.
And what about our hero? There is so much to consider for the setting that what our hero looks like has yet to be thought. What sorts of things might be good for our hero? How about a troubled past that dealt with everyone he ever loved getting hurt because of him and he is the reason Fate has chosen Jessie to die? That would sure be motivation to try and save her, no?
Does he have any physical weaknesses? A crippled arm or leg? An old injury that prevents him from doing anything great? A simple scar across his face to make him look mean? Anything?
And what about the other characters in the story? The parents, Jessie, friends, family, strangers, random people who simply walk around with no point to their existence in the game? These are secondary characters. I usually split these up into groups: Main Secondary characters, Secondary Characters, anomalous characters, and disposable characters. Let me explain these to you.
Main Secondary characters
These are the extra characters who have just as much say and purpose in the story as the main characters just not as large a part. In an RPG these would be the followers or group members of your party. In games like Zelda these are the main characters who you always have to visit, meet, help, receive help from. And so on.
Secondary characters
These characters are the extra characters who give depth to all of your main characters. Levi’s parents, Jessie’s friend Allegra, people who exist for the sole purpose of being helpful but unnecessary. Who accentuate and give a realness feeling to your characters without having any say in how the game turns out.
Anomalous characters
I made this up basically but in a game these do exist. They are much like regular Secondary Characters except that their parts are far under developed and a stupid move by them causes the whole game to go out of wack. These characters are ones who if you don’t beat to a certain area you’ll never finish you objective, these are minor enemies and bosses who are there only for the purpose of stopping you and making the game more fun and time consuming.
Disposable characters
These characters are simply there to make sure you town isn’t deserted, to be there, shopping, walking, giving a tid-bit of info if you ask nicely. Totally unnecessary and worthless when it comes to gaining your objective in the game.All of these are important in your game and so I suggest you think about them carefully. Of course have plain generic people and adding and subtracting characters will happen throughout the creation process so take nothing you make now as any form of final draft on who is going to be in your game. You’ll find a lot you don’t like and a lot you do.
4. Setting
Now don’t get me wrong. Normally I would have put this at the beginning of the plot section but in this case I decided it was better to write it here. You see you have your characters in general figured out, you have the plot and reasons for things but you don’t have a setting, you don’t have extras that will really accentuate your story and give it that extra pizzazz needed to make it an instant hit.
"On another planet you introduce animals and dangers not known to earth. Like a billowing pit of black oozing tar like substance that is intelligent and alive seeking out human sacrifices to feed its ever lasting hunger."
So what are the usual things to consider in a setting? Who, What, When, Why, Where, and how right? You have the who, you have the way so what about the What When Where and how? So lets start with When and Where. Is it on earth or another world? What sort of time and society do they live in? The middle ages on earth? The middle ages on a planet known as Zorath? The future with technology, or lack of technology, a post Armageddon age. So many extras can be added on with any of these. On another planet you introduce animals and dangers not known to earth. Like a billowing pit of black oozing tar like substance that is intelligent and alive seeking out human sacrifices to feed its ever lasting hunger. In the future you can have teleporters, guns and explosive devices, in the past you can have weapons like swords and spears, vast wilderness. And so on. I’m sure you’ve seen all of them before and you each have your own preferences so work those in and really add to your plot. Maybe the tragedy is the black bog threatens to kill everyone if it is not fed every year but no one has ever known of its existence. Maybe a mad man is threatening the world with nerve gas. As many possibilities and each of them leading to brave new worlds and adventures.
Then you have the What and How. What are the dangers of the world, what do they have to find, what do they live in? How is life lived there, how do they get around, how does the society survive. So many things, a past, a present, a future, prophesy, for people, places and things. This is all in setting, this is all needed in setting. So I hope you can see why I chose to make a general plot and save this step till later.
5. Game Implementation
Okay, lets admit it. What I’ve just done here is had you write a book. A great story, probably not good enough for the best sellers list, but defiantly not a game. Now of course there are other tutorials that will show how to make a game engine or implement the flow of game creation but this is a plot tutorial. A way of making the games deeper and more meaningful to the user. What could I possibly have to say about placing it into a game? Nothing. In truth I’m a writer not a true game creator. Of all the things here they only give you the building blocks for the putting of your game together. They only give you the starting and ending points, they give the characters, and personalities to which each character will reply to certain circumstances. But you have to implement them into your game. You have to make those who simply shop and fill the town to shop, you have to make the plot line applicable and interesting to the user so that they will be willing to read dialogue and descriptions of events and history. You have to decide when game play will stop and automated story will begin. When to force your characters to do something and when to allow them to roam free.
Well luckily when you make a story most of this will be done for you. As you go along you’ll find that any changes you make will be automatically updated in your game and many extras will follow. So these are just a few things to consider and use. I will post my story line I made using these steps as well as a text introduction that I came up with. It sucks since I made it within the span of a day or two and am use to weeks of planning but work with me here, it’s just a rough draft.
6. The Hand of Fate
Levi is a young boy of 19, he lives in a modern day society where threats to national security and personal safety are the norm. He lives with his father his adopted brother, his best friend Jessie, whom he secretly loves, and her father. He has red hair and is rather hansom though only in an average sort of way. He loves computers and mystery books as well as ancient mythology and philosophy. His father is the top research scientist at a lab that produces cures and ways to fight chemical and biological germ warfare. Jessie’s father is a colonel in the airforce who is assigned a secret mission to find an insane scientist Lisa Whineholdt. Who use to work on one of Levi’s father’s projects and instead of finding a cure for a certain disease created the most powerful nerve gas in the world. But no one knows about it. That is until Fate comes for a visit. A young man found wandering outside their complex one night with a serious gun wound is taken in by this family to be taken care of. He calls himself Talin, his eyes and hair and clothing, with the exception of the blood stains, are all white. Giving him a sort of angelic look. In the middle of the night Jessie goes missing meant to be the last victim of Whineholdt’s experiments before releasing the gas on the world. In a frantic race against time it is your job as Levi to find clues, friends, and any help you can in order to save Jessie. Talin of course comes with you but causes you to get lost on your quest time and time again. In the end you discover who he really is and with an over used cliché “Don’t temp fate Levi, Don’t tempt me!” You set out once again alone meeting up with many strange events that can only be described as a fated presence that is trying to stop you at every turn. In the end I’ll introduce the surprise ending that all you have to do is die in Jessie’s place and you beat the game. It would of course get into deep philosophical reasoning and ideas. Human nature and psychological and spiritual ideas on Fate and who or what he really is.
Paragraph
War, there isn’t a single generation that has been spared its wrath. Not a single child alive or still born has escaped it looming presence. That death like grip that holds all man in fear for their lives. Now war is not simply over there being fought by a few. It’s here, it’s now, its being fought by all. As Levi walked down the streets of his once lovely town he realized that with greed came destruction, and that in this world the death that so many suffered was the only escape greed offered to relieve them of their pain.
If he didn’t have the love of his family, of his friends, Levi might just wish for such an end for himself.
