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Babylon Dreams Challenge
In the Sub-Q thread the subject on converting existing linear stories into interactive stories has come up. I think this is actually going to be quite difficult, so I thought I'd put up a challenge to generate some discussion about it.
First - the story Babylon Dreams. It's one I wrote some 18 odd years ago and is fairly typical of mythos pulp. Although it was published on the web at the time, since the demise of geocities it's been shuffling between my hardrives. The setting is an unnamed modern day English city, intertwined with Cthulhu Mythos elements. It's a fairly typical horror/tragedy and wouldn't pass Sub-Qs submission guidelines. You might want to have a read through before we hit the spoilers below.
Second - the challenge. Come up with a proposal for converting it into an interactive work. If you really want you can actually make your interactive version, but you don't have to. I'm looking for discussion and ideas on how to convert it. If you do make a version, I'd like to put it up on my neocities site, with your permission.
Third - restrictions. Whichever path through the interactive version you pick it has to still be a good/complete story. Consistency of setting. Non-trivial ending. Consistent with the Cthulhu Mythos (major mythos gods must be true to themselves, so no bashing Narlyothep over the head and running away). Agency is important - the player must feel they have some non-trivial influence over the evolution of the story.
What do I see as the problems?
Railroad - the story is pretty short and there's not a lot in there that isn't essential to the plot (and what little character development there is). The plot is set out like a railway line with lots of stations - and the narrative just charges through them like a locomotive. There's nothing much you can actually skip if you're going to get to the stories original ending.
Bad decision - the plot revolves around the three 'player' characters behaving in an anti-social fashion - making a bad choice. But if you give them an alternative, how do you preserve the story?
Size - the story comes up at a bit under a 1000 words. Sub-Q has a limit of 5000 words for the twine file, but would prefer 3500. Kind of limits what you can add, especially as the count includes markup and scripting.
Setting - modern England. If you write any extra text, it needs to be 'right' - no Victorian English, no Americanisms.
Mythos Lore - helps if you know something about the mythos. Humans are insignificant. Ancient aliens, incomprehensible to us in terms of scale and motives populated the universe long before we got here. Magic works, but by aliens rules. It's not so much that the gods don't like humans, as they generally don't even notice us. Exposure to these terrible truths results in insanity and, sometimes, death. Narlythep is a major mythos god that has been known to take human form - his eyes are always an empty void full of stars. Azarthoth is the mad god, the piper at the center of the universe, an endless nuclear chaos - to gaze upon him is to loose your mind. There are insane humans who study or worship the mythos gods - the crazy old woman was one of these.
Feel free to critique it as much as you wish - it does sort of play to stereo types. Hopefully we'll learn something about converting linear stories.
First - the story Babylon Dreams. It's one I wrote some 18 odd years ago and is fairly typical of mythos pulp. Although it was published on the web at the time, since the demise of geocities it's been shuffling between my hardrives. The setting is an unnamed modern day English city, intertwined with Cthulhu Mythos elements. It's a fairly typical horror/tragedy and wouldn't pass Sub-Qs submission guidelines. You might want to have a read through before we hit the spoilers below.
Second - the challenge. Come up with a proposal for converting it into an interactive work. If you really want you can actually make your interactive version, but you don't have to. I'm looking for discussion and ideas on how to convert it. If you do make a version, I'd like to put it up on my neocities site, with your permission.
Third - restrictions. Whichever path through the interactive version you pick it has to still be a good/complete story. Consistency of setting. Non-trivial ending. Consistent with the Cthulhu Mythos (major mythos gods must be true to themselves, so no bashing Narlyothep over the head and running away). Agency is important - the player must feel they have some non-trivial influence over the evolution of the story.
What do I see as the problems?
Railroad - the story is pretty short and there's not a lot in there that isn't essential to the plot (and what little character development there is). The plot is set out like a railway line with lots of stations - and the narrative just charges through them like a locomotive. There's nothing much you can actually skip if you're going to get to the stories original ending.
Bad decision - the plot revolves around the three 'player' characters behaving in an anti-social fashion - making a bad choice. But if you give them an alternative, how do you preserve the story?
Size - the story comes up at a bit under a 1000 words. Sub-Q has a limit of 5000 words for the twine file, but would prefer 3500. Kind of limits what you can add, especially as the count includes markup and scripting.
Setting - modern England. If you write any extra text, it needs to be 'right' - no Victorian English, no Americanisms.
Mythos Lore - helps if you know something about the mythos. Humans are insignificant. Ancient aliens, incomprehensible to us in terms of scale and motives populated the universe long before we got here. Magic works, but by aliens rules. It's not so much that the gods don't like humans, as they generally don't even notice us. Exposure to these terrible truths results in insanity and, sometimes, death. Narlythep is a major mythos god that has been known to take human form - his eyes are always an empty void full of stars. Azarthoth is the mad god, the piper at the center of the universe, an endless nuclear chaos - to gaze upon him is to loose your mind. There are insane humans who study or worship the mythos gods - the crazy old woman was one of these.
Feel free to critique it as much as you wish - it does sort of play to stereo types. Hopefully we'll learn something about converting linear stories.
Comments
(Spoilers, of course)
To become interactive, there would need to be a whole lot more detail. If the characters are leaving a pub, surely they are discussing something "real world' that could take up some of that time (such as the obtained phone number and what they think of the girl it was obtained from), and dialogue would need to be written and perhaps branched to feel interactive. This might lead into the "it's late, let's take a shortcut" discussion. At this point the PC ("Him") might opt out of the scenario and be given a "that was the last time I saw my best mates" epilogue.
The encounter under the overpass would need to be similarly fleshed out. Several examples of the beggars asking for handouts, and decisions could be made whether to give money or not. Perhaps the number of these would exhaust the actual ready cash carried by the PC and the possible chance to get a train or a bus home if the group is hopelessly lost. This might cause an argument, especially if the PC gives away all his money, and might trigger the leader's rage at the old woman asking for yet another handout. This would need to fleshed out with proper dialogue and branching choices, and perhaps another out for the PC. Perhaps if he leaves, he reads the paper the next day to read about the inevitable "Body of Homeless Woman Found Under Bridge" but instead sees reports of his friends missing, or found horribly mutilated.
There needs to be an incident; either the group must offend or injure or horribly frighten the old woman, and that needs to "seal" their fate. Perhaps she blows a whistle and eerie shapes of other homeless (who seem larger and scarier and perhaps inhuman?) lurk beyond the fences and force the group into another door that leads into the tunnel. Perhaps the search for this tunnel or manhole cover might be a puzzle that could be failed, and the player finds out the creatures the woman summoned are "not" human for another bad end.
The walk through the tunnels should feel like bad choices are always being made, and the situation is getting worse, even if it is on rails. Perhaps there are a couple of escape routes, but always with a cop standing on the street over the grate so they can't go out there. Perhaps weird out of place things are encountered for no reason. Why is there a child's teaparty set up here?
Then reaching the underground cinema is a neat scene. A whole neon city around it? Is there course for any more exploration? Why would this suddenly make getting home not an option? What about the cinema lures the group in like lost boys? Does it promise live nude whatever? "Things you've never seen?" Is it a horror movie? Grand Guignol performance? There could be interesting wording on the marquee that could be examined and mulled over, and/or posters.
Buying the tickets should be a thing because if we've use all the money, one character might have to cover the other, or go into his reserve "sock stash" of money. Why do they want to see this performance so badly? And why would they use the remainder of their money when they could cut out and take a train or a bus and get home? The ticket booth person could be another eerie character. The "usherette" could similarly be interacted with as she leads them to their seats.
The reveal then, should be effective and shocking. Perhaps at the sight of the elder, the choices the character can make become garbled and incoherent as his mind is split. Horrible things should start to happen as the scene goes to black - just an indication of horrible squick without going into too much detail that the reader's mind won't race.
Hope this is the type of feedback you wanted.
To answer some of your questions - the long, dark tunnel leads out of this world and into another. They are under the influence of the old womans curse as soon as they start to move away from her. The lights and music from the cinema have a hypnotic effect, drawing them towards it, suggesting they want to see the movie and combining with the curse. The entire neon city is elsewhere, some sort of prototypical Babylon - which could certainly be expanded to be more than just a backdrop. It would take more than a bus or a taxi to get home from there though...
Rereading it, I should have put a candle stub next to the last light. They'd have taken it and lit it to light their way - and thus found the road to Babylon. One way to escape Babylon might be to find another candle (as their one would gutter out when they arrived). Probably a few good ways to get killed as well, but they'd need something to break the curse/geas before they could go exploring. Maybe one of the beggars gave them something in return for a handout?
I can see the dark tunnel becoming a maze of oddities and traps that would kill them off one by one until they lit the candle...