The context for this is my ongoing attempt to create something for Spring Thing. This year I had plenty of ideas, but also lots of distractions. Nothing really came together so I have extended my deadline to 2026 .
One thing I did achieve though, to my surprise, is a game.
Not a game for you, dear reader. I created a game which exists in the story world. A game my characters play.
This isnāt a new idea. There are mini games inside every Zelda title.
The game of Gwent is a key feature of The Witcher. Quidditch underpins a lot of the plot of Harry Potter.
Until now I probably thought that was all showing off. Surely the designers had too much time on their hands.
Not the case, I can confidently report. I dip in and out of writing, so itās important that on returning to the keyboard I donāt discover that during my absence a character has wandered off or been overtaken by a sense of futility.
Providing a cultural touchstone, an engine of intrigue, a generator of movement, has been really handy. Mine happens to be a fictional board game called three-sixteenths. Every time I turn my back the people in my unfinished game sneak off to play together.
Then when I have time to write again, I know where to look for them. I can sit down at the table and find out what theyāve been up to whilst I was away.
I donāt know about the cultural touchstone and all that stuff, but one of the motivating factors in the design of the thing Iāve been working on is that how people play games telegraphs a lot about their mental state. So playing game-with-games with NPCs is intended to be a major mechanic.
Very early in development I realized I wanted to be doing this in general, and to accomplish that I wanted to do the same thing with the outer/framing game. And since the āinnerā partā¦playing cards and so onā¦works because itās iterative decision making involving similar problems in different circumstances, I wanted the same rough mechanical framework in the main/framing game. So it has procgen/roguelike elements. And that motivated having the games-within-a-game, and the various characterās behavior/strategies/whatever work as a sort of thematic or metaphorical structure for ātalking aboutā (in the gameās narrative) the ārealā things the characters are confronting.
This isnāt exactly a novel approach (Nabokovās third novel, The Defense is kinda like this with chess, and Iām willing to bet a lot of people reading this can think of other examples just involving chess). But I think itās an answer to the question.
I donāt hide that Iām thinking about an in-game (board)game (my testers surely have noticed the bases already in placeā¦), but Iām undecided if the little extra is worth the effort.
But if an in-game is structural to the narrative (e.g. a āfind & expose the corrupt team memberā mystery game), the issues are others, stemming from the playerās knowledge of the rules (remember a certain baseball diamond puzzle and Rule 16 ?)
Sorry, I donāt quite follow. Do you mean this as a mental exercise for yourself (i.e. you imagine the characters playing this game, think about what/how they played, then return to your own writing of them) or do you mean it literally (as well)? That 3/16s is a game that players of your game play via the PC(s)?
Itās definitely the first. A sort of memory-palace technique. But maybe also a bit of the second.
Iām experimenting with modifying NPC attributes based on how they are currently experiencing a sim of 3/16ths. Not sure how much of the details to reveal to the player. But Iām hoping it will generate some believable procedural interactions.
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