Elsewhere Ben was talking about promoting Gateway and someone, Graham I think, asked him about it. I thought I'd start a new thread to talk about the game in more detail as I'm kinda curious, but unsatisfied by his answer! So, humour me if you will, Ben!
1. You talk about the drama resolution system and it structuring scenes - how does it do that, and why is it a good thing?
2. You say it allows you to perform any action and describe it's effects - how does that work in the game? Is it a narrative conceit, and if so how are narrative rights controlled? How does this work in terms of mechanics?
3. What makes the game narrativist? What makes it gamist? And how do the two work together?
Sorry if I'm asking awkward questions, but your response in the other thread didn't tell me very much and read a bit like a blurb. I'm just trying to dig a little deeper and find the honest answer about what the game is about!
Okay, here goes...
Submitted by malladin_ben on Wed, 06/08/2008 - 23:30.
Firstly I think I need to explain that I'm coming at this from a traditional gaming background. I've not really played indie games before and not read many. When we started to make the system that became Gateway it was a traditional game, but something happened in the middle of production that made us completely change direction (in fact, Andrew I think it came about after the Qin game in January, just after you left :) ).
The thing that changed it all was the drama resolution system. We had a fairly solid core traditional rpg system, and we needed something to handle the "exceptions" to normal combat, such as chases, mass combat, and the like. Essentially being lazy, I wondered if I could make a single system that could handle all these things in a more universal way.
To do so I thought about how such scenes are depicted in films and described in novels, and used that as a starting point to frame the system. When it was completed it was such a good solid system that we decided to ditch the traditional system and build something new surrounding this drama resolution system.
In traditional games the system models what is actually happening in a situation - initiative handles timing, you hit and deal damage to your opponents, etc. In Gateway you are essentialy working towards a climax of the scene. and you are modelling the ways in which different entities within a dramatic scene interact with each other, but in terms of their effect. Entities can be characters, but also hazards, obstacles or whatever else the characters might face in the scene. As the scene develops there is a toing and froing of tension as entities get the edge over each other, eventually leading to the climax of the scene where one finally manages to overcome whatever was the source fo the drama in the scene.
The gamist part of the system involves the tactical options available to players to gain dominance over the different entities within the scene. Whilst the narrative aspect comes, largely, from how they describe doing so. They might be physically attacking someone, making friends with them, or it might just be that a cab pulls up at just the right point. Players can also interrupt the scene to narrate their own flashback scene which might have some effect on the current scene.
The system works as players choose from a set list of action effects for each action that they perform, which has specific effects in terms of how this determines dominance between entities and progression towards a climax to the scene, allowing players to describe these actions in any way they think appropriate.
I think that answers all of the questions. One I may have missed is why this is a good thing. I find this a difficult question to answer beyond "its fun", but then isn't that the goal. Alternatively I could say "It allows me to spew out all those different setting in my head really quickly and easily as I've now got a simple and flexible game engine I can use to frame it all with."
Cheerio,
Ben