Center of the Universe

Story Telling for Games

The sin I like to call, “The center of the Universe” is seen far too much in games. This is where the entire world revolves around the player’s character.

An in-game example would be you walk up to a shopkeeper and the NPC states something along the lines of:

I’m so glad you are here!

My wares were stolen from my shop and I need them back.

Could you please go and fetch them for me? I will reward you handsomely if you do so.

What even is this? The NPC shopkeeper had their stuff stolen and their only course of action was you. They had no other plans to get their things back. They didn’t talk to any sort of authorities. They have their shop still open and seem to still have stuff for sale. They promise to reward you. Reward you with what? The supplies you are going to recover?

I would hope that if this NPC shopkeeper said all of this, it is actually a trap where that shopkeeper sends heroes to be ambushed for a cut of the take.

Being the hero in the world does not make you the only thing that changes the world. Where are the characters that are oblivious to everything? Where are the characters that just don’t care about you, don’t care about what you want, or don’t care that the world might be crashing down? Even if you are playing a god in a god game, I’d expect your worshiping followers to pray to you for salvation and then attempt to find their own cure, just-in-case you’ve determined any follower wearing a red shirt is as good as dead.

Fix it

Let’s rewrite the sample above to revolve less around the player. We are going to make this tougher and assume that the game we are building is highly limited so we cannot close the store, change the shopkeeper’s inventory, or have dynamic dialog trees.

The desire would be for us to be sent on a quest from the NPC shopkeeper to recover goods. If we could close the store I would have the shop closed and maybe have the quest start from someone else since the shopkeeper might be wary of strangers. In that case the shop keeper’s dialog would simply start with:

Go away.

We need a perspective change at this point. We want to view this interaction not from the world revolving around the player but the shopkeeper. After all, this quest is the shopkeeper’s journey that your journey is intertwining with. We should be asking questions to make this scenario add to a rich world and help develop the shopkeeper as a character.

Brainstorm

With that in mind, we can approach the problem by asking obvious questions for this scenario, “Why hasn’t the shopkeeper actually gotten their goods back, why isn’t someone else getting the goods, why were they stolen, why is the shop still open, and why would the shopkeeper trust you?” We should brainstorm on each of those.

There is no quiz on the brainstorming at the end so feel free to skim the bullet point lists.

Why didn’t the shopkeeper get the supplies back themselves?

• It is a trap (as mentioned above)

• Shopkeeper stole the goods he wants recovered and can’t risk being seen with them

• Shopkeeper is in hiding and is afraid their identity will be blown if they tell anyone. Why would they tell you this though?

• The shopkeeper is lying and wants you to actually steal goods from someone else

• Shopkeeper is too weak to get them

• Shopkeeper has responsibilities at the town he can’t leave for

• The shopkeeper is a drunk

• The shopkeeper believes money is the right solution to all problems

• If they leave everything else will be stolen

• They are under house arrest

• They think they are a vampire or lycanthrope and think can’t be outside that long

Why didn’t anyone else help this shopkeeper?

• The shopkeeper appears to be crazy or is crazy annoying

• The shopkeeper is new to town

• The shopkeeper will be compensated for the stolen goods from the town or insurance so retrieval was not part of it

• The shopkeeper has been socially outcast

• Shopkeeper has cried wolf too many times

• Shopkeeper is hiding those goods from a significant other

• The authorities are corrupt and were paid off or are the ones who stole the goods

• The thieves are part of the shopkeeper’s family so it needs to be quite

• The shopkeeper is the last in his clan, tribe, or faction

• The town is racist against the shopkeeper

• Shopkeeper was told the next time they were robbed they would be thrown out of town for attracting too many thieves

Why the shop is still open with full inventory?

• The shopkeeper already replaced the stolen goods with a new order. If a lot of time has passed, are the stolen goods still around?

• The supplies stolen were a special order and not part of the shop’s normal inventory. Such as a shipment of medicine

• The supplies stolen were personal belongings and not shop goods

• The thieves stole everything that was in the storage area of the shop as opposed to the store front or vice versa.

• The shopkeeper stole goods from another store who they blame for the theft from their store

• A theft actually never happened and the shopkeeper is lying. This is how they supply their shop normally

• The thieves were trying to steal during a resupply to get two shops worth of inventory but robbed too early and only got one shop worth of goods.

• The town chipped in and resupplied the shopkeeper

• The authorities already recovered the goods but they were the wrong goods and the shopkeeper went along with it.

• The supplies were going to be used to open a second location run by someone else. Maybe that’s you?

• The stolen supplies are a protection fee so the shop has always operated at that capacity

Why would they trust you?

• You are friends

• You are a member of the town

• You are part of their tribe, clan, family

• You are part of the authorities

• You are part of a trustworthy group

• You are visibly or spiritually marked in a way that signifies trust

• It is a trap and anyone will do

• They are out of all options

• Your heroic deeds are well known

• They don’t trust you

Putting it together

We could almost randomly choose one or more options from the brainstormed list to have a more compelling story than the junk we initially listed. That said, let’s actually randomly choose some of the entries to see how we could generate the quest in a shoehorned single block of text.

Picking some random choices we have:

Why didn’t the shopkeeper get the supplies back themselves?
The shopkeeper believes money is the right solution to all problems.

Why didn’t anyone else help this shopkeeper?
The shopkeeper will be compensated for the stolen goods from the town or insurance so retrieval was not part of it

Why the shop is still open with full inventory?
The thieves stole everything that was in the storage area of the shop as opposed to the store front or vice versa.

Why would they trust you?
You are part of their tribe, clan, family

Summarizing we get that, this shopkeeper’s weapon is money itself. An unfortunate event of a theft has given them an opportunity to commit fraud and try to double their inventory for free. They will want to lie about being paid for the goods or at least try to make it sound they got paid very little. They don’t want the town to find out what they are up to so they are going to lean on deception and societal pressure to silence and manipulate you.

With this we go from:

I’m so glad you are here!

My wares were stolen from my shop and I need them back.

Could you please go and fetch them for me? I will reward you handsomely if you do so.

To:

Please come on in. No one from our tribe should ever be left outside.

Snoop around and make yourself at home. If you see anything you’d like, just let me know. I’d love to give you the tribesman discount but I was recently robbed and am in terrible risk of going out of business. I’m almost broke.

I'm going to trust you with tribe only knowledge, the sheriff here is a horrible coward. He wouldn’t go after our stolen goods. Instead he paid me a tiny sum for them. The sheriff let them steal from us and get away with it. Now that they have gotten away with it once, I’m sure the thieves will be back.

I wish I could go get my goods back but clearly I’m only good with making money not defending it.

You know, you look to be one of the strongest members of our tribe I have ever seen. You're simply gorgeous. Would you be willing to see about retrieving my goods? It is good for the tribe to protect each other and I am willing to reward you.

Either way please don’t mention it to the sheriff. If he knows I asked you then he will know I don’t agree with his solutions and that can cause problems for us.

Here, let me see your map and I’ll mark where I think the thieves went.

This text changes the quest from giving a simple quest for the player to a quest where the shopkeeper has their own story and the player is able to contribute to that story.

If we spent more time on character development, dialog trees, ability to have multiple returns or other mechanics we could do so much more and significantly better.

Here is another example of random choices:

Why didn’t the shopkeeper get the supplies back themselves?
Shopkeeper is lying and wants you to actually steal goods from someone else

Why didn’t anyone else help this shopkeeper?
The shopkeeper appears to be crazy or is crazy annoying

Why the shop is still open with full inventory?
The supplies stolen were a special order and not part of the shop’s normal inventory. Such as a shipment of medicine

Why would they trust you?
It is a trap and anyone will do

Summarizing them we get that, this crazy annoying shopkeeper has a deal to get money by sending the hero to bandits to be killed and stripped of all their goods. The bait is to attempt to trick player to be heroic. If the player succeeds the shopkeeper will get all of the bandit camp’s supplies. If the player fails, the bandit’s will give the shopkeeper a cut of the player’s goods. Overall it is a win-win for the shopkeeper.

With this we get:

Please don’t touch the goods and let me know if you want to see something. We don’t offer any loans.

If a real customer comes in you’ll need to step out. I want to ensure they feel comfortable here. 

However, while you’re here, I could use someone whose life has clearly been rough. I recently had people I grew up with turn their back on me for starting this shop. They stole my shop's medicine supply. I don’t need the medicine personally. It did take me a lot to get it here though. You wouldn’t believe how many lowlifes I had to deal with to get it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m talking about a real hard type of lowlife that couldn’t even afford to shop here. Present company excluded of course. I would have reported the theft to the authorities but I still have a code. You understand, those folks have that phrase they use, snitches get stitches.

Do you think you could go retrieve my goods back from their camp? Retrieve them however works for you of course. I’d give you a big enough reward you’d even be able to shop here.

The medicine is in crates marked with "Property of Dr. Tuner.” Yes, that's the name of the doctor on the other side of town. That’s where the supplies came from.

Let me mark on your map where the camp is and then let me let you go.

This example reads a little similar to a game that revolves around the player but having it appear that way is in the shopkeepers interest. The text should raise yellow and red flags on both this shopkeeper and what is going on.

When creating games, we need to avoid making worlds that are dimensionless and only revolves around the player. The player has their story and everyone in the world has a story too. For a more believable world, I want to see other entities acting on their motives first and must be convinced to help or join the hero’s journey if they ever do.

Thanks