So lately I've been thinking. There's this old adage about movies: Show, don't tell. And there's a parallel one for video games: Do, don't show. Anyone who at least knowledgeable about video game storytelling is probably aware of these, or at least about the principles they espouse. For those who don't know, they mean that movies are not books, and also that games are not movies. In a book, the only way to convey information to the reader is by telling them, though text. One of the strongest elements of film-making is the potential to tell stories through visuals; instead of describing a picturesque landscape to a viewer, you could just show them, for example. One of the strongest elements of game-making is the potential to tell stories through interaction; look at Bioshock for a way to tell the history of your world entirely through the environment, and there are plenty of games that showcase how to make a game tell its story AROUND the player, and have it adapt. There are others that can tell it better than I, but there's the gist of it.

Basically, I have been thinking of how to incorporate these ideals into an RPG-type game. Specifically, one made in RPG maker-esque engines and such. As a fledgeling game designer/developer, I want to find ways to make games that are great, well, GAMES, not ones that would make better movies or books. For example, FF13 tried to tell its whole story and history through endless text and cutscenes, and that game got ripped to shreds by reviewers everywhere. Every Metal Gear game, despite how good or bad people think they are, are terrible examples of how to do video game storytelling; they each have hours of talking, reading, cutscenes, etc, and players never really PLAY the story.

I want to have many characters, and I want to develop them each, but I can't think of any effective ways (other than walls of text) to do so. I want to have a rich world loaded with history, and be able to immerse my players in it. I want to tell a story, but I want my players to actually PLAY it, not just read endless text.

Thoughts?

I think you may have confused 2 concepts here. You can still "show, not tell" entirely through text, its just the way in which you write it. FF13 actually did a fantastic job at this; and of all the bad reviews I've heard none have faulted the writing. I think it was disingenuous of you to make this connection.

The difference between showing and telling in writing is a subtle, but important one. Showing and not telling means layering your story and dialogue such that themes come out with out specifically refering to them. This is applicable in all media regardless of if they're text only, or have no text at all.

Lets take the biggest rpg cliche of them all for this example; dead parents. Most RPGs just straight out tell you through having the character somehow refer to having lost their parents and they make a huge scene about this. This is entirely the wrong way to go about it. You can show and not tell this information by perhaps having the character refer to not speaking with their parents anymore, or other hints that they don't interact, then maybe let it come out that one parent died at some point, and have another reference somewhere else later on about the other one. You never really need to make a scene of them being all alone and spelling out this theme to the player; you just show it through a slow trickle of information and how their character behaves. Maybe they're overly dependant? Maybe they're an emotional void? If you're subtle about it you can still show and not tell through text.

I have heard a couple pretty damning reviews of FF13, but yeah you're probably right about it.

And that's some really good advice you gave, and it pertains to most RPGs, which are laden with text. But how would you also make it more interactive, or cut down on the text while still relaying the same things? How would you go about telling the story you want to tell, but letting the player mold it into what they want somehow? Basically, how would you make an RPG apply to that second one: do, don't show?

Well try to think about it in real terms. In your life you have your day to day goals, and you have your long term goals. You also have friends, and while you interact with your friends for your day to day and long term goals, knowing them better is not really a goal in itself; its just something that unfolds as you do stuff with them and hang out.

The same goes for story telling. You don't have drama for the sake of drama, that is a non-plot, and its boring. You have your overarching plot, what your characters are doing, and then things about your characters trickle out as you learn about them through their behaviour in response to the plot. Games are not TV or movies; if you make the drama and the plot the same thing then it just doesn't work as well - and this is where most JRPGs go wrong.

And I think you'll find when you think about it; most critically acclaimed media separate the plot and the character development. They trigger eachother, but learning about the characters is never the purpose of the story, it just happens on the side.

I agree with your view on FF13, but I must say that I didn't find any professional reviews bashing the game on that point. I believe it was mostly the gamers themselves that were disappointed with the way the story was told. I myself found the endless paragraphs of text rather annoying. I would have preferred the old way of Final Fantasy where the story gets told through NPCs and such.

As for 'do, don't show' -- I think that's rather vague and abstract? You can't 'do' information. Everything the player learns is through text or visuals. Now the way it is brought across can vary, of course.

I'm a firm believer that back story should only be revealed in the main plot on a need-to-know basis. Unless that particular detail is something the player absolutely must know to understand the plot, don't foist it on them. If the player wants to know more about the world, that's what NPC dialogue, readable books and side quests are for. If it's an important point, something the player must know, than yes, tell it during the main plot, but try to keep it in character, and if possible, through some other method than simple dialogue or a text crawl.

A good example is Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. A few generations before the game begins, the nobility, except for the royal family, was dissolved in Liberl. This becomes an important plot point later, but instead of making you sit through a dry wall of text, the game has the main character and her party participate in an amateurish school play on the subject. Oh, and all the roles have been gender-swapped because the school council president is a little... well, different, so poor Joshua, your only male party member at that point, gets dragooned into playing the princess (he's frighteningly good at it, too). Not only does the play reveal an important point of back story, it provides some comic relief and a little bit of character development as well.

The funny thing was, almost every bit of the story and occurances in FFXIII are actually told through the cutscenes, and if you're paying attention and willing to think about things, everything you needed to know was presented to you - though a little is left open to thought or requires you to try to get into the character's heads to understand, since it's not outright spoken.

The database is there as a supplement - it's there to flat out tell you what's going on, clarify what the characters are thinking, and provide additional little blurbs. But it was in no way necessary - FFXIII was a very well done (although not flawless) example of showing the story as it is, and left the option for the story to still be told through additional materials if people didn't grasp it.

I don't want to derail this thread by focusing on FFXIII, but its also a good example of the extreme opposite where you only show and don't tell. When you start the game you have absolutely no idea what a L'cie is or the like and it all sounds like jargon. Whether they should have explained it or just used the terms less until they became more relevant is debateable, but I thought I'd just throw that nugget in here.

And man, I feel like replaying FFXIII.

http://gamedesignreviews.com/reviews/sword...a-do-dont-show/
They had an article and some discussion on it here.

Part of the "Do, don't show" thing is to remember that you can show and can still tell players information, but to remember that they are playing a game, not watching a movie with a battle system mixed in here and there.

Probably one of the most important uses for it is in a tutorial and in the intro. I've seen quite a few games whose tutorials are a wall of text. "Blah blah blah blah blah can I actually try it out for myself instead of overloading me with info?". It's far easier for the player to get it if you have them try it out rather than telling them all the info.

For intros, it's nice having at least part of it where the player can take control, instead of having a 10 minute long cutscene (or worse, wall of text). Seiken Densetsu 3, while having a long intro (It could have been solved by not having a credits and long boat ride), had it pretty good.

I'll go over one of the intros, this one Lise's:
(For screens of this, visit my blog: http://dev.oceansdream.net/?p=752#more-752 )
You start off high on a mountain, with a gorgeous view. You play a Warrior princess type who is on Level 1, and has to fight a Level 1 bird. It's an easy fight, but the enemy has a bit more HP than usual so you can get used to the controls and not accidentally one shot them.

They go over how the monsters are increasing lately, and how worrying a sign that is. You are taken back in the castle, where the King asks you to find Elliott (your brother). So you take control again, and you can walk around the castle and talk to NPCs to see if anyone has found him. You trigger a cutscene where a Ninja talks to Elliott and shows him a "Magic trick". He goes to convince him to go turn off the barrier at the castle. Since you see where they go in, you as Lise take control again and can head down there.

You are too late, and the barrier is turned off. So the castle gets invaded by Ninjas, which you can fight off. They're still pretty easy but now they're all over the castle. As Elliott was captured, you need to go to the King and see if he's okay. As you've been there, you can figure out the way back, while fighting enemies. The King is killed, Elliott is taken and the Castle is taken over. The rest of the intro plays out in a cutscene: You decide to go to Wendel, go to the port, go on the ship and the credits play (That is for time saving reasons, as the Castle is very far from the port and you'll be climbing up that mountain later in the game). Once you get to the next port town, that's when the intro is over. You've been playing a good amount of the intro, learned enough about what's going on, had a few NPCs to tell you details about Rolante while you were in the castle, and have seen and fought off some of the invasion.

This would have all been a 15 minute cutscene in greyscale if a typical RPG Maker user were to make it. Then you would be at a forest level, and then get another long wordy tutorial about how to work the really simple battle system which only has one useless skill.

This is pretty much the reason why I never play anyone's rpg maker games.

And about this, this is what the dialogue is for. Not just in cutscenes, but elsewhere too. When you examine something, when you enter somewhere, when you talk to some NPC. These can all be used to bring out the personality of the characters. For example, instead of having the NPC go "Corneria is to the west" or whatever, perhaps they'll say something and one of your characters disagrees with it and shows it.

So say... NPC: "Agh, you're not one of those religious nuts are you? I had enough with my wife trying to get me to go to church!"
Then perhaps one character in your group is very religious and has an argument with the guy. And maybe the subject just was never brought up until now. Then if you enter a church and examine something, that character might tell you not to touch it as it's sacred. So instead of bringing up a long cutscene that your character was religious and came from x background and blah blah blah, you could have just the most necessary or relevant info brought up in a cutscene and the players exploration and NPC dialogue/sidequests/small scenes can fill in the rest of the info. If you bring that character to their home, you can possibly get even more direct info from their relatives or their personal items.

The unfortunate thing about this thread is that it truly depends on the story you're making and the game. The amount of knowledge you'd have to cram into this thread would be so vast and adaptive no one would sit through it. (It's already tough to get through the wall of text that is this thread)

If you make a story in a world with a lot of foreign concepts like Mana Crystals and a magic power system and something called Astral Vibes that the Gardaniel Kingdom controls to combat the Dark Lord of Necrosia that was sealed with the energy a thousand years ago and then revolutionary war erupted over whether or not to use the powerful energy that Alexander, the deistic manifestation of the cleansed energy, excreted. Yeah, you're gonna have a very difficult time telling all this in the beginning without a wall of text. Even more difficult if they start right in the town where this has happened and the player somehow feels they should know it.

The more exotic your game, the more difficult it will be introducing your character to it at a reasonable level. You will have to find examples and discuss specific ideas.

If, on the other hand, it's a simpler story with few concepts not represented in the real world, then you will find it much easier to introduce your player to it.

Get organized, and things will become more clear. Don't be afraid to change things while they're still in the theory stage. Once it's out on paper or represented visually, then changing it will not be good.

There are a lot of fine examples in this thread to use that will get you on your way.Continue to research, read, and study. Ask questions.

Gameplay storytelling is both different and similar to storytelling in movies and books. Identifying those similarities and differences are key.

I wonder if you wrote that with a straight face. The majority of the (background) story of FFXIII was 'told' through endless paragraphs of text, not through cut scenes. Sure, you can get the story without reading it all, but that's not the point.

Man, I'm causing so much trouble for the players.

Part of "show, don't tell" also means instead of just SAYING that the player experiences something in text, you show them actually doing it. i.e. Mage A is supposed to be a genius. Well, you need to show the guy doing stuff that is at a genius intellect.

"Do, don't show" pretty much means if you can let the players play it out, do so, as it weaves the narrative into game play, which is a better experience, supposedly. (Though, plot exposition rules still apply. If the scene is superfluous, it doesn't need to be there)

so, instead of just stating a mage is smart, you show him doing smart things. If the mage is a player character, instead of just showing him spout off smart things, actually have the player drive the choices that leads to him making brilliant decisions, etc.

obviously, some things will not work in this way, and some will just bog the story down. i.e. if the player's character is well versed in elven culture, but that particular thing is immaterial to the story, then purposely sticking a scene where the player interacts with elves in the past will be utterly meaningless.

basically what it comes down to, is this:

1. less is more, so try to get your character down to their most core parts
2. once you do, check to see if it's an attribute (i.e. a skill, an aspect, a personality trait) or an event of the past
3. for attributes, don't just say they are this, have it show up in game. i.e. a strong character should be able to use his higher strength in game, a smart character should be able to deduce things that other characters of lesser intellect cannot.
4. if it's an event that has shaped them, show how that event has effected their perception.

Background=/= story.
The actual story was told through cutscenes, background information and lore through paragraphs of text.