Evolution of a Scene

March 29, 2019

When I’m working on a story I tend to jump around in its timeline a lot. I’ll work on the scenes that I have a clear idea for first and then come back and fill in the blanks in between later on. For scenes where I’m not quite sure what they need to be the benefit of this approach is that I’ll have scenes on either side where I know what the state of the story is. I know where I’m starting and I know where I need to end up and that makes it easier to figure how to get between those two points. Easier but not necessarily easy.

One of the challenges of designing Act 3 of my Sleuthhounds: Cruise game is that the two player characters, Jane Ampson and Pureluck Homes, are working independently for the most part. Aside from specific sequences where the two characters have to work directly together, there are also a number of situations where what one character does affects the state of the game world for the other character, subtly changing what that other character has to do to advance.

One such situation occurs relatively early in the act. Pureluck Homes has to sneak into the cruise ship’s kitchen to get a key to a section of the ship that I wanted only him to have access to. However, a problem arose in that Ampson also needs access to the ship’s kitchen later on. I needed to make sure that by the time Ampson got into the kitchen Homes had already taken the key. That part wasn’t too difficult – it was fairly easy to determine a way to block Ampson’s access to the kitchen without blocking Homes – however, I was then stuck with having to communicate to the player that the kitchen had become available for Ampson to explore.

I needed a scene somewhere that would let the player know that Ampson could access the kitchen, or that would at least point the player in that direction, even if they had already tried to get in there with Ampson and been unable to do so. That scene also had to occur sometime after I knew in the game that Homes had taken the key that I didn’t want the player to be able to get as Ampson.

As Act 3 developed, without consciously thinking about that particular problem, I incorporated a scene where when Homes first uses the key to access the Homes only part of the ship, he’s initially turned back by ship’s engineer. My intention was that at this point Ampson, working independently of Homes, would talk to Sir Price the owner of the cruise ship and say something that would cause the owner to summon the engineer so that he’d move elsewhere in the ship and no longer be a block for Homes.

I had a vague notion that Price would not be available to Ampson until Homes had tried the key and found his way blocked by the engineer. All well and good except that one problem remained. How to have the player know that Price had become available for Ampson to use to get the engineer to move. In a previous act I had already had Price summon one of the characters and I didn’t want to repeat myself. I also didn’t want to get into the complexity of having Price himself go find Ampson and appear in whatever room she was in, especially as there are some locations where it would not be appropriate for him to do so.

I needed some way to communicate to the player that Homes, having used the key to try to get into the Homes only part of the ship, had in some subtle way changed the state of the kitchen so that Ampson could now get in there. I got hung up on the idea that Price would meet with Ampson and provide some clue that that state change had happened. Aside from the geographic problem I described above, I realized there was another issue. Supposing the player had done everything they could with Ampson up to that point. Then they would have no real reason to think that switching back to Ampson would trigger a scene with Price. I could easily imagine players getting stuck here.

Once I had that realization, it occurred to me that since I couldn’t guarantee that Price would end up in the path of Ampson that I needed to change tack. Since I knew that Homes’s action of using the key was what caused the game world to change, I realized that it made more sense to have Price encounter Homes instead of Ampson and provide a hint that something in the kitchen had changed so that players would realize that was a location worth revisiting. Great! Fantastic! The only difficulty with this was that now I had to come up with a scene between Homes and Price that I hadn’t originally intended be there.

During Act 2 of the game, the player has to sneak into several characters’ cabins to investigate them. In a couple of cases it’s possible for the player to get caught in the act and there is one case where the player definitely gets caught. I thought that might give Price something to talk to Homes about. If a bunch of characters from Act 2 came and complained to Price the ship’s owner would likely not be happy.

I spent a couple of hours writing and rewriting the scene. Price would show up and bawl out Homes for disturbing the guests. The player would then either be able to apologize for the transgressions or defend them in the name of investigating the case. During the discussion Price would also be able to drop his hint that the kitchen was now available for Ampson to search. Unfortunately, no matter what I wrote it just didn’t feel right. It just didn’t work.

Over the years I’ve developed three key questions I ask myself whenever I write a scene in a story:

1) How does this scene progress the plot?

2) How does this scene progress the characters and their relationships?

3) How does this scene affect the tension?

In terms of creating an adventure game, I’ve also added a fourth question into the mix:

4) What does this scene give players to do?

When I’m writing a story, if I put together a scene that can’t satisfactorily answer these questions then it’s a scene that needs to go. In the case of the Price meets Homes scene I was in real trouble:

1) The scene just regurgitated the actions the player had done in the Act 2 so no real advancement of the plot.

2) Price and Homes were already at odds in the story and the scene didn’t change that in any way.

3) Again, because Price and Homes had already been shown to be arguing previously in the story there was no new or altered tension to the scene.

4) The scene allowed the player to apologize or defend their actions for each transgression. However, since there could be multiple such choices for each character who caught the player that part of the scene seemed really repetitive and weak.

While technically I needed the scene in order to communicate crucial world state changing information to the player narratively the scene just didn’t work. What’s more, in my original conception after Price finished talking to Homes he was actually going to go off to a fixed place in the ship where Ampson could then interact with him and when she did, since she was also investigating for Price, Price would then bawl her out as well. I had no reason to believe that scene would be any more successful and then I would have two scenes that did nothing narratively and that basically blamed the player for doing things “wrong” when they really had done no such thing. Yikes!

After spending more time on the problem than I’d like to admit I was really starting to despair over the scene. I felt that if I couldn’t make that scene work then I’d have to rip up a bunch of other stuff and rework it to get all the pieces to fit together (I’ve had to do that before in other stories and while it’s necessary it’s naturally not the most fun thing to have to do). That’s when something clicked inside my head: What if I gave that despair to Price?

From the start of the game Sir Price had been shown to be this overbearing, powerful, in command personality. But what if it was shown that was just a facade and he was riddled with doubts, worries, and insecurities? Price had wanted the investigation to be kept secret from the guests of the ship but how would he react if that revelation came to light and there was simply no way to deny it. Suddenly, the scene made sense. It was a new angle for the character, it gave the player an impactful choice on how to have Homes interact with Price, and it was a nice subversion of the tension of the scene where the player would think Price was about to bawl them out for what happened in Act 2 and then have the scene go in a completely different direction. In short, the scene had become interesting.

It seemed a simple problem to start with: have a scene that communicated to the player the state of the ship’s kitchen had changed so the player would have a reason to investigate it with Ampson. From there it became two scenes with Sir Price regurgitating what the player had gone through before while also blaming the player for exactly that (cringe). It’s now morphed into one scene where the player gets a chance to see behind the tough exterior of Price and choose to have Homes make a connection with his employer or not. It’s been a tough road and one that has left me a little bit behind schedule working towards my next milestone deadline, but in the end it’s created a much more interesting scene that’s actually about something and that’s what every storyteller is always striving for.