Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9140167" data-attributes="member: 7040941">A solid bit of advice I'd give to this is that much like Players need to give their characters a reason to be out adventuring, Gameworlds also need to provide a good reason for there to be adventures. While non-specific, it is a good mindset to get into when you're looking to design a world and tune its lore towards the needs of the game. But, an interesting case study on this subject is I think the two Zelda games Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Breath of the Wild, first off, is near perfectly designed from the aspect of being playable, and its near perfectly in synch with the gameplay loop, reinforcing it at, quite literally every possible turn. The designer's Triangle rule to govern line of sight and the considerate use of enticement Landmarks make up a big portion of why the gameplay loop works to foster a sense of exploration and adventure (which is the entire point of Breath of the Wild). Everything you can find in the world in-between these bigger pieces all serve to not only flesh out the world but bring that same sense down to a smaller scale. But what Breath of the Wild does as well thats extremely important is provide a careful amount of negative space; ie, nothing at all. Open world games tend to fall into a trap of cramming millions of things onto the map (even when the game world is comparatively tiny) and then also marking every single one of those things on a map, which not only creates a sense of claustrophobia but also ruins the sense of exploration (because everything is already there and "discovered" or will be once you go through the minutia of climbing the reveal map tower). Breath of the Wild solves this by not only giving a lot of space even on the small scale, but also by being very limited in terms of map markers, and by inviting players to use towers and other high vantage points as they would be in real life, giving you an overview of an area, and letting you make sense of where you want to go. The game essentially doesn't make value judgements on whats interesting to explore for may be 90% of the things you can find on the map, with the remaining 10% all being things you can see from basically anywhere, assuming you're up high enough. But narratively, the world is also designed around the gameloop. Breath of the Wild famously doesn't have much of a main quest, and after the short tutorial you're literally just given the quest to Destroy Ganon, and that's practically it. The entire loop is to explore Hyrule and gather Link's strength while doing so, and the narrative itself is fully integrated into it. The main quest isn't a series of missions, its literally run around and train up so that when you assault Hyrule Castle, you won't be ganked by all the things protecting it from you. While both BOTW and TOTK are not quite as well done narratively as they are everywhere else, the idea they took towards designing their narratives is the right direction. But, Tears of the Kingdom also serves as an important look at how these things can backfire a bit. Tears of the Kingdom uses, more or less, the same map from Breath of the Wild, but with added Sky and Depths portions. For someone like myself and who had not played Breath of the Wild before, I'm not affected by this. TOTK to me feels even bigger than what Breath of the Wild feels like, and thats a good thing, as it means that what the designers added to the map is fundamentally the right idea. But, for those people who have played Breath of the Wild before, and in particular have played an absolute ton of it, the use of the exact same map is rather detrimental, as the single biggest portion of the map for these people is something they've already spent countless hours in. Theres little new to find, and the new Sky and Depths don't cut it as they just aren't quite as large as the Surface is. This is something that has to be considered not just in terms of generating sequels, but also in revisiting old content, which is an issue even Breath of the Wild has. Once you've seen it, you've seen it, essentially, and the gameworld doesn't have the capability to make an old area feel unfamiliar again. So how can these ideas be applied to TTRPG game worlds? Well, thats a question I've been working towards answering for the better part of the 6ish years I've been playing TTRPGs, as its been my proverbial white whale to find, and now to write, a game that perfectly captures and synchronizes the sense of Exploration I've been chasing since I got tired of Morrowind after 6000 hours of game time (and I still haven't actually done and seen everything in that particular game), but also manages to keep it fresh even when I come back to familiar places. And, to toot my own horn a little, I do actually think I cracked the code on that particular endeavor. The system for this I have in mind is still being formed (both literally and figuratively), but I think it'll be quite successful. But to get into that would be a whole long post unto itself, and not one I think would necessarily be appropriate for this topic.</blockquote>

Verification