Ironwood Omnimedia

When I develop stories, be they short stories, modules/adventure, or even my campaign adventures, I tend to look for something within that story that would make a fun focus. This focus is not necessarily from the reader or player’s point of view, but rather within the scope of the overall story. There are themes I want to explore. However, I do not set out to make a story by first deciding on the theme I want. Rather, I come up with a very basic story. I have a beginning, and ending, and of course the opposition between the two. As I explore the story and its various threads I tend to find the theme that the story is wanting me to explore. For Dececration I was surprised to find that this theme was in character motivations.

Character motivations are usually thought of in a very simple concept. It is usually the linear cause and effect dynamic. This event happened to cause this person to react this way. Sometimes you can explore dualities and relationships that may effect this, but they are usually simple and easy to digest. As they should be. However, I found something interesting in Dececration. In this mod, I found certain characters will react to certain motivations and change the entire dynamic of the story. Where once a character is an oponent, or he or she becomes an ally. This was a rather strange thing to see at first. It wasn’t until I saw the overall scheme and potential explorations that I saw how violently the story, and the character’s perceptions of who is an ally and an enemy could change.

The actualy reason for this actually goes back to that simple concept of motivation. I like to ask myself why does this person or group want to do this? Lets take one thread as an example, and unfortunately it will be a vague one as I try to keep the surprises in tact.

In one thread we want to explore why a character wants to do this thing. We find a religious motivation. This motivation is given by an outside source. However, the source’s motivation, while partly religous, is also about power. He wants his religion to have the power. Therefore, he manipulates some people to believe that his relgion requires certain actions. This will grant him the power he wants. However, he puts the entire group he influences in jeopardy because they are the instruments of his motivation. They deliver the end result. There are some that are aware that there is an alternative, but lack the strength to act.

In this example, the opposition is found to actually be two seperate, but coinciding groups. They are associated as one, because we see a single result and they act as a single force. At face value we can go through an entire adventure and see them only as the result of their motivations and never learn that there are potential allies, and in fact an entirely different thread to this story that could be explored. It is ironic that this very thread we are using as an example is likely to only be experienced by a small minority of the people that would play it. This is fine as it actually shows a much more truthful version of how such events occur.

This is only one example. And that example does some very interesting things because of other motivations within the story. If we did follow this thread we may have found that we can make an ally from what was an enemy, but in so doing make a new enemy, and also make what was an ally now an enemy. Simply because of motivations and the dynamics between the various opposing motivations.

I’m enjoying this adventure because it not only gave me a new avenue to explore, but it also gives me new insight into motivations behind characters in the other modules I have planned. It now helps me to develop my antagonists in the adventures. Perhaps, and I can see it already, these antagonists are not the opponent. They are only an opponent to a character that has a directly opposing motivation. We could, in theory, find that there are plenty of player characters that have very similar or complimentary motivations that could turn your standard bad-guy into one of your greatest allies.

Note: this post concerns the Play-By-Post campaign entitled Desecration. The module is planned for comercial release in 2008. Sign up for the Desecration PBP game ends on October 5, 2007 and is open to all registered Ironwood Nexus Community Members.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Developer Blog, E-RPG General Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.