RE: https://dh780fall24.commons.gc.cuny.edu/final-project/
PROJECT PROPOSAL: A scratch-built procedural text-based hex crawl game template (that may include kinetic poetry or images), with the ability for other designers to “re-skin” the encounter prompts to fit other stories and genres (for example, fantasy, espionage, or science-fiction adventures). Imagine a cross between “Mad Libs” (fill-in-the-blank details) and “Zork” (text-based adventure crawl).
* DESIGN: Web-based interface using PHP-based scaffolding, returning array-generated modular text prompts with three input/response options per hex/encounter.
* ARGUMENTATION: The flow of the game will be based on a hex crawl, with each hex returning a text prompt with three player response options.
* AUDIENCE: The modular scaffolding (details driven by arrays) will allow other instances to adjust pitch toward different audiences (age range, knowledge level, interests, and values).
* REFLECTIVENESS: The prompt writing guide will allow future instances to explain not just what to say or what the object is but why certain choices could be made in relation to the audience and the adventure’s purpose (persuasion, education, simulation). The player may select a specific goal (affecting change in one inventory item) as a “victory condition” of play.
PLAYER INPUTS: Text prompts will give three options (from possible seven options). Players will earn and lose modifiers to each option based on initial decisions (character creation) and gameplay (consequences of decisions and random task resolutions).
* Fight: Attack with weapons or magic to harm a target.
* Hide: Avoid conflict but remain in the encounter area; bonus to then: Fight or Move but risk discovery/harm.
* Move: Leave the encounter in a new hex encounter (N, NE, SE, S, SW, NW).
* Rest: Do nothing and see what happens or recover from harm.
* Study: Closely examine an object, creature, or area for detailed information.
* Sway: Communicate with a target to persuade its attitude.
* Special: A unique ability fitting the genre (use magic, call in airstrike, reroute auxiliary power).
An alternate input option will be the text prompt: What is the answer to X? (pattern matching to text string – a password, correct name of the guilty suspect, whatever.)
TRACKED INVENTORY VALUABLES
* Health: Harm from encounters creates penalty modifiers on actions.
* Influences: A rating of favor/disfavor among NPC factions (noble houses, rival spy agencies, planetary governments).
* Treasure: Abstract game-world valuable resource (gold, SIGINT and assets, dilithium).
* Information: Clues to answer an endgame/encounter riddle.
* Time: Limited number of moves/days before ending game back at home hex.
HEX ENCOUNTER TYPES/FORMATS
* Chase (flee from a threat or catch a fleeing NPC)
* Combat (fight NPC/monster => influence or treasure)
* Discovery (plot clues, source of new resource => information)
* Race (ticking clock, decisions to limited resources first)
* Riddle (code, puzzle, missing formula => information)
* Role-play/Social (dialog/drame, response => relationships/bonds => influence)
* Scandal (secret to protect or expose, ethical/moral dilemma => influence)
* Random (unexpected challenge, villain attack, NPC in need, priority of ideals)
Very interesting to propose a template rather than a game. In his essay on “textual instruments,” Wardrip-Fruin talks about the way “playable media” are more like, say, guitars than songs: they’re tools or toys to be engaged with in an iterative way. Here, you proposed to build an instrument, or perhaps even a toolkit for instrument making (up a metalevel from the “instrument” construction). I like it. And of course your decades-long run of experience thinking about game mechanics and dynamics are on good display here. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
To clarify, to demonstrate functionality, I will need to include a game, which is now trending to a science-fiction/horror starship simulation. (That’s a popular genre right now due to such TTRPGs as “Mothership,” “Screams Amongst the Stars,” and of course, the “Alien” TTRPG based off the movie franchise.) My ultimate goal, once built, is to share code with annotations, allowing others to drop in different scenarios – much like the “T.I.M.E. Stories” board game allowed for “mission modules” to vary between film noir, heroic fantasy, pirate adventure, etc.