The Forest Paths Method for Accessible Narrative Design

hello friends I'm Alexander swords welcome to my home office here in Melbourne Australia giving this presentation under very different circumstances still what I had intended the session is the forest paths method for accessible narrative design I'll just to clarify straight off the bat the accessible part of that is about the fact that it uses plain language it uses simple definitions and it's the method is designed to be accessed by the entire team so to clarify your own ideas and help you collaborate with the rest of your team this is me I'm not going to go through everything I've got qualifications I've done stuff the thing that I'm really proud about though is the forest palace method it's an accumulation of many many years working across a bunch of different mediums basically it's come from a design philosophy of making sure that the power of all stories is recognised in this process its plan language its accessible which means it's also very practical

it's not high-level at all it will literally help you understand how to create the drama that you need to to access the to connect with the audience that you'd like to connect with it is collaborative at its core and it helps you integrate considerations that are wider than just the narrative design so if a scene narrative design impacts the rest of the game development process but also impacts a whole bunch of other things like streamers marketing accessibility and so on you'll see here that I'm starting with a blank spreadsheet I think sometimes it's very good for examples to begin at the very beginning so literally all I've done is opened up this spreadsheet and and renamed it I mean see at the top left there it's called high-concept formula we have to excuse me I'm gonna look at this screen because it's bigger this is the benefit of doing this talk from my home office so we've got a spreadsheet here and for the first step in and what we're trying to do this is probably one of the

best ways of starting using a high concept formula again this is about making sure you're asking yourself the right questions more than anything else but it's really super simple you have the player which is play out as a character performs activities you see that these you know these are variables and you know you're probably guessing these as we go along that manage resources to become obstacles achieve a goal whatever that might be so these are the elements that need to go into a game super simple stuff this is probably a really good place to you know if you're starting ideas for the first time you're just brainstorming a really good way of

kind of getting your ideas out just in a table with you around your team I'd try and work out the kind of game that you're trying to make I am going to use an example that I've been thinking about you know it just gave me a bit more of a mature game a bit of a game for adults and and trying to get away from away from conflict you know so that to provide a bit of a slightly different example to what you might expect to say you know shooter or a horror game or something like that so basically the idea that I had was that this is about an old man who lives in the city and as unfortunately what happens sometimes is with all people they end up being the last people in their Friendship Circle to to be alive unfortunately they last longer than everyone else important to them and so you know there's a lot of isolation that comes with that so the idea of this game is that this old person is is taking a journey back home to try and reconnect with their roots essentially because that's where they

made all their lifelong friends and so they want to return back there you know and the general kind of just I mean they're there but just for this idea to was that I wanted to create a game about it is about the friends we make along away so hopefully we'll get to a narrative design which which achieves that before I finish this video and I also will say like my goal for today's example - is to just get the narrative design to a point where we could come up with a really good solid a solid place to go forward designing a vertical slice because it is a new idea and you know the role-playing kind of aspect of this would be that you know we're a studio maybe you're I'm playing as a solid developer who's coming up with an idea maybe to go for funding or maybe to pitch to you know to the team so vertical slice is what we're aiming for so the character is an old man the activities that I've been thinking of you know so where we want to I'm going

to set it in Australia so we can travel across the stranger type of skills ahoy and then I'm making friends which you know I guess is is you know it's about relationships I guess you know so resources so time is a factor maybe fuel as a factor and made into the vehicle maintenance maintenance and maintenance maintenance of the vehicle and that's that's how you spell maintenance anyway obstacles distance loneliness I feel

like good resources for you put in relationships here I think because you know we're managing them it's something that we're managing and hopefully we'll get something out of it and the goal is to return to the cool so that that's a pitch for a game right so you know the player is an old man who's travelling across Australia maybe making friends as a way of managing time and fuel and the maintenance of their car you know through these relationships overcoming distance and loneliness along the way hopefully you know to return to where he grew up that that's you know I'm very comfortable with that as a pitch you know this would be something that I'd automatically be able to take to the team to start kind of getting their ideas about whether all of these aspects or elements we want in the game kind of

as they are and you know start those conversations about mechanics in particular you know this feels a little bit kind of walking simulator so far and and that's probably where where I'm going to take it from this point forward so I have to step forward a little bit to save you watching me doing some of the tedious stuff basically what I've done is created a matrix here and set up what we need to go forward but what we're gonna do next though is this is is exactly what we just did a high concept formula I've stuck the word can in front of it I put the question at the end of it and that's now makes it a dramatic question so can the old man travel across Australia making friends managing time fuel maintenance and relationships to overcome distance and loneliness to return to where he grew up those of you are familiar with the dramatic question there's no surprises there there's a few unfamiliar just have a quick google it it's not very deep to understand although the use of it can't be super

good super deep but the next thing we want to do is have a look at this matrix now it's simply put from left to right is time progressing through the game through the gameplay experience and then each of these are sequences and each of these sequences are broken up into I've got five different elements these elements that I've got here are from the variables that we've got from the high-concept formula but these elements should change depending on what genre you're doing what type of game you're playing you know what questions you're trying to answer for yourself and so you know they might even change over the process of doing this but the first thing we will do is across the top here we have so this is the dramatic question this is where we want the answers to that dramatic question so what I want to do though is like this is feeling like a bit of a walking simulator so you know the answers to these questions are

either yes or no and because of the genre of walking simulators generally you know a yes is the player feels like that they can move forward through the through the experience without any kind of really hard pushback obviously and no is the opposite of that and always when the player feels like they're they can't move forward without a definitive gate being opened or you know an obstacle being overcome but for us it's what simulator we don't want really any kind of to feel like this any two impediment here you know these resources shouldn't be shouldn't ever completely deplete they should only be concerns these obstacles should never be absolute at any point for most of the experience I want to mix things up a little bit though and we're going to have a note here and the reason why I want to know is because he was to return to where he

grew up this is a very tangible goal but I kind of want to say no to achieving that tangible goal so that we can explore what intangible goals that he might achieve along the way so you know this is a case of you know usually in cinema terms they call it you know not getting what you want but getting what you need in this case he wants to return to where he grew up but I want to explore what he needs and you know this is the game that I want to be about the friends you make along the way so in this case here what he wants us to return to where he grew up but what he needs to do is make friends and so that's the experience that I want to put the player through so that's gonna be a no at that point there I don't know what that looks like yet the good thing about this is you know I've got drama there and it's just an intention I don't even know what that looks like yeah I don't need to also when you're doing this sort of stuff it's perfectly fine to start with intention and then work your way into detail that's perfectly fine and that should be what your process is another cool thing about this is that if you

want to you can get your whole team in front of a screen straightaway with this blank document and start working with it and then maybe do some analysis along the way or just start with intention you know that sort of thing the other thing that I think I'm going to do because it is been walking simulator kind of territory is you know I don't think that obstacles are so important as themes you know because it's about making friends and and doing that you know there's different things that kind of arise from that also too you know he's in a very interesting situation being an older person facing isolation there's some themes there that you know we want to investigate the other issue is we're walking simulators you know theme is at the heart of those you know so we want to see that reflected in the design that we're doing as well I think the other thing too is you know because because this very simple progression here it's

not going to be too much of a difference in goals going forward so I don't really feel like it's something that we need to track through this process so you know I'm going to put something I'm gonna put intended audience instead now popular reason for that is you know we're making this as a game for an older audience or for a game for an audience rather who's really interested in engaging with a specific style of story and this kind of narrative content so I'm going to to draw a line underneath it just to mark it as this element is is not a narrative design element it's a functional element it's not meant to necessarily impact on anything above it but anything above it that line will impact what what is below it and I think it's important to kind of keep entire in mind you know who our intended audience is and and what effect and our good design is going to have them through this process so yeah and

the other thing that I want to do straight up as well so we do have in the first parts of method I do have dramatic forces and these are do break it up into two groups one is dramatic forces over time and the other is between elements and we'll start with over time because usually what you want for a case of narrative design is some dramatic force being applied it starts at the beginning of the game and ends at the end of the game and that's a dramatic force is basically a way of understanding the relationship between what the player is expecting and the drama that's being introduced by what is unexpected and so you know straight away what I want here is there's going to be transformation here and transformations essentially when any element in your narrative design is having its context

change it's being transformed as the context around it is being changed or the definition of it is being changed so you know typically I'm the example that it uses you know if you have a warrior it's just a warrior and I think that they're just fighting and all sudden it turns out that their prince or princess you know the context of that character has changed there is a transformation there from just warrior to warrior prince or warrior princess in that kind of instance this transformation though is you know we want the story to go from from traveling to making friends along the way which so I guess what we want is you know it's about the end but about the journey so we changed the context of the story gear there's a transformation of what this story should mean that it's you know it's not about reaching the goal it's about the journey along the

way yeah putting notes of yourself terrible memory I designed this entire system because they have a really terrible memory why should I remember this sort of stuff when I can just create a system to understand these relationships that come with the diagram and obviously what's good about this is that other people can see this and and be able to follow it with you so yeah I'm not sure there any yeah I would say the other the other dramatic force over time is a reversal and we're not really sure what it is yet but there's definitely a reversal here from yes to reversal of fortune this is the the traditional definition of what a reversal is a reversal of fortune I've expanded that definition to include all reversals where you have one element that changes from one state to its opposite in this case it reflects the traditional understanding of fortune going from good to too bad but there's

no reason why it couldn't be from you know if it's art style from black to white if it's you know if it's time from night to day you know that sort of thing as a rehearsal and then we've got probably should start looking at any kind of low-hanging fruit that we have as well I mean we don't really have any kind of story there we can just kind of look at things and go okay you know begins the begins the journey there I'm not gonna put nster Jenny there because we want this transformation and this is an arm so we still don't know what that means yet but maybe then you know what what we can kind of do is actually just look at activities and help activities decide for us you know what the story will be and different things so you know this is pretty simple so there's two activities

here traveling across Australia making friends so why don't we just for it travel with a capital because I'm a stickler like for things like that making friends travel travel I'm gonna leave that one blank so we don't know what we're doing there and this one's good making friends and this one's going making friends cool great we already have a really nice structure there as well so you know there's a rhythm there the player will be able to identify and I think you know that's good there's some structure then the player will kind of understand about resources so basically I think what's going on here is you know the other elements that we've got here are probably going to want to inform us before we even really want to think

about what the actual story is although you know they need to stop to make friends yeah cool okay so what we might want to do then to is actually now just kind of work out what resources will want to use and when I feel like you know the beginning it's going to be all good and at the end you know bad maybe this is a work in progress and then what we've got along the way well what we could probably do is just go you know so it's just like a fuel thing here and a maintenance thing here and then a time thing here great also we've ticked off so you know this

isn't to say that these resources aren't necessarily an issue like in any other point of narrative design it just means in these particular sequences this is what we're concentrating on in sequence to it's going to be about the player having to stop to manage fuel and the way they're going to do that is by making friends with someone that seems pretty simple what we might do is theme their well from the beginning we know that isolation is an issue that's something that we want to explore from the beginning and you know the evolution of that I guess if they're making friends are talking to someone is you know the time left alive and what to do with it I think I mean the cool thing about this we can just kind of drop in random ideas here shouldn't be touching their face to create a virus drop ideas like just ideas of things that we do

want to to work with here and then just fold them in at this point so maintenance here I mean to feel like you know losing health as an older person fits really nicely with maintenance being the issue there so and I guess fuel does too how much fuel is left in the tank how much time is left alive how much maintenance you know maintenance verse losing health you know this so what I'm going to do this so this is another dramatic force at play here where you have you have two elements that have a relationship that cause you know that they create drama in this case it's a it's a synergy between resources and and the themes you know fuel equals and it's important to note these sorts of things I mean this one's basically just for yourself as a narrative designer but it gets but even in this kind of scenario if it if I am the narrative designer but it ends up

being handed over to a writer you know the writer knows that this is the gold this is we want something really special out of this relationship between resources and themes in this case particularly being fuel and time left alive so yeah and maintenance and losing health you know this is probably another synergy I'm having a good top other type of a note there we just know that that resource maintenance and losing health is is a good synergy there yeah okay so I don't know about the last one yet and that's okay I think we can leave that there so do we have enough for a story intended audience yeah so what I'm looking for here is like what impact it will have on the end audience and I think beginning the journey travel or good isolation you know I want there to be a sense of hope

for the intended audience so you know it can't be all doom and gloom and I'm hoping that you know the beginning a journey the traveling everything is all good at the beginning you know so you know they want even though this isolation here is the theme you know they're doing some kind of decisive action you know so for the intended audience that's hopefully what I would be excited about at the beginning of the game and what they'll kind of engage with so the we probably should look at the ending and you know feel like we're getting a long way ahead with some of the other stuff without without having the ending kind of nailed down and it's probably time to do so so a clue here at the moment that we've got is two things are all kind of all bad in terms of the car in terms of you know that's the resources that we're managing here but you know I can't help it think that if

this is a no they're not necessarily getting to return to where they grow up that there is you know there's some kind of synergy here even though I don't know what that means yet although I've got a kind of a sense of where there might be going the other issue is we have another dramatic force overtime here between you know this sequence in the resources and this sequence in the resources as well you know there is an escalation here where maintenance is a problem you know I'll guess I'm making the decision to make this a dramatic force right this is the second half of the game here we want some kind of drama in that sense of impending drama and that can come from an escalation you know car suffering car dead these are my notes that I need to be the best running in the world I'm gonna put a blue on that to let me know so that's that's another dramatic force over time escalation now this isn't progression

progression doesn't necessarily need to be noted on here any escalation is something an increase that is beyond what the player expects and whatever element you're dealing with so we're dealing with resources here you know so it looks like if you've got this escalation here leading towards the ending the ending is that the car is all bad so that means that stops car is dead you know I feel like that his is yeah all bad is third time is the resource here being managed because isn't functioning you know so that's where the sense of urgency is I'm going to pull

this this escalation back to to this one here because the cars not functioning here so you know we've got this escalation it's still circling the car suffering to car dead but it's just happening one sequence beforehand so now we need to work out you know how we're going to get this character from from from you know wherever they've stopped here to to their destination you know I mean I guess I guess where we're going with this is that he's not going to survive this journey unfortunately so old man passes the card to explain this because the car isn't functioning either to to the town where you grow so yeah so you know in

this case then we've got the new friend response the town where he grew up that's a really happy ending but you know a really powerful one and you know I think that ends up really high sitting this sense of you know it is not about the journey because unfortunately he didn't survive the journey but he did make friends along the way so it's definitely a case of him not necessarily getting what he wanted but he did get what what he needed in that so it does obviously pros a little bit bit of a problem for you know for what the player is doing here but it's not necessarily a problem but the player controls your friend perhaps so so what I might do

actually is that you know the cars towed the car is going to be towed to the town old man gets lift with new friends but old man passes the final leg break as well so you know this would be a case of the player is is driving the old man back to along this final leg back to the old town and then he passes along the way and there's something I really like about that it means that you know the it's a bit of a shift for the players perspective because now they're playing this new friend who they've possibly never met before there's also something really lovely to be had there about this new friend being responsible and so this player being responsible for the for the final

moments of this old man that they've had this really kind of strong relationship with along the way but we're going to get a few minutes left and we're aiming for a vertical slice so what we probably want to do here is have something kind of work at least two sequences where we have you know something kind of fleshed out a bit better for a vertical slice experience what I probably want to do is have a who travel sequence and a conversation sequence in this so you know what we probably want to do is you know this is probably going to be our vertical experience that we're aiming for so we just met now we just need to make sure that this is this section that we've got complete to hand over for the rest of the team so I'm traveling talking to driving responding to music

listening to cool so that's look putting nostalgia there the nostalgia from the themes is going to be prompted by the music they're listening to traveling branching dialogue you know so the player gets to to navigate I guess the internal thought process of the old man making friends through dialogue as well it doesn't need to be any trade it doesn't need to be any kind of inventory management and I don't want this to be about conflict either they have to stop stops to get my something minor actually

subjugate noise investigated so you know this is a bit of a foreshadowing there about the car is kind of honest on this last legs stops getting always investigated making a friend maintenance talks to talks to repairing no third person so they're not all then whether it's really bad that we had this kind of gendered language ingrained in our in our English stops to get noise investigated talks to repair person you know and now I know that you know this conversation is going to be mostly about the cars health but some of it'll also be you know they'll be referring to their own health as well and maybe that'll be a bit of an issue so the cool thing is I don't even need to necessarily know who this character is that they're talking to this is enough that I could go to the rest of my team

and how they start I have you know starting a conversation with them about what this looks like you know so intended or it's losing health toad audience you know relating I mean I know it's a bit of a cliche I guess for all people to talk about what ails them but you know I want everyone in the team to know that this is what we're aiming for that it should be actually about two people relating to each other you know about this this experience so there's going to be something about the character that this old man is talking to you obviously but they will be able to relate to the old man we also you know so we've got this energy here we also know that this escalation needs to work so if we're creating this for the vertical slice we know that these elements here need to function to deliver on the promise of you know this

transformation that runs through the entire experience as well as this escalation that needs to be paid off and the second civilized sequence it's cool so we've got that at sequence there we do want a traveling sequence though resources yeah I'm not really sure there are any resources that are being managed there that we need to include here because it is about nostalgia to a certain degree we don't ever want any resources here maybe we even just want to let the player drive for as long as they want to drive this is a slow game and so what would could be interesting for our entire audience is a time for self-reflection which isn't something that you know older people necessarily are short of because you know with the isolation comes time to for them to think for themselves but you know this is a bit more of a structured you know it's almost a bit of us could be a bit of a structured meditation this sequence in its style and you know it looks let's

put that there and for us in Australia you know these long drives are part of our culture you know and part of a long tradition of what it is to be Australian because we live in such a big country with cities that are so far apart so you know I think this is something that a lot of people particularly in Australia would kind of relate to and there is something kind of you know obstructed meditation around these long drives you do get in a frame of mind that you don't necessarily get in when you're traveling to work or even just sitting on your own in the house so I feel like you know if our goal is to achieve you know enough of a narrative design to go ahead with developing a vertical slice I feel like we've got that here we're talking to themselves in a sequence here so that we know story wise at least where we're going here but so the cool thing is right we now have what I call the

beginning of a narrative design pattern and part of the reason why I don't call it a template I don't call their plan is because some of this stuff has very specific detail and some of this really just has in tension and some of it is perfectly black and that's because this pattern is evolving this this should be a living document that kind of evolves as the team you know develop the game it should evolve as iterations kind of happen and hopefully what can happen is because you have this diagram that starts to put these kind of dramatic relationships together between the different sequences between the different elements you'll understand the implication of any changes as development goes forward obviously I haven't taken you through the entire method this time around but so if you are interested in the method more please take a look at the book and it's less of a plug to buy the book it's only not for a lot of money available on Amazon at the moment but it will explain to you and give you more examples about

how to use this method but you know what you can take away from this right now even if you don't look at the book is you know ask yourself these questions when you're starting to put an idea together think about these different elements and start to think about how they relate together you know as you're kind of deciding what variables you want in the game and then start putting your ideas into a matrix ignore the dramatic forces ignore the forest parse myth that if you like but just start understanding that we should be working in these matrices you should be breaking the game down into elements that you know the design pillars do for a game and then trying to understand how these different elements relate to each other at any given moment in the game and what the relationships you know how that those elements will evolve over time through the play experience yeah so I hope that you know this has helped give a bit of an insight into the method and even if you're not interested in pursuing the method just a way of understanding how

you might want to kind of organize your thoughts going forward and trying to get from you know those different stages from intention into detail or from working on your own clarifying your own ideas until working with your team and it why thank you very much for for tuning in and watching this video I really appreciate your time and and that you have a thirst for knowledge about narrative design it is an evolving art science ongoing experiment so any feedback would be very very grateful and available on Twitter so please reach out if you have any questions or comments about this and I hope I do get to talk to you all in person really soon thank you so I'm just gonna take the opportunity to summarize some key points the high concept formula was the kind of first big one that I started using there's the variables there for you as a

well as a bit of an explanation and some examples take a look at those in your own time also these are dramatic forces over time this is the list you've got the reversals you've got escalations you've got transformations obviously storytelling is very subjective so you know this is about actually establishing what's expected and then these dramatic forces should be above what is expected this is the changes that you should see over time in your narrative and then we've got these dramatic forces between elements the synergy opposition and absence didn't use all of these in the example today absences in particulars tricky and it comes from Japanese traditional storytelling more than anywhere else it seems from my research but also there's yeah just the list there for you to refer to again later so thank you that's all from me today I really appreciate you spending the time even virtually to come to my talk I am available on Twitter please reach out I always love

to get feedback from people and of course if you want to see the forest parts method in full if you want to see more diagrams and examples than the book is available I really appreciate your time and your support and the opportunity that I'm GGC is giving me an sending to you today people making credit stories