Game Designer
Narrative Design
On this page, I’ve compiled some of the best examples of my use of narrative design.
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My games Functional and Life is Ruff are examples of my solo narrative design work. You can read more about my process and the narratives on their pages.
World Building and RPG Design (The World of Spirie)
For many of my classes, I worked on building a world called “Spirie.” The world of Spirie is filled with many people, but not all of these people are created equal. For the past two thousand years, only 1% of Spirie’s population has been able to use the full extent of their brains. This divides the world into two types of people, the freethinkers and the unfree.
I was inspired to make this world because I wanted to explore making a world where typical game NPC behaviour was normal for the population. In this RPG, the players play as freethinkers with full use of their free will, while many of the NPCs are unfree. They do not need to eat or drink; they walk in patterns, and they say lines of dialogue over and over again when asked. They often ask freethinkers to do work for them even though they should be capable of doing it themselves.
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When thinking of the science behind how this NPC world would work, I looked to a lot of examples in nature of how different animals don’t need to do functions such as eating, sleeping, etc. The unfree are able to go without sleep by only using one half of their brain at a time. Once one side gets tired, they use the other, so they do not need to rest. This is similar to how dolphins are able to stay awake for more than 15 days. This use of their brain also plays into why they cannot keep up with normal conversations, and at times pace around, they aren’t working to their full abilities. The unfree also don’t need to sleep because they take in nutrients from the air. This is similar to filter feeding from fish. Because air is so important to their survival, this resulted in a lot of their society being centred around air, from their careers to their religion.
You can read more about the world of Spirie and it’s races and locations in this PDF:
Spirie Characters
I created three freethinking characters from the world of Spirie to develop and work on my dialogue skills. These characters are:
Brock Maerheard
Age: 21
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Gender: Male
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After becoming an adult, Brock took the World Workforce Placement Test and was given the role of Arbour Specialist (a tree gardener). Brock is part of the 1% of citizens who can use the full capacity of their brains, and thus, he can see the corruption in the world around him. He can see that these placement tests are rigged to keep the poor poorer and the rich richer, and thus, when he becomes fed up with his job, decides to make changes to the world government, but he’ll need to fight his way to the top of the chain to do it.
Mimilique Gochur
(Image: Matthew from Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade)
Age: 19
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Gender: Female
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Mimilique is a long-time friend of Brock. When Brock decided to take on the government, Mimilique was ready to join him without a moment’s notice. Mimilique is very light, so when she gets lost in thought, she starts floating in the air. Brock’s had to help his friend “Mimi” down many times.
(Image: Female Lalafell from Final Fantasy XIV)
Ajir Tumet
Age: 45
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Gender: Male
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Ajir is an air farmer who’s tried his best to support his family. Growing up with two non-freethinking parents, Ajir has become accustomed to going with the flow and not questioning his surroundings. Even though he sees the atrocities around him, he didn’t want to cause trouble for him and his family, so he turned a blind eye to them. That all changed when the government took over his air farm. When Brock and Mimilique passed through his town, he decided to join them to take down the government.
(Image: Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist)
Twine and USR Module
With this group of heroes, I created an adventure with them as a Twine game and as a module using an RPG called USR.
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The Twine game takes place from the perspective of Brock Maerheard. The player makes choices for the group as they track down a lead on someone from the world government.
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You can play the twine game here:
The module version of this adventure has the same overall story, but it is adapted for more open-ended play that RPGs allow for.
You can read through the module here:
Dialogue
Out of the three characters I’ve created for Spirie, I’ve developed Ajir Tumet the most. Ajir has the most developed backstory of the characters. Ajir is a freethinker, but he was raised by unfree parents. Not only that, but he grew up in a mostly unfree town, so he had a pretty lonely upbringing. He eventually met a freethinker named Alyce, who would later become his wife, and from then on, his life was filled with happiness. They had a son named Boyen who was born an unfree, but even so, Ajir did not despair. He had Alyce to help raise him and help him through the lonely moments of having an unfree child. His happy family life came to a halt, however, when the world government shut down his air farm and made his wife and child ‘disappear.’ From then on, carefree Ajir became vengeful and desperate and thus decided to join Brock and Mimilique in hopes of reuniting his family.
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I have various works from the perspective of Ajir that give an example of dialogue work that I’ve done.
Monologue
When Ajir first met Brock and Mimilique, they asked him to join them, but he turned them down to stay with his family.
Shortly afterwards, the government raided his farm, and so Ajir set out to find Brock and Mimilique again to join them and deliver this monologue:
First Meeting
When Ajir first met Alyce, his lack of experience talking to freethinkers made him a little nervous, but he was able to establish a relationship that would eventually grow into love.
Read their first meeting here:
Three Person Dialogue
When Ajir and Alyce first realised Boyen wasn’t freethinking, it was hard for Ajir to grasp, but he started to come to terms with it after having a conversation with Alyce and Boyen.
You can read that conversation here: