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[Caz]

ARG vs TIMEWASTER

[catherwood-offline]

some guidelines off the top of my head, totally my own personal measurements and nothing official:

• Will your puzzle trail be replayable? (Timewaster)
  
• Will your puzzles unlock story narative or character interaction, rather than just present another puzzle page? (ARG)
  
• Is your story just "glue" to tie the puzzles together in a theme or sequence? (Timewaster)
  
• Can your players influence the sequence of puzzles? (ARG)
  
• Can your players put the trail on hold, leaving the characters frozen in time? (Timewaster)
  

I could think of more later, but maybe this gives you a sense of where my mind is on the issue.

[Agent Lex]

It's a bit of a sliding scale, but it basically goes back to the third question catherwood asked. The scale goes from "puzzles holding a story together" (ARG) to "story holding some puzzles together" (timewaster).

For example, let's say you were concocting an Indiana Jones-style story, where your main character is going through a puzzle-filled temple to grab some kind of treasure. If the journey through the perils of the temple is merely a device to hold some puzzles together, with the path being entirely deterministic and the narrative mainly for flavour, then it's a puzzle trail/timewaster.
If the main character has his magical cellphone that can contact the outside world (even in the depths of a temple) with him, is often in contact with the players, there's choices about paths within the temple to take and perhaps consequences for incorrect puzzle answers, then it leans more to the ARG side.

[rose]

well, you could always just call it a game and let the players sort it out. Start off in news and rumors, you can end up with whatever fits.

Plus, I'm just tired of the excessive focus on labeling anyway. I'm going to start singing the praises of Space's Sphere of Chaotic Fiction. Trust me, it will take a while but in a few years everyone will be using it. Just like ARG, he invented that phrase and look where it is now.

[Caz]

Thanks every one. I can see better where it would fit in now (witch is still on the border but more on the ARG side.)

[Nightmare Tony]

One suggestion: game characters who are a part of the player's lives. They respond, and the players affect what they do and say and think as friends. or as enemies. But as an interaction, since it is interactive fiction.

Puzzles may or may not have a reason. I have been hard at work in development, and literally every puzzle in the set has a reason. Some created them to give information, and they fit the context of their character. Whether it be a secret message from one character to another to a task and trial for new recruits, there is a reason for everything.

Might prove useful when looking at your game story and puzzles. Toi me at least, the puzzles should be in serivce of the story and not the other way around.