Good evening, my fellow Kindred,

I think that many people wonder how we approach writing the dialogues, and more importantly, what our take is on players' agency. After all, Blood & Vice is classified as an RPG, so those two are important to keep the players engaged. They will be 1st line they encounter and the main point where the plot will be pushed forward.

Well. Let's start with a basic fact: writing dialogues for an RPG game is a difficult task. It's unlike writing a book or a screenplay for a movie or series. Many may ask why. The main difference is that in an RPG, players' agency is important. It's a drive that pushes the game forward, and many of you probably played some TTRPG sessions (or were someone who ran those). In TTRPGs, encounters with NPCs are often flexible and rarely end up as how they were intended. A storyteller may have a load of notes, but most players usually take an approach that they didn't predict, and the notes become partially useless. As a Storyteller myself, I know the feeling, but in my opinion, such sessions are the most fun for the players and Storytellers. It's not bad when you lose control over the story - quite contrary - it means that players are engaged and creative in their endeavors, seeking solutions where you didn't though anything was possible. This is a players' agency in action - a raw power of playful chaos coming in to turn everything upside down. As it is in real life.

On the other side of the spectrum lies so-called railroading. Railroading is a technique where the Storyteller guides players by their hand directly to their target, allowing them to do very little outside of what he planned. I like my story to be mixed with chaos. I'm not afraid of losing control, but sometimes, when players step away too far from the main plotline. They become lost, and with becoming lost, they also lose interest. Storyteller not only controls the world's reaction to the players decision. From time to time, he has to grab their hand and guide them back on track so the chronicle will not end up prematurely, because everyone forgot why they started to play in the first place. It's not bad to take over the reins from time to time. It's bad to do it all the time. Players more often than not don't play to live through someone else's story. They play to live their own story. Rigid railroading should be a tool to be used when it's necessary, not all the time. It wrecks the players' agency.

Okay, that concludes two different approaches in TTRPG sessions, but not video games.

Well, let's say it with full honesty - video games are more of a railroading than being flexible. You can't take the approach that isn't presented to you in the game. That's just how it works. A game cannot give open choices like a Storyteller sitting at the table. They aren't flexible this way, and there's no way around it. So what can you do? Well... that's where writing dialogues for the games is difficult. There are two main types of plot in games - linear and non-linear. Both have their uses. For smaller titles or something more similar to a Visual Novel, the linear plot works better. It gives minimal flexibility with sparse branching, but can still be made in a fun way. Telltale games are a good example. They are Visual Novels that are written very cleverly, giving a lot of smaller and bigger choices, keeping the player engaged, but at the end of the day, only two or one choices in the chapter matter. 

Non-linear is much more difficult. Why? As the name states, such a plot has branching, forks, and other narrative constructions that make the plot diverge at many points. It's more flexible, but the player still has to choose between the provided options. They are not just there - they are the things that initiate branching. A branching that writers have to keep in mind and have to expand if such a need arises. It's not unlike a tree structure where players start at one point but may end up in entirely different sections of it based on their decisions alone. For Blood & Vice, this is the approach we chose. Our decision was mainly made to make the world more real and responsive to the players action, because, at the very essence VtM setting is made for very personal experiences. The best example, in my opinion, was Planescape: Torment, which was very player-oriented, allowing him to explore not only their surroundings, but also themselves and their companions. It was not about the main plot, not entirely; it was the entire journey that brought the player to the ending that was really important.

Having this part explained... Other things make writing dialogue for the games difficult.

Video games under the hood are separate systems that are interconnected and influence one another. No part of the game can exist outside. They work as a well-oiled machine. Well, most of the time, bugs and mistakes in the design aren't avoidable, but aside from that, the total experience is a sum of every single system the game has to offer. Dialogues are just one of such systems. While designing and writing conversations for the game, one has to remember it. If they are the main focus of the game, they often have to communicate and initialize other systems. While writers don't have to remember all the inner workings of the game, they have to remember to interconnect and construct the dialogues around them so they don't exist outside. For Blood & Vice, dialogues connect with: dice rolls, quests, companions, investigation system, influence system, morality system, faction system, and sometimes combat. As you see, it's a lot. And it's only a part - writers have still to remember how and when plot may be diverged, which adds another layer of difficulty to an already difficult task.

But let's wrap this up. Maybe you have another opinion about the dialogues? We're curious about it. Do you like linear plots or non-linear ones? Do you have any experiences with TTRPG sessions you'd like to share? Or maybe you have an entirely different approach than the ones mentioned above? Share them on our Discord server!

Have a nice weekend and see you next month.