Games that emphasize emergent narrative
emergentmage.com
emergentmage.com
People wish sometimes that video game ai could keep up with a good game master - but then again, you would lose the fun of hanging out with friends in person
Narrative "emerging" because the level of risk, broad array of "ways to fail" and/or simulation complexity enables players to tell the story of their playthrough in an interesting way. (See: 'boatmurdered', Kenshi).
Narrative "emerging" out of inter player conflict and politics in large multiplayer games. See guild politics in PvP-with-consequences focused MMORPGS such as Lineage II (at least back in the day, it's a bit of a different game now), and EVE Online. (This sort of narrative blends with the first as well, see: http://www.wirm.net/nightfreeze/part1.html)
Narrative "emerging" as a result of very intricate procedural generation that actually does create logically consistent histories and conflicts in a single player world. (See: Dwarf Fortress and Ultima Ratio Regum). I guess things like GPT generated dialog belong here too, but that hasn't really achieved the "logically consistent" part yet.
This article seems to exclusively talk about the first one.
Thanks for the categories. Havent thought about the differences too much before.
Although I do get a nagging feeling that I would get more out of playing Dwarf Fortress instead every time I play Rimworld, and usually end up binging that for much longer.
It's a great game otherwise, and I'm absolutely plugging it for a recommendation, but like with the systems that cause attacks and assaults only based on colony wealth at that time (and at times encompassing visiting trader wealth too), the emergent systems are a product of the author's ideas and biases, like any other creative work.
To have "emergent narrative" IMO requires a much larger set of verbs than "door, lock, hallway, monsters types A-Z, etc..."
Personally, I think most emergent narratives are poor narratives. They lack the pacing and dynamics of one crafted by a story teller. I think Rimworld tackled this, with the different 'storyteller' options selecting certain types of events, levels of difficulty etc., trying to improve the sense of drama. But it is still stuck with poor choices making poor narratives. "So I made my pickaxe and tunnelled through the wall the noises were coming from and was eaten. The end.'
At least this criticism can’t apply to Dwarf Fortress — IBM VGA-9 makes for some pretty cheap graphics!
The element of time past makes for a stark difference from other uses of randomness or procedural generation. By the time the world arrives in its “current” state where player-controlled characters enter, the long, complex, infeasible to study in detail history (which, by the way, involves said characters and their ancestors) imbues everything with potential meaning and significance.
I've tried over the years to get into the various big franchises when I see something very cheap, but there's never a high-level tutorial for "I don't understand the gameplay and I barely understand the sport."
Imo, minecraft has more emergent gameplay than some roguelike as Tales of Maj'Eyal, which has a story and mostly the same map / similar dungeons.
The narrative is what happens during the game and how each team reacts to the present situation by adjusting their strategies and actions.
Pixel Dungeon is an Open Source roguelike dungeon crawler with procedurally generated maps. It also has high replay value because every play through feels different.
(mild spoilers)
Once you figure out that the world is actually much bigger than the normal levels you go through the game also has a big exploration element: you not only need to find spells to defeat enemies, but also to traverse the terrain and access secrets. There are cryptic messages hidden in places behind terrain, hidden combinations of liquids that have powerfull effects, secret artifacts that have to be interacted with in a certain way.
Nowadays if you see someone playing this game online you'll see them do all these things, know where to go and what to do. But when the game just came out almost none of this was known; people had to figure things out on their own and worked together in the Noita lore discord. I really liked being a part of it.
But Fortress-like is merely the foundation upon which the game is built. I would say the main innovative feature is it's a mystery generator, with a focus on the intersection of lost history (ruins, artefacts) with contemporary politics inside and between empires.
Where DF is very simulation focused, URR has made real steps forward for procedural and emergent _narrative_
The ones I have seen are optimized for VR but support normal screen WASD players.
They have a real time cast following a narrative script at showtime, but there is improv feedback with the audience built into the experience.
There are quite a few efforts in this direction: [1] is a good example and [2] is an active producer
[1] themetamovie.com
Totally agree, is DayZ in a nutshell. Creates some down right weird, funny and intense interactions between randomly paired humans. Excited to see what all the new updates bring.
https://github.com/BarclayII/slashem-up
Why? Vampires, fire/ice mages, #tecniques (the doppleganger monk it's supreme), lightsabers, guns...
Slex is good, but it has too many roles, objects and additions.
Just copy pasting the first comment on steam to show what kind of stories unfold:
I was born mere seconds before my twin sister in a once prosperous town. Through the years and hardships, the townsfolk seemed to be dwindling in numbers and there were not many left. My mother, Honey Nova was the leader of our people and a strong and kind woman. She took very good care of my sister and I. She named me Yun and my twin sister Yan. Life was easy as a child, I enjoyed playing outside with my twin in the berry fields and following my mother as she worked as a gravekeeper. She was a hard working woman and was very close with her two brothers. When it came time for her to pass on, she begged to be buried next to them.
My sister and I gathered around her as she stood on her gravesite (she always put her work first, a dedicated grave keeper). We cried as we said our last goodbyes - her dying words were "I'm proud of you daughters". We took off our hats in respect and steeled our resolve to become the village's next gravekeepers. Our first order of action was to bury our mother and uncles and then to find them gravestones.
Our work was busy and fast-paced. We scoured the wilderness for headstones, built paths and plots, and even found a few wayward relatives in the wilderness that could finally be put to rest. A few years after my mother died I had my very first son. Stillborn. Too young for a grave, too old for the pain it left in my heart. I never even gave him a name. I was eventually able to conceive another son, I named him Yama. He was a quiet child, never speaking much - but seemed to intrinsically understand the world. He immediately set out and fed himself and started working. I was so proud! He was a role model for his (many) cousins. My sister was a fertile woman.
Then along came my second son... I gave him the name Yurem.
Yurem was a little more, spirited. Around the age of four is when I noticed he wasn't quite right. I retired from my job to stay home with him and hopefully instill some of my mother's values - love, respect, strength. Around the age of 14 he started acting out in the kitchen and I grew increasingly concerned. He would throw off his clothes and hide in the corner mumbling things about God and witches. I pleaded with him to put his pants back on, nothing seemed to get through to him and nothing could prepare me for the horrors about to unfold.
In the following year, Yurem snapped. He had found the body of my first born son and approached me. He screamed at me, veins popping from his neck and forehead. He said I was a witch, that I had an abortion and that I needed to be cleansed. My oldest son Yama overheard and came to my defense. It was then that we saw the knife behind Yurem's back. Yama dove in front of me, telling his brother that I wasn't a bad person. That stillborn children happen all the time. We don't have hospitals. But there was no talking Yurem down, he had finally jumped head first into the deep end. As Yurem lunged for me, Yama grabbed him and wrested him to the ground. After a long tense struggle, he finally managed to wrench the knife from Yurem's hands, but suffered several wounds in the process. Struggling for his breath, he raised the bloody knife back towards Yurem and said he will die for his actions. Yurem slunk to the ground and began sobbing hysterically.
About this time, other members of the village were alerted to the unfolding scene and rushed to the room. When they entered, all they saw was Yurem crying in a heap on the floor and Yama with a bloodied knife. I tried to explain the situation, but things started happening so fast. The leader called for the exile of Yama and all of the villagers immediately followed suit. They cursed him! The poor child that only ever tried to protect his mother. The one that held so much promise. His body turned to bones almost in an instant, unable to carry the weight of all the curses. I stared, unable to speak, at the skull of my child. All I could pictures was his bright brown eyes as he looked up at me when he was a boy.
The villagers slowly filtered out of the room one by one. It was when the last one left that I heard it, a slow, menacing chuckle. Yurem was staring at me from across the room. I screamed for help and ran out of the room. I told everyone who would listen the story of what actually happened, but nobody would listen. Yurem disappeared at some point, maybe into the wilderness, maybe into the delivery truck that frequented our village. I lived the rest of my life in fear, hoping he would never return. The only respite was the love of my gentle sister and my many nieces. As our lives neared their end, my twin sister and I made our way to our graves. Her children came one by one to tell her they loved her. I stood alone, with only one random villager running by that said RIP to me. My sister died shortly before me and I could feel death's fingers enclosing. My last words were: Curse Yurem Nova.
https://rawg.io/collections/extended-list-of-all-immersive-s...
The games listed in this article have a lot of randomness , random maps, random characters, random events, usually you can change the world and have your action be reflected, each play will be very different then the others. I like watching on YouTube talented people play this kind of games, I am not so creative/inspired to play them.
Probably The Sims series could fit the article criteria.