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 Forum index » Meta » General META Discussion
Players Changing the Story
Moderators: imbri, ndemeter
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Guest
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 		Players Changing the Story
Hi,

This is my first post ever. I am planning on doing a documentary about CF.
I am looking for occurrences when players changed the course of a game, forcing Puppetmasters to change their plan. I have heard a lot about the partnership between the players and the makers of the game.

I hope some of you can give me examples of players reaching out through the 4th wall.

Thanks

PostPosted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:34 pm
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notgordian
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Joined: 23 Nov 2006
Posts: 1383
Location: Philly

 		Arguably the most famous example happened during I Love Bees when a player using the handle "weephun" turned over information on the Sleeping Princess over to the Operator.

Some of the PMs discussed this event during the ARGFest 2007 Keynote -- the discussion starts at 21:20 on the linked video. The video also discussed the inclusion of "The Red King" earlier on.

The Halo wiki also describes the incident (although I can't get the url to work) -- this link includes the actual audio of the game-changing moment.
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Preston_Thorne_(character)

The audio and video discussion/treatment should be fairly useful.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:04 pm
Last edited by notgordian on Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:23 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Guest
Guest
notgordian wrote:
Arguably the most famous example happened during I Love Bees when a player using the handle "weephun" turned over information on the Sleeping Princess over to the Operator.



Thank you NG for this. Do you mind elaborating a little bit , I dont understand, or where can I find info on what happen?

PostPosted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:54 pm
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notgordian
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 		I didn't actually play I Love Bees, so pretty much everything I know about this particular incident can be found at the following websites. If you're looking for a more general runthrough of the story, check Rowan orthebruce's walkthrough.

Go to this video.
Skip to 21:20 and listen to the next 4 minutes or so.

Then, read weephun's wiki entry and listen to the audio file of the betrayal.

PostPosted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 2:07 am
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vpisteve
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Joined: 30 Sep 2002
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 		Some examples off the top of my head:

Last Call Poker: A character, Matt Viet, was trapped in a burning building. Players had to find a blueprint of the building elsewhere in the game, and using that, communicate to him an effective escape route. Their success in this determined whether the character lived or died (they successfully saved Matt).

Why So Serious: A character (the wife of a main ARG character) was in a coffee shop that players knew was about to become the site of a mob gunfight. They could call the coffee shop to convince the hostess to get her to the phone, or call her away from the shop and out of harm's way. They did not succeed, she died in the ensuing gun battle.

These are examples of characters in secondary story arcs, and players' actually able to determine their fate by their actions (or lack thereof). In addition, there are many instances where players are given the illusion of changing the storyline, especially when it comes to the main story. Very often, what happens can't be changed, but HOW it happens may be.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 6:01 pm
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konamouse
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Joined: 02 Dec 2002
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Location: My own alternate reality

 		After Sammeeeees concluded we found out from the PM (labfly) that she had set up three possible endings depending on what we (the players) decided to do with the Spoocheeeee disc. If we wanted, we could have just destroyed it. Or joined forces with Mr Alan Johnson (yeah, that was pretty much guarenteed we wouldn't do that). Or we could have performed the empowering ritual and taken over Spoocheeeee ourselves. We ended up doing the backward ritual to remove Spoocheeeee power forever.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 8:09 pm
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Nighthawk
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Joined: 14 Jul 2007
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Location: Miami, Florida, USA, Earth

 		My first game, LGL ( http://www.lglabs.net/ ) was HEAVILY driven on player input and interaction. The players came up with better plot points and story progression than anything I had envisioned in the beginning. So much so that it changed the entire ending.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 8:44 pm
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imbriModerator
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vpisteve wrote:
In addition, there are many instances where players are given the illusion of changing the storyline, especially when it comes to the main story. Very often, what happens can't be changed, but HOW it happens may be.


Project Abraham would be a good example of this. Every week, the players voted on which character should receive an injection which (in every case aside from one) meant death. This impacted the information that they recieved and, also, the order that they received it.

Nighthawk wrote:
So much so that it changed the entire ending.

When I think of player influenced endings, I can't not think about Lockjaw. While the players had huge influence through the entire game, they completely created the ending when they wrote a very realistic lawsuit against the major corporation (several of the players were, in fact, lawyers). We weren't entirely sure how we were going to wrap it up until that moment (thanks guys!).

In Eldritch, the Sentries (a player group) are the protagonist of the story. Their actions and reactions drive so very much of what we do that it's almost difficult to distinguish at this point what we haven't changed. We've had entire characters emerge that weren't even in the original plot based on they way the players have taken things - several of those are now major characters. Heck, one of them is now so key to the plot at this point that we couldn't tell the story without him. In fact, at this point the story is actually about him.

PostPosted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 11:13 pm
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LindbergMTL
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Joined: 05 Sep 2009
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 		Nice. Awesome input from all of you! Very much appreciated and quite exciting.

PostPosted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 12:17 am
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vpisteve
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Joined: 30 Sep 2002
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imbri wrote:
vpisteve wrote:
In addition, there are many instances where players are given the illusion of changing the storyline, especially when it comes to the main story. Very often, what happens can't be changed, but HOW it happens may be.


Project Abraham would be a good example of this. Every week, the players voted on which character should receive an injection which (in every case aside from one) meant death. This impacted the information that they recieved and, also, the order that they received it.


Geez, I can't believe I didn't mention Project Abraham. That was the whole point, really, in that the players CHOSE who died each week. There was a HUGE diagram that had to be built with all the possibilities as time went on. We actually set out as that being the main conceit of the game, in that we pretty much always promise that players can affect the outcome, let's really do it in a major way. I daresay no ARG had yet attempted something of this scale, story branch-wise. OK, at least none that I'm familiar with (loathe as I am to yell "FIRST!!" Wink ).
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 2:56 am
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Daeld
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Joined: 02 May 2009
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Location: Australia

 		Depending on how much time/interest you have, a current game "ARG: The Baldulc Will Rise" is a game that is active at the moment. It seems that the PM(s) has/have allowed a great degree of freedom for the players to influence the details of the game.

PostPosted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 7:34 am
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catherwood
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee

Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 4109
Location: Silicon Valley, CA

 		Re: Players Changing the Story
Anonymous wrote:
I am looking for occurrences when players changed the course of a game, forcing Puppetmasters to change their plan.
(emphasis mine)

Some of the examples above are not really about catching the PMs unprepared or forcing them in an unplanned or undesired direction, which is what I thought the original question was probing for. Having a story structure which allows for branching, or even encourages the players to drive the story, is really the opposite.

(no, i have no examples)

PostPosted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 11:34 am
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Daeld
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 		Yeah, OK, good point Embarassed

PostPosted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 5:43 pm
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danteIL
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Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 1990
imbri wrote:
In Eldritch[...]We've had entire characters emerge that weren't even in the original plot based on they way the players have taken things - several of those are now major characters. Heck, one of them is now so key to the plot at this point that we couldn't tell the story without him. In fact, at this point the story is actually about him.


Lessee.... Stu? Eddie Pope?? Elftrytub????

PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 6:17 pm
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imbriModerator
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Joined: 21 Sep 2002
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danteIL wrote:
Lessee.... Stu? Eddie Pope?? Elftrytub????


Devon. Sploit.. Exu...

None of those originated in a design document and all have gone on to be fairly instrumental and, even, pivotal. Stu & Eddie Pope were both born in design documents (book 1 and book 3, respectively). Elftrytub, though, was a fairly spontaneous creation along with several others.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:29 pm
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