Start->Run

Well I've managed to already skew my counter, I have no "return to home" link on my archive page (which actually auto-generates for once) and I don't really like my current template...but I have my new blog up and running.

Basically this blog is here for me to brainstorm my short story. A short story which may not end up very short and has every intention of being adapted to a NWN module. So I have to do several things at once for this to work: write out the story, keep in mind different play-styles for a non-linear approach, then there's the scripting, learning the Aurora toolset to make the module, character names, character development, how to handle death...

Sounds complicated. And it is, but for now at least I will be concentrating on the story, and story only. I was having a bit of trouble with the start of it but I already know how I want it to end so I'm now thinking about starting at the end and working backwards. I think that's the way some authors do it. As opposed to say J.R.R. Tolkien who started at the beginning of the LotRs and just started writing the adventure not knowing himself how it would end. But perhaps I should digress?

So basically I got the idea from a short story I had to read for an intermediate college English class called The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. That link contains the entire story from beginning to end, no I don't know if that's legal (I assume the site would be shut down if anybody had a problem with it.

Now I don't actually "like" The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas as a story, the scenario of a philosophical moral dilemma is what mostly appealed to me. I was going to write more of parody of the story; kind of an average person meets this idealistic society.

But like I said, I was going to adapt it to a Neverwinter Nights module. Why Neverwinter Nights? Well I have it, I can play it, and the "toolset" it comes with to make your own module is actually famous (at least in the right circles).

So because this will be a module for a video game it needs a lot more action and conflict than the story provides for. So basically I was going to make the Omelians one faction and the walk-awayers another faction.

Of course the player won't know this at first. The ending will consist of something like the following: the player choosing to either "free the boy, effectively ending the paradise that is Omelas" or "leave him as he is, the suffering of one is worth the happiness of so many others". So the player must choose from two choices that are something to that effect. But for a dramatic flare I will drop module as soon as the player picks. So the player will never see the result or consequences of his choice. Now I realize that may seem a little evil, but I think it's pretty good. After all this is more a story presenting a moral dilemma as food-for-thought, not some stupid Hollywood movie with all the loose ends nicely tied for ya.

However module players, or all video game players for that matter, seem to prefer multiple endings. Well the above may seem like one single ending but I was also thinking of presenting it in a different tone depending on how the player acted in the game. In other words the storyline will take one course for an evil player, another for a good player and yet another for a play-the-field middle of the road type player. So an evil player will propositioned in one way to go on a mission to steal the source of the Omelan's power perhaps, killing all in the way as he goes, while a good player will be able to "rescue" the suffering child from the evil Omelans.

As for those factions I mentioned I figured I would have the proverbial "walkers" decide they've had enough and attack the town of Omelas. This prompts the Omelans to harness the power of the suffering boy and fight back, resulting in civil war.

Than for color I thought I would have a yet a third force come in and attack the both of them, resulting in both factions banning together to fight the mutual enemy, all the while back stabbing and manipulating each other. This idea I actually got from the real history of China in the 1930's and 1940's. Once the mutual enemy has been defeated they go back to fighting each other. Eventually, either through defeat or negotiation (another player style variable maybe) the player gets to the door to the room where the suffering child is stored. This is where the leader of both the Omelans and the walkers make their respective arguments to the player.

Now I could possible make two parallel stories that lead up to a single point (when the civil war starts perhaps), letting the player choose a faction at that point. So two separate stories, one from the perspective of the Omelans, one from the walkers. Each story with the goal of convincing the player to choose that side, and also introducing the whole premise of the story and why the two sides don't get a long.

So I've more-or-less got a rough outline of both the start of the story and the end of the story, but not much detail on the middle. Is the foreign force attack causing the two factions to ban together a bit too much? Would the story work without that thread? I don't know.

There are of course other game-specific details I haven't even considered yet. How to handle player death for instance. All modules I've played have a separate small map with a character to talk to and some penalty to be "re-spawned" back to a starting position.

There's also the consideration of multi-player. Will it be multi-player? Can it be multi-player? How would that change the story and how it all ends? And what about "henchmen", the NPCs players can hire to help fight?

The other thing I had in mind was the general culture of the proverbial "walkers". The Omelans seemed rather like hippies, to me at least. I mean Omelas is supposed to be an ideal society: without police, family values, nuclear weapons or a soldiers. Not exactly conservative perspective. In fact I found the whole story rather derogatory. So I thought I would make the "walkers" the direct inverse of such a premise: I would go more for the philosophy introduced in another story recently fresh in my mind: Starship Troopers (the novel, not the movie). There's two points of particular interest I think are of note: one is how all members of society must earn any official "citizenship" and only these citizens can do things like run for office and vote. One of the ways to earn your citizenship is to server in the military.

The philosophical notes include harsh and immediate discipline, to keep society in line, an emphasis on personal responsibility. The other is something like finding the loophole in the whole premise, which is that society has effectively filtered out the aggressive wolves to make them server the government, effectively leaving only the non-violent sheep. This effectively rules out any kind of armed rebellion against the government. I found this quite fascinating.

I think I've managed to make some amount of small progess on this today. About 5 1/2 pages and this is only my first entry. I don't actually know yet if anyone is visiting this page but just in case I will have an email just for it quite soon.

  ¶ 2:37 PM