This style of prototyping is fun. The rapid firing of ideas can indeed create a world players can enjoy. But it doesn't stop there. Because to fully give them an experience they'll remember or grow fond of is to expand upon those ideas and flesh them out into something people will understand and accept. Narratives in games are easy if you just want to make something that gets you paid. But to those who wish to build a world people can immerse themselves into for years means you won't be following every detail given here. When you land an idea and it's one you enjoy, take the time to build it. Put in that love and care it needs to become something truly wonderful. Writing is an art. Creation is a gift. You as a dreamer have these things. It's true, not every idea will get the reaction you want from people. But to maximize the effect it has means you have to decide what it is and how it is presented. Have confidence in what you write and use your common sense. Trust in your own opinions of what you made before anyone else. Only make changes when majority of the people you tell it about find disagreement in underlined ideas. Most importantly. Do not scrap it. Archive what you make because a failure is only a failure when you toss it away. Sometimes a step back and a new prospective can save something old and make it into a flame so warm. People will flock to it in the cold. Stay creative both young and old creators. Stay passionate. For we are the ones who give people the worlds they can escape too from everyday life.

This was really interesting, I wish it hadn't gotten so rushed near the end.

Cool. I knew there was gameplay prototyping but never thought to prototype my narrative. Looking forward to trying this out. Thanks.

This is great. I hadn't considered prototyping the entire game experience this way. Great. Have the sandbox to prototype the core mechanics, and a story prototype like this where all those mechanics are just abstracted and condensed to make sure all the pieces fit together into a coherent experience.

I really wanted to see what these narrative prototypes actually are. Like is it a D&D module or a choose your own adventure?

This was such an informative and entertaining presentation, thanks a LOT!

Thanks for the thoughts! I start with paper too. If it isn't fun to play on paper, you can adjust quickly there.

This is gold.

Helpful talk. I'm working on a prototype for a narrative-based game and this helped me rule out what's out of scope for the prototype. I realized that I'm spending too much time trying to work too many things into the first pass. I wish there was a concrete example of this style of prototype provided with the talk though.

This is EXACTLY what I was looking for!!!

Incredibly useful thank you!

This was super helpful in general regarding concepting. Wish he’d had more time to go into greater detail.

Use someone that loves you, and leverage their patience 😂

This was a great talk and a very interesting method to plan out games. I fear it's not a one-size-fits-all however if you're looking to make something in the vein of a 50+ hour JRPG type of game. Maybe you could, but the creativity needed to make the board game compact enough to make that practical; would be better used in the game development itself. Would love to see some case stories on this nonetheless.

10:45 I'm feeling both.

Would this still apply to me and my team? We've already had a playable slice, with the mechanics, the art. The mechanic of the game however does not reflect the theme we chose, and we are told to replace it with something that is more inline with the mechanic chosen, so it will show on the gameplay. As far as deadline though 2 weeks, as of this writing 2 weeks before we have a theme and narrative that ties into how the art and gameplay looks.

So, turning board games into videogames.

There are so many games, even narrative-driven ones, I can think of where the most rigorous and comprehensive paper prototype would give almost no idea of what playing the final game would be like that seriously call into question the usefulness of this approach.

Video starts at 10:30 ... The first part is just a bunch of justification/hedging and some story time...

This it is an interesting talk, but it should've started at 10:30. Skip to this time to get straight to the useful stuff.

skip to 14:00

talks with highly specific titles like these are usually disappointing to me, because even after watching the entire talk i still don’t fully understand what all of this has to do with narrative design. these are all great pointers for general prototyping, but when a title is this specific i expect most of the talk to be practical advice about that topic, rather than abstract and broad.

hero journey bull shit.

no~ no~ no~ I want to be someone else I suck so hard the developer guides the direction, not the player meaningful choice is an illusion.