Thought Exercise II Solution

Yesterday's Thought Exercise: Conceptualize another procedurally generated world where the game builds a story around the player's actions.

The prototype game is called Narrator.  As you move through the game world, a text explanation of your actions is built in the background.  Eventually, you die and you see a story form of your actions.

Example Output:

Phylos, the hero of Ether Island, left town on the 1st of Febvember after haggling with Grandfather Edgard for a sword and two chicken legs.  He sold his house to Leopold, the stable master, and rode off valiantly to the North on the last pony on the island.

Phylos travelled the entire day without incident, eventually reaching the town of Newguard.  He stayed the night there at the Inn of Lost Eyewear, losing two gold coins in a brutal dice game against the Mad Pirate Gunney.  Mad Pirate Gunney was so impressed by Phylos's sportsmanship and willingness to lose gold that he joined his party.  The next day they left the town and continued to the North.

The first day of adventuring outside of Newguard, Mad Pirate Gunney was slain by a winged gargoyle that fell off an ancient tower.  Phylos continued alone through the ruins.  He found a tunnel that led down into the Cavern of Disregard.  Inside he found three goblins enjoying a tea time meal and discussing goblin literature of the Enlightenment period.  Phylos the Cruel slew them all before they could react, then stole their ancient tome of literary criticism.

Little did Phylos the Cruel know, the ancient tome was cursed.  He lasted two days in the Cavern of Disregard, fighting off goblin intellectuals before the poisonous ideals of the tome froze his heart (and the rest of his body) into stone.  He died on Febvember the 4th.  To this day, he remains a statue in the cavern as a warning to other greedy adventures.  The goblins took their book back.

Creating this system would not be too much of a stretch.  Each milestone is basically an achievement (like you see in World of Warcraft, on the Xbox, or on Steam), but they get ticked off silently in the background rather than by a flashy announcement.  This system feels far more rewarding than a screen of disconnected, trivial accomplishments.  Here's an example of a group member death event:

[When], [Group member name] was [death verb] by a [cause of death].  [Player name] continued [alone OR with [other party member names]] through [location].

Some very cool choices and methods could be done with this text parsing system.  There are a lot of options as to what gets left out and what gets included.  Perhaps hearing about how many chickens legs Phylos bought is not that important and instead the story mentions other game branches.  At the bar, Phylos missed an opportunity: "A mysterious woman was watching Phylos from the shadows, but he did not notice her.  Instead he played dice with Mad Pirate Gunney."  Such language would not only add some excitement to the story, but may also give hints about other things to try in future playthroughs.