This is jumping the gun slightly, but I am starting to feel as though the project I am doing at present (Preposterous!) Is a stepping stone that I am about ready to jump past. While I need to ensure the project is completed before moving on I need to start thinking about what the work I have done here means to me.
Well, I remember why I started Preposterous, I was thinking about mid-core games, the concept of a game that sits between casual and hardcore games as a perfect middle ground. Through research, I found that the idea of a 'new market' being mid-core games to be folly, or at least not up to the hype the industry had for it at present. I then returned to the source of my own game interests, which was storytelling above all else; I still feel that the main reason I pursue games in any capacity is because I truly love the interactive storytelling elements that I find in games. I wanted to find out what was the best type of game to encapsulate the interactive storytelling experience, because I truly believe that storytelling in games is all-important (to me).
From that I looked into the patterns of storytelling throughout history, trying to find a system or possibly a pattern; what I found was that all stories throughout history share huge correlations, and the story structures of human beings does not change all that much from story to story. From further research I found that storytelling was an integral part of humanity and people always wanted to hear stories and even tell them. So if it is that integral to us, then surely we must enjoy it right?
As a small test I devised a card game, the idea of which would be that it made it easy and fun to tell stories to one another. The problems with creating such a game were numerous, mostly because if you put a mechanic or system to storytelling the system has a tendency to fall apart. However, the core mechanics of storytelling stuck, and giving people constraints and random inspiration made it easier to tell stories to one another. One interesting thing I still want to test with my card game is audience possibility - I have a theory that since it doesn't involve any kind of story that the card game isn't limited to the traditional card game playing crowd, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. But I digress, the Preposterous card game is only there to prove that people enjoy telling each other stories, it is a fun activity that is gravely absent in role playing games specifically.
So I suppose - depending on how well Preposterous does - the next step would be to create a game that allows the players to easily tell stories to one another, in-depth and enjoyable role-playing storytelling games without any sort of development systems or numerical challenges. I want to bring role-playing back to where I think it should have gone, and make it about telling the story of a character, creating an experience between a group of players that is fun, immerse and above all about the story.
So that would be my next move, taking what I have learnt about storytelling as a game and creating a game that makes it as easy as possible for people. There are not many games to my knowledge that have done this (Fiasco might be one of only two games) which, again is good and bad - Bad, because it means it might not be possible or popular and good, because it means my work will not be a derivative. If there is anything I have learnt it is that people need boundaries to be creative, so I will have to create boundaries of some kind to make storytelling accessible. I will also need to find out if progression systems can work without destroying the role-player's empathy, the tendency at present being that once it starts being about stats players stop thinking of their characters as people. There are many problems but I look forward to this eagerly, the idea of creating a role-playing system that makes players care about the stories of their characters is exactly the kind of game that I want to play!
Possible name for the system - Novel.
Pros - On target with what I want to accomplish
Cons - Confusing slightly...
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