The boy knew silence more than song.

He bore a photo left to fade,

A smile lost yet kept so long.

Moonlight through the branches fell,

A hunger deeper than his shame.

He stepped beyond that hallowed well,

And whispered out another’s name.

We came through the brush, we came through fire,

‘neath canopy, we built his pyre.

The boy, the beast, the god unleashed.

Mischief, terror and desire.

Yes, I was there. I touched his face.

My trembling hand, his startled breath.

His eyes ferocious, love and grace,

A pilgrim lost ‘tween life and death.

His skin was warm, yet soft with fright.

A fragile depth pressed into mine.

His body burned with sudden might,

Entwined in heat along my spine.

We came through the brush, we came through fire,

‘neath canopy, we built his pyre.

The boy, the beast, the god unleashed,

Mischief, terror and desire.

He longed for more than fear could give,

But ran towards his forest home.

He turned away, afraid to live,

Retreating past the marker stones.

We came through the brush, we came through fire,

‘neath canopy, we built his pyre.

The boy, the beast, the god unleashed.

Mischief, terror, and desire.

The leaves became a burning sea,

The antlers crowned his weary head.

He vanished where the shadows crossed,

Past violet and amber threads.

Was he the boy, or beast, or god?

A vision borne of autumn’s flame?

I only know he touched my heart,

And now I’ll never be the same.

We came through brush, we came through fire,

‘neath canopy, we built his pyre.

The boy, the beast, the god unleashed.

Mischief, terror, and desire…

Transmedia storytelling, simply put is when a large fictional world is taken and explored through multiple media platforms. By designing in this way, the creator/s can investigate their world, pulling stories from it in an organic way that works uniquely with their chosen medium/s. With this approach, we aren’t talking adaptations. Rather, each new piece tells its own adventure whilst also contributing to a larger plot. Individual pieces make sense as standalones, but audiences are rewarded for engaging with the storyworld as a whole.

We see examples of transmedia storytelling in things like The Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Walking Dead, The Unknown 9, Final Fantasy, Game of Thrones, Ultraman, Harry Potter, and more. Not all have been successful in their attempts (transmedia is exceedingly difficult to do!), but at the very least, they show us the hunger audiences have for fully immersive and emotionally resonant fictional worlds.

With all this being said, I’m not here to talk to you today about the specifics of transmedia storytelling (we’ll save that for another time!) Instead, I want to discuss the use of transmedia storytelling as a worldbuilding technique and a way to playtest your work.

Coming from the video games industry, I’ve seen and contributed to playtesting a lot. When designing a video game, one of the consistent jobs needing to be done is surprise, surprise - playing the most recent version of the game and trying to break it. We do this to highlight issues in the project so they can be resolved before the game releases to audiences. The playtesting team dilligently goes through it all, pressing buttons, trying to find bugs, looking for things that will annoy, or worse - disrupt the player’s experience. Once discovered, playtesters communicate with other teams in a studio to create fixes, thus polishing the project continuously as they march towards release.

We do this for games constantly. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, rarely is such devotion to smoothing out rough edges directed at the narrative itself. Sure, we do edits and revisions, multiple drafts, and required sign-offs from stakeholders, but this isn’t really playtesting. These moments of honing are important, but they exist within one specific lens - the final experience. An important lens, for sure! But not the end-all-and-be-all that many are led to believe it is. Operating through the lens of the final experience is crucial to creating something fun and engaging, but there’s so much more we can do in addition to that to build impressively immersive worlds.

That’s what I want to discuss today. The use of transmedia storytelling as a form of playtesting. By taking the time to explore our worlds through different kinds of mediums, we are able to see with greater clarity what works, what doesn’t, and what is missing.

Transmedia playtesting differs from traditional narrative development as it’s end goal is not the same. With a traditional approach (drafting, redrafting, editing, receiving feedback, etc.), the aim is to end up with something tight, streamlined, audience-tested and ready to go to market. Transmedia playtesting aims not for a final product, but for a cohesive world that is as deep as it is wide. In this sense, we can consider transmedia playtesting as the step one takes either before or alongside a traditional editing approach. If traditional editing is about polishing, then transmedia playtesting is more like running a simulation (or several) to see how well your world functions as an immersive environment.

Transmedia playtesting has a knack for revealing blindspots in our worldbuilding and narrative design. Since transmedia stories need to function as standalone pieces and contribute to a larger whole, transmedia playtesting forces the very structure of your fictional world to work on its own - it’ll either break down, or sail smooth. It’s also a great way to find out (if you don’t already know), which mediums are best suited for what you’re trying to do. And, if your aim is building a transmedia franchise, well… the benefits of this process should be self-evident.

So, what does Transmedia Playtesting look like exactly? And how do we do it? Let’s break it down.

As a Narrative Designer, for me, the typical process of developing any sort of project tends to go like this:

1. We begin with an idea. A page or two outlining the basic narrative conceit of the project. When working for a studio, or on a contract, this idea is more often than not handed to me by the developers or creative director. It is a template for what will come.

2. Going through the one-pager idea, we highlight key characters, phrases, concepts, locations, etc. These are areas in which worldbuilding can be developed around. The highlights act as the initial content plan for a story bible (also known as a world guide.)

3. We build out the story bible. Starting with the subjects we highlighted in step 2, we write little articles or essays about them. Once those are done, we use the story bible instead of the one-pager, going through it again and highlighting any new key concepts that have come from our initial work. They become the next lot of essays in the document. We repeat this process until we have something substantial enough to work with. The story bible is usually intended for internal eyes only. It acts as a narrative design blueprint for the rest of the development team (or teams) to work from when constructing their contributions to the project.

4. At this point, we typically then move into audience-facing content design. A plot synopsis that shows the path characters (or the player in the case of a video game) take through the story world from start to finish. Dialogue scripts and any other narrative components intended for the audience to engage with are also done here.

5. The final step, which often takes place alongside step 4 is the traditional editing process. Drafting, redrafting, receiving a yes, no, or feedback from stakeholders or others. The work is honed, spit-shined and then sent off to the next stage, with narrative designers usually acting as consultants going forward.

Sometimes these steps happen one after the other, but more often than not (in a professional environment) they tend to happen concurrently. This is because in a professional environment, we’re constantly under-the-gun to hit deadlines. I’m sure you can argue the business benefits of this, but from a storytelling perspective, it can be rough. Sure, moving speedily can help with making sure the work doesn’t get bogged down, but it also means that in many cases, you’re submitting work you’re maybe not entirely happy with, or work that contains issues with immersion and emotional resonance.

However, if we slow the process down just a little bit and add the extra step of transmedia playtesting in between 4 and 5, we stand a much better chance in avoiding those issues.

Take your story bible as a blueprint for the world and start applying it to different writing mediums. Write some short stories, develop a paper game, pen screenplays, audio dramas and comic book scripts, draw and paint, make music… follow your bliss. Explore your world in this way to find out how it ticks. All this works because with each writing medium, there is a new kind of narrative language to learn and play with, and each narrative language exposes your world in different ways. Laid bare, you can now see what’s important, what’s superfluous, and what’s missing.

For example:

Short stories (or any form of prose really) are powerful in conveying character depth. With prose, we get to move inside the minds of our heroes and villains. We learn their motivations, their fears, their irrationalities, and most importantly, how they think. Regardless of whether you write in first person present tense (my favourite), or third-person, eye-of-god, past tense, or something else, you’ll undoubtedly uncover hidden things you didn’t know before about your characters. You’ve likely written out their backstory as a character profile within your story bible, but by writing about them in prose, you get to experience those backstories (or the lingering emotions and traumas that came from them) in a more personal and intimate way. Writing prose helps identify character complexities - those little hooks that can be used to build empathy in the minds of your audience.

Scripts on the other hand - be they for the screen, a podcast/audio drama, comics or something else, force you to consider more external elements related to character and setting. Seperated from what characters think or feel internally, scripts provide two key limitations: in a script, you can only write what they says, or see.

For the say: playtesting in this way lets you explore character voice. Not just what your characters say, but how they say it. Through their words, we can show glimpses of their internal lives. Through their words, we can figure out whether all of our characters share the same voice (yours!), or whether they stand alone as individuals with their own unique vocabularies and outlooks on life.

For the see: We learn more about the world itself. Is it exciting? Is it visually arresting? Does it make sense structurally? In the case of more fantastical narratives, this limitation also helps us analyze whether or not the world is believable, or whether it’s too conceptual for an audience to connect with emotionally.

Games focus on the structural and experiental nature of your work. As a medium that operates through systems, it reveals whether the systems of your world are too complicated, whether they make sense, and how well the worldbuilding works to immerse people. If your end goal is to build some sort of game around your IP, then playtesting here has obvious advantages. It can reveal how well your world and characters interact with each other and with your players.

Regardless of which mediums you choose to playtest through, they all contribute to providing a larger, more detailed picture of what you currently have. By approaching your design in this way, you can highlight inconsistencies, plot holes, logical gaps, and underdeveloped themes. It can also reveal where a tonal throughline is needed, and which characters are core to your world. And once you have a list of things to work on, you can go back to your story bible and redraft.

This method is how I’ve approached my most ambitous personal project to date. FarBodies is a transmedia IP that I’ve been developing with Tentacular Studios for five years now. If you want to know what it’s about, you can check out our newsletter here.

What began as (quite frankly, a rip-off of Assassins Creed and Vampire: The Masquerade) has now transformed into its own unique beast as a result of transmedia playtesting. After exploring my story bible in multiple mediums, I’ve found myself going back and removing huge amounts of unneeded content, whilst adding huge amounts of different content that is far more relevant to our end goal. Through transmedia playtesting, we’ve learned more specific details about our audience as well. Instead of marking a target audience and building to sell to them, we built our IP first, and then through this process, allowed the fictional world to reveal our audience to us. It’s more organic.

Through this approach, we’re not just selling a product designed by commity. We are instead, presenting a world to an audience and inviting them to find themselves within it.

Transmedia playtesting pushes us in new directions. Ones more hollistic than the cynical late-stage capitalism we’re used to. When we know our world like we know the real one, even if not all the content makes it into the final release, our audiences gain a richer experience and a strong, personal, emotional connection to the IP.

They may not know all the details about how things work, but they can feel it. And that feeling is the ilusive white whale we’re all chasing. It’s a hard thing to explain. This thing that is almost ephemeral, almost invisible to our audiences. But it draws them in. It’s the sweet spot. The “grey space in the middle” - as David Bowie once said. A playground that can’t quite be defined, but affords audiences a sense of personal connection and co-ownership to our worlds all the same. It’s the “it”, the “spark”, that keeps them coming back, time and time again.

Nick.

First, the within:

DETHRONING THE OUTSIDE SAVIOUR TROPE IN QUEST DESIGN

Building a world and a player protagonist intentionally with player-to-game intimacy in mind allows us to completely reformulate how we structure quests and side quests in games, bringing them more in-line with the communal nature of folklore. A trope particular to the fantasy RPG, but one that appears in many narrative and gameplay genres is that of the outside saviour. A variation of the white saviour trope, the outside saviour is typified by the player character arriving in a land, community, or faction foreign to their own, and meeting with some kind of leader of that society. This figure will relay to the player a massive problem their community is facing (Our trade route is overwhelmed by bandits! Our water supply has been poisoned! There’s an assassin in our midst!). They then task the player with completing an objective or several objectives to resolve this problem for them. In the end, the player is celebrated and rewarded as a hero, before going on their way.

This quest model, which derives from the Hero’s Journey structure, explored in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces and popularized by Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey, is one which sees neither the player protagonist, nor the community they’ve helped, win. Yes, the problem has been resolved, but the protagonist continues on, forever an outsider, and the community – well, what are they going to do the next time bandits appear at their gates, or the evil Empire forces horrible and inhuman laws upon them?

The answer is of course, nothing. They’ll wait and hope that the next wandering hero to pass their way is feeling generous.

This approach is rooted in colonialist sense individualism and is a narcissistic force which we can negate entirely in the Player/Pentacle model. We've already laid the groundwork for the player and the protagonist to see the world and those in it as a collective struggling under a corrupt system, so, instead of following that same old structure of questing, why not explore one where the player acts as a catalyst instead of Chosen One? Through this approach, players provoke communities of NPCs into spontaneous self-organization using local stories to motivate, strengthen and push them as a collective into enacting lasting systemic change.

THE COLLECTIVE CHANGE GAMEPLAY LOOP

Regenerative Listening

The gameplay loop begins with the revelation of a story with great resonance to the NPC community being affected by some kind of systemic corruption. This story can be brought to the attention of the community via the player themselves or even before the player has arrived in their midst. Whichever the case, this story should be expressed via authentic language and heartfelt emotion so as to have/create the greatest impact amongst those who hear it.

Example: The player encounters a community who highly value knowledge, history and tradition. However, the community has fallen into slavery beneath a cruel mercenary leader and his boorish army. This mercenary has forced the community into subjugation, demanding food, weapons, medicine and gold from them. For many years now, the community has lived in fear of this vast and oppressive system. However, the player brings word that the mercenary and his army have just burned to the ground one of the great libraries belonging to the community, located in the nearby mountains. Those whom the player initially informs are furious – how dare these oafs destroy such a treasure trove of information! This outrages them, and they decide enough is enough, it is time to act. But how?

Superpositioning

The player then helps project this story across the community via various different platforms of influence within the story world. These platforms of influence can be characters within the community, social medias or public events.

Example: As the player moves throughout the township, they meet various NPCs from all walks of life who have been negatively impacted by the mercenary group. These NPCs are non-traditional leaders – they are neither heroes nor rulers, rather, they are normal people – peasants, farmers, artists, beggars, prostitutes, merchants, etc. Through collaborating with these figureheads via small tasks or side quests (i.e. reigniting the passionate anger in an ex-soldier turned beggar, who had his family killed by the mercenaries years back, or revealing to a merchant how his business activities fund the mercenary armies), the player activates allies, who then inspire and gather factions around themselves to do battle against their oppressors.

Social Self-Organization

Through this superpositioning of story, wildly varying types of non-traditional leaders should arise as figureheads of movement. These figureheads now open up a variety of interactions for the player, where they work in collaboration for the sake of the community, pushing it as a whole past a tipping point into collective action.

Change-Making

The gameplay loop ends with this step, in which the community collectively takes action against whatever threat is impending on their wellbeing, activating lasting systemic change.

Example: With multiple factions now ready to create change, the player can now take the fight to the mercenary leader and his army. Here, the player works as a cog in each figurehead’s strategy rather than as the leader. The merchants cut of supplies to the mercenaries, causing them to grow weak with hunger. When threatened for their actions, they are protected by a small guerrilla army fronted by the ex-soldier turned beggar. As the mercenaries are increasingly struck by famine, their leader sends for local prostitutes to raise their spirits. Entering the camp, the emboldened prostitutes are able to get close to both the mercenary leader and his men, and empowered by the previous steps, they assassinate the mercenary leader and several of his top generals, causing the army to break apart and flee the village in disgrace.

Essentially what we are creating here with this kind of gameplay loop is a non-linear decentralized and emergent movement, directed not by the player, but by the community that the player is in interaction with. By creating multiple potential figureheads within a community – more than what is required to reach the change-making step –we then have a diversity of combinations that will rewrite aspects of how that final step plays out. To use the previous example, perhaps the player doesn’t rally the support of the local prostitutes, and so, instead of a series of assassinations putting an end to the mercenaries, perhaps famine kills them instead, or starvation causes them to raid the village, resulting in the beleaguered community fighting back with unmatched fury. The idea is that these emergent systems when triggered, can interact with each other, and create unique conclusions to quests, encouraging multiple playthroughs.

Emergent systems interacting with one another like this are nothing new. In Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild when it rains, rocks grow slick and hard to climb, the player character’s footsteps become quieter and stealthier. Arrows, set alight by fire will be snuffed out, and human characters not under cover, will shield their heads and run towards the nearest building. Areas with sunken terrain might flood, and certain creatures that prefer wet weather will be easier to find. This kind of weather model is a trademark of a story world where different mechanical systems within the game interact creating unpredictable and fascinating results. What the Collective Change Gameplay Loop advocates for is using these kinds of interactions to express narrative progress through spontaneous leaderless movements inspired by folkloric storytelling.

Now, the without…

NARRATIVE SUB-ROUTINES

Fans love mysteries, and one of the strongest ways to foster a rabid fandom is through the creation of one, or several! One such way to do this, is through the use of Narrative Sub-Routines (NSRs). These are short stories hidden within larger narratives. They are mostly imperceptible - subtle hints that require some work on the audience's behalf to find them and figure them out. They can be plot threads that are not immediately obvious, but run through a portion of the greater story, or they can be a set of signs and symbols that gradually accumulate to take on a greater meaning. NSRs can also be subtle threads that lead the Player OUT of the game-world experience and INTO a different piece of story content that may exist on a different media platform.

Simply put, NSRs display your narrative in an entirely new light, increasing replayability and online discourse around the game's world in public forums such as Reddit. NSRs can be about anything, however they are defined by their placement as almost imperceptible clues that require work on the part of the Player to uncover. They remain almost permanently sub-textual. The process of discovering and sharing them is like sharing a secret. Digestion and understanding of an NSR should recontextualize the main story in a new light. To illustrate this further, let's look at a few different examples of NSRs across four storytelling platforms – as well as an example of my own.

THE HISTORICAL EXAMPLE

In the low rain forests of Guatemala, Belize and Southern Mexico, there once existed a now fairly well-known civilization. The Mayan Empire is thought to have begun circa 2600 B.C.E.1 and peaked as a culture around 800 A.D. The Mayans didn't really become a prominently studied society until the 1940s when Historical anthropologists began to research the imposing ruins of their empire. Initially, it was believed that, unlike their contemporaries (The Aztecs and the Incans), Classical Mayans were a predominantly (and unusually) peaceful society, choosing instead of warfare, to dedicate themselves to non-violent pursuits such as astronomy and architecture. It wasn't until archaeologists began to dig deep into translating the hieroglyphics within the ancient city of Tikal, that their perspective began to radically change.

Unlike their neighbours, the Mayans never unified as a single Empire, rather, their communities were formed out of several city-states connected by language, trade and other cultural similarities. However, these city-states were very regularly locked in violent conflict with each other over resources as well as political power. Furthermore, they were discovered to conduct vicious human sacrifices as part of their religious rituals. Nowadays, the Mayans are considered by Historians to have been an extremely violent society - something they would never had concluded, if they'd not discovered evidence that recontextualized everything they thought they knew about this fascinating culture.

THE HIDDEN MICKEYS OF DISNEY LAND

Our second example takes us away from the historic, and to the magical world of Walt Disney's theme parks with the mysterious "Hidden Mickey" symbols. Essentially, a Hidden Mickey is the classic Mickey Mouse symbol we all know - the head with two circular ears. This representation of the famous cartoon character can be found hidden in the designs of rides, attractions, stores, products and even movies and TV series. The symbols can be simple painted representations, or more complex - they might be made up out of rocks, plates or other such objects. They come in all sorts of sizes and forms, but it is what they represent that is of interest to us. These Mickeys are more than just design choices, you see. The symbols are located throughout the parks in certain locations referencing the lore and mythos of Walt Disney himself. These references in many cases will lead you from one part of the park to another, allowing the intuitive park-goer to follow a trail through the different rides as they learn more about the park's creator ad his favourite rides.

THE MARVEL HATCH

Continuing on the Disneyland theme, another NSR was demonstrated outside the Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: Breakout attraction at Disneyland Resort in 2017. Near the attraction, fans noticed a mysterious Hatch in the ground. The hatch was similar to what one might expect of a bomb shelter entrance, however it was emblazoned with the classic Marvel Avengers logo. The hatch appeared seemingly out of nowhere and quickly gained the attention of fans. Vice President and Executive Editor Rya Penagos wrote online, shortly after the discovery of the hatch:

On top of this mystery, fans at the park also began to notice workers in Hazmat suits operating near the Avengers Hatch, further spurring discussion and excitement.

TRUE DETECTIVE AND THE KING IN YELLOW

Personally one of my favourite shows, and really one of the first real "prestige" TV series of the early '10s, True Detective is an anthology series on HBO that explores dark and gritty mysteries from the perspective of (usually) deeply troubled law-enforcement officers. The first season saw Mathew McConaughey as the existentially pessimistic Detective Rust Cohle and Woody Harrelson as his hot-headed partner, Marty Hart, as they hunted for an elusive serial killer in the Louisianna backwoods.

As they push further into their investigation (which takes place over the course of seventeen years), the two detectives begin to encounter strange references to a figure known as The Yellow King. The King In Yellow is a short story collection by the author Robert W. Chambers, a prolific writer of weird fiction. The King In Yellow, written in 1895, is comprised of ten different stories, which run the gambit from supernatural horror to romance. The first four stories in his collection are tenuously connected by several key elements: A mysterious play in book form called The King In Yellow, which is said to drive insane anyone who reads it in its entirety, A malevolent supernatural entity also known as The King In Yellow, and lastly, a strange symbol known as the Yellow Sign. The content of the mysterious play is hinted at throughout these stories as involving another world (either in a different dimension or on a different planet in outer space), as well as the great city of Carcossa. Chambers book went on to be read by the now famed HP Lovecraft, who included the King In Yellow in his growing pantheon for the Cthulhu Mythos, giving the entity the name true name of Hastur.

True Detective utilizes this mythology to create a subtextual air of cosmic horror, which, when combined with the depressive philosophy touted by Cohle throughout the series (itself drawn from Thomas Ligotti's brilliantly pessimistic The Conspiracy Against The Human Race), places the show strangely within the genres of weird fiction and cosmic horror. Interestingly, despite receiving several clues relating to the Yellow King, Black Stars, and the city of Carcossa, the two Detectives never once uncover Robert Chambers book, The King In Yellow, nor does anyone else. This suggests that the book itself does not exist within the story world of the show, and that the Yellow King is either a real person or entity.

To be clear, the series is not overtly supernatural. It exists in a strange place where tonally, it feels very much like a supernatural horror, but in terms of what literally happens in the plot, we never see anything that breaks the rules of reality. That is, with one potential exception: Throughout the story, we learn that prior to becoming a Louisiana homicide detective, Cohle worked as an undercover cop, helping to bring down dangerous gangs and drug dealers. As a result of taking drugs to keep up his disguise, Cohle now suffers from hallucinations. These hallucinations typically take the form of bleeding lights but can at times be more mystical in nature - such as seeing a symbol formed in the migratory patterns of a flock of birds. These visions plague him through the first part of the story, but in the later years of his life, when he has temporarily given up chasing the killer, Cohle is asked about the hallucinations, which he states stopped happening a long time ago. Only… they haven't or at least, that's what he later tells Marty as they pick up their search once more. These elements establish Cohle as a severely unreliable narrator, and in their final showdown with the killer at the end of the series, Cohle encounters a vast, swirling vortex underground in the ruins of a place that the serial killer they’re chasing refers to as Carcossa. For those of us who are in the know, and understand the references to the Yellow King, this moment is jarring. Is Cohle experiencing another hallucination? Or is this something more? Something darker?

The show leaves the answer ambiguous, but those questions can only be asked by the studious audience member who has followed the NSRs throughout.

NARRATIVE SUB-ROUTINES IN FROM SOFTWARE’S BLOODBORNE

Returning to one of my all-time favourite games and another example of cosmic horror, From Software's Bloodborne does a great job at making use of NSR's to cultivate a folkloresque sense of immersion, that fans and Players still to this day, agonize over online.

Particularly within the Old Hunters DLC, we see NSRs at work:

Upon entering the mysterious Fishing Hamlet area of the DLC, players encounter a hideously deformed villager, his face covered, limping through the village, madly uttering the following dialogue to himself:

Fairly nonsensical, and even for those who have a rough idea of the plot up until this point, the villager's rambling makes little sense. However, if the Player has previously discovered and collected a special Rune (Equipable symbols that grant the player buffs or give them spells to use), called the Milkweed Rune, they can uncover a NSR that allows them greater understanding. The Milkweed Rune's item description states:

Equipping this rune around the mad villager then grants the player a secret piece of dialogue as well as a special item that recontextualizes the story:

The item the Player receives at the end of this speech is the Accursed Brew, which has the following item description:

It is at this point that the Player realizes that this dilapidated village, filled with violently insane fish-people was once a prosperous hamlet who were violated and destroyed by the two major factions of the game - the scholars of Byrgenwerth and the Healing Church of Yharnam, in their pursuit of forbidden knowledge that they believed the villagers held. This is further evidenced by the abundance of Blood Vials found throughout the village. Blood vials are the way in which the player restores their health, but they are also inventions of the Healing Church. Their placement in the village suggests that the Church has already been there prior to the Player arriving.

THORNWOOD PARFUM

Over the past year, during various Covid-19 lockdowns, my partner and I decided to start a small business as a way to entertain ourselves and maybe make a little bit of cash on the side. We turned our sights to another passion of ours – high-end perfumes. For years, we’d saved our coins and purchased small bottles of perfumes for our collection. Tom Ford, Creed, Guerlain, Gucci – to name a few. So, together, we founded Thornwood Parfum, a luxury niche fragrance brand that utilizes narrative design and transmedia storytelling to engage customers. While a professional perfumer worked on our initial set of five fragrances, my partner and I set about developing an expansive story world for the brand. One based in history, but with a bit of a high-fantasy/cosmic horror twist.

At the time of this book’s release, our products should be just getting introduced to the world – so let us know from the future if they’re any good or not! Anyway, I digress. As part of the storytelling for our brand, we commissioned a talented French artist, Mathieu Prost to design and print for us a medieval-style woodcut for each fragrance. At the same time, we worked with a brilliant New York-based Conlanger (a creator of fictional languages) named Jacob Kronenberg to construct a fictional dialect for our world. Combining these two things together, we created our own set of Narrative Sub-Routines: Each fragrance comes with a postcard containing the woodcut print. Within that print’s design are sentences written in the fictional language of a lost culture – sentences that can and will be translated by fans as we drip-feed them clues during the initial release stage. For those dedicated enough to translate those lines, they will receive extra, hidden lore about the world and how it came to be how it is in the modern day.

What we see here with the confusion around terms is essentially the result of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. This was an incredibly ancient pagan tradition being shoe-horned into a relatively modern credal religion. For those being converted to Christianity from their old ways, it was a struggle to let go of a belief so integral to their way of life. That belief defined a lot of their understandings about the world, and the way things worked. Through their astral doubles, they could maintain control over the unpredictable and chaotic nature of the world. While the old world would have deemed them shamans, magicians and priests, this new world forced them to find more appropriate, more ‘holy’ ways to convey their inner spiritual life to others. They became Ecstatics and Saints, and the journeys of their doubles became visions or sometimes dreams. And when those visions or dreams did not fit in with the religious dogma of the time, their stories were supressed, squashed out and ignored. But the concept of the Double was, and remains an important part of humanity’s cultural heritage. It acts as an intermediary between us and the realm of the spirit, the realm of the dead. The Double answers an authentic human need.

It’s my belief, that this concept of the Double is powerful and something we can put to good use in the act of narrative game design. Making use of the Double provides greater meaning to a player’s agency and allows them to re-discover a base human belief consciously or subconsciously regarding our connection to both nature and one another.

WHAT IS THE ASTRAL DOUBLE?

Before we go any further, we need to ask the question – what exactly is the Astral Double believed in so fervently by our pagan ancestors? To answer that question, we are going to explore specifically the beliefs of ancient Germany. While much of Europe fell victim to the Christianization of their traditions, Germany and other northern countries were some of the most resistant to missionaries and conversion. These countries act as a kind of litmus test for us. When we look at Germany we are “flushing out from under cover a belief that, in all its forms, is common to all of Europe.”3

The ancient German idea of the soul would be seen as something very strange to us today. In their language, they had at least three terms for the soul. The fylgja, the hamr, and the hugr. Fylgja, which translates as “female follower” was considered to be a spiritual double of the person she occupied. Attached often to a family, she was thought to act as a protector and guide.

It was thought that if your fylgja wished to leave your body, you would be overcome with an irrepressible sleepiness. Upon falling into sleep, the double would exit your body to go about its business. The fylgja’s primary purpose was to protect the person it was assigned to, much like the “christian” concept of a guardian angel. A final interesting word on the fylgja before moving on is that, though being an independent guardian of a person, it would often manifest itself in their dreams as an animal.

In The Saga of Gisli Sursson (c. 1250-1260) the protagonist, Gisli is assailed by two women in his dreams, one good, the other bad. The good woman, representative of his fylgja, (the bad, a representation of his enemy’s) takes him on a gray horse to reveal to him the place where he will one day die. Although the horse is separate in his dreams from his fylgja, its colour and the fact that it leads to the place in which he dies (connecting him to the land of the dead by association), suggests that the animal is a psychopomp, or spirit guide and therefore an extension of the fylgja.

The Hamr was supposed to be a physical double of a person. Whereas the fylgja acted as a spiritual entity, the Hamr was a corporeal being able to be wounded during its travels. Such a wound, upon the hamr’s return to the human, would reveal itself in the person’s true physical body as well.

As you can see in that story, just like the fylgja the hamr does not need to take the form of a human but can (and often does) take on the form of an animal instead. The main difference here, is that the fylgja can only interact (as humanoid or animal) in dreams and, for lack of a better word, the “astral realm,” whereas the hamr would be able to manifest this way physically.

Lastly, we have the hugr, an important key to the puzzle we are trying to solve here. The hugr is an interesting element to consider. While I stated earlier that there are potentially three spirits to a person, this is why I said potentially. The hugr, a kind of psyche of the person it belonged to was thought to be the entity or energy that occupies the physical “sheath” of the hamr. When the hamr leaves the human body to perform tasks, it does so, while possessed by the hugr.

The hugr in fact, bears a striking resemblance to the player – both are psychic extensions of a protagonist, and both use an aspect of that protagonist as a sheath to do their bidding. But more on this soon. For now, let us look at another fascinating tradition around the concept of the spirit/soul and shamanism in general.

THE SOUL OF BONES

In his seminal work, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath, Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg makes note of a peculiar practice found throughout Italy, Ireland, Germany, Lapland (Finland), Siberia, China and even Africa, in which the bones of slaughtered animals are gathered together and used in a ritual designed to resurrect the creatures from the dead. A testimony of one such ritual is provided below:

Another example, found in the Edda by Snorri Sturluson (c. 1179-1241) is as follows:

What we see in these two example stories is firstly, a ritual designed to make certain wild game (which was crucial for feeding the people) never goes scarce and secondly, a belief that somehow, part of the animal’s soul remained within the marrow of its bones, and that the animal could be resurrected from it. This is what we call the soul of bones. The soul of bones was not limited to animals either:

In fact, we can see this tradition as far back as Greek antiquity. In a haunted house story from this time, Pliny the Younger tells of the ghost of an old man that was haunting a house in Athens. Upon digging in the place where the ghost had disappeared, it was discovered his bones, bound in chains.10 Interestingly, we see this same concept played out often in our modern-day haunted house stories. Houses being plagued by such evil spirits are often built atop some kind of burial ground (E.g. Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror) and can only be freed from the haunting through laying the bones of the spirit to rest through a proper burial. We also see in the folklore surrounding vampires and other such ghouls, the need to decapitate them and burn their corpses to ash, as a way to kill them. Arguably, the concept of the soul of bones is why christian religions, believing in the eventual resurrection of the dead, are opposed to cremation, whereas pagan traditions, perhaps fearing the resurrection of the evil dead, frequently practiced cremation. What is interesting to us, in the practice of narrative design, is how the soul of bones might have an effect on death as a narrative mechanic in gaming.

THE SHADOW AND THE DOPPELGÄNGER

Lastly, we would be remis if we did not discuss two of the most well-known versions of the double today. The Shadow and the Doppelgänger. The Shadow, popularized as a literary archetype by Carl Jung and his psychological exploration of it. In Jung’s Psychology and Religion, he writes of the shadow as the supressed, animalistic nature of mankind. He states that:

Jung is perhaps most famous for his concept of the collective unconsciousness and the human archetypes that exist there, the shadow, of which, is but one. He found that these archetypes existed through various cultures in the form of fairy tales, myths and legends – in other words, folklore.

However, it was the concept of the Shadow that was most readily picked up by writers of literature, such as Bram Stoker, Henry James, and Robert Louis Stevenson – among others. In literature, the Shadow took on the definition of being a “darker part…” of the character’s “…humanity that must be faced and dealt with.”12 We still see the use of the Shadow in this way in literature today. The wildly successful USA Network series Mr Robot (which just finished up its final season in 2019), revolved heavily around this inner battle between the protagonist Elliot and his shadow – the aforementioned Mr Robot.

While the Shadow as it exists currently in literary theory is a fairly new concept – Jung having written about it in the 20th Century, we can see traces of the Shadow, as he suggested, in folklore.

In fact, there has seemingly always been this tradition, this idea that the shadow is somehow the visible form of the soul or the hidden aspect of man.

While Jung and modern literature suggests that the shadow is the darker parts of mankind, in the lore, it is not that simple. The shadow is a manifestation of a person’s double, just like the fylgja and hamr are. In particular, the Shadow is thought to straddle the line between the world of the living and the world of the dead and is therefore an omen of ill fate in particular circumstances.

This last belief, that of one’s shadow being represented as a “duple” brings us to the final aspect of the astral double I’d like to discuss – the doppelgänger, which translates to “double goer” in German. The term doppelgänger is a relatively new one, being coined by the German Romantic author Jean Paul in the 1800s. However, the concept itself, comes back, of course to the pagan traditions we’ve been discussing, hidden within the ambiguity of the concept of the astral double we’ve been discussing.

The doppelgänger, called a fetch in Irish folklore or sometimes a changeling, was thought to be a perfect physical look-alike of a person, usually seen as an ill omen, bad luck, or in some cases an evil twin. This enduring tradition, like the Shadow made its way into literature such as Titan (Jean Paul), The Double (Fyodor Dostoevsky), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson) and William Wilson (Edgar Allen Poe). In most of these examples, the doppelgänger is a villainous counterpart to the hero, however a doppelgänger does not always need to be represented in this way.

The doppelgänger is also present in the archetype of the foil found in literature. The foil is thought by some to be named after Shakespeare’s penchant to use the crossing of swords in his plays to create excitement for the audience. Alternatively, it could derive from the practice of using foil as a backdrop to a precious gem so that it shines more brightly. Whichever the case, the foil in the context of our study is a kind of doppelgänger. It describes a physical counterpart character to the protagonist – the foil can be their equal, their match or their opponent. The foil as a character exists to contrast against the protagonist as a means of highlighting the qualities of the character.

Often in fiction, the foil is expressed as the converse, that is, the polar opposite of the character, however I would argue that this is the weakest way to express this archetype. A far more interesting representation is in what is called the inverted foil. Rather than representing the opposite of what a protagonist is, the inverted foil’s personality or nature is such that it reveals and highlights to the protagonist their shadow as a corruption of their own soul. The inverted foil causes the protagonist to look inside herself and forces her to confront what she sees.

An excellent example of this play between the inverted foil and the shadow can be found in the classic film Casablanca (1942). In Casablanca, the protagonist, Rick (portrayed by Humphrey Bogart) is a morally destitute café owner in Morocco during world war 2. Once a brave freedom fighter, Rick has supressed his better self after being deeply wounded by Illsa Lund the woman he once loved. Now, Rick only cares about himself. He’s selfish and hardened, unwilling to stick his neck out for anyone. This is his new status quo. Then one night, who should walk into his café, but Illsa herself, along with her new husband, Victor Laszlo, a Czech resistance leader (and Rick’s inverted foil). Illsa and Victor are looking for Rick’s help in procuring letters of transit out of the neutral zone of Casablanca to America, where Victor can continue his fight against the Nazis. Rick is placed in a conundrum. He has the power to seduce Illsa, who as it turns out, still loves him, but doing so will destroy Victor and have a serious effect on the fight against the Nazis. In this set up, Victor is not the villain, and neither is Rick. Instead, they are inversions of each other. The true villain of Casablanca is not even the Nazi general trying to capture Victor. The true villain is Rick’s shadow – that desire deep within him to seduce Illsa for himself. If Rick indulges his shadow, he’ll get what he wants. Illsa will come back to him, and they’ll live happily ever after. Rick will be okay if he does this, as he thrives in chaos. However, his exposure to her, exposes him to the plight of her husband, and in the end, he knows, that if he takes her, he will lose his soul. He will fall to his shadow, his shadow, which would rather let the Nazi’s rule the earth if it meant he could be with Illsa again. Without Illsa, Victor simply will not make it. She is his muse, his inspiration, his reason to keep fighting. With her gone, he will be crushed. In the end, Rick decides to sacrifice himself by helping both Illsa and Victor escape, thus defeating his shadow. He sacrifices himself – his love, his happiness, his desires because he recognizes that he has to be better than what he has been. He helps the two get on a plane, risking his life and security in the process. This is a far more interesting story than it would be if he were fighting Victor for Illsa’s affections, or even if he were fighting the Nazi’s themselves!

We can see this same sort of set up in Santa Monica Studio’s 2018 Masterpiece God of War – particularly if we consider it in the context of previous iterations in the series. In God of War, we follow Kratos, an aging spartan warrior who, seeking to escape the demons of his past has fled Greece and relocated to Scandinavia, where he marries and has a young son named Atreus. In this soft reboot of the original series, Kratos’ shadow is really, the violent, angry, hateful memory of who he was in his past. A persona which threatens to return after his wife passes away. In this story, Kratos’ inverted foil is his son, Atreus. Whereas Kratos is jaded and bitter, his son is bright-eyed and adoring. Atreus wants nothing more than to be like his Dad. In this story, Kratos’ shadow not only threatens to consume him, but his son as well. To save his Atreus from this fate, Kratos must do what he fears the most – make himself vulnerable to Atreus and let him in, like he once did for the boys’ mother. Like Rick from Casablanca, Kratos will be mostly fine if he remains stoic and staunch – he can take on whatever comes at him, but also like Rick, giving in to this, giving into his shadow, will mean not only the ruin of his inverted foil, but the destruction of his own soul. At first, Kratos tries to hide the truth of his past and their shared godhood from Atreus, but as events grow darker and things worsen, Atreus descends rapidly down a similar path to his dad. All this builds over the course of the game until we reach a tear-jerking moment of catharsis between father and son.

After saving the goddess Freya from being strangled by her own child, Baldur, Kratos sees finally the end destination of their journey if he allows his shadow to win:

“You are just an animal!” snaps Freya, leaning over the cooling body of her son.

“Passing on your cruelty and rage. You will never change!” she cries, tears running down her cheeks.

Kratos listens sombrely, before responding: “Then you do not know me.” He says.

Venom in her eyes, Freya retorts: “I know enough,” then, glancing over at the shaken face of Atreus, she asks: “Does he?”

Kratos pauses, the time has come. He’s a at a crossroads. He can continue along the same path of violence or take the plunge. He can let his child, his last link to his beloved wife, truly know him.

“Boy.” He addresses Atreus, “Listen close.”

The music darkens to signify his digging up of old and hated memories: “I am from a land called Sparta.” He tells his son.

We see Atreus behind Kratos’ back, already shaken by the fight, becoming increasingly unsure as his father steers them towards unfamiliar territory.

“I made a deal with a god that cost me my soul.” Kratos continues.

“I killed many that were deserving…” he almost winces, “…and many that were not.”

The battle-scarred warrior takes a deep breath before revealing: “I killed my father.”

Stunned, Atreus stutters: “That was your father in Hel!” and then… “Is this what it is to be a god? Is this how it always ends? Sons killing their mothers,” he motions at Baldur’s body, now in Freya’s arms, “…their fathers?”

His voice is strong, Kratos has taught him not to express his emotions, but in his face, we can see it – a desperation, a pleading to be told that this is wrong, that the dark heritage of gods will not prevail with them. Kratos turns and kneels before Atreus, looking him in the eyes.

“No.” he tells him, placing his hands around the child’s solemn face.

“We will be the gods we choose to be. Not those who have been.”

He puts his arms around his son, gripping the boys’ shoulders tight.

“Who I was is not who you will be… We must be better.”

It’s in this moment that Kratos sacrifices a version of himself. He kills his shadow. The safe haven he spent years hiding within. Vulnerability, which he once viewed as a weakness, he now realizes, is strength. He sees for perhaps the first time in his life, that intimacy is the way forward for him and his boy. He lets Atreus in, breaking for the first time the cycle of violence that has ruled their family in every previous entry of the series. Kratos now sees the inversion of himself in his boy. An inversion that has forced him into a confrontation with the true villain of the series – the darkness of his own heart.16

THE PLAYER IN UNIO MYSTICA

Video games are a unique medium in that they place the player directly in the body of a character, rather than having us observe one. This means a couple of things. First, unlike other storytelling mediums we are not in the sympathy or empathy business. While those emotions may be elicited by the player towards NPCs in a game, we are not asking the player to empathize with the protagonist. Rather, we are in the intimacy business. We ask players to EMBODY the protagonist, to wear them like a glove, to be closer to them than their own skin. Yes, a well-designed game narrative should make the player feel for the Player Character, but this is different to sympathy or empathy. By its very definition, you cannot have sympathy or empathy for yourself. Rather, you are intimately aware of the emotions you are feeling, even if you cannot articulate them at first. We’ll call this intimate awareness of the PC’s emotional life union. The player is in union with our protagonist, whoever they might be. As narrative designers, we should aim to foster intimacy, so that this union can be achieved.

THE PLAYER AS THE HUGR

Consider the pre-Christian concept of the soul and those accompanying elements of the Shadow and the Doppelgänger as narrative motifs. If we explore them as cogs and gears to be put to work in the creation of a playable protagonist, then something interesting begins to happen. The fylgja, hugr, hamr, shadow and doppelgänger all represent certain concepts - core aspects of humanity.

In this conceptualization, union begins with the hugr, which is the energy or essence that animates both the protagonist and the hamr. The hugr is a recognition of the intimacy given to us through folklore and suggests a player’s ability to involve themselves with, and control multiple aspects of, the story world. Tangherlini speaks of folklore as ‘transmission taking place interactively.’17 This is the transmission of beliefs, themes, morals, concepts, discussion, and commentary. Folklore is porous and narrative is a two-way street. The content we pass out to the player is able to be explored in this model, played with, and reshaped, before being sent back to the authors as well as other players. Like the exchange between shamanistic storytellers and audiences of the past, we are dealing with highly interactive elements here.

Traditionally, the hugr is disembodied, but it’s also what gives the body life. In the lore we’ve discussed, it could influence others over great distances, with no time passing at all. It also had the unique ability to superpose itself across the ‘astral’ realm. You can see this kind of projection or doubling in the stories of the benandanti, where the soul travels to Venusberg or the Fields of Josephat to do battle with witches; or in the Norse traditions, where there is a passing into the realm of the dead. For the Zoroastrians of Persia, it is the crossing of the Chinvat Bridge; for the ancient Greeks – the mysterious Hypoborea; and in Arthurian myth, it is Avalon, the land of the Fey.

The hugr (or player’s) first port of call when entering the game is the protagonist and understanding the player as a separate entity to that protagonist - one with narrative agency – radically redefines how we should design them. Because the player is the hamr, the protagonist’s character can almost be considered as a kind of sentient “sleeve” or outfit that the player dons to explore the world of your game. While complete immersion into a character is the aim, it is necessary for there to be a slight degree of separation between the player and the protagonist so as to avoid that dreaded ludo-narrative dissonance. Treating player characters as individual beings that are being occupied by the player (or hugr) ensures that the will of the character is not superseded complete by the will of the player. Allowing a complete takeover results in possession, rather than cohabitation, and possession allows for the player to simply use the protagonist as a tool, rather than viewing them as a ‘real’ multi-faceted being. Respecting this separation encourages the player to work alongside the protagonist in that union we are trying to achieve. The player’s actions then become coloured by the personality of the character they’re occupying. Through this, we can also view the protagonist partly, as a collection of traits that need to be ‘fed’ by the player, resulting in a desire to engage positively with the narrative themes, instead of fighting against them.

THE PLAYER IN THE HAMR

The hugr leaves the body of a man, sheathing itself within the hamr – a physical double with the ability to travel far and wide, to the otherworld and back, engaging as it goes, with gods and demons, the living, and the dead. Likewise, the player leaves the game world, superpositioning themselves through the hamr, projecting themselves into a post-digital world of pervasive communication. We can think of the hamr as an avatar constructed by the player to best reach those that exist on transmediated platforms outside the game. With internet platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, as well as fanfiction and blogging websites, audiences have more power than ever before. They can nourish and grow stories they like or cut back and destroy those that they don’t. This is comparable to audiences of folklore in the past choosing either to share and edit their own folklore or instead, letting those stories fall into insignificance. Audiences can now push their likes, dislikes, thoughts, suggestions and demands across multiple platforms at once, to potentially thousands of people at the same time. This is the true power of the hugr when it occupies the hamr – it passes from one world and into the other, and once there, it receives influence and power. The same is true for our players and their interactions with the other world of social media.

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENT AND REGENERATIVE LISTENING

Across the entire history of storytelling, non-interactive, author-driven pieces have only existed for a fraction. For our ancestors, mimetic circulation was a slow, evolutionary process, taking many years for stories to disperse across oceans and mutate as they were adapted by various cultures. Today, mimetic circulation is instantaneous – social media has allowed audiences to talk back. It’s time to face facts: You, the author are no longer in control. Stories that begin as small anecdotes or discussions on noticeboards and comment sections now have the power to balloon at a rapid speed and change the world around them.

From these stories self-organized spontaneous movements have risen up – The Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street. These movements appear with a stunning speed and can create sweeping change. They often have no need of a single leader, and if there is one, that leader tends to be directed by the collective rather than being the one who defines the agenda of many. On the darker side of things, this power that has been given to story by non-linear, digital communication can also create dangerous movements. Look to the Alt-Right, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and of course, Donald Trump’s America for examples of this.

The Player and the Pentacle seeks to embrace this reversal of power and use it for good through the act of regenerative listening or recognizing our audience’s ability to influence story and use it to affect our reality. The player’s ability to occupy their hamr and project themselves out into the world, also opens up new avenues of narrative design within the ‘on-boarding’ and ‘off-boarding’ of a game (or any piece of interactive storytelling for that matter). When the player tweets out a review or pauses the game to take a break, they are no longer fully leaving that fantastical world. Instead, if we cultivate things right, they will be able to find opportunities to explore new and exciting avenues of immersion. Accounting for the player’s ability to co-author a story in this way, is what I like to call empathetic design, and really, all this really requires is a paradigm shift in creators when we do all that creating. Knowing that our audiences are eager and willing to get into the wet sand with us and start shaping castles means we can deliberately leave parts of the story-world vague so that they can fill in the blanks instead. These intentional plot-holes, when enacted in combination with an active community presence and a willingness on our end to learn from our audiences, creates a more robust fanbase overall.

Transmedia producer and legendary Narrative Designer, Jeff Gomez (Starlight Runner Entertainment) knows the truth of this first-hand. Jeff, who is a great friend and mentor has frequently discussed how, back in the day, when he was the Narrative Lead behind Magic: The Gathering and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, he decided to give out his personal email to fans so he could hear their thoughts. He was immediately scolded by those around him for making a dumb move – some fans aren’t always the nicest of people, and even back then, the risk of being overwhelmed with nasty worded emails and threats was very real – yet, in spite of what everyone thought would happen, the response was overwhelmingly positive. And listening to fans thoughts, Jeff began to reincorporate some of their ideas into the lore of the worlds he was designing - to critical acclaim. This is empathetic design and regenerative listening in action, happening all the way back in the 1990s – Imagine what we can do with today’s technology to further develop this beautiful exchange!

THE PROTAGONIST AND THEIR SHADOW

The Shadow is the true threat to success in a Player and Pentacle narrative. The Shadow represents the untamed, violent, masculine, and dark energy of the protagonist. It is what threatens to consume them if they do not overcome it. Unlike a traditional villain (which you can still have), the shadow is a complex psychological product of the overarching system that your protagonist finds themselves living under. They have developed this shadow through a lifetime of existing within a system founded on individualism and violence. While the protagonist (and player) might be pitted against the evil Doctor Robotnik (or whoever, really), the true threat to their survival is internal. Ultimately, the Shadow is a Jungian representation of the very mindsets that are causing our real-world to currently fall apart. In a character-driven, personal story, the Shadow is the curse of individualism, convincing us to selfishly attend to our own desires at the cost of the needs of others. In a larger, more expansive story that deals with many characters and multiple factions, the Shadow is the curse of tribalism – of asserting one’s rightness over another’s and demanding that their worldview be one of narrow black and white conservatism, instead of colourful and bright diversity.

Tribalism, I believe is the result off a poverty mindset – we fear those outside of our tribe because their views, which contradict our own, may result in them making us wrong, in taking from us, that which we have all at one point in time used to survive – subjective truth. When a primitive civilization grows beyond scattered isolation, it inevitably comes into conflict with itself. The same is true with the mimetic spread of narrative. While the objective truth remains that we are all one people, and that we are stronger together than apart, our subjective interpretations of that truth can differ wildly across locations and cultures, resulting in conflict between those of us who, in reality should be working together, to face the ultimate threats of our age – hatred, greed, sickness, fascism, environmental collapse – the list goes on…

THE INVERTED DOUBLE

And this brings us back to the doppelgänger – our inverted double. Existing somewhere in the story world there should be another character or process that inverts the traits of the protagonist and forces them to confront the dark side of who they are. At this point, the protagonist must overcome and defeat their shadow (or be completely consumed by it) before the story is truly over.

THE FYLGJA AS AN ANTI-SHADOW AND SOUL OF BONES

In the fylgja, we see a tutelary genie, a being of light, a representation of the feminine, of destiny, of protection, mentorship, and love. The Celtic equivalent of the fylgja, after all, is the fairy, and in Christian lore, it’s the Guardian angel. In a Player and Pentacle narrative, we view the fylgja as an external opposition to the shadow and the soul of bones as the thing which keeps us motivated to persist in the story world. The fylgja always points to an identity that the character can become or aspire towards. They’re who the protagonist could be if they overcome their shadow. The fylgja’s job is to act as a distant call to the protagonist, reminding them of their true self, encouraging them to pass through the dominion of the shadow, so as to join her and grow as a character.

The Soul of Bones on the other hand, represents how the mortality of a character anchors them to the task at hand. Think about it this way – what’s stopping your character from tapping out, giving up and falling off the map? This is the element in your story that forces the protagonist and player duo to keep moving forward, one step at a time. Just like the hugr is connected to the soul of bones in the lore, the player should find themselves invested in the bones of a character’s purpose. We too, cannot tap out. We are driven with the character to keep playing, to keep seeking, to find out more.

Whereas the fylgja exists primarily for a narrative purpose, the Soul of Bones is represented through gameplay. Sometimes, these two components will exist as the same thing, other times, they might be entirely separate. A protagonist’s fylgja could be represented through a character, or characters, or an event, or several events, within the plot that repeatedly drive home the narrative moral or theme of your story, such as: Strength is found in empathy and compassion rather than in endless cycles of violence. The soul of bones can optionally also reflect that narrative moral through a mechanical feature or features, or the soul of bones could relate to something else entirely, keeping the protagonist on their path, such as saving a loved one, or hunting down a powerful relic – the important thing is that the soul of bones is explored via narratively driven gameplay.

From Software’s Dark Souls series provides us with an excellent example of how the fylgja and the soul of bones can work together to strengthen a singular narrative theme. In the highly acclaimed dark fantasy series, death is used as a mechanic to strengthen the impetus keeping you and your character bound to the world. The entirety of the Dark Souls series is focused on these ideas of death and rebirth, sacrifice, and hope. You persist in a world that is slowly fading into darkness, where everything around you seems to have no desire other than to kill you. The goal of the protagonist (as the chosen undead) is to restore fire (or light and life) to the world by replacing the previous Lord of Cinder, sacrificing themselves to delay the age of darkness from enveloping the world. As the player, we are pulled through the world of Dark Souls by collecting souls (the game’s currency) and strengthening our character so that they can complete their task. Upon being killed by one of the game’s many enemies, we lose any of the souls we are carrying, sacrificing them so that we might be reborn and try again. When returning to the world, we can choose to take part in the activity of corpse-running – returning to where we last died and retrieving what we lost from a blood stain on the floor, or by killing the enemy that last killed us. Instead of being a brick wall or fail state, death becomes a doorway, through which your character can grow.

Bonfires also exist throughout the world, where the player can rest and replenish their health, save their progress, or teleport to another area to spend their souls. However, there is a trade-off for using one of these bonfires - just like death, resting at a bonfire will also restore all enemies in the game, making your next run just as difficult as the last. And yet, we keep at it, bound to the world by the soul of bones and called through it by our fylgja – a cycle of death and rebirth, sacrifice and hope. With every boss we beat, every NPC we talk to, every time we level up, we truly believe that if we are to simply persist against this darkness, then eventually, we’ll see a brighter day. This belief can even be found in an optimistic analysis of Dark Souls online community’s catch phrase, uttered at newbies struggling with the game’s intense difficulty: GIT GUD! They shout time and time again when first timers complain about dying hundreds of times. Many have seen this line as being a little mocking, a little rude, perhaps even arrogant, but for me, it’s simply another fylgja, designed to pull you forward to the game’s climactic end.

BRINGING TOGETHER THE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

The Player and the Pentacle model is a unique and new way to consider your narrative design processes when creating a truly immersive world. It combines traditional practices of interactive storytelling with cutting edge research on narrative design being explored by myself and others, before implementing them both into the framework of the folkloresque. The components of this model are, like the effect they attempt to bring about, non-linear by their very nature. They are a collection of living, breathing processes, and as a result can at times overlap or appear in unusual orders. The narrative designer should also feel free to use or not use whichever aspects they want in the creation of their worlds. These are guidelines, not hard rules.

This being said, when we bring each element together as a cohesive whole, we get the following road map of the player’s journey through our game:

1. The player, acting as a kind of hugr, steps into cohabitation with the protagonist by entering a magic circle, and engaging with our story world.

2. They centre themselves within the five-pointed pentacle of narrative design. Now separate from the real world, they are consecrated and set apart. Within that circle, the player is free to engage with the story in a non-linear way.

3. Whether through exploring lore, deep lore, or plot, they encounter narrative delivery systems through the process of play.

4. Eventually, they cross paths with their double or inverted foil, who pushes them to confront the shadow that haunts their story.

5. Meanwhile, the fylgja, an anti-shadow and representation of who they might become, calls out across the world as an echo, drawing them forwards through conflicts both external and internal.

6. By following the fylgja that they are taught the importance of collective movement and the sacrifice of self. They overthrow the shadow (itself, a representation of individualism), and thus reaching transformation.

7. Meanwhile, through a process of empathetic design, the story world actively accounts for the player’s ability to sheath themselves within the hamr - an avatar or narrative process based OUTSIDE the circle of play – the otherworld of non-linear digital communication. This accounting allows for regenerative listening on behalf of developers and for co-authorship of the story IP.

8. This co-authoring can then go on to inspire communities and set into motion the folkloresque processes of mimetic circulation and reintegration into the cultural canon.

To further help with the construction of such a protagonist, I’ve provided below a template from which you can explore and develop your player character. After which, I’ve provided a filled-out example (one of my own personal projects) to show you how I might go about building such a character myself. Please feel free to take this template and add or edit it in whichever way seems fit for your purposes.

THE PLAYER AND THE PENTACLE PROTAGONIST CREATION TEMPLATE:

Character Name: [Enter the full name of your protagonist + any epithets they are known as. i.e. “Geralt of Rivia – The White Wolf, The Butcher of Blaviken”]

Character Brief: [Enter a brief overview of your protagonist. How would you explain them to someone in just a few short sentences?]

Character Backstory: [Enter the full backstory of your character. Explore their childhood, how they grew up, what traumas they’ve experienced along the way, what their passions are, what drives them, how they became who they are today, etc.]

Character’s Shadow: [Enter information on the Shadow of the character – What is that darkness inside them? How did it come to be there? What horrors is your protagonist capable of if they succumb to that darkness? What do they need to do to be able to defeat that darkness? i.e. For Rick, in Casablanca, his “shadow” is the self-centredness he has adopted after having his heart broken, it is the part of him that would give the world over to Hitler himself, if it meant he could be with the woman he loves, if he could undo the heartbreak visited upon him. To defeat his Shadow, Rick must come to terms with that heartbreak and let it go, he must sacrifice his own desires for the sake of another’s vision – Viktor’s passion to defeat the Nazis once and for all.]

Character’s Inverted Double: [Enter information on the protagonist’s inverted double. This is not their opposite/nemesis, rather it is a character, who’s traits cause the protagonist to (painfully) recognize their own weaknesses, faults and/or selfish behaviour. i.e. In God of War, Atreus is the inverted double of Kratos – his desire to be like his father, as well as to be close to his father, coupled with his outbursts of anger and rage, act as a mirror to Kratos, reflecting the mistakes and problematic aspects of Kratos’ personality and of his dark past, provoking Kratos to finally let his son in, and teach him that they both need to be better than the violent, angry god Kratos was in his youth.]

Fylgja & The Soul of Bones: [Enter information here on the Fylgja and/or soul of bones of the Protagonist. Sometimes these are two separate elements, other times, they are one in the same. The Fylgja is a guiding voice, calling out to the protagonist, hinting and suggesting to them who they might become if they were to defeat their Shadow. The Soul of Bones is that which keeps the protagonist on their path, it is what stops them from tapping out when the going gets tough. Whereas the Fylgja serves a narrative purpose only, the Soul of Bones can also serve a gameplay purpose as well as a narrative one. i.e. In Dark Souls, the cycle of death, rebirth and strengthening acts as the Soul of Bones keeping the protagonist in the story, whereas the sense of hope that by persisting, eventually light will succeed, is the Fylgja.]

FILLED OUT TEMPLATE EXAMPLE:

Game Title: The Hand of God

Narrative Pitch: The Hand of God follows Nasim ibn ghul, a legendary assassin of the hashīshīn (origin of the term assassin, lit. “Users of hashish”) as he completes kill missions for a mystical entity – “The Cloud of Unknowing,” who passes down the names of those the hashīshīn are destined to kill. But when a routine job goes wrong, Nasim is left out in the cold, excommunicated from his Order, hunted by both his associates and the horrifying creatures created to protect The Cloud, Nasim must uncover the true purpose of his Order and find redemption in a world hostile to his very nature.

Character Name: Nasim ibn ghul (Nasim, son of the Ghoul)

Character Brief: Star member of the hashīshīn, a modern-day continuation of the ancient Islamic sect of Assassins. Cold and calculated – at least on the surface. Nasim is a rogue who believes he is only in things for himself, yet, given the opportunity, he will always ascertain to do the ‘right’ thing. This information escapes him however – he sees himself as a worthless human being – good for nothing more than killing others.

Character Backstory: The story of Nasim begins strangely enough, in 1489 A.D. – two years before the end of the Granada War in which Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon waged war against the Nasrid dynasty’s Emirate of Granada, an Islamic realm of Southern Iberia. In the aftermath of a deadly battle, the hashīshīn, an order of elite assassins, came across the quiet mewls of a new-born child half-birthed from the womb of his murdered mother. Taking the child under their wings, they named him Nasim ibn ghul, after the grisly circumstances of his birth. As soon as he was old enough to hold a sword, Nasim began his training. Through the entirety of his childhood, he was fed propaganda from the cult, and taught to believe that he was nothing more than a tool for killing – this was his divine purpose, gifted to him by the mysterious entity at the head of the hashīshīn – a being he was yet to encounter - The Cloud of Unknowing. At the age of twelve, Nasim was gifted his first mission – a test, to see if he was worthy of continuing on. He was to steal into the house of the Iberian Lord theorized to have killed his mother and put an end to him. The mission did not go according to plan. In the chaos of it, Nasim ended the life of the Lord’s entire family, including a child no older than himself. This weighed heavily on Nasim, but for the hashīshīn, the mission was deemed a triumph, and precipitated Nasim’s first encounter with The Cloud of Unknowing, deep within their ancient Temple. Literally, a cloud of thunder and lightning contained within the building, this deity stretched out an elongated, inhumanly sized arm, and blessed him with the mark of the hashīshīn, before sending the boy off on his next mission. Years passed in this way, and Nasim, blessed with immortality by the strange being, rose to the top of the Order, killing countless people indiscriminately over the years. The more he killed, the more he was able to smother the guilt of his first assassinations, and in this way, he managed to avoid the fear that was rapidly devouring his soul. Until now…

Character’s Shadow: Nasim’s shadow is the voice of fear inside him that originated from his horrifying upbringing and years of trying to hide from that hurt. He believes himself to be nothing more than a tool for killing, and knows from experience, that the more he shuts himself off to his emotions, the more he kills mindlessly, the more he can hide from the broken child deep inside him. If Nasim continues on this path, something horrible will happen – to him, and probably to others as well. The more he kills, the more he loses his soul, and should he never confront the horrors of his past, he will eventually lose his mind to chaos. To defeat his shadow, Nasim needs to make himself vulnerable to others. He needs to allow himself to love and to be loved, so that he can begin to see himself in a new light and accept that what was done to him in the past was neither normal nor right. If he can gain even a fraction of insight into this, then he will have set himself on a path towards redemption, a path that will eventuate in being free from his shadow.

Character’s Inverted Double: Where things begin to change for Nasim, is on his latest mission. He is instructed to locate a nearby farmhouse and kill everyone inside. However, upon arriving there, he discovers the house is occupied by a young woman and her eight-year-old son, Mateo. Mateo is Nasim’s inverted double. Mateo’s personality has many similarities to Nasim as a child. Nasim has second thoughts about his mission, but unluckily for those involved, The Cloud suspected this might happen and has sent others to complete the mission, should Nasim fail. Iris is killed and Nasim suddenly finds himself the protector of this young boy. As the two flee from the hashīshīn and the supernatural monsters conjured by The Cloud, they uncover a massive conspiracy as to the Order’s true purpose and begin to bond along the way. Mateo, still young and traumatized, begins to mistake Nasim as his father, forcing Nasim to confront his Shadow, and discover the answers as to why he is incapable of expressing intimacy and love to others.

Fylgja & The Soul of Bones: Nasim’s fylgja is a representation of the truth that intimacy is a strength and not a weakness. It is only through opening ourselves up to love and to being loved by others, that we can overcome trauma and create systemic change in the world around us. His fylgja calls out to him through the exchanges he has with Mateo and others, as well as dreams he periodically has in which he is haunted by the spectre of his own lost childhood. The Soul of Bones that encourages player engagement with the narrative moral his fylgja represents, is found in the trust mechanic of the game. Throughout the game, players must cultivate their relationship with Mateo via on-screen prompts (these can be as simple as placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder or responding kindly to something Mateo says or does, or alternatively, the player can choose to scold Mateo when he makes a mistake, etc.) If the player cultivates a strong relationship with Mateo, then the boy will help them in combat and in puzzle solving. If the player drives a wedge between Nasim and Mateo, then the boy might hide instead of helping in combat, running away at night when they’ve made camp, or even deliberately mislead the player in puzzle sections, etc.) To create further complexity to this mechanic, the player’s ability to respond positively to Mateo might be dependent on other more subtle choices made throughout the game relating to Nasim’s willingness to open up emotionally to others.

Footnotes

In fact, circles appear frequently throughout A Dark Song:

Later, when Sophia becomes frustrated that the ritual isn’t moving fast enough, she attempts to leave the house:

Sophia reluctantly returns to the house, having seen Joseph’s terrified reaction. The two continue the ritual, and it isn’t long before stuff starts happening. As Joseph explains, they’ve “been noticed.” The rest of the film plays out like all good horror films – the characters fall victim to the scares of demons and spirits from the other side as they attempt to reach the conclusion of their quest. Eventually, out of terror, Sophia does leave the house and passes over the circle, foregoing her only form of protection. She finds herself in a ghostly version of the world, a kind of limbo. Purgatory. No matter how far away from the house she runs, she always ends up back where she started. As night falls, she realizes she’s trapped, and with the demonic spirits now able to hurt her, she has no choice but to complete the spell and summon her angel if she hopes to survive.

MAGIC CIRCLES

What we are seeing in A Dark Song is a reoccurring motif in occult and folk-literature. The motif of the Magic Circle. The Magic circle has been suggested to originate with the Zisurrû, an ancient Mesopotamian ritual in which a circle was drawn using a flour-based paste around a ritual space as a means of purifying the area or protecting it from evil influence. It was used in various situations – drawn around special figurines to thwart dark spirits, around the bed of a sick person to protect against ghosts and demons, or as a component of a larger ritual.2

The concept of a Magic circle has survived with us all the way from Mesopotamia (c. 3100 BCE – 539 BCE) and has found its place today modern occult religions like Wicca, as well as in entertainment as the above example shows.

In his book, In the Dust of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy vol. 1, Eugene Thacker explores the use of the magic circle and its purpose in both occult systems and popular culture:

In fact, Magic circles have been long incorporated into the lexicon of games and virtual worlds. In a 1938 book by Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga, magic circles are explored:

For now, as we move forward with the chapter, keep in mind the following:

1. Magic circles consecrate a space.

2. Magic circles govern the boundary between the natural and the supernatural.

3. Magic circles create temporary worlds within the ordinary word.

4. Magic circles can summon spirits or protect the practitioner against them.

PENTACLES

Often found within a magic circle are occult symbols. Whether to summon a supernatural entity or for some other purpose, magic symbols are prevalent in both the occult application of circles and their depiction in entertainment media. One of the most famous symbols we see housed within a magic circle is of course, the pentacle or the five-pointed star. Pentacles also have a rich tradition dating back hundreds of years. The first documented appearance of the pentacle can be found in the 1500s, primarily in the grimoires Heptaméron – a short story collection by Marguerite de Navarre, and the more famous Key of Solomon, a Grimoire written during the Italian Renaissance, but as was the practice of the time, claims to have a much more ancient lineage – presenting itself as being authored by King Solomon of the Bible himself. The Key of Solomon contains within it, dozens of different pentacles – pentacles that aren’t always five pointed stars, but a wide variety of designs, each with different purposes for different spells. However, since pentacles are easily recognizable, we’ll be dealing with them as a motif going forward.

THE PENTACLE OF NARRATIVE DESIGN

The Pentacle of Narrative Design is something I’ve often described as a narrative structure, but in actuality, this is a bit of a misnomer thanks to the non-linear nature of interactive storytelling. In literary theory, a narrative structure describes the framework that underlies the progression of the plot.

The typical narrative structure you’ll see taught in creative writing classes around the world can be seen below. Beginning with introducing the setting and characters, the reader/audience are then introduced to a problem, which creates drama and rising action until we reach the climax, where things are as worse as they can possibly be. The protagonists overcome this final conflict and the action quickly falls as things return roughly to the normal world, where at last, we have a Denouement, in which things are resolved and we leave the characters to return to the real-world.

While this narrative structure technically works when we are considering the plot of a linear game, it does little to explain the ways in which a piece of non-linear storytelling is structured. Whereas traditional mediums like literature, film and TV move from one end of the line to the other, a line is inadequate to describe how the kinds of narratives we are exploring. Game narratives tend to… blossom outwards in all directions. Thus, let me introduce to you the Pentacle of Narrative Design (below) as an alternative way to understand the various parts at play in non-linear, interactive storytelling:

STORY: THE SACRED SPACE WITHIN THE CIRCLE

Remember back to a few minutes ago when I asked you to keep in mind three important facts pertaining to the magic circle? Yes? Let’s revisit them now:

1. The Magic circle consecrates a space.

2. The Magic circle governs the boundary between the natural and the supernatural.

3. The Magic circle creates temporary worlds within the ordinary word.

4. The Magic circle can summon spirits or protect the practitioner against them.

In this context, the magic circle does all these things for the player. It consecrates (sets apart) a space for the player to engage with something beyond themselves. It governs the boundary between the natural and the supernatural – by which I mean it allows a space for the fantastical to supersede the normal (immersion). It creates a temporary world within our ordinary world. And it summons spirits (NPCs, Enemies, etc) for us to engage with.

Story is what the magic circle summons. Story, and in this context, the game world itself. Everything that has been created to express the intentions of the developers to the players – the art that lets us feel something greater than our little lives on this little planet, in this vast universe. When we talk about story, we’re talking about the game in its entirety – characters and events, yes, but also gameplay, SFX, VFX, level design, and so on, and so forth. Story is what the player picks up and buys in the video game store or online. Story is a consecrated and sacred space to the player, which means two things:

1. We as designers have a responsibility to guide them into an emotional, transcendent experience. Anything that breaks immersion or creates ludonarrative dissonance for the player is something we need to try to remove from the work.

2. Anything that gets in the way of that experience – in game purchases, loot boxes, whale-hunting and other such corrupt monetization’s which prey on the neuro-diverse or those with gambling addictions, have no place in the magic circle. These are unethical practices which detract from a truly powerful experience and will only hurt your game, your fans, and yourself in the long run. The real way to create an evergreen game is to deliver a product that emotionally resonates with players. Get that right, and then maybe you can charge extra for a couple of DLCs.

LORE: THE HEAD OF THE PENTACLE

The Digital Jam VR Writers Room White Paper (now very hard to find online – message me if you want a copy!) spends significant time detailing the creation of immersive virtual worlds. While the paper is geared primarily towards Virtual Reality, much of the content around world-building and narrative design crosses over easily into any interactive medium. Specifically, the white paper considers the question of how one goes about creating a story bible and story world for players to explore and get lost in.

Lore is a focused approach to crafting the richness and nuance described by the writers of the VR Writers Room white paper and is made up of all the generalized world-building of a game. It’s everything from geography, language, culture, and religion, to biology, horticulture, history and much more. Everything your game needs to exist as a believable world where actual people (or creatures) can reside.

Many have asked me over the years, how much lore is enough lore? Well, I’m a firm believer that the more, the merrier. Some might warn about focusing too much on world-building, becoming fatigued or losing sight of content that players are actually going to definitely see, but I’ve found that as long as you are disciplined in your creating, pages upon pages of world building is only going to help, not harm you. Do not be afraid of writing content players may never see. In-house lore content still has an important place within a story bible or game development document, as it allows others in the development pipeline to immerse themselves in the world and be influenced by it in the creation of their additions to the game. Extra content can also always be used in extensions of the base game (DLCS, Sequels etc.) or in transmedia offshoots (comic books, web series, movies, tv, etc.)

DEEP LORE: THE LEFT HAND OF THE PENTACLE

Depending on how you look at it, Deep Lore is technically a sub-section of lore, but for our purposes, we’ll explore it as a separate point in the pentacle star. Deep lore is named because of the depth it brings to a player’s understanding of the world and events of the story. I define it as all the world-building elements in your game that are crucial to understanding the plot and ultimately, the message of your game. Deep lore describes a specific style of world-building. One that focuses on crucial elements like character backstories, the cosmological rules of your game, structural politics etc. Deep lore consists of information that does not fit into the immediate plot but brings to light why things are the way they are or foreshadows how they will end up.

Above is a Quenya (Elvish) greeting uttered by Frodo the first time he meets Gildor Inglorion, an Elf of the House of Finrod. The Elvish language brings a sense of realism to the cultural world-building of Middle-Earth and as such would be placed in the Pentacle under the first point in the star – Lore. Knowing the language of Quenya is not crucial to the reader for them to understand the plot. But, when we consider the character of Smeagol and how he became Golem - context for his mad quest to recapture the one ring, we see something different. This backstory is information we need to know if we are to understand Golem’s motivation in the immediate plot. Specifically, it effects how he relates to both Frodo and Sam as he guides them to the slopes of Mount Doom.

If The Lord of the Rings trilogy took place in the form of an interactive narrative (and of course it has, to varying degrees of success), then this information, having happened prior to the Protagonist starting their journey, would not be immediately known. The Player would have to actively seek out that information in order to understand Golem’s eventual betrayal and his tragic end. This is an example of Deep Lore.

“But Nick!” you might ask, “Isn’t that just exposition?”

Well, yes. It is. But in a game, it is special kind of exposition. Exposition that the player will need to seek out themselves. This means as a Narrative Designer, your job is to find a way that ensures the player comes across it. Without throwing it in their faces of course.

Subtlety is key.

NARRATIVE: THE RIGHT HAND OF THE PENTACLE

Narrative concerns itself solely with the mode of telling that is being used to convey lore, deep lore and plot to the player. Narrative is similar to Story in the sense that it is a meta-fictive element at play in the development of a game. Like Story, when we talk about Narrative, we are talking about the game as a whole. Story is high level design. Narrative is still high level, but it’s slightly closer to the ground. When we discuss narrative, we are discussing the tools that we want to use to present information to the player. Narrative relates directly to the working parts of the game’s story – NPCs, Items, Enemies, Text-based pick-ups, audio-based pick-ups, music, visual style and tone, level design, etc. How do these disparate elements all come together to tell the story of our world? How do they guide the player through deeper themes and/or philosophical questions being posited by the developers, so that they might be immersed and meet with eventual transcendence? Story might be a painting of a house, but Narrative is concerned with the different paints and brushes that the artist used.

Consider the 2020 Samurai masterpiece by Sucker Punch Productions, Ghost of Tsushima, which displays an unusually beautiful use of narrative to deliver story information to the player. A common task required of the player in open world roleplaying games is to navigate a large open world. This task drives the player from one story event to another. Often, the mechanics in place that allow this task to be fulfilled are a little clunky and quickly descend into the following: In the corner of the screen, you might find a little GPS map, and as you play, the game forces you to focus on that, and the little X or bleep or star or whatever, to know where you’re going. You follow a dotted line across the world to get from A to B.

As great of a game as it is, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is, I find, highly guilty of this approach to navigation. A staggering 81 million dollars US was spent on developing this game over three and a half years – and all I’m doing is watching that little map sitting in the bottom corner of the screen!7 I could be immersing myself in this stunning world, but instead, I’m trying to figure out where the hell I am.

Ghost of Tsushima on the other hand, attempts to find an elegant solution to this problem by considering navigation as a form of narrative delivery system. By using the folklore of Japan as a jumping off point, it creates a player experience that captures the peaceful introspection and exhilarating violence of a Samurai power fantasy. Swipe on the PS4 touch pad or select a spot on the in-menu map, and a guiding wind blows in the direction of your goal or destination. This guiding wind is grounded within Shintoism and does away completely with the GPS map approach, allowing you to instead, enjoy the world around you.

In the indigenous Japanese belief system, god-like spirits named kami are found throughout nature – in trees, rivers, animals, and yes – even the wind. Further strengthening this connection, Ghost of Tsushima provides other unique forms of navigation for the player to discover: As you pass through an ancient forest, you might spot a friendly red fox, or golden bird flittering through the trees. Either creature, if followed will attempt to lead you to a secret hidden just off the beaten path. Foxes in Japanese tradition are spiritual animals, and so guide you to hidden shrines, where praying at them will grant you special charms. The golden bird, seen as a good omen in Japanese myth, also leads you to various secrets and treasures. Taking this idea even further, the game could had provided a meditation mechanic (rather than using an in-menu map), where the player has their character think on certain concepts corresponding to different shrines, collectables or quests. Those thoughts could then trigger the guiding wind to lead them to their destination. The game could have even introduced a nefarious guiding wind, that could trick players, drawing them into traps, just like folk superstitions from around the world suggests of the will-o’-the-whisp - ghostly lights that try pull travellers off the road and into dangerous forests or swamps.

PLOT: THE LEFT FOOT OF THE PENTACLE

Deep Lore might be a difficult concept to enact in the creation of a game. On the flip side, plot is relatively easy. Plot in interactive storytelling is much the same as plot in other story-based mediums – with a few amendments. Plot is everything that happens to the player (or around the player) in real-time as they engage with the game’s systems. It’s what happens between that opening cinematic, and those final credits. It’s the player (and protagonist) moving from point A to point B or, I should say, point A to point B, C, D or E.

Game plots are non-linear. They need to give the player a sense that they’re working towards something, while at the same time being fluid enough that certain plot points can be encountered in whichever order the player encounters them in. Do this right, and you have an elaborate immersive experience. Do this wrong, and the player can’t help but feel that the game is breaking down, collapsing slowly around them. Plot can make use of whichever narrative model you like, however – and we’ll draw from screenwriting theory here – depending on the genre of the game you’re building (narrative genre rather than gameplay genre), your plot will be built of two parallel branches from start to finish. These parallel branches are called through-lines. One is your action through-line and the other is your relational through-line. Your action through line is exactly how it sounds.

This is what we would normally consider as the player journey in a game development doc: The player goes here, the player does this, the player fights that, the player becomes stronger, the player meets this faction, and so on and so forth. A relational through-line is the emotional journey undertaken by the player and protagonist. It plots the emotional beats between the protagonist and the NPCs of the world – particularly the NPC most important to that character (i.e. a love interest or family member). Often there’s an overlap between the action through-line and the relational through-line, but they should always be considered in the development stage separately so that each line stands strong on its own. Some genres do not require a particularly advanced relational through-line, and some won’t require one at all (a relational through-line in DOOM Eternal for example would detract from both the gameplay and story). That being said, both should always be considered, at least in the early stages of development.

PLAY: THE RIGHT FOOT OF THE PENTACLE

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we come to the concept of play. Play is all about the actions the players take to interact with the world and influence the progress of the plot. This is where a core gameplay loop (or loops) comes into the mix. In our magic circle, Play puts a specific focus on allying itself with the other elements discussed above. In this approach, the Narrative Designer is required to work as what I like to call a T person. A T person is an expert in one thing (i.e. the ascender of the T), while also knowing a little bit about a lot (i.e, the arm of the T). The Narrative Designer should be an expert in all things story, while having a bit of knowledge about all the other creative disciplines in game design. I’m not talking about being able to write and code (I myself have abysmal skills when it comes to coding), being a T person simply means that you have developed the ability to come alongside other developers in a game’s pipeline and work with them, championing all things story. It’s your job to guide and help make certain that the gameplay elements work in cooperation with the narrative to deliver an impactful story.

This is the bloody and beating heart of narrative design.

From Software really are masters when it comes to this kind of narrative design. We’ll touch on Dark Souls a little bit in the next chapter when we discuss how character can be utilized to create a new kind of immersion, but right now, let’s stop and consider two other games the studio has developed which display this union between play and story themes – Bloodborne (2015) and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019).

Bloodborne is a Lovecraftian-styled horror dressed up in the form of a gothic action-adventure RPG. Thematically, the game is all about evolution (or de-evolution), desperation and hope in the face of an uncaring cosmos. As a hunter you progress through the crumbling Victorian city of Yharnam, killing lycanthropic beasts and facing off against tentacled Great Ones as you attempt to put an end to a supernatural blood disease that has ravaged the populace.

Bloodborne is an exemplary piece of strong narrative design for many reasons, but the one we are going to discuss right now, is how they imbue their combat loop with thematic potency. Like most games, Bloodborne gives the player what appears to be a health bar at the top of their screen. When you take a hit, the damage is represented briefly as a faded chunk of your life. If, upon seeing this, you leap desperately into the fray and strike back at the enemy, then that chunk will return to full colour and your health is restored. Wait too long, and it’s gone for good.

You see, in Bloodborne, we’re not really looking at a health bar at all.

Instead, your character’s life is defined by your will to live. This is a hope bar. How will you respond to a world of cosmic entities and demonic creatures that you are woefully unequipped to deal with? Will you steel your resolve and fight, or succumb to the darkness? By implementing this question into the mechanics of combat, the game aligns its ludological components with its philosophical themes, creating a unified story, as well as encouraging a fast-paced, frenzied and desperate fighting style in the player.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, also uses narrative design to marry its combat system to its core themes. As the Creative Director of all these games, Hidetaka Miyazaki states, the combat of Sekiro comes:

In the game, players are once again, given a health bar to protect, only this time, they are given a second bar as well. One that is arguably much more important: this is your posture gauge. Posture exists in the game as your character’s defence. When your posture is low and you are on guard, it is next to impossible for most enemies to cause damage to your health. However, every hit you take while guarding, will fill the posture gauge up. When the gauge can’t be filled any further, your posture breaks, and you open your character up for a death blow at the hands of your enemy. Likewise, your aim in battle is to break the posture of your enemy in the exact same way, allowing you to enact a death blow on them instead. A death blow removes either a significant portion of health, or kills you (or your enemy) entirely, depending on the difficulty level you are currently facing. You can hack away at your enemies, acting desperate and hostile (as is encouraged in Bloodborne), eventually filling up their posture gauge, but this will take a long time, and is risky as attacking opens you up to their blade as well. Instead, you need to break your enemy’s posture by deflecting their attacks. Deflecting requires hitting the guard button at the exact right moment, turning the combat of Sekiro into a kind of rhythm mini-game, where you hit your guard button in tune to the beats of an enemy’s strike.

Why is this combat gameplay so important?

Like in Bloodborne, this narrativization of a core gameplay loop serves to explore thematic elements of the game – in this case, it reinforces the values that the Protagonist, a Shinobi named Wolf holds in high esteem - discipline, technique, strategy and decisiveness. Whenever the player crosses blades with a challenger, these ideas are reiterated over and over all the way up until that final boss is felled.

ACTIVATING THE MACHINE

The end goal of the magic circle is thus: The player boots up a game and, in that act, crosses the salt line dividing the normal world from the special one. There, they inhabit the central point of the pentacle, which is character. Through that lens, the player is now free to explore the sacred space in whatever direction they like. They are informed gradually through various narrative techniques, about the story-world, becoming more and more immersed, until finally, immersion ticks over into transcendence – the moment in which they lose themselves entirely to the story you have created.

Footnotes

Let’s stop for a moment and unpack this quote. The first thing to notice here is that the telling of a legend is defined by Tangherlini as a performance. It is not passive. It does not play out on a page or behind a tv screen, utterly disconnected from the audience. Rather, the storyteller is performing for the audience – they are engaging the audience with narrative and provoking the audience to follow them emotionally, to engage with the tale on an entirely different, active level to what they might do if the story were simply written down.

Tangherlini also states that legend has a conversational nature to it, which I would suggest implies a performative improvisation on behalf of the storyteller. The deal being made with the audience is this: Engage with my story actively, and in return, I will allow you agency in how it plays out. The boundary of narrator and audience blurs. This is an important aspect to note down. Understand that story does not take place in the mouth of the storyteller, nor does it take place in the ears of the listener. Rather, story takes place in what David Bowie would call “the grey space in the middle,” a place in which the intentions of the storyteller are given up freely and the audience are allowed to play with it, to shape it and define it as something relevant to themselves.

Lastly, let’s make a note that the “believability” of the narrative is strengthened by giving the audience a personal stake or agency in the telling of it. The narrative is not set off by any distancing formula. There is an equality to the telling that lends itself to not only interactivity but co-creation.

DIVINATION ENGINES

We’ve discussed the interactive nature of legends, myths and folktales already. And while there are similarities between them and the modern-day video game that allow them to be used to strengthen immersion for the player, the divide is still rather large. But there is a form of folkloric storytelling that has much more in common with the digital gaming of today. A form that reflects the non-linear nature of what we’ve come to expect from modern game narratives, and one in which we can potentially draw a great deal of ideas from in our own work. I’m talking about Divination Engines.

Divination Engines are artifacts which have traditionally been used by people throughout history to foretell the future. Tarot cards, Knucklebones, Runestones and the I Ching are just a few examples of these devices. You may be confused, but really, these artifacts actually have a lot in common with games. They all require human input to work, whether through throwing stones, flipping cards, or tossing sticks, and they all rely on subjective interpretation to tell a story. In fact, one could argue that artifacts of divination like a Tarot deck or the I Ching are at their core, random story-telling generators.

TAROT

In his article Tarot Guidebooks as a Literary Genre: Narratives of Destiny, Associate Professor of the Auckland University of Technology and Editor of The Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture, Dr Paul Mountfort writes, beginning with a quote from Tarot expert, Emily Auger, that Tarot can be seen “…as a kind of “low tech cyber simulation.”” He continues by suggesting that:

This is of great interest to us as Narrative Designers and developers because Mountfort suggests that by randomly drawing a spread of cards in an attempt to tell the future, players (for lack of a better term) are drawing from their own psyche to construct a simulated narrative from which they can derive meaning.

Tarot decks, find their beginning, not in ancient Egypt or with the Gypsies, like many city-mall witchcraft stores like to suggest, but in a stock-standard, non-mystical Italian card set known as Trionfi and was used to play the game tarocchini. The game, which was quite popular during the mid-15th century across much of Europe, did not see itself used for divination until the late 18th century. Part of the mystique of Tarot, and its ability to theoretically divine the future, is of course, the arcane imagery and suites of the cards themselves. In a 1956 essay, a New York librarian and Tarot expert, Gertrude Moakley, linked these esoteric elements to a celebrated medieval poem – II Trionfi by Petrarch.

In this wildly popular poem that was penned by Petrarch over several decades (c. 1340-74), a poet journeys through a visionary experience in which he witnesses a series of six “triumphs”, a procession of chariots, led by Love. The poet initially joins this procession as the captive of Love alongside various noble and religious figures. Upon arriving at the island of Cyprus (the birthplace of the goddess Venus), Love is defeated suddenly by Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade, whom Petrarch had an affinity for. Laura, alongside Honour, Prudence and Modesty as well as similarly “pure” heroines such as Lucretia, Penelope and Dido, overthrow Love, freeing his captives, binding him to a column and chastising him. Returning from battle, Laura and her companions encounter a furious woman in black – the personification of Death. Death shows the victorious host a countryside littered with corpses, dead from the plague, before pulling a hair from Laura’s head and killing her. Greatly saddened, the poet aims to elevate Laura’s fame, thus snatching victory from Death’s jaws. But Time kills all things, and the poet realizes that even Laura’s fame will one day disappear, his love will die a second death – the death of oblivion. Finally, Eternity becomes the poet’s only refuge. He longs for the day when he too will pass on and be reunited with his beloved. Petrarch’s poem is filled with the stock characters that appear in the first set of cards in the Charles VI order of the Tarot (see Figure 1).

In this list, we can see the through-line of the poem’s narrative:

The Fool (the poet), is cast into a divine vision (represented by the Magician card). There he sees Love, seated upon a Chariot, drawing a procession. Prisoners of the procession are various nobles and religious figures (The Popess, The Empress, The Emperor and The Pope). Upon being defeated by Laura (a representation of Chastity and depicted in the cards via the Cardinal Virtues – Temperance, Fortitude and Justice), Love is overthrown, tied up and punished (Represented by The Hermit/Old Man, Hunchback and The Hanged Man/The Traitor). Virtue, however, proves to be of no avail, for Fortune cruelly strikes out against Laura by sending Death to her. In this moment, the ascending and descending paths of the afterlife yawn before the poet (Represented by The Devil). In response to the tragedy of Laura’s death, the poet decides to elevate her fame to the very heavens (The Tower). But the Moon and Sun remind him of the mutability and mortality of all corporeal things; he must take solace in the Triumph of Eternity, that upon dying himself and leaving the World, he will face Judgement (The Angel) and be reunited with her in the afterlife.

This poem was at its height at the same time tarocchini was being widely played with the trionfi deck. The early versions of these decks, known as the Bembo decks (c. 1440-60), were commissioned by the grand ducal Visconti-Sforza family of Milan, who just so happened to be patrons of Petrarch. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that the cards acted as illustrations to his poem. But what is perhaps most fascinating, and helpful to our own studies in non-linear storytelling is the way in which these illustrations as the psychiatrist Carl Jung suggested, are psychological images and symbols that connect to our unconscious self. Jung stated that the cards “combine in certain ways, and the different combinations correspond to the playful development of mankind… (they) …are sort of archetypal ideas, of a differentiated nature.”4

In Italo Calvino’s 1973 novel, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, several travellers, struck mute by a magic forest take shelter together in a Castle. Unable to speak, they each tell their stories to one another through the use of several different decks of Tarot cards. Using the archetypes and symbols in the deck, their tales unfold via interpretation of the cards. The novel, which is an exploration on the part of the author around the ways in which meaning is created, is a dazzling example of how Tarot can work as a randomized non-linear storytelling engine.

THE I CHING

The I Ching is yet another powerful storytelling device that has traditionally been used as a divination tool. Invented in the Zhou dynasty (1100 – 400 BCE), the I Ching is essentially an oracular manual that provides predictions of the future. Seeking answers, the user inquires of the I Ching via tossing special coins or sticks while contemplating their question. From the tossed coins or sticks, the user can create what is called a “hexagram”, to which different chapters of the I Ching corresponds. Each hexagram is constructed via a series of six lines, broken or unbroken, reflecting the energy of the user’s current situation. Once the user has constructed their hexagram, they then consult the index of the I Ching to find which chapter holds the answer to their question.

Once again, what we have here, is a randomizer that points the attention of the user to certain narrative archetypes, allowing them to draw a conclusion via their interpretation of the chapter. The I Ching was first fully translated in 1882 by Scottish missionary, James Legge. It came to fame in the 1960s as hippie counterculture sought to explore aspects of eastern mysticism in search of enlightenment. But the I Ching has enjoyed more interesting success in the western world through the shaping of popular culture literature. In 1962, famed Science Fiction novelist, Philip K. Dick used the I Ching to plot and write his classic alternative history novel, The Man in the High Castle. Dick writes:

The Man in the High Castle, which won the Hugo Award in 1962, and has since been adapted into an Amazon TV series tells of an alternative timeline in which Germany won world war two and America is now under the control of both the Nazi’s and the Japanese. 37 Dick, Philip K., and Paul Mountfort.

We’ve seen this plot riffed on recently in video games, through the reboot of the Wolfenstein Series, primarily in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus in which the player must free America from a Nazi regime. Through using the I Ching to plot his book, Dick created a philosophically and (some might say) spiritually dense work of fiction, where the ending provides us, the reader, with some uncomfortable implications about the nature of reality. In the novel, a reoccurring motif is that of another alternate-reality novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy written by the eponymous man in the high castle. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy details a world in which the Allied Forces won world war two and in the final pages of the novel, is revealed to have also been written using the I Ching as a plotting device, suggesting that their dimension is just one of many, and that ours is too. In Figure 2, we can see an example of predictions made by the I Ching during the plotting of the novel.

BEHOLD, THE MULTIVERSE!

As a solution to certain problems in quantum mechanics, Hugh Everett proposed in 1957 the idea of the Many World Interpretation (MWI). Departing from the formerly dominant Copenhagen School of quantum physics, the MWI suggests that instead of “wave function collapse,” in which observation determines quantum states, there is a “universal wave function” (all possible states, and therefore worlds, exist.) Physicist Bryce De Witt describes the shocking philosophical implications of this theory:

This is a crazy thought when relating to (some) narrative design work that we might find ourselves doing. As John Gribbin, a science fiction writer and astrophysicist states:

THE READERLY AND WRITERLY TEXTS

In 1970, the literary theorist Roland Barthes released his book S/Z in which he wrote almost prophetically about the future of story. He and others foresaw a day when literature would cross the border of the passive and move into the active. At the time – a time before the internet and digital gaming – he had no idea how this would look, but to map out the future, he wrote of two things: lisible texts (readerly) and scriptible texts (writerly). These two terms were a way to define both the “old” (passive) approach to storytelling and the “new” (active - which as we’ve just argued is actually quite an ancient tradition!) Barthes described Novels, Film and TV as being readerly texts. These are stories that present worlds filled with easy-to-understand characters and events. Stories that require only the passive act of reading or watching to understand. The Writerly text on the other hand was something quite different. With a Writerly text, the audience would, Barthes imagined, become active in their consumption. These were stories that were self-aware, stories that required mental or physical action from the audience to be able to be understood. Novels like James Joyce’s Ulysses, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates all fit under this definition. The Unfortunates in particular experiments with elements of play and form in ways only the 1960s could produce. Although the first and last chapter of the novel were defined as such, everything else was presented to the reader unbound and randomized – the idea being that besides from the beginning and the end, everything else could be read in any order to create a unique story for every person who engaged with it.

A more modern example of the Writerly text is of course, Mark Z. Danielewski’s brilliant House of Leaves – a horror novel (of sorts) that uses font size, style and colour, along with strange formatting, blank space, hidden codes as well as multiple and conflicting experiences to tell the bizarre and terrifying story of a house that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Danielewski’s novel encourages readers to actively search for answers within the text themselves, often provoking emotional responses ranging from curiosity, excitement, and fear, all the way to feelings of claustrophobia, agoraphobia and bizarrely – both cosmic pessimism and hope. And yet, as we have just observed in the last few pages, Barthes wasn’t creating anything new. Legends, Myths, Folktales, Magic, and Divination Engines – these are all versions of the Writerly text. Regardless of whether you believe in their mystical powers or not, these texts hold the unique ability to capture audiences through the conscious and subconscious mind, as they shape their own stories based off archetypes and micro-narratives. And of modern gaming – both analog and digital, we are seeing writerly texts developed and explored by players and storytellers. Even the story bibles and game design documents we build in-house, behind the scenes, fit into this category. You’d be hard pressed to argue that the way we move around such documents is not a non-linear, interactive experience that mirrors Barthes ideas on this ergodic form of literature. And when that design document is interpreted like an architect’s blueprints, something truly special is created. When a player travels the paths which we have built, they are experiencing a Writerly text, and narrative design in action.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS

Merely years after Barthes proposed to us the idea of Readerly Texts and Writerly Texts, we begin to see his prediction take shape in the form of a small tabletop roleplaying game named Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) first published in 1974. D&D finds its ludological origins in war games like War Chess (1811), Kriegspiel (1824), and H.G. Wells’ Little Wars (1913).

Writes Jennifer Grouling Cover in her book, The Creation of Narrative In Tabletop Role-Playing Games,

Interestingly, and perhaps obviously, D&D was heavily inspired by the fantasy works of JRR Tolkien. It has long been held among scholars that Tolkien, in his lamentations that England’s body of folklore was lost to history, wrote The Book of Lost Tales, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as an attempt to reconstruct what that body of folklore might be. While it is in recent times debatable whether this is exactly, one hundred percent true, Tolkien himself did write of his work that:

From his passion for languages and his desire for folktales “bound up with its (England’s) tongue and soil” Tolkien went on to create his fantasy epics, and while his purpose may not have been, in the end, to totally reconstruct an English body of myth, he was definitely influenced by the few scraps of ancient story that had been found in England at the time, as well as the surrounding northern countries. In fact, in the same letter, Tolkien writes:

Tolkien considered his intention to do the above as having failed, but the point remains – he drew from folkloric traditions and motifs to build his universe, a universe from which the creators of D&D were inspired by in their own development process.

Though they may not have realized it, the creators of D&D were drawing on the ancient lineage of interactive storytelling that we’ve been exploring in this chapter. The playing of D&D as a “response to literature and a way of interacting with literary worlds”12 is simply just another example of folkloric storytelling opening up to that “grey space in the middle,” to become prosumers instead of consumers, and co-creators instead of passive audiences.

Footnotes

I wanted to just draw your attention to a secondary newsletter I’ve just released on Substack - Project: FarBodies.

This has been the centre of my world for the past four years, and it’s a massive undertaking. For those who don’t know, I grew up in the hardcore punk music scene - a subculture of loud music and passionate people who rally around each other and support each other and try to make the world a better, more accepting place.

For a very long time, I watched talented musician friends, activists, and organizers, use their unique talents to better this scene. Though I dabbled in bands for a while as a vocalist, my real passion is obviously writing and storytelling, and so, I was always uncertain about how I could contribute in this way.

Project: FarBodies is my answer to that question - a sprawling, transmedia saga set in a world of horror and urban decay. It follows the exploits of punks, outcasts and hardcore kids as they unite with their local community and do battle against supernatural forces and corporate overreach.

If you wanna know more, or are interested in supporting the vision - rock on over the the Project: FarBodies newsletter and sign up for updates. Thank you in advance, for all your support!

Nick

Ancient storytelling was incredibly interactive. As cavemen, we sat around campfires sharing tales with one another about the outside world. This is of course, how story was first born. It was a way of conveying instructions for survival in a dangerous world when our ancestors had to go out to retrieve food, resources, and (unfortunately) slaves. While hiding up a tree or in the back of a cave, the storyteller would lead his tribe in an almost trance-like ritual of explanation, in which others might chime in and completely change the direction of the tale being told. In this way, storytelling was birthed through conversation. Arguably, storytelling only came under “authorial control” with the invention of the written word. Cultures without writing, instead conversed with one another so as to remember and keep their traditions alive. If we take a moment to understand the nature of these kinds of non-linear conversational narratives, then we can use this understanding to help us in building authentic story worlds. But first, we need to rediscover those modes of story.

SEMANTIC CHANGE

Over time, the meaning of words change. The word “Awful” once meant “filled with awe” and was used to describe religious fervour. For us today, that word now means something which is horrible or bad. In linguistics, this is called semantic change – when a word evolves over time to the point in which the modern meaning is radically removed from its original usage. In the world of Pop Culture storytelling, we’ve allowed semantic change to confuse our understanding of legends, myths and folktales. These are not originally interchangeable terms, though we often use them as such. And a quick disclaimer here: Because semantic change has so muddled these terms, we are using the word “Folklore” as an umbrella term which sits above all others. It’s important to clarify that while folktales and folk practices are a kind of folklore, they are not the only kind. So, let’s take a moment to explore these separate narrative phenomena’s and rediscover their meanings.

LEGENDS

I began this book with a quote from perhaps two of the earliest folklorists in the western tradition – Jacob and Ludwig Grimm. In their 1818 book, Deutsche Sagen or German Legends in English, Jacob Grimm writes:

Roughly translated, Grimm’s quote is as follows:

“The tale is poetic, the legend, historical.”

Although they may contain elements of the supernatural or the miraculous (such as monsters, ghosts, or divine intervention), legends are typically considered to be truthful in some way. Their claims may be hard or even impossible to verify, but more often than not, they are considered in some way to be of historical origins. Legends are often based on real figures, places, and events. Interestingly, this historical core becomes distorted and exaggerated over time due to the legend being passed down from generation to generation and essentially interacted with and changed. With all these sub-genres of folklore, the listener becomes the next storyteller, and with each new storyteller, the legend is edited and added to, so that its narrative might become “better” in the eyes of the teller. This unreliability, this elasticity, allows the tales being told to be perceived and explored in new and different ways with every generation it endures. Legends tend to take on cultural and sometimes spiritual significance. Stories like King Arthur and his Knights, Robin Hood, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or even Homer’s Illiad, fit the bill when we talk about stories that may have some basis in historical fact.

In his essay “It happened Not Too Far From Here…”: A Survey of Legend Theory and Characterization, folklorist, Timothy Tangherlini takes us through a summary of definitions for legends, all the way from Grimm in the 1800s to modern folklorists of the 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s. Although he was unable to find a definition that fits perfectly, he managed to distil the important bits into the following quote:

Now that’s a whole bunch of big academic words, but breaking it down into layman’s terms, Tangherlini is basically saying: legends are short, episodic, traditional stories that are specifically located in terms of their real-world settings. They are shared through oral tradition, and are an example of how beliefs, superstitions and collective experiences confirm the values and morals of the people to whom the legend belongs.

Understanding this definition of legends allows us to incorporate a deeper level of context to our standard video game quest narratives. Quest narratives are defined as in-game activities..

When we understand a quest in terms of legend, we can ground activities in our games even deeper into the world building. Consider how most fantasy RPG games include at some stage an optional side-quest to track down the strongest weapon or armour in the game. Often times these side-quests are comprised of collecting several items that will unlock a hidden chamber in an ancient temple or ask the player to kill a series of high-level enemies, each holding a clue to the weapon/armour’s location.

Contextualizing these kinds of side-quests as being derived from legend integrates both the journey and its reward smoothly into the world, making it feel less gamey and more authentic to the immersive qualities of your story - We are seeking the lost sword of Galahad who was said to have existed during the Diluvian era of our game-world’s past and according to some, found in his final resting place, deep within a nameless mountain in the north-eastern region of the map. Now, instead of the player purely looking for a weapon to make them unstoppable, they are engaging in a legend passed down through the centuries. Likewise, the gameplay involved in this quest can now become more diverse – yes, perhaps we still need to collect seven keys, or kill all twenty mercenaries patrolling the map, but we can also include things like red herrings (perhaps there are several conflicting versions of the legend floating around that have regional differences), exploration and navigation, research, investigation and other such tasks that focus the player’s attention on the story, rather than on features of play like collecting points or items, killing or beating game AI, escorting NPCS, etc. By shifting the focus, we turn gameplay into the underlying skeleton or architecture, allowing players to simply immerse themselves in the world instead.

MYTHS

What is a myth then? We’ll cover this one pretty quickly. The Oxford University Press’ A Dictionary of English Folklore by Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud defines myth simply as:

We can immediately see some big differences here between Myths and Legends. Legends are based (supposedly) off of historical events, people, and places. They focus on humans, although those humans’ abilities can become exaggerated over time through the game of telephone played by storytellers. Myths on the other hand, focus themselves on the divine and play out on a larger, more cosmic stage. Myths can be deeply symbolic. They are not giving an account of an actual event, rather their focus is more on conveying an important truth to those who listen to their telling. Myths explain the unexplainable – creation, long forgotten migrations, the weather, what happens when we die, etcetera, etcetera.

We see here that the primary purpose of a myth is to teach a spiritual truth to the listener through allegory and mysticism. And once again, like all the subgenres within folklore, myths are passed down often through oral tradition, mutating as they move from one generation to the next. If we consider myths as being closely related to religion and mysticism, then we find ourselves with a rather handy framework to, just like we did with legends, shift gameplay mechanics beneath the surface and allow for greater immersion into the story world. For example, let’s consider magic systems in games – all too often, magic in games feels at best, a little uninspired – you’ve got your fire spells, your water spells, your earth spells, and your wind spells. Magic most regularly features as a series of elemental powers in games. Occasionally, we might up the ante by include light and dark spells on top of those initial four, but rarely do games move past these categories. And yet, in the real-world, when we look at the history of occultism – whether it’s the astral magic of the middle eastern Picatrix, the ceremonial practices of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the more down-to-earth magic of the European Cunning Women and Le Petit Albert, or the trance-based experiences of Shamanism, magic is a far more diverse and interesting discipline than just air, earth, water and fire. By connecting our magic systems to the religious mythologies of our fictional worlds, we open ourselves up to a more creative interpretation of how spellcasting might look for our players.

FOLKTALES

“Das Märchen ist poetischer, die Sage, historische.”

“The tale is poetic. The legend, historical.”

The word Märchen is defined as meaning:

As such, we can confidently say that Märchen, which translates to “fairy tale” in English, is a good place to start when defining the concept of a folktale. Following Grimm’s premise here, we can also assume that the folktale is more “poetic” in nature – which unfortunately doesn’t give us too much to go on.

But what do you think of when you hear the term “folktale”?

For me, my mind casts up images of leprechauns and changelings. Doppelgängers and Elves. I think of old superstitions – placing iron above your door to keep out the fae, or a pair of scissors beneath your pillow to protect against witches. Perhaps your mind goes somewhere a bit more modern – stories like Bloody Mary, The Hook Man or The Missing Hitchhiker. Perhaps you think of the countless Creepypastas that now exist online – Slenderman, No-End House, Anansi’s Goatman, the list goes on…

It’s interesting that such a term casts up so many variations in our heads. Unlike Legends and Myths, the folktale is much more personal in nature. It’s not about gods or goddesses, demons, or vast cosmic powers. It’s not about great wars, mighty heroes, or exaggerated outlaws (although these things can all sometimes make an appearance.) Rather, folktales are about us. They’re about our fears, our superstitions. They’re about the little things we don’t know or can’t understand in our world. That definition of a Myth I mentioned earlier from Oxford? It goes on to state that:

And so, we come to something of a definition for this unusual sub-genre. Like legends and myths, folktales are popular stories that move from generation to generation, person to person, via word of mouth. Also, like legends and myths, folktales are often so old, the original author has been forgotten. However, folktales have an incredibly unique point of difference in the way they are told. It is almost as if they are less sacred than the previous two.

Why is this?

Well, perhaps it is because folktales enjoy the ability to shapeshift like the creatures they are often about. Often, you will find there are many different versions of the same folktale going at once. They can be slightly or vastly different, come from competing sources and even be contradictory in nature. Think for example, of the urban myth Bloody Mary. Who is Mary? Is she a corpse as some versions of the story suggest? Is she a witch, as posited by others? Or a ghost – as is the case in the version I first heard as a child? And never mind who she is, what about what she does when you summon her? Is she a friend or a foe? Covered in blood or not covered in blood? Does she scream at you, do your bidding, curse you, reveal the way you will die, strangle you, drink your blood or scratch your eyes out?

The answer is, of course, that she is all of these things and more – depending on what version of the folktale you hear and/or identify with. As Game Designers we can use this fluid-nature of the folktale to surprise and excite players as they explore our worlds. Imagine hearing the folktale of a particularly nasty monster dwelling in a nearby forest. You gain what knowledge you can from the story, prepare your weapons and potions, then head out to find the creature. You encounter it, only to discover there are several surprising aspects of the creature that you didn’t previously know about.

Perhaps you’re being chased by a mob of vicious fairies, and you remember hearing from an NPC earlier something about them not being able to stand the touch of iron. You hunt through an abandoned building, sneaking around, trying not to draw the little monster’s attention, and upon discovering an iron bar on the floor, set about taking the fight to them. What if you’re being pursued by a vampire and remembering one of the old stories you’ve heard through the course of the game, you drop from your inventory all the bags of grain you’ve picked up while exploring random barrels and boxes around the world. The vampire, upon seeing you drop these items immediately stops and starts to count them all, giving your more time to escape or find a means of killing it. These are just some of the ways folktales can manifest in gameplay, and again, they bring narrative context to mechanics, so that immersion is all the easier for the player.

FOLK PRACTICES

While we now have three clear definitions on the different kinds of folklore, we also need to explore the tools or vocabulary in which these sub-genres are expressed throughout history and cultures. This vocabulary is termed by anthropologists as folk practices and are intern divided into five more sub-sub-genres. These are:

1. Verbal tradition

2. Material culture

3. Customs

4. Childlore, and…

5. Folk History.

Verbal Tradition

Verbal tradition relates to both the written and spoken word, songs, chants, poems, etc. It is important to note that Verbal lore is repetitive. A simple conversation will not suffice, rather verbal lore is defined by those words and phrases that conform to some kind of traditional pattern known to the speaker and the audience. For example, the phrase “Why did the chicken cross the road?” tags for us that this is a joke and the next sentence to be uttered shall be the punchline. “Once upon a time…” signals to us that this is a story, and quite probably a fairy tale. Verbal tradition can be used to convey chants, prayers, curses, songs, fables, fairy tales, poetry, ghost stories, greetings, jokes, oaths, limericks, myths, legends, proverbs, tongue-twisters, urban legends and many others.

MATERIAL CULTURE

Material culture is all about physical artifacts of folk belief. These are things that you can touch, hold, live in or eat. These physical objects can be produced by artisans and be unique (such as idols, carvings, or shrines). They can also be massed produced (think Tiki Cups or fridge magnets). Material culture can convey folk beliefs through things like paintings, embroidery, costume, holistic medicines, food and recipes, toys, decorations, pottery, sculptures and carvings, architecture, and many others.

CUSTOMS

Customs are defined as remembered enactment or re-enactment. These are often closely related with socially appropriate movements or acts and can cross over with other genres. Customs convey folk beliefs through things like handshakes, special events (birthday parties for example), games, manners, hand signals, and many others.

CHILDLORE

If there were such thing as a sub-sub-sub-genre, then childlore would be it. With childlore, we are looking at all the other folk practices, filtered through the understanding of children. As such, childlore has historical been difficult to record, since children often tend to be more secretive about their world. Childlore might include things like nursery rhymes, hopscotch, jokes, urban legends and playground songs, amongst others.

FOLK HISTORY

Lastly, we have folk history, which is essentially the act of recording folk traditions – something that in many places has become a tradition in and of itself.

MAGIC

We touched on magic in games a little earlier, but let’s go slightly further here and make a few notes about the traditions of magic in the real-world for the sake of covering these sub-genres accurately. Although there are hundreds of versions of magic out there, for the sake of simplicity, we can categorize them into two groups – High Magic and Low Magic, otherwise known as Ceremonial Magic and Folk Magic or Shamanism.

Ceremonial magic is likely what you, the reader, are most familiar with. You will have seen it your entire life in films, books, and games, though chances are, the authors of those texts have spiced the concept up a bit for the sake of drama. Simply put, Ceremonial Magic is a religious or spiritual practice in which the magician or practitioner performs complex rituals with the purpose of achieving various forms of enlightenment. Ceremonial magic relies on ritualism, book-learning, reliance on the positioning of celestial bodies, the worship of gods and the pondering of various esoteric philosophies. As with all things, there is also an element of classism involved with magic. Ceremonial magic is typified as a form of occultism belonging to the upper-class, the educated and the priestly – those who are special initiates to secret gnosis (knowledge).

Folk Magic or Shamanism, on the other hand, is to my mind, much more interesting. While folk magic also involves rituals and chants, it is also inclusive of herbalism, palmistry, lucky charms, talismans, divination, astral projection and the manipulation of spirits and other supernatural entities. Folk Magic is often the magic of the people. The lower-class, the uneducated, the cunning women, grannies, shaman, and hoodoo practitioners. Folk magic is more grounded, more earthy, and while it often maintains a connection to religious beliefs around gods, goddesses, sin, and salvation, it tends to make use of complex (and often contradictory) matrixes of folktales, myths and legends to define its cosmology, rather than simply relying on orthodoxy. To give an example, Hoodoo magic derives from various traditional African religious practices and indigenous botanical knowledge. Yet, it also incorporates elements of folklore from the United States, as well as Tarot and elements of Christian (Catholic) mysticism.

Exploring unique magic systems in further detail is beyond the scope of this book, but if this concept has sparked interest in you, I would highly recommend that you track down and devour the book Game Magic: A Designer’s Guide to Magic Systems in Theory and Practice by Jeff Howard, as he presents an absolutely stunning exploration of this topic for both scholars and practitioners of game design alike.

CTHULHU RULES THE WORLD

Okay, phewph! That was a lot to get through, right? Well, we’re not done yet! Now that we have a working definition of what folklore is exactly, it’s time to explore how folklore spreads so that we can understand the ways in which we can artificially develop it within our own work. And to do this, we’re actually going to move away from history and religion for a moment to instead, plunge ourselves headfirst into one of my favourite nerd-culture subjects – The Cthulhu Mythos.

You’ve heard of that right?

The giant octopus headed alien god invented by that horribly racist writer H P Lovecraft, and popularized by Tabletop Roleplaying Games, Comic books, Video games, and more recently Film and TV, like HBO’s Lovecraft Country (2020) or SpectreVision’s The Color out of Space (2019).

Talk about a sharp left-hand turn, right? Well, the truth is, Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos have a lot to do with what we’ve been discussing so far.

But before I get started, I want to give credit where credit is due - to the wonderful YouTube channel, Tales Foundry. The case study we are about to pursue is not of my own making, rather it is explored in their video “Are H.P. Lovecraft’s Mythos Actual Myth?” [sic]7

In it, Tales Foundry argue that the Cthulhu Mythos is not just the product of clever world building but is instead an example of how an actual body of folklore can be artificially developed in the modern era.

When you consider Lovecraft’s canon and the canon of those who carried on the Lovecraftian tradition after his death, you see that the Cthulhu Mythos bears a strong resemblance to a body of folklore which explores the concerns of post-modern existentialism. It does this through dark philosophies, studious humans, incomprehensible monsters, and alien gods. But the true point of difference between Lovecraft’s mythos and the mythos of say… JRR Tolkein or JK Rowling, for example, is that the Cthulhu Mythos exhibits something known as Mimetic Circulation.

We’ve been talking about mimetic circulation for a while now, though I’ve not named it as such. Mimetic circulation is when a story is told, then altered, then told then altered, then told then altered again, ad infinitum, until it becomes so changed by this continual exchange that it reflects something about those who tell it. The actual content of the folklore becomes unimportant at this stage. In these instances, the content, and indeed, the very vocabulary being used, become more akin to props on a theatrical stage. Props that are used primarily out of habit to project the ideas, feelings and fears of the cultures and people who appropriated those stories.

Somehow, HP Lovecraft, a down-on-his-luck ultra-racist, pulp-horror writer managed to do this. If you’ve read any of his work, you’ll have noticed this, even if you weren’t aware what it was called. Throughout his collection of short stories and novellas, Lovecraft often makes throw-away references to books, artefacts, gods, monsters and other such “props.” These random references then appear again in later stories with greater detail, effectively tying his work together with an underlying framework. The town of Arkham, for example, was just a reference, originally appearing in Lovecraft’s story The Picture in the House, before becoming a hub for the supernatural in later works. Dagon began as the title of a short story completely independent from the great and terrible God that would one day be worshipped by evil cultists in one of his greatest works, The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

On top of his seemingly flippant approach to world building, Lovecraft also encouraged his writer friends to develop their own stories using his fictional creations. They would adopt his props into their work, and in return he would adopt theirs into his. This broadened the mythos greatly. The writer Clark Ashton Smith created the toad-like entity Tsathoggua in his story The Tale of Satampra Zeiros. Lovecraft later used the same creature in The Whisperer in Darkness. Frank Belknap wrote of a version of Lovecraft’s Necronomicon (an ancient evil grimoire) as being translated by the real-world scholar, Dr John Dee. Afterwards, Lovecraft began referencing the “John Dee translation” of the Necronomicon in his own work.

As a result of all this swapping and connecting of ideas, a larger body of literature began to grow around a pantheon of gods, monsters and their human victims. After his death, as the number of authors contributing to this pantheon grew (Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Neil Gaiman and Laird Barron to name just a few), the lore of this fantastical world became a cacophony of stories – some were badly written, and many were often contradictory. But it started something. A spark was lit, and from it, Lovecraftian horror as a genre was born.

The Cthulhu Mythos became more than just worldbuilding. And now, with the original works of Lovecraft all existing in the public domain, his mythos has opened up to anyone who wants to contribute, and just like real folklore, it has become alive, interactive and to date, more than a hundred years after his death – ever growing.

Footnotes:

I am so sorry, America, for what's happening to your country - and what is likely to come. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, it's terrifying to see how much more dangerous life is about to be for women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color in your country and abroad. Electing a criminal with a dictator's ambitions is heartbreaking, and it’s an even greater tragedy that, at the voting booth, so many people didn’t even show up. Many that did gleefully welcome the continuation of racism, mysogyny and bigotry - for reasons I find unfathomable to understand.

Some of you may be offended by my critiques. You might tell me, “You’re not American, so stay out of it.” I understand that perspective; and if it was any other country we were talking about, I might agree. Unfortunately though, when it comes to America, none of us can truly ignore what’s going on. You are the most powerful nation out there. Whoever you vote in as president has an impact on the whole world.

I live in New Zealand—about as far from the U.S. as possible—and still, this election will affect me. It will shift global markets and raise prices. It will embolden extremists worldwide - my own country included. The geo-political structure of our world is also likely about to change, and it’ll be a mad-dash between authoritarian superpowers to take America’s place at the top.

We can of course hope that Trump and his cronies are just all talk, or that they’re too incompetent to enact their agenda, but history sadly suggests otherwise. In the past, when fascists tell you they’re a fascist, usually, you’d best believe them.

This time around, I felt I could no longer stay silent.

If you’ve noticed my username—The Punk Writer—you may have guessed my background. I spent my teenage years in the hardcore music scene, an offshoot of punk that has a deep commitment to activism, equality, and antifascism. Funnily enough, I was also raised in an evangelical Christian environment. I went to church every Sunday, listened to Hillsong, and even attended conversion therapy sessions to try and “fix” myself. I watched Alex Jones documentaries, and for a large part of my life, subscribed to almost every fearmongering ideology pushed my way. Thankfully, I broke free of that destructive path, but as a result, I do understand a little bit about the religious and cultural environment that has created the mess we are now all in.

But being gay in that world was also a blessing in disguise. That hidden part of me, the one I tried to repress, was like a grain of sand within an oyster: an irritant that eventually formed something valuable in my life - endurance. In the end, it wasn’t God that saved me, but my own identity, and the support of my local hardcore scene. Learning to think for myself and embracing who I am made me stronger. I came out the other side knowing in my very core, the power of resistance.

And so, I want to speak to those of you who feel terrified right now. Those of you who are wondering whether you, your family, or your loved ones will be safe under this new regime. Feeling afraid is normal, but I encourage you not to stay in that place for very long.

In the words of my favourite Manga artist, Kentaro Miura:

I may not be there with you on the front lines, I may just be a keyboard warrior right now, but if that’s the space I’m able to work from, then by god, I’ll wield this keyboard as deadly as I can.

To understand what lies ahead, we have to understand the fascism of our past - and how it has always been defeated. If you’re looking for specific tips on how to survive police brutality, or disrupt alt-right meetings, that’s beyond my skill-set. I’d suggest you read the fantastic book The Antifascist Handbook by Mark Bray - which you can find a free PDF of HERE.

What I can do, is give you a powerful narrative tool that I’ve found has served me well in my own life. It is my genuine hope that this will help keep you moving in the war to come.

It’s important to remember that Fascist regimes, no matter how powerful, always burn out. They may consolidate their power through fear and manipulation, but they are ultimately unsustainable. Authoritarians like Trump, the MAGA Republicans and the Heritage Foundation will not succeed. They will be unable to build a sustainable movement without eventually destabilizing themselves. Regimes like theirs always self-destruct.

And their leaders?

…It never ends well for them, that’s for sure…

Consider Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco - three human monsters who once ruled their nations through terror. Despite decades in power, each was ultimately brought down, not just by outside forces but internal resistance as well: Mussolini was executed, his body hung on display to be mutilated by his surviving victims. Hitler faced military defeat and took his own life. Franco's Spain transformed rapidly into a democracy upon his death. Fascist governments can take a while to dethrone, but with continued resistance, their defeat is inevitable.

America, your battle may not be short, easy, or without consequence. But there is always hope. And that is really what I want to talk to you about today.

For a while now, in my own life, I’ve come to embrace something about my personality that I was always taught to be undesirable:

Pessimism.

I’ve always been a brooding, melancholic soul. But unlike the Pessimist Philosophers of the past, I’ve always found myself clinging to a tiny, dark, hope. But over time, I’ve come to believe that hope and pessimism are not mutually exclusive. When combined, they create Hopeful Pessimism. An outlook that I argue is a powerful guiding principle in the face of evil.

Hopeful Pessimists believe that while things are likely to get worse, and while we may all be doomed, we fight regardless. As things get worse, and victory moves further out of reach, we persist. We struggle not because we expect to win, but because doing so is a profoundly human act of courage. We recognize the grim reality of our world, but refuse to be paralyzed by it. While we may not see immediate changes, we can still work toward a different future.

The Hopeful Pessimist doesn’t sugarcoat reality. We face truth directly. We acknowledge challenges, systemic flaws and the limitations of our world. We embrace the mystery of it all, accepting uncertainty and unpredictability as a part of existence. Through this, we stray grounded, we don’t get cocky, and we prepare for both setbacks and breakthrough.

The Hopeful Pessimist questions idealistic solutions. We believe that Blind Optimism poses a greater threat to the world than a brooding, negative person ever could. We reject the arguments that “things will work themselves out,” that “everything will be okay,” or that “somebody else will solve this.” Instead, we look for practical steps that yield improvement.

We don’t dream of a better day, arriving all on its own. A new world must be birthed - with all the pain and blood and screaming that comes with such an act. We take each moment as it comes and respond accordingly. We continue forward despite setbacks.

We struggle. We resist. We push.

We don’t give in. We don’t surrender. We never accept despair.

Despair is unhelpful.

Fear, as they say, is the mind-killer.

Lastly, we recognize that humans have more in common than they don’t. We support one another and find solidarity in relationships. We understand that there is no Messiah, no Chosen One on a Hero’s Journey, coming to save us. We must save ourselves. Our enemy is not an individual villain, but a broken system that perpetuates villains. It is an enemy too big for one person to defeat. So we aim to form a collective - one that embraces and leverages the identities, quirks, strengths and weaknesses of all of us to fix, or do away with that system - come what may.

To those who feel helpless, I encourage you to find strength in this message. We’ve all of us, spent so much of our lives being told to think positive, to believe that negativity is dangerous and wrong. I’m here to tell you now:

That is a lie.

Hopeful Pessimism affords us a look at the world without the rose-tinted glasses. We recognize darkness, and call it out for what it is. We provokes meaningful change.

So my friends, as you face this new threat and prepare to confront it, I ask that you not be a passive observor. You don’t have to fight on the frontlines, but you have to do something. Whether that’s creating art, caring for those at risk, attending protests, or engaging in affirmative action, find out what you were meant to do and do it. Unite with one another and create pockets of progress - pockets of rebellion. Stand firm. Be Punk. Even in the face of persecution.

As fascism rises around the globe and our planet continues to warm at an alarming rate, we may very well all be doomed. But regardless of the outcome, our resistance remains invaluable. Once it’s all over and the dust settles on our dying planet, we will have transcended death in some small way. Our struggle living on long after the last human is gone.

Struggle Strugglers. It’s the only way we’ll get through.

Love you all,

Nick

As the player explores the bog and interacts with the children of the orphanage, their supervisor Gran, the mysterious childlike Godling named Johnny and of course the Crones themselves, they discover that Gran’s job is actually to fatten up the children and feed them to the Crones in exchange for them looking after the surrounding area.

FOLKLORIC MOTIFS IN THE WITCHER 3

In the world of academia, when one aims to develop a research paper or study, one of the first things required of them is to establish a research methodology. A research methodology is, in layman’s terms, the approach taken by the researcher to identify, select, process and analyse information about their topic. This methodology is explained within the final paper and is used by the reader to critically evaluate the study’s overall trustworthiness. It essentially gives the reader a lens by which to explore the work through. In this chapter, we are going to explore a fascinating methodology that has appeared in recent years as a way to understand folkloric motifs in popular media, and we’re going to use The Witcher to do it. Understanding this is important to more than just academics. Why? Because by understanding the lens we are looking through, will help us understand how to make our story worlds more compelling, more engaging. Folklore is about intimacy as much as it is about anything else. Myth is opera, but folklore is nose-to-nose. So, let’s take a step back and look at this section of the game for a moment, shall we?

The whole experience has a darkly pagan vibe and while The Witcher III is very much a campy D&D style fantasy game, encountering the crones feels distinctly terrifying and in-line with the sub-genre of folk-horror. If we examine the lore of the area, we will see that there are several distinctly folkloric motifs at play. Let us look at them intern:

1. A Cursed Swamp:

While not exact, Crookback Bog functions essentially as a cursed or forbidden forest within which no man, woman or child may travel without putting themselves in great danger. The Forbidden forest itself is a reoccurring motif found in folklore across the world – particularly, and most relevantly, in Northern European cultures, of which, The Witcher IP is partly inspired by.2 On top of this, the motif of Abandonment in a Forest is also quite common in the same area and makes an appearance in the game via the children being gifted to the Crones in exchange for a blessing. It’s interesting also, that the Forbidden Forest here is a swamp – the player must cross forms of water to reach the orphanage and the crones. Water is a regular symbol in folk-literature, signifying the passing of the hero from the realm of the living and into the special world, the realm of fairies or ultimately, the realm of the dead.3

2. Three Crones (Or Witches):

The three witches, the Ladies of the Wood also have a strong basis on various folk traditions across the world. The Lady of the Wood is a motif in Germanic folklore, as noted by Jacob Grimm,4 and we also find the motif of Three Witch Sisters throughout Europe as well.5

3. A Trail of Sweets:

Magic Sweets are often a staple element of fairy tales (think Hansel and Gretel and the Gingerbread House) and are used to lure children to their doom.6 In Jewish folklore, we find trails that guide characters in the direction of an Otherworld.7 Additionally, the folktales of India make references to paths in which characters are forbidden to step outside of, or else face certain death.8

4. Children Being Eaten:

We see children abducted in Icelandic lore,9 children murdered in both Irish and Jewish stories,10 children being abandoned (or exposed to the wilderness),11 Witches stealing children,12 children being sold or promised to someone or something,13 and in ancient Greece, we have, of course, the Lamia – a Witch famous for devouring children.14

5. The Godling “Johnny”:

One of the more interesting characters encountered by the player during this section of the game is Johnny, the Godling. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what mythical creature Johnny is based on. In Slavic folklore, the Bożątko is a benevolent household spirit upon which it has been suggested Johnny the Godling is based.15 Another term floated around in relation to the Godling is Lutin.16 The Lutin, has its origin in French folklore and is essentially a Hobgoblin or Gnome.17

6. Sacrifice For The Good Of The Community:

Lastly, we have the concept of sacrifice to witches for the good of the community by the villages surrounding the bog. This is a take on an ancient archetype found throughout history, the world over. This is the typical belief system of an agrarian cult, or agrarian motivated society. The Benandanti cult of the Friuli Region in Italy, for example, held the belief that people born under a certain sign had the power and responsibility to travel at specific times of the year in astral form, to do battle with the Malandanti (evil witches.) The Benandanti would carry fronds of fennel as weapons, while the Malandanti would use sticks of sorghum (theorized by some to be the origin of the witch’s broomstick). In the spirit, these two factions would fight for the outcome of crops. If the Benandanti won, the crops would be prosperous. If the witches won, the crops would fail.18

The same can be seen from the testimony of Thiess of Kaltenbrun, a Livonian man put on trial for being a werewolf in Jürgensburg, Swedish Livonia, in 1692. Thiess claimed that a group of God-fearing Werewolves would chase evil witches once a year into hell to do battle over various stolen seeds, fruits and vegetables. If the wolves brought the stolen produce back to the surface, the crops would succeed, if not, they would fail.19

While not 100% accurate to the motif we see in the Witcher, the act of interacting with witches resulting in some kind of blessing or curse is similar enough (and common enough) to include here.

As you can see, just from this small selection, taken from just a tiny part of an expansive game, we have a lot of elements that are almost complete adaptations of folkloric traditions from across the globe. Yet, what is important to note, is that these motifs either come from different geographical locations around the world or share only similarities to the existing real-world traditions.

THE FOLKLORESQUE

In fact, this is a common occurrence in a lot of entertainment recently – this sense that we are engaging with texts drawn directly from ancient traditions, yet, upon further exploration, are inspired by folklore, rather than being direct adaptations. Associate Professor of Folklore and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Michael Dylan Foster explores this phenomenon along with other contributors in his essay collection The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World. For Foster, this was first discovered when he was asked to give a talk on the belief systems behind Studio Ghibli’s fantastic film Spirited Away (2001).

Upon realizing that Spirited Away was not explicitly based on Yokai, Kami, Oni or any other Japanese tradition found in Shintoism, Foster termed the phrase the folkloresque to describe the phenomenon. He writes:

The folkloresque acts as a buff of sorts, imbuing a story with a sense of authenticity and allowing audiences to interpret the work as being derived from something larger and steeped in history.

We can see this happening particularly with the Witcher franchise. While being partly inspired by Polish folklore (the original book series being written by Polish author Andrzej Sapjowski), the series draws from a multitude of sources, but has since been (re)incorporated into the folk traditions of Poland. During his visit to Poland in 2011, President Barack Obama was even gifted a copy of the game The Witcher 2, along with two of the books that inspired it, as a representation of Polish culture.22 The Folkloresque is an important concept to understand as we move into the rest of this book as it contextualizes everything that I’m about to suggest in relation to building complex and exciting game narratives.

KEYS TO SAFE ADAPTATION

When dealing with folklore and traditional stories or other narrative aspects of cultures other than your own, channelling your work through the lens of the folkloresque goes a long way to avoiding cultural appropriation, as you are being inspired by, rather than copying these motifs. However, understanding the folkloresque means following a few key instructions:

1. ALWAYS consult or work with someone who belongs to the culture you’re interested in exploring. They have information you need, information you want, and information you didn’t know you needed or wanted.

2. Allow them to tell their story in COLLABORATION with you. Listen to them. They are the experts.

3. Be RESPECTFUL to the source material. Yes, mix it up, use it as inspiration to create something new, but if you’re more interested in straight up adaptation, then you need to be certain that you are creating these stories with dignity and accuracy.

4. Go straight to the SOURCE. Draw your inspiration directly from the people and cultural documents that are inspiring your Story World, rather than from other adaptive texts which may or may not have done a good job themselves in this regard. Your job is to be a professional researcher. Follow academic conventions.

CONCLUSION

We’ll delve more into the Folkloresque as we progress through this text, but for now, its adequate to have a basic understanding of what the term means, as well as the effect using it in the development of art has on the longevity and thus, the profitability of the art. Building your game through the lens of the folkloresque, strengthens your IP, making it durable. Remember in the introduction when I mentioned that folklore has the unique ability to adapt to the times? Typically, a game, or any other piece of art that sits within the canon of “popular culture” only remains popular for a short period of time. Times change, and with them, trends come and go out of fashion. Believe it or not, Zombies will not always be as pervasive in our media as they are today! But with games strengthened through the folkloresque, by deeply human themes and traditions, we’re likely to see the IP retain its longevity on the stage of popular culture for quite some time.

Footnotes:

Last week, in celebration of the spooky season, I released the first part of this four-part series tracking the historical development of horror. In that essay, which you can read HERE, we looked at the genre’s origins in the context of classical antiquity. Drawing from various mythological and folk traditions we suggested that the multicultural fear of death, use of monsters to explain the unexplainable, and religious propaganda tied to the European Witch hunts, all formed the basis for the genre that we know today.

In this follow-up essay, we’ll leap forward a few centuries to discuss the emergence of horror as a distinct literary style. Beginning with the Gothic, we’ll touch on the concept of the sublime, before moving onto Gaslight Horror and its infamous Penny Dreadfuls. However, before all that, we do need to revisit the Medieval period one final time…

Horror is an expansive subject. We’ve seen this already. A complete examination would likely fill multiple volumes. For example, we could look at the beliefs of Agrarian cults, the influence of pagan holidays or even the works of a certain William Shakespear in relation to the genre’s formation, but to do so would quickly exceede the scope of this series. While all those factors do contribute, for this series, I’m only interested in what I consider to be the core vertibrae within horror’s spine.

That being said, there is one foundational text that I missed. One that warrants discussion as it is pivotal in influencing the works we are discussing today.

I’m talking, of course, about everyone’s favorite depiction of Hell—the epic 13th-century poem, Dante’s Inferno.

I’m sure we all have at least a cursory understanding of this text, but for those who have been living under a rock for the past seven hundred years, Dante’s Inferno is an epic narrative poem that follows the author (Dante) as he receives a guided tour of Hell, led by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. As Dante descends, he moves through the nine circles of the christian underworld, witnessing the various torments of sinners, until at last, he reaches the center where the Devil himself is imprisoned for eternity in the frozen lake of Cocytus. Whenever the Devil flaps his wings to try escape, icy winds create further torment for him. In addition, he is required to chew constantly on the three greatest traitors in history: Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius.

The reason why Dante’s Inferno is so important is that it functions as a bridge beween the fears of antiquity, those of the Medieval Church, and of Gothic horror.

In Inferno, we see the longstanding fears of the ancient world - death, the wrath of the gods, supernatural punishment, and terror of the unknown - reimagined through the lens of Christian cosmology. This reimagining would go on to heavily influence beliefs about the devil and demons during the European witch trials as well. Dante, as a writer, is a master at painting a powerfully vibrant depiction of Hell. In his narrative, the damned face punishments tailored to their sins—a concept that is still explored in horror stories today.

What’s more, Dante makes use of the unknown and its ancient associations with chthonic deities, evil spirits, and other worlds to reshape his Hell into a literarily impactful and complex setting. Much like the practices and beliefs of ancient mystery religions, where spiritual revelation - or gnosis - was often hidden behind intricate symbols, narrative structures, and dense philosophical concepts, the nine circles of Hell function on their own internal logic, rather than just relying on theological tradition.

Dante’s logic when compared to previous incarnations of horror stories is unique in that it introduces elements of psychological horror. Punishments aren’t just physical torture; they are also ones of the mind. In addition, those that are physical, the poet describes in almost exploitative and unsettling ways designed to provoke a physical reaction from readers. Dante’s aim is not just to provide a cautionary moral tale, but to induce revulsion, shock, and scandal at sin - an agenda that often features in horror to this very day.

Lastly, Inferno depicts a deeply personal journey for its protagonist. The Dante of the poem is not merely an archetypal heroic figure descending into the underworld, as in the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice; rather, he is an ordinary figure - an everyman - who embodies the often conflicted internal moral lives of real people.

Through these features, we see how the ideas of mythology are transformed into something relevant to Dante’s audience. We also see early genre signifiers developing that would later be used extensively in Gothic horror. The depiction of the Devil, for example, acts as a foreshadowing of the monster as a tragic figure rather than simply an embodiment of evil. This nuanced portrayal of the enemy of God could be seen as an influence on the Byronic characters of proto-Gothic works like Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as the more refined Gothic horrors to follow, such as Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and Stoker’s Dracula.

In fact, we could argue that it was Dante’s Inferno - more so than other examples of medieval religious horror - that influenced Gothic literature the most. In the period we are about to discuss, stories become less about sins and transgressions as being horrors in and of themselves, and more about how they can haunt the mind and warp the soul. Unlike other religious inspired texts of the time, Inferno reveals sinners as pitiful in addition to being heretics.

“Poetry… In The Tombs!”

The development of Gothic Horror arguably begins with a peculiar literary movement referred to today as the graveyard poets. But before we get to them, we need to understand the cultural climate that birthed their artistic vision.

The protestant reformation, beginning in the early 16th Century, prompted a shift away from traditional Catholic doctrines and towards individual interpretations on spirituality and the afterlife. Next, the Enlightenment period, in which scientific inquiry and rational thinking challenged superstition, contributed to a sense of freedom in re-examining old beliefs.

However, as the century marched onwards, certain groups began to resist these new paradigms. The Romantic movement, pivotal in this backlash, argued for the importance of emotion, spirituality, imagination and the sublime (more on that later!)

Around the same time, perhaps influenced by the traditions of the Momento Mori, along with an increase in medical knowledge, people began to consider death in more reflective ways. Artists and writers often explored death not just as some scary monster, but an inevitable part of life. The world’s socio-political climate during this period was also one of upheaval, war and political instability. Though people were more inclined to meditate on the nature of death, there was a collective sense of uncertainty about the future. As a result, darker themes of loss, and existentialism became particularly resonant.

Finally, the 18th century saw changes in the way we dealt with our dead. Cemeteries were designed as places of peace, where the living could visit and sit with their lost loved ones. Tombs, crypts and monuments were constructed in ways that explored mortality through an artistic and aesthetic lens.

Enter into all this: The Graveyard Poets.

Beginning in 1714 with Thomas Parnell, and his poem A Night-Piece on Death:

Through his imagery of graveyards at night, Parnell examined death from a contemplative perspective. The “pale Cynthia” mentioned in the above excerpt, a reference to the moon, acts like Virgil in Dante’s Inferno as a guide through these meditations on death. Parnell’s message was that death was not something to fear, but rather, a doorway through which the soul reaches God. Parnell leaned heavily on themes from the Romantic movement, to do this, balancing his poem in the space between science and emotion.

Other poets such as Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, James MacPherson, Robert Blair, and Thomas Chatterton also contributed to this fascination with death and the afterlife, and together, they began the groundwork for the Gothic novel. The Graveyard Poets echoed ancient fears of mortality, the afterlife, and the dead, but reinterpreted them as something entirely new.

“The Chewing of the Dead”

As the Graveyard Poets continued to explore horror as a philisophical exercise, a growing revival in public interest about the supernatural flooded Europe. While there are many factors for this, the key moment in my opinion, comes to us through sensationalist news reports, circulating at the time.

You see, around the 1720s, in the Austrian village of Meduegna (now present day Serbia), a man named Arnold Paole claimed publically to have been bitten by a vampire. The attack had allegedly occurred some years prior, and Paole claimed he had staved off the Vampire’s curse by eating dirt from its grave and smearing himself with its blood. But in 1725, Arnold fell from a haywagon and died from a broken neck. Within several days, others in the village claimed Arnold was haunting them. These people all allegedly died shortly after.

Forty days later, the villagers, now increasingly concerned, dug up Arnold’s grave. They found his corpse showing no signs of decomposition. There seemed to be fluid still running through his veins. His clothing and funeral shroud were also soaked with blood. Numerous other signs led them to believe Paole had become a vampire. The story goes that they drove a stake through his heart, causing his corpse to shriek and scream, before cutting off his head and burning his body. After, they dug up his alleged victims and repeated the process.

Five years later went by, and similar mysterious deaths began to plague the same community, causing them to believe that Arnold was somehow enacting his revenge. It was at this point, that a massive investigation was undertaken to corroborate these events. It was reported on by Johannes Fluckinger, a military surgeon, before making its way across the continent, fascinating everyone from scientists and philosophers to commoners as well.

The reports of Arnold Paole's alleged vampirism, coupled with the Graveyard Poets’ explorations into mortality and the sublime, created a fertile ground for the emergence of Gothic Horror. As new writers interwove themes of death and introspection with folklore and “modern” society, a new literary focus began to come into focus. These works examined the eerie space between modern human experience and the ancient macabre. Complemented by the Romantic movement, which cautioned against the abandonment of past superstitions; these tales often focused on ancestral secrets and how the forbidden things of our past, if ignored, might come back to destroy us…

“Awe and Horror”

Before we jump into the Gothic though, we first need to outline a specific philosophical element crucial to its expression. The element I’m referring to is…

The Sublime.

So what is the “Sublime?” And why is it so important?

The sublime is yet another gift from the Romantic movement. Rooted in aesthetics and philosophy, it refers to a particular emotion common in art and horror. The Sublime is in essence, an overwhelming sense of beauty and terror. It provokes awe and fear in its subject. It is an emotion that is reserved for extraordinary experiences - those that transcend the normal world. Often it is linked to the vastness of nature, or the supernatural and uncanny. This concept crops up regularly in Gothic Horror, manifesting through landscapes and themes that inspire appreciation and dread. Think desolate crumbling castles, dense, dark forests, stormy oceans and encounters with the unknown…

In short, the sublime affords us moments in which we scream: “Oh wow!” and then after: “Oh shit!”

“Foul Secrets Lie Beneath…”

By 1764, Horace Walpole’s classic novel The Castle of Otranto arrives on the literary scene. Telling the story of a cursed prince and his family, it explores themes of fate, guilt, and the supernatural, introducing a new set of modular storytelling blocks for future authors to play with: The haunted castle, mysterious ancestral portraits, tragic family secrets, and supernatural apparitions among others find traction here, and become staples of the genre.

Then, in 1794, Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe is published. Radcliffe’s novel, which places an emphasis on the female experience, tells the story of Emily St. Aubert, as she deals with both terror and romantic intrigue. Like The Castle of Otranto, it too adds building blocks to the Gothic Horror canon, introducing desolate landscapes, vulnerable heroines, and psychological suspense.

After this, we have The Monk in 1795 by Mathew Lewis, which builds on both Walpole and Radcliffe’s work by blending horror elements with eroticism, challenging the moral and societal norms of its time.

These three works, when looked at together, really provide the framework for this stage in horror’s history: settings that explore the sublime, shameful secrets, supernatural hauntings, vulnerable heroines, and a pervasive sense of sex and often, sexual “perversions” for their times.

“Sleeping With Ghosts”

In 1816, due largely to the continued influence of the Romantic tradition, we get what is perhaps the most important moment in all of horror history. A moment told, and retold, fictionalized, and elaborated upon hundreds of times since. I’m speaking oc course, about the Gothic Sleepover that took place that year at Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

I’ll let its most famous attendant, Mary Shelley explain:

And so who else was in attendance? Asides from Mary, we have her husband, Percy Shelley, their friend Lord Byron, and Byron’s travelling Physician, Doctor John Polidori.

As Mary Shelley pained herself trying to find an idea, the others were already busy with their own. During that rainy summer, Byron wrote a part of a novel he’d never finish, involving an aristocratic hero encountering elements of future vampire fiction. Percy, wrote part of a poem called A Fragment of a Ghost Story, as well as part of a story called The Assassins. Polidori, inspired by the vampire novel Byron quickly abandoned, wrote The Vampyre, a crucial first step in introducing the blood-sucking villain into western literature.

This ghost story competition between the friends is made even more intriguing by the popular theory that they were consuming Laudanum the entire time, possibly helping them in their creative process.

While Polidori’s The Vampyre is an important text, it’s really Mary’s novel - Frankenstein that stands above the rest. In it, Mary explores themes of creation, science, and the sublime. Her story focuses on the ethical implications of playing God and the responsibilities of the creator towards his creation. Now considered a cornerstone of Gothic Horror, Frankenstein is also frequently mentioned as one of the first works of science fiction, and the beginning of the Sci-Fi Horror sub-genre. We’ll save Sci-Fi Horror for another time. For now, it’s enough to recognize Frankenstein as a literary milestone that perfectly reflected the anxieties of its time. In an era marked by rapid scientific advancements and profound questions about humanity's place in the world, Shelley invites readers to ponder the consequences of unchecked ambition and the pursuit of knowledge. These themes still resonate strongly today.

“Nevermore! Nevermore!”

Meanwhile across the pond, the United States was having its own Gothic moment. Largely through the works of one Edgar Allan Poe, the American Gothic tradition begins to flourish in the 19th century, heavily influenced by the writers discussed above. This subgenre took the classic tropes of European Gothic Horror and reshaped them to the American landscape. Poe, who’s works tended to explore the darker aspects of the human psyche, pulled the U.S. into the Gothic game in 1833, with his work MS. Found In A Bottle. This was a short story written in the form of a manuscript found in a bottle at sea. It details the harrowing adventures of an unnamed narrator, who after being shipwrecked, encounters several unexplained phenomena as he tries to get home. MS. Found in a Bottle is an exciting piece because it is maybe one of the first to explore themes of madness, isolation, and existential dread. Core components of later authors like HP Lovecraft, and writers of Weird Fiction and Cosmic Horror.

“Same Fears, Darker Days…”

Gothic Horror would continue on, expanding and developing further, but we’ll leave it here as we move onto Gaslight Horror and the Penny Dreadful. But before we do so, it’s important to note that even though the Gothic utilized many new and refreshing ideas, it still clearly connects back to those classic fears of Antiquity we discussed in essay one.

If you remember, these were:

• Mortality and the Undead,

• Monsters as explanations for real evil,

• Moral instruction and warnings of eternal damnation.

Stories like Frankenstein reveal how Gothic horror reframes the age-old concerns around death. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s ambition to create life, ultimately leads him to confront his own mortality. Similarly, Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher draws a connection between madness, isolation and psychological torment with destined death.

When it comes to monsters as explanations for real world evil, Gothic horror introduces a new dimension to its bestiary of creatures. Whilst the Greek myths of the Minotaur and Medusa suggested ways in which monsters might also be victims, and Dante’s Inferno hints at the Devil as something to be pitied, Gothic horror took these ideas and ran with them. The development of the Byronic character archetype - a tragic, dark anti-hero figure - allowed for villains to appear as complex and sometimes sympathetic characters. These antagonists could not only act as scapegoats (like in the past) but also embody the more morally ambiguous and abstract aspects of humanity. Through this interpretation, we get classics like Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, Dorian Gray, and The Phantom of the Opera, among others.

Moral instruction and warnings of damnation are also rife here, with stories like The Monk demonstrating the consequences of submitting to one’s sinful desires. Whilst written in a new era where the Church had significantly less sway, it seems people were still concerned about the potential threat of eternal hellfire.

“There’s A Devil Out There, Haunting These Streets…”

Moving away from the Gothic, we next get Gaslight Horror and the famed Penny Dreadfuls. Beginning in the late 19th Century, Gaslight Horror lifts the themes, archetypes and ideas of the Gothic and relocates them to heavily urbanized settings. Brought on by the industrial age and terrifying real-world evils like the serial killings of Jack The Ripper, Gaslight Horror aimed its sights on social anxieties around the rapid changes in living conditions, overpopulation, class struggles, and urban crime.

Key texts in this subgenre are:

• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson,

• The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes,

• The String of Pearls likely by James Malcom Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest,

• The Mysteries of London by George W. M. Reynolds, Thomas Miller and Edward L. Blanchard, and…

• Varney The Vampire by James Malcom Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest.

These popular stories often appeared in the form of the Penny Dreadful - cheap booklets that could be purchased for a penny, usually containing stories of crime, horror, and mystery. The affordability of these booklets led to a boom for horror, as they tapped into the salacious nature of urban crime, often muddling real-events with the fictional, and inventing classic horror villains like Sweeney Todd, Mr Hyde, and Spring-Heeled Jack.

Though they eventually fell out of popularity as books became easier to obtain, one can argue that Penny Dreadfuls are what really pulled the genre into the mainstream. Easy to purchase, exciting and easy to read, they acted as a step away from the more “lofty” ambitions of high-brow literature. Penny Dreadfuls also contributed significantly to the rise of Pulp Magazines (covered in the next essay), as well as comic books.

Like Gothic Horror, folklore and mythology, Gaslight Horror continued to express fears of the undead, utilize monsters to explain the unexplainable, and present moral warnings to its readers against sin.

As authors voiced their anxieties about the industrial age and urban life, they unwittingly set the stage for horror’s next development. Our growing understanding of science, medicine and technology, meant that storytellers started to turn away from the evils perpetrated by the spiritual world, and instead, towards an agnostic understanding of human evil and theories of what monstrosities lay in the stars above that science might soon uncover.

In our next essay, we’ll track this change by looking at the works now described as Cosmic Horror and Weird Fiction. In these pieces, the boundaries of the human mind are poked and prodded at, as our universe is revealed to be both devoid of God and teeming with an infinite multitude of incomprehensible terror…

But until then, keep your wooden stakes close and your garlick necklaces on.

Happy Halloween!

Nick

References

A night-piece on death. (2011, May 26). The Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44841/a-night-piece-on-death

Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus (Revised edition, 1831)/Introduction - Wikisource, the free online library. (n.d.). Wikisource, the free library. Retrieved November 1, 2024, from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Frankenstein,_or_the_Modern_Prometheus_(Revised_Edition,_1831)/Introduction

But define it, we must.

Why? Because by putting a concise definition together – an industry standard if you will – we can unite ourselves under one banner and take the first step in establishing a replicable system of tools for those who come after us. Although it’s a new path, Narrative Design is becoming more and more important with each passing year. This kind of work is increasingly in demand all across our culture – often in places you’d never expect.

Personally, I’ve worked (or know of others working) as a Narrative Designer for digital games, street games, immersive theatre, live events, social and political activations, therapies for mental health care, as well as branding and workplace culture design for businesses. Narrative Design can also be found in the film and TV industries – particularly in franchise world-building.

Our craft allows the world to encounter new, heart-changing ideas through the medium of character and play. We are moving away from an era of passive engagement with story and into an experiential, interactive one. For most of the modern era, stories have existed as objects that readers or audiences consume in the same way a baby might consume a bottle of milk. Whether it’s a book, a film, a tv show of a piece of theatre, we’ve traditionally sat in our seats and let the steady flow of story fill us up as we gaze upon the action. But this is no longer the case, thanks to our post-modern, post-digital society. We are now stepping into an age of experience. This is why content creation apps like Vine and after it, TikTok have become so popular with younger generations – our palettes for storytelling have become more complex. We now demand ways in which we can interact with and change the pathway of story. One need only to look at the way in which directors, producers, actors and writers are engaging with their audiences on social media, allowing their input into the creative process, as evidence of this shift. This is the future of story-driven media, and the future of Narrative Design.

With all that being said, what is Narrative Design? Is it the same as Game Writing? Is it something entirely different? Is it somehow inclusive of both? To answer that, we must first ask, what is it that makes a story? When we ask that question, several key concepts immediately spring to mind:

• Characters

• Setting

• Drama

• Suspense

• Action

• Conflict

• Plot

You’d be correct in thinking that story equals all these things, but I think we can simplify them down even more into a nice one-liner.

Story is Character responding to conflict.

At least… traditionally.

Video games and the increasing interactivity of media has turned this definition on its head. Now, audiences expect more complexity in what they engage with. The success of shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead tell us that fans are seeking stories in which we have multiple protagonists - who are often in conflict with each other. They are looking for vast worlds - fictional settings in which there is more going on than just what they are shown on screen. They’re looking for stories of moral ambiguity where the evil characters do what they do for a reason, a reason which we can, at times, get behind and support ourselves. Lastly, we’ve learnt from the final (horrible) season of GoT, that audiences want their voices to be heard, interpreted, and then contextualized into the story itself. Fans of that show developed an expectation for all the complex aspects I’ve just mentioned above, making it known on social media platforms what they hoped would happen. Then, as if buckling under the pressure, the writers took a sharp left turn in that final season, pulling away from the vast, complex geo-political tale they’d constructed, instead reverting back to a more traditional “chosen one” vs the “villain” narrative. They turned a beloved character intoa genocidal maniac and awkwardly tied-off all the loose ends they’d been building for years. The result? A universally panned final season with very little redeeming qualities, and a ravenous fanbased demanding even to this day, a rewritten re-filmed season eight.

The knee-jerk reaction from writers to this sort of a situation is typically to grumble about how authorial control of a story is important, and how we as writers shouldn’t be at the whim of audiences when it comes to developing our art. And while there is an element of truth to that statement, it kind of misses the forest for the trees: audiences are changing - whether you like it or not - and they will continue to change. If an artist creates “commercial” art that nobody wants, then what’s the point? Instead, let’s embrace this shift from the passive to the interactive, from the linear to the non-linear. The way to do this is by learning about and engaging with Narrative Design as a discipline.

Narrative Design is a three-pronged trident. Each prong is just as important as the last. But you need all three to spear a fish. These prongs are:

• Non-linear world building

• Game writing, and…

• Ludo-narrative cohesion

Non-Linear World Building

Unlike a traditional novel, film or TV show, this new form of storytelling places a much stronger focus on world building. In fact, with video games in particular, world building is perhaps more important than plot or characters. It also needs to be non-linear: players should be able to engage with this world in any order they desire. We need to consider that while something important plot-wise might be happening in one corner of a room, the play has complete freedom to gawk at a painting hanging on the opposite wall instead. They might listen to a quest-giver wax poetically about what needs to be done to free the land from a vicious tyrant, or they might decide to attack the quest-giver, or simply leave, and head straight for that final boss, ignoring all the steps in between. This freedom of movement means that as world builders, we need to design a series of loosely connected elements that, yes, can subtly direct a player along a certain path, but also makes perfect sense of the player decides to forsake that path and go it their own way.

Game Writing

This is the act of content writing - dialogue, item descriptions, in-game texts (like books, letters, journal entries, plaques etc.) and “barks” (one-liners uttered by NPCs or the Player Character themselves.) Like the world building aspect, game writing needs to be non-linear too. Players could come across a book of lore at the very start of the game, or at the very end, so whatever’s in it, needs to make some sort of sense at any given point in time. Dialogue also needs to be complex and interactive - choices should be available on how a player responds to a character’s question. Players should also be able to effect plot outcomes periodically through the course of play, with those outcomes being nuanced so as to avoid massive divergent (and hard to keep track of) versions of the story. A quick note: While many (if not all) Narrative Designers I’ve met do this sort of content writing as part of their job, Game Writing is also, at times considered its own discipline entirely. Plenty of AAA studios will make a point to differentiate between a Game Writer job position and a Narrative Designer job position. While these are often considered to be two separate roles, the Narrative Designer, often through necessity, will find themselves engaging in both from time to time.

Ludo-Narrative Cohesion

Lastly, we have the most important element of Narrative Design, and perhaps its most defining feature. If you’ve engaged with narrative in the games industry before, you might be aware of the ludological vs narratological debtate. If not, this is basically an argument between those that think games should be considered as a form of literature, and those that think it should be considered purely based off its elements of play - rules, point scoring, etc.

In recent years, this debate seems to be slowing down as more discussion is held around the commonalities between story and gameplay as well as the introduction of Narrative Design and two key concepts: Ludo-Narrative Dissonance vs. Ludo-Narrative Cohesion.

Ludo-Narrative Dissonance is a term used to describe a situation where narrative themes are in direct oppoistion to the core interactivity of a game, resulting in a disconnect between the two. You might have a game where the story explores the horrors of war, and the detrimental effects it has on the human psyche, but if your gameplay encourages and rewards the player for killing Nazis in increasingly violent and bloodthirsty ways, then you have a disconnect - you have Ludo-Narrative Dissonance. The overall message of the game becomes muddled. Conversely, if that same game explored the detrimental effects of war on the human psyche through a protagonist traumatized by what they’ve seen and done to survive, then the gameplay should consist of finding non-violent means to achieve your goals. The player doesn’t have to always succeed in this, but placing the focus on gameplay that mirrors the story is an important step towards Ludo-Narrative Cohesion. Ludo-Narrative Cohesion is really the crux of all Narrative Design. It is an act in which the writer marries core interactive elements of the game to core themes of its story.

When both play and story are reflected in each other, then everything else opens up for the player to explore a deeper sense of immersion in the world you’ve created. And in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about? This is why people play games - to lose themselves in an alternate reality, to indulge in fantasies where they can control and effect the world around them on a large scale. There are many ways for the Narrative Designer to reach this unity between play and emotional truth, and to be clear, I' am far from advocating my way as the only way. What I am saying is that in my studies and practical experience in the industry, I’ve found that exploring and understanding folklore, and then using the underlying engines that flow through these ancient stories, has been the best way for me to achieve powerful results.

In her seminal essay, Putting the Gay in Games, Adrienne Shaw presents several alarming statistics about the video game industry. She writes:

With over 90% of industry workers identifying as heterosexual and 89% as male, it’s no wonder the industry struggles with representation. The lack of LGBTQI+ characters in AAA studio games and the fetishization of women in unrealistic battle armour found in many fantasy titles, contribute to the perception of video games as the domain of pimply fourteen-year-old boys.

More recent statistics show us that the industry continues to grapple with issues of diversity and representation, despite some signs of progress. According to the latest Developer Satisfaction Survey (DSS) conducted by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) in 2023, approximately 79% of respondents identified as white, while about 31% identified as women - an increase from previous years, though still showing underrepresentation of women and people of color ("IGDA and western University release 2023 developer satisfaction survey," 2024).

Interestingly, the survey indicated that 85% of respondents felt that diversity in the workplace and in game content was important, which reflects a growing awareness and desire for change within the industry. This sentiment has seen a slight increase from prior years, indicating that there is recognition of the need for more inclusive practices. However, the actual implementation of effective diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies appear to lag behind these aspirations, with a notable 28% of workplaces reportedly lacking any EDI programs.

Furtherrmore, hitorical data shows that while awareness and acknowledgement of diversity issues are increasing, the workforce demographics remain relatively stagnant. For instance, in 2005, about 91% of industry professionals indentified as heterosexual, and in 2017, this figure was still quite similar, with 81% identifying as heterosexual. This indicates that while the conversation around diversity is expanding, real change in representation is slow to materialize.

To sum up, while there is a growing recognition of the importance of diversity within games, challenges remain in transforming this understanding into actionable change. There also appears to be a danger of stagnation; developers may mistakenly believe that change has occurred when it has not. Adding to all this, is the uncomfortable truth is that a small, but vocal subsection within the gaming public has positioned itself as being loudly against “wokeness” and “Politics” in games. Such people have commandeered affirmative action tactics like doxing and review bombing in an attempt to force queer developers and their stories back into the closet. This resistance has been notably amplified by movements like Gamergate, which aimed to silence marginalized voices in the industry. While there is growing awareness and dialogue around diversity, systemic challenges persist, such as ingrained cultural attitudes and the impact of harassment that continues to deter many from participating in game development.

Girl “Ghettos” and Gaymers

Now that we’ve examined the statistics, let’s focus specifically on LGBTQI+ representation. Shaw raises a crucial point about the pitfalls game developers face when attempting to create diverse content. As an example, she discusses the industry’s efforts to target the female gaming market:

This approach is a blatantly sexist mistake by ?developers? A similar error threatens to repeat itself with queer representation. Shaw illustrates this with an example where Sony took out an advertisement in the gay magazine Attitude to promote the once incredibly popular, now rarely mentioned Singstar. The advert featured half-naked muscular firemen in an attempt to sell the game to gay men. Shaw notes that this approach mirrors the failed strategy used to market games for girls, focusing on flamboyant stereotypes of gay culture rather than recognizing queer gamers as individuals who simply enjjoy video games (Shaw, 2009, p. 238).

The fundamental error in both cases lies in assuming a connection between female gamers and traditional femininity, and between queer gamers and the flamboyant, hypersexualized stereotypes of gay culture. While these stereotypes exist, they do not define every queer person, nor do they encompass the full range of interests and identities among gamers.

Orcs and Issues of Whiteness

Next, let’s explore the representation of PoC in video games through the lens of whiteness in the fantasy genre. In her book Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness Helen Young discusses the implications of Orcs in relation to racial issues:

Young notes that Orcs are coded to be non-specifically non-White, whereas humans and other humanoid creatures like dwarves and elves are often specifically coded as White. The development of Orcs often incorporates discourses associated specifically with Black culture and/or Native American cultures or other indigenous backgrounds. Young also considers how Orcs are made to be “other” through their skin color (typically green, brown or black), extreme aggression, irrationality, and having a primitive disorganized culture, or a homeland which lies outside the borders of civilization. This problematic portrayal extends to representing PoC and LGBTQI+ characters in fantasy, regardless of their species (Young, 2016, p. 89).

Writing Queer Characters Into Your Games

As a gay Narrative Designer in the industry, I have been vocal about the need for representation in games. In a 2017 interview, I ws asked why it is important for queer audiences to see themselves represented in games and media. To that question, I explained that representation is important (especially for younger queer audiences) because it instills confidence, normalizes queerness, and provides encouragment through portraying queer individuals as heroes instead of monsters of tragic victims.

When creating characters for my stories I strive for complexity, ensuring they embody the full range of human experience - from the good all the way to the bad. My goal is not to create a “gay game” or “LGBTQI+ Fiction,” but rather works that are meant for everyone, that just so happen to feature queer characters in engaging and relatable ways.

In one of the earlier games I worked on - OrbusVR - two central characters, Lord Oscar Hulthine and Lord Markos Rῠnval are both gay and heroic Knights. Markos’ darker skin also allowed for the exploration of post-colonial themes regarding his origins from a colonized country.

When I was a kid, I read The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. In it, the protagonist befriends a Knight named Roland, who seeks his lost love, Raphael. Though Connolly never explicitly states Roland is gay, I found inspiration in his chivalrous character. Connolly later mentioned that while he didn’t write Roland as gay, he intentionally left that part of the character ambiguous and open to interpretation (Connolly, 2007).

As a young, closeted gay kid in small town New Zealand, I interpreted the character of Roland through my own lens, and found him to be incredibly inspiring. The ripples of that character still echo through my work today. While Connolly used intentional ambiguity back then, in my own work today, I approach my characters queerness with clarity, without necessarily forcing their sexual identities into the spotlight. I aim to incorporate queerness into dialogue and storytelling, whilst ensuring that such characters are multifaceted people first and sexual being second. In OrbusVR, Oscar and Markos were directly inspired by what I read out of the relationship between Roland and Raphael.

CASE STUDY: ORBUSVR

In these initial conversations with Oscar, he reveals his allegiance, and ties it specifically to Markos of Rŭneval, who is singled out as his lover through dialogue implication. Here, I sought to establish something thematically similar to what was common in Chivalric literature of antiquity. In examples of that genre, the concept of friendship amongst men is often blurred with that of romantic love. Look at the relationships between Johnathon and David in the Bible, or Achilles and Patroclus, Damon and Pythias, Oresetes and Pylades in Greek mythology.

After seeing Oscar captured and shipped off to Guild City to be executed, the player is asked to attend to Oscar’s final rights, sparking a conversation that layers further queer subtext upon the character:

When we reach the event of Oscar’s execution however, the truth finally comes out, bold and proud:

This is the approach I’ve taken for most games I’ve worked on in terms of creating LGBTQI+ representation. Maintaining queer characters front and centre, I build slowly upon their queerness as a revelation alongside the progress of their character in general.

SUMMING UP…

Oscar and Markos exemplify the depth that queer characters can bring to storytelling in video games. By presenting their relationship authentically and with nuance, we challenge the dominant narratives that often sideline or misrepresent LGBTQI+ identities. It is vital for game developers to understand that queer representation is not merely an inclusionary checkbox; it is an opportunity to enrich narratives, broaden perspectives, and foster empathy among players.

As we look to the future, it is essential to advocate for an industry that not only acknowledges the demand for diversity but actively works to create it. This involves recognizing the unique experiences of queer individuals, creating space for those narratives within games, and crafting characters who resonate with a wide audience while remaining true to their identities.

In this journey toward inclusivity, we must remember that every character—regardless of their sexual orientation—should be designed as a fully realized human being, with flaws, virtues, and a story worth telling. By prioritizing authenticity in character development and representation, the gaming industry can create a more vibrant, engaging, and accepting space for all players.

As we march steadily towards October 31^st and the celebration of all things ghoulish, what better time to examine my favourite genre? For those who don’t know my fictional work, I’d consider myself primarily as a horror writer. Because of this, I’m often asked why I enjoy these kinds of things. Ignoring the judgement that often accompanies such questions, I actually have to say, this is one of my favourite topics surrounding the genre. If horror seemingly evokes such negative emotions, why is it enjoyed by so many?

First, and foremost, horror is undeniably entertaining - at least for a certain kind of person. The genre taps into something primal and animalistic. It reaches out and embraces the deepest part of our lizard brains. The rush we feel during particularly grotesque or intense scenes, can leave us with a sense of exhilaration and the knowledge that our own situations are much better than those of the heroes, as they step down dark gloomy stairwells towards the sound of clanking chains. Yet this answer rarely satisfies those who dislike the genre. They don’t enjoy that particular brand of emotional cocktail, so how could anyone else? Such an answer can even reinforce their belief that horror is unhealthy, or it produces psychopaths.

So, when faced with this question, I tend to lean more towards a philosophical explanation. Through horror, we get to confront evil directly. We look it in the eye. For a short while, we get to indulge in the notion that evil is as simple as a zombie rising from its grave. It’s as understandable as a shapeshifting clown living in the sewers. In those moments, we can pretend evil is easy to define, rather than being the complex and disturbing reality we face in real life. Engaging with horror allows us to condense real evil into archetypes to be analyzed in a safe space. A space where we can explore our fears and anxieties without any threat to our person or mind.

It’s like how teenagers often use horror movies as a social test. Where the act of maintaining composure determines their standing amongst their peers. In this same way, the horror story is meant to push against your own boundaries and explore the things you find taboo. Importantly it does it in a way where there are no real-life consequences. Instead, we get to eat popcorn, crack jokes, and cover our faces when things get spooky. This activity is a form of what psychologists call emotional regulation. It grants us a sense of control over our experiences and feelings of fear.

So, when I get asked why I do what I do, or how I can like the things that I like, the answer is simple:

In those moments of darkness, when it’s just me and an unspeakable abomination on the TV screen, I can confront the things I usually suppress. I can use horror as a workshop to safely explore what goes bump in my own personal night.

I’m able to make peace with the darkness in our world, and the darkness inside myself.

“The Blood That Feeds These Wicked Roots” is the first part in a four part series where I’ll be examining the history of the genre. Over the coming days, we’ll chart the evolution of scary stories from classical antiquity to the Medieval era, through the Victorian period, and into the late 19^th century. Ultimately, we will arrive at the present day; in horror boom we’re currently experiencing. By understanding what has fed the roots of this fascinating genre, we can illuminate our own fears and discover how they might manifest in our stories.

In this essay, we’ll explore the ancient origins of horror, focusing on how things like mythology, folklore, morality plays, and religious witch-hunting manuals shaped our early understanding of the genre. We’ll examine concepts of death and undeath in the ancient world, the exact nature of monstrosity, and the societal fears that these narratives grappled with. Through this exploration, we’ll reveal the lasting impact these ancient tales have had on contemporary horror, and the feast of fears they continue to evoke…

“It’s An Endless Cycle of Maggots…”

As October rolls around, many of us horror obsessives embrace the seasonal chill signaling the approach of Halloween. Outside, the leaves turn vibrant hues of orange and red. Jack-o-Lanterns light up our front porches, and the days grow shorter, casting longer shadows. As the weather grows cold, we sip on Pumpkin Spiced Lattes from the comfort of the fireplace and watch black and white monster movies till the early hours of the morning. October is a time steeped in themes of death and decay, mirroring nature as it prepares itself for a wintery sleep.

But for myself, living down in the southern hemisphere, here, in Aotearoa, Halloween takes place in a seemingly parallel world. As the north prepares for darkness, we welcome in the light. October is the back-end of Spring for us, and early signs of Summer are now starting to show. Here, the days lengthen and temperatures rise. Flowers and trees bloom, filling the air with the perfumed aroma of pollen. While others look towards the chilling embrace of death, in New Zealand, we celebrate the joyous reawakening of life.

The vibrancy of nature’s triumphant return, when constrasted against images of ghosts and goblins, witches and vampires, mummies and werewolves, is strange. But it makes me wonder how different cultures around the world have interpreted the cycles of life and death, growth and decay.

The ancient Romans, for example, saw death not as an end, but rather a continuation of life. For the people of their time, death was both intimately known, and at the same time, a terrifying mystery. To them, the dead did not really die. Rather, they transitioned into a secret world that was contained within our own. This belief allowed them a way to deal with the often sudden, unforeseen and unexpected tragedies that plagued societies in classical antiquity. They feared death not only because a loved one suddenly gone, but also because just as suddenly, they might come back...

While fears of Revenants were rife across the ancient world, the ways in which Roman society dealt with them is particularly interesting when attempting to trace the evolution of horror. It’s well-known that later societies such as the ones that have formed our own, often desperately aspired to be like the Roman Empire of the past. As a result, their culture has played an incredibly important role in the formation of Western thought - literature included.

So what did the Romans think exactly in this particular context? Well, they saw the dead as being both impure and dangerous. They believed that a corpse could easily become a threat. They felt it was important to make sure that these potential threats were appeased. And they believed that if they weren’t properly put to rest, they might rise and set out looking for revenge.

To the Romans, the dead were the cause of epidemics, of madness and supernatural possession. Those that suffered such possessions were known to them as Larvaetus, or those “Possessed by a larva” - aka, the spirits of the dead. In order to avoid these insidious attacks, the Empire held yearly festivals to honor the dead - Parentalia and Lemuria - are two we know of today. In fact, the poet Ovid gives us an interesting tidbit in relation to these festivals, showing us how seriously they were taken:

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an ancient Zombie apocalypse to me!

To them, the dead were believed to have power because they continued to live on in their tombs. During funereal rites, the living would announce to the deceased “Take good care of yourself!” before adding, “May the earth be light upon you.” The deceased were then called by their name three times as a way to recognize their identity and stop them from returning. The soul was even outlined within Roman law, described as remaining within the body, until a series of complex rituals were conducted. The ignoring of such rites, would result in the dead becoming outraged or dissatisfied, allowing them to return and trouble the living.1

These dangerous entities were known as the evil dead (hmm, sound familiar?) and they were typically those who had experienced violent deaths. Murder, execution, drownings, suicide, or any that occurred before the “fated day” of death. Many were criminals, as criminals were often denied the right to a ritual burial. The Roman poet Horace writes that:

Revenants weren’t always confined to rotting bodies either. They could also come in the form of Ghosts and Specters. In ancient Greece, Pliny the Younger records an anecdote from Athens about one such entity, stating:

This story of ghostly revenants ties to an ancient and expansive belief across Africa, Europe and even into parts of Asia. The belief that the soul was housed within a creature’s bones. This was typically connected to hunter-gatherer traditions, and ritualistic attempts to re-wild hunting grounds with fresh game. Often the bones of larger animals would be gathered in piles, or baskets, while their skins were stuffed with wood shavings and straw. Through a spell, the god of sacrifice would restore them to life, making them even fatter than before.

In the Edda by Snorri Sturluson, we see an account of this tradition:

The concept of the soul of bones was not limited to animals. Anthropological evidence shows us that among Shamanistic peoples - such as the Turko-Tartars and the Siberians, the soul of a man was also said to reside in the bones.

The claim that this belief, or any other was wide-spread across large geographical locations prior to the rise of Christianity, is one that has been debated amongst scholars for sometime, but while we may not be able to claim a one-for-one comparision, there definitely appears to be a certain continuity of these sorts of archetypal ideas across history and multiple cultures. This concept of the Soul of Bones in fact, is so prevailent that it has managed to survive from ancient times relatively unchanged all the way to modern horror films. In our spooky classics, Houses plagued by evil spirits are often built atop disturbed burial grounds (Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror,) and the undead are regularly dispatched through methods like salting and burning their bones (the TV show Supernatural is one example of this.)

The pervasive beliefs around Revenants in antiquity, whether they have to do with anger towards the living, or what binds them in their undeath, is fascinating in that it reveals to us a widespread multicultural concern. One which continues to resonate today. That concern is this:

What actually happens when we die?

Societies like the Romans, the Greeks and the Norse (among many others) each grappled with this existential concern in remarkably similar ways. They feared untimely death. They sought to appease the victims of it. They took precautions to protect themselves from these they were unable to appease. And they told horrifying stories warning about what might happen if they didn’t remain vigilant.

Today, these fears have evolved, but remain embedded in our collective minds. Now, instead of rituals and traditions, we explore this fear through horror stories, searching just like they did, for an answer to life’s most concerning question.

“…Slithering Putrid Things…”

Of course, not all horror stories deal with Revenants or the different forms of the undead. Others deal with monsters. And just like our horror stories today, the mythologies of antiquity also explored all manner of scaley, fury, and fire-breathing creatures. We all know these kinds of tales: Medusa the Gorgon, the Minotaur in his Labyrinth, the Dragons of Japan and China, Giants, Griffins, Elves, Oversized wildlife and more. These are creatures designed to explain the unknown, or to illustrate caution, or act as foils to the heroes that face them. They’re dangerous for sure, but in most cases, not particularly scary.

So, what’s happening here? What is it that differentiates a beast of myth from one of horror? And why have some of the classics made that leap into the darkness, whilst others are take up residence in whimsical children’s fantasies regarding wizarding schools?

In his book The Philosophy of Horror: or, Paradoxes of the Heart, Noel Carrol provides what I feel is a fascinating and insightful categorization of the two:

Carrol explains that characters in a horror story react to monsters through fear, yes - but not only that. The threat of fear is “compounded with revulsion, nausea, and disgust.” Monsters in horror stories are often described as:

It seems to me, that the mythological creatures who successfully make the jump to horror, are those that have an inherent capacity to symbolize deeper and more disturbing ideas. Whilst figures like Medusa or the Minotaur begin as symbols of caution, warning listeners of the dangers of hubris or human desire, at some point they were able to transition. They became modular narrative building blocks that could easily convey themes like isolation, betrayal and depravity. They could do this because whether on purpose, or by accident, the lore surrounding them already already leant itself to a greater kind of darkness.

In one tradition, Medusa and her sisters are the offspring of gods, but in another, she is a high priestess of Athena. After being raped by the sea god Poseidon inside Athena’s temple, poor Medusa finds herself cursed by the goddess of wisdom and warfare herself. In a stunning display of victim blaming, Athena transforms Medusa into a hideous monster instead of absolutely destroying Poseidon. With this version of the story, we can clearly see these darker elements at play. Though the original evils here are perpetrated by divine beings, it’s pretty commonly understood that the gods of Olympus were more like humans than the deity we are used to hearing about in our current era. The story of Medusa stands as an early example of this idea that monsters aren’t born, they’re created instead.

In the story of the Minotaur, we see the same kinds of elements allowing for a seamless transition into horror. The Minotaur itself is a creature born through divine punishment, betrayal, and violence. He is an abomination that is somehow both pathetic and deadly. In the myth, he is the result of Queen Pasiphaë’s unnatural union with a bull - brought about by a curse from Poseidon (This guy again?!) after her husband refuses to sacrifice to him. The Minotaur is born, and almost immediately confined to a dark labyrinthine prison. Once fully grown, he embodies the shame and violation of natural order that brought him into existence.

Here, we see themes of monstrosity exploding all over the place. We have King Minos’ pride tied directly to his unwillingness to sacrifice, as well as his shame over his wife’s monstrous offspring. Then there’s Pasiphaë’s unnatural desire itself, put upon her by Poseidon’s wrath. And while beastiality was not as taboo back then as it is today, the union of a woman - a queen no less - with a beast-of-burden would have been a scandalizing idea, even back then.

The labyrinth, too, is key to the horror of this tale. It is both a physical maze and a symbol of confusion and fear. It’s a horrifying fate for any infant to be ripped from their mother’s arms and cast into a prison. An infant minotaur is no exception.

If we move away from the stories found in the Mediteranean, other myths, like those from further North, show us similar things. For example, let’s consider some of the stories focused around faeries and their terrifying intrusions on the human world. Whilst we can point a direct line to the fae as originating in places like Ireland, they actually tend to appear all over this geographical region. These strange ethereal creatures become horrific with ease, used as they were, to try explain the trauma experienced by the population in a time where medicine and scientific knowledge were lacking.

For example: Doppelgängers, or "fetches," were often seen as bad omens. They brought with them either death or bad luck. Sometimes they’d appear as doubles of a person, at others, they would manifest as a shadow, jealous of the life held by its physical counterpart. In many examples of lore dealing with these beings, the shadow was thought to straddle the line between the worlds of the living and of the dead.

Such beings, symbolized the existential fear of losing one's own identity. They were explanations of the bizarre or troubling, such as mental illness or sudden personality changes.

Similarly, stories in which human children were being abducted by malevolent faeries and replaced with an imposter, or Changeling, likely originated as a way soothe the devestation parents felt after losing a child to famine, plague or other unknown illnesses. While having your kid abducted is still terrifying, it is perhaps easier to believe your baby might be alive out there living in a magical kingdom, than to accept the harsh and pointless realities of a cruel world.

What we see with Medusa, the Minotaur, Doppelgängers and Changelings are modular building blocks that can each be defined by common threads. Asides from naturally lending themselves to those deeper, more unsettling themes, all of them are connected in either a physical and/or mental way to us humans. Medusa and the Minotaur are beings with half-human forms. They are unholy chimeras, yes; but they also reflect the horrors of being trapped between two natures, unable to embrace either. While Doppelgängers and Changelings are their own “species,” they’re described as being humanoid, have human-like intellect and steal from humans in one way or other.

With all of these examples, there is also a certain “othering” of the creature. A singling out that adds layers of tragedy and revulsion to them. Though they may be a part of, or exist within human societies, they are not of us. Instead, they are feared and hated. They act as scapegoats for our own sins. When we think of them in this way, it becomes clear why those of us who grew up as gay, tend to identify with the monsters in horror films. One can only imagine those who were different back then may have felt a similar way.

When we consider the Revenants, the Ghosts, and now the monsters of mythology and folklore in the context of horror, we see that each acts as a kind of mirror, reflecting our own dark images back at us. They are more than just fictional demons. Instead, they are archetypal shapes that allow us, through story to grapple with things like morality, social fears and the all pervasive concern over what happens when we die.

“Burn Them All! Let The Witches Burn!”

The fears of the ancient societies we have just discussed, particularly those regarding the power of women, had a profound influence on the ways in which organized religion began to develop in the wake of the Roman Empire’s collapse. From the time of the early Christian Church, where Apostles commanded women to be silent, to the systematic persecution of “witches” centuries later, the shift from antiquity to the Middle Ages birthed new anxieties into our world.

Echoing earlier mythological representations of dangerous women, the monsters feared during this time came to include creatures defined by their femininity, or their sexual desires. Medieval tales of the Loathly Woman, or Catholic fears of Succubus and Incubus demons are a couple of great examples.

Whether the Church genuinely believed that these supernatural beings were real, or simply demonic imaginings depends on which camp one planted their theological flag, but what is clear, is that those in power saw certain people and their ways of life as opositional and a dangerous threat to their own grip on power. Female and sexual figures became tropes within the Christian framework, and were used to stoke genocidal fears, which of course, resulted in the early modern Witch Trials across the European continent.

These trials reached their height with the publication of a dispicable, but important text of the time. The Malleus Maleficarum or Hammer of Witches written by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger in 1487, provided a detailed manual on identifying those in-league with the devil, and how to prosecute them. The Malleus Maleficarum served not only as a legal guide, but as a template for other similar texts:

• Discours Exécrable Des Sorciers by Henry Bouget (1602)

• Tableau De L'inconstance Des Mauvais Anges Et Démons by Pierre de L’Ancre (1612) - which in addition to Witches, deals with hunting and persecuting Werewolves, and…

• De Masticatione Mortuorum In Tumulis by Michael Ranft (1725) - which translates to The Chewing of the Dead in Their Tombs and explores how to combat Vampirism.

While Bouget and de L’Ancre applied the witchhunting methods of Malleus to witches and werewolves, Ranft’s work built on the Malleus’ preoccupation with spiritual corruption of the physical body, extending his focus to folk tales surrounding vampires and religious anxieties related to sexual sin. Additionally, later representations of vampires would evolve to embody anti-Semitic fears concerning Jewish immigrants.

Despite the supposed “non-fictive” nature of these kinds of religious manuals, when we look at them, we can see striking similarities between them and the soon-to-come boom of horror literature. These texts often featured vivid and exploitative descriptions of demonic possession, infernal or demonic magic, and grotesque punishments for those guilty of following Satan. By casting the accused as agents of the Devil, witch-hunting manuals were able to hijack the modular narrative building blocks established through mythology and folklore, and use them to demonize those they disagreed with, providing a justification for the atrocities they sought to visit upon them.

Of course, today, looking at all this from a wiser, more tolerant perspective, we know that these manuals were in fact, works of fiction. Setting aside the real-life evils they unleashed on minorities throughout this period, these manuals can actually be seen as proto-horror novels.

And as these witch-hunting manuals drove fears of supernatural evil into real-world persecutions, Morality Plays served as another significant medieval vehicle for moral instruction. These stories utilized allegory to depict the eternal struggle between light and darkness. They were plays featuring archetypal characters like the Everyman, Death, and Sin designed to illustrate moral lessons and the spiritual journey of the soul. Popular during the late Middle Ages, they focused on indoctrinating audiences on the consequence of sin, and the joys of redemption.

One of the most notable examples is the play Everyman, which follows the titular character on a journey to confront death, where he must account for his life and face judgement for his sins. the clear dichotomy between good and evil presented in this play mirrors the moral themes explored in modern horror stories. Morality often plays a significant role in horror, leveraging fear as an educational tool. In some cases, it can even serve as a contrast, allowing us to examine whether the morals presented are truly beneficial. Horror is often considered by some scholars as being a deeply conservative and reactionary genre, but in this sense, I would argue it at the very least, has the potential to be the polar opposite. Horror, when it challenges the established norms - particularly if it is in search for a new, better, answer - is perhaps the most progressive, and dare I say, the most aspirational genre out there. But that’s just my two cents.

However, in the context of the Middle Ages, horror was highly conservative, and rooted in very real spiritual stakes - eternal damnation versus eternal salvation - serving as a deterrent against sin and a potent mode of religious propaganda.

“And As The Crimson Curtain Starts To Fall…”

We can see now that horror has consistently engaged with the consequences of moral, societal and spiritual transgressions. Throughout ancient history and into the Middle Ages, it has been used as a way to explore the repercussions of human disobedience towards whatever beliefs were held dominant in a particular society at a certain time. This thematic lineage can be observed in contemporary examples like The Witch or Drag Me To Hell, where protagonists are judged for their sins and forced to confront them whilst enduring overwhelming terror.

Ultimately, the convergence of mythology, fears around death and the undead, and religious anxieties towards women and other marginalized groups, laid the groundwork for the emergence of the horror genre to come. Soon, we would begin to see early forms of a consistent literary genre. Next, would come the Gothic Romance, and after that; Gaslight Horror and the famed Penny Dreadfuls…

And as we reach the end of the long dark tunnel, only to discover a black tower, now looming before us, we can, now hopefully see, that the portrayal of human perversion, the othering of outsiders, and the stoking of religious fervor, not only shaped the horror narratives of their day, but also that of the ones to come. Now, as we step through the tower doorway, and take our first steps up the rickety, gloom smothered spiral, we can push forward with the understanding that by knowing and understanding the fears of her collective past, perhaps we can learn a little more about the ones we have today - and; perhaps those we are yet to have, in the future.

Happy Halloween,

Nick

As we ferry him across the red sea, surrounded by beautiful white blossoming trees, he tells us:

The music quietens, it is sombre almost, as the silhouette of the Everdoor floats into view. Gustav continues:

At this, the falcon falls into silence, preening himself as we at last reach our destination. With one final embrace, the music swells and Gustav rises high into the air, glowing with a golden hue. We watch, tears in our eyes, as quietly and tragically/hopefully he disintegrates into the light, dispersed gently back to the ancient and mysterious great beyond. Through Gustav’s long-winded speech, we can discover something about the state of our world and our place within it.1 As I write this, our planet is being overwhelmed by chaos. Fascist regimes are popping up seemingly out of nowhere, bushfires are eradicating plant and animal life by the millions, the Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on populations across the planet, evil men enact unprovoked invasions of other countries, threatening thermonuclear war, and global warming promises to put an end to life as we know it. More than ever, people are searching for meaning, for a reason to all this horror, and more than ever, they are retreating into the fantastical worlds of entertainment to escape our own seemingly random one. Gustav reveals to use the secret truth of all art - it is a form of meaning - of transcendence - a way to move beyond the pain of the here and now and suggest order, structure, purpose and understanding to our lives as human beings. By entering into these worlds, we can learn and grow, and possibly even bring back tools to fix the real one that we actually live in.

People get it wrong.

We think that religion or politics might save us, might show us a better way, but both these systems are flawed. They require specific kinds of intellect or faith to explore them, resulting all too often in acts of brutality and tribalism. Story, on the other hand, is quite different. Through story (be it a good book or a provocative painting), we are offered an Everdoor of our own - a way to step out of this dimension and into another, and experience through the intangibility of the heart, purpose and meaning to the human soul.

Not A Cult Leader!

While this may sound like a theological statement for a new kind of spiritualism, I promise you it is not. I’m no cult leader and developing some kind of religious manifesto is far beyond the scope of my work. No. This is a book about Narrative Design and interactive storytelling, and how allowing greater levels of agency in your games, enables players to explore a higher realm of being - one that need not be governed by tribalism and misunderstanding, but rather collectivism and empathy. Whether you feel it or not, believe it or not, we are all connected. Our commonalities unite us, and we have far more to gain by embracing that connection than we do by rejecting it to die on hills of division. Through my studies in storytelling, I’ve come to believe that we’ve experienced this collectivism before in our semi-distant past, through the expression of folklore. Folklore has the unique capacity to engage thousands with deep messages about our own humanity, all-the-while adapting itself to the individual person or group receiving its message at the time. Through folklore, we see the transmission of ideas and beliefs across vast geographical spaces and over great periods of time. The stories change, adapt, mutate, and grow as they move and are (for the most part) resistant to extinction. As soon as one version of a folktale goes out of style, it rebuilds itself with new ideas and imagery to remain relevant for the current generation. It imbues its meanings not just in traditional “narratives” (such as myths, legends, and folktales), but also through various other motifs and practices: fashion and architecture, jokes and songs, children’s games and chants, superstitions and beliefs, food, and drink. Its reach as a mode of communication is powerful.

Today, folklore has seemingly taken a aback seat in our fast-paced, highly strung, modern society, but dig a little deeper and you can see it in action across all forms of entertainment media, urban myths, and cultural practices. As I said before, this is a book about Narrative Design in games, but it is also very much a book about folklore - in particular, the underlying story-engines that have driven this fascinating genre of storytelling throughout the scope of human history. WHile we won’t be delving too deeply into the countless stories and traditions themselves, we will be spending significant time looking into certain aspects of historical folklore (particularly elements deriving from continental Europe) to suggest a new kind of approach to Narrative Design in games, an approach built by myself and others, with the specific intention of creating space for the player to find transcendence. In short, think of it like this: If folklore is a door, then interactivity is the key, and behind that door lies the profound. An indescribable moment of bliss where we can experience self-made purpose or meaning - one that points us to the true nature of humanity - connection. So that’s it. Read on and enjoy. I’ve not held anything back here. Unlike the gnostic scholars and ceremonial magicians of our past, I’ve no desire to keep my tools a secret. Rather, I wish to share them openly with any who will listen and take on board my message. Religion won’t save us. Politics won’t save us. But stories?

They just might.

Coming to terms with the fact that I was gay kind of put a damper on that whole vision, and so, after divorcing myself from religion and losing my faith, I returned to my first love. Something that had been with me for as long as I could remember – storytelling. From the earliest examples of my work…

...to the more elaborate stories invented by my younger brother and I as we danced around our backyard each afternoon, as a kid, I’d spent hours exploring fictional worlds of my own creation. I’d always hoped that I’d one day become a published author and faced with a complete loss of faith and direction, it was in remembering these childhood games that gave my life purpose again. I figured I wouldn’t be so naïve to assume that going to university and studying the craft would result in me becoming the next Stephen King, so I set the more reasonable goal of being a High School English Teacher as a day-job while I worked on “making it big.”

In the first two years of my undergrad, I focused heavily on prose fiction, in particular, on a terrible little novel about a bunch of drug-addicted youths returning to their hometown for a funeral. And while that story is likely to never see the light of day, it taught me a couple of things about myself as a writer. I discovered I had within me, the capacity to imagine huge, long-form story arcs and complex worlds, but lacked the attention span to sit there and fill hundreds of pages up with description. Through a screenwriting class, I realized my talents where much better suited to visual mediums than to traditional literature.

I’d always been an avid gamer growing up. Many of my fondest memories involve gaming with my brother, or school friends, and as it was this medium that I was most familiar with, I often found myself writing about it in essays and non-fiction work for class. When I finished a twenty-page thesis on the narrative of BioShock Infinite, I started to realize that perhaps there was something bigger at play here. And in the vague recesses of my memory, I recalled wanting to write for video games when I was younger. Not knowing how to even begin getting into the industry, I approached a local game review website and asked for help. They had no clue either, being industry adjacent, but they did point me to a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy who would eventually become one of my long-term mentors. Edwin McRae is perhaps one of the best hidden talents in the business and is definitely one of the more senior Narrative Designers in the New Zealand games industry. At the time of meeting him, he’d been hard at work for several years with Grinding Gear Games on the MMOARPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Action Role Playing Game) Path of Exile, which back then had around 10 million registered players.

Edwin and I hit it off almost immediately, and after a few weeks of getting to know each other, he offered me my first writing job as an assistant on Path of Exile. I went from having never written for a game before, to sharing the responsibility of delivering engaging stories to an audience of millions. I was thrown in the proverbial deep end and forced to swim. Over time, Edwin gradually stood back from his role at Path of Exile, and I found myself stepping in to replace him as the Lead Narrative Designer, a role which I inhabited for almost two years before moving on to other projects. At the time of me leaving, Path of Exile had gone from being a game with four story acts, to one with ten and over twenty million registered players. The game has since gone on to win a BAFTA award for Best Evolving Game in 2020 and is currently hard at work on Path of Exile 2.

Over the next few years, I went on to act as the Narrative Lead for several games across different platforms. With OrbusVR and Orbus: Reborn, I learnt how to adapt the traditional open-world RPG narrative to a Virtual Reality medium. Lyra: The Traitor of Lyngrave let me finalize many of my ideas around branching dialogue trees and moral choice storytelling. I worked alongside theatre producers on various live interactive properties, spoke at game development events both locally and internationally, earned two master’s degrees, developed a complex narrative-driven magic system based on real-world esotericism, established my own development studio (Tentacular Games), and begun work on a transmedia story franchise based around a series of high-end perfumes (Thornwood Parfum). Most recently, as I write this, I am in the final stages of packing my entire life into cardboard boxes. By the time this book releases, I'll be roughly a week away from relocating to the United Kingdom, having accepted the role of Senior Narrative Designer for the AAA studio, Sharkmob London.

Through all of this, I’ve continued learning and growing in the craft of Narrative Design, and while I would say that while I am far from being done, I can speak with a degree of expertise on the subject. This book is, in a way, the culmination of what I have learnt so far. It is also an overflow from my current Doctorate studies, but it’s also more than that. I truly believe that story has the power to change the world. There is a kind of unspoken power in narrative, one that has the ability to reshape minds and cause hearts to grow. This book is about that power. If you make use of the concepts established here, you will see a greater level of immersion and stronger player agency in your interactive narratives. Your stories will improve. They will gain resonance and go out to change the hearts and minds of those who play them. This book begins by discussing a few important concepts:

Narrative Design – What is it exactly? How does it work? 

The Folkloresque – a way of understanding the kind of storytelling I’m advocating for. 

Legends, Myths and Folktales – What are the differences between each, and why knowing them matters. 

After this, We’ll establish a historical link between folklore and interactive Narrative Design, showing how these concepts are not unique to just my mind, rather that they are derived from very ancient traditions. Traditions we’ve lost in our modern times, but traditions that are finally returning to our understanding of story. 

We’ll explore my secret weapon – a narrative model tailored specifically for interactive storytelling and based on folkloric concepts that are largely unknown today, but derive from our pagan ancestors across Eurasia. This model, which I refer to as The Player and the Pentacle will give you a framework to approach your Narrative Design, and more importantly, a way to construct stories that last. 

By the end of this book, you’ll find yourself well-equipped to tackle stories in a wholly new way.  Folklore is about intimacy and immediacy. Rather than looking for answers outside of ourselves, folklore encourages us to look within. By helping players to take part in this almost spiritual act, we can connect them to ideas that they may have never considered before and help them empathize with people and causes that they’ve previously opposed or misunderstood. There is great power in what these tools can do, and as all us nerds know, with great power, comes great responsibility. So, take these tools and use them, but please, use them for good.

Nick

And like the wonderful nerd he was, Chuck expounded. But he might has well have been a mile away. All I could think about was how this little typewriter-television-phone was going to run video, unfold entire story worlds in front of thousands—millions even—and we would somehow be able to explore them, play in them, and bend their narratives to our will. Between seat and screen, there would be genuine magic. Participative narrative not across a kitchen table, but across the planet.

As of this writing the world’s latest video game obsession is Elden Ring, an action role-playing playing game developed by FromSoftware with the creative participation of fantasy novelist George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones). The game is entirely immersive, some complaining it’s too much so. The world simply exists, shorn of the didactic trappings that would normally instruct and direct the player. You navigate Elden Ring by interacting with its myriad environments, engaging its characters, battling its monsters, and placing all of it into a greater narrative context right between your ears. We are not spoon fed its lore, we are swimming in it as if we have been transported to a realm that has always been there.

The upshot of this is that players are forced (and are mostly thrilled) to communicate with one another, coaching, exchanging tips, complaining, and exalting their discoveries. Cleverly, this can be done in-game by leaving notes at various sites. But the real action is happening across Twitch, Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok.

This is exactly what Nick Jones is describing as a new narrative modality in the book you’re holding, The Player and the Pentacle. Jones posits that recent generations have been raised on deeper, richer longform stories. From video game series like The Legend of Zelda and Halo to transmedia cosmologies like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we have come to accept, enjoy, and spend billions on infinitely detailed alternate realities. What’s more, technology has evolved to the point where we no longer must sit at a table playing D&D with pencils and paper (much as we might love that)—we can project ourselves into these story worlds and interact with them, not just hacking at dragons or shooting at non-player characters in them but laughing and even crying with them.

Ask any fan their favorite things about their best-loved story world and I’ll bet you the intensity or explicitness of its violence won’t even be in the top ten. The relationships, the mysteries, the depth of the lore, how aspects of the world interconnect with a film or streaming series that also depicts that world—those will come first. And those are forged by creators who have an intrinsic understanding of Narrative Design.

Storytelling has changed because storytellers must take three new things into account. The first is that our audience is now capable of talking back to us. If they don’t like something, the world will know about it within hours of its release. Such is the power of social media. The second is that our stories are subject to intense scrutiny and need to stand up to it. If we run our characters through a cardboard tube, our audience will poke holes in it, then tear it apart. If we want our story worlds to last we must fully realize them right out of the gate. And third, our audience must be made to feel like participants—they must want to speculate, to solve those mysteries, to feel that endorphin rush when they find those Easter eggs or fit elements of two pieces of content together and they snap like Lego bricks.

This is the purview of the Narrative Designer: the Lore Master, the Cosmologist, the person in charge of envisioning, creating, or maintaining the superstructure of the story world, whether it’s a video game or a blockbuster global franchise.

Finally, and perhaps most unique in my experience, Nick argues for us to be mindful and tap into the folkloric. He’s doing this for a vital reason, and here is where the tables turn and the master (that would be me) becomes the student. As these sprawling universes become ever more spectacular, they are in danger of becoming generic. Eye candy for our 8K televisions and IMAX movie screens, leaving us dazzled and empty.

Folklore is local. It’s warm and personal and beautiful and horrifying. It is about the things that happen to ordinary human beings in intimate situations. There is specificity there capable of smashing tropes and avatars. The Player and the Pentacle is a handbook on how to tap into the folkloric (the microcosmic) and weave it into your video game, your D&D campaign, your transmedia universe (the macrocosmic). Listen to Jones and you will be far better able to level up your interactive narratives, granting your players (or even your audience) a deeper sense of immersion through Narrative Design, and a far greater feeling of agency in your story world through the compelling power of the folkloric.

Storytelling has indeed changed forever. Good thing we have Nick Jones as a guide to maximizing our craft in the new modality.

Jeff Gomez

March 2022

To achieve this emotional goal, it is important our antagonists meet with fates that are diverse, emotionally resonant, and fitting, whilst also delivering or originality and surprise.

As my old screenwriting teacher used to say:

“Give them the ending they deserve, just not in the way we expect it.”

In my previous essay - The Unholy Trinity of Villains - we began with an exploration of popular antagonists found in media. We saw that when we really dig into them, these figures almost always tend to be tragic in some way - they are the tormented products of larger systemic issues within their worlds.

We discussed the three most popular villain archetypes in fiction:

• The Evil Incarnate,

• The Mad-Man, and…

• The Morally Complex Villain.

We walked through the nuanced characteristics and motivations of each, seeing how they interact with their larger narratives to shape compelling challenges for our protagonists.

In this essay, we’re going to dive a little deeper. Specifically focusing on how the kinds of actions villains take, have a direct affect on the justice (or lack therof) they receive.

Think of this like a Narrative Equation:

Unlike a math equation, the above formula is a guideline only. Take it from someone who has lost count of how many books on writing he’s read: rarely is anything in storytelling a hard rule. The craft is full of ambiguities and contradictions. The best anyone can do is learn as many frameworks as they can, try them out, and find out what works for them.

With that being said, I strongly stand by the above idea because it is helpful in ensuring successful endings. Handing out the wrong kind of conclusion to any character - be it a villain, a hero, or a mix of both, becomes destructive to your story. It ends up feeling unsatisfying and in the worse cases - Unjust.

An Unjust Ending

Recently, the highly anticipated Joker: Folie à deux, arrived in cinemas to overwhelmingly negative responses from critics and fans alike. And while that movie has a whole laundry-list of problems, the ending is in my opinion one of the worst.

SPOILERS INCOMING

In the film’s climax, Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck finds himself brutally stabbed to death by another inmate. The response to this narrative decision by both critics and fans speaks to that sense of injustice. Somebody made a critical error with Arthur Fleck’s judgement equation. They posited it as:

At every stage of this equation, I would argue, they fundamentally misunderstood both the Joker of Batman lore, and, more importantly, the Joker of their own world. So let’s have a look at who he really is.

1. Character: Arthur is an emotionally complex and unsettling figure. We can evidence this by pointing to the non-linearity of his character arc. Unlike a traditional arc, Arthur does not begin at Point A, then move to Point B, then Point C, and Point D. Rather, he bounces all over the place. He makes progress one minute, then regresses the next. Sometimes he stumbles upon untapped aspects of his Psyche, other times, he sticks to the tried and true. You could say that Arthur is a soul in search of an identity. He is a pitiful victim one minute, an agent of chaos another, or he’s an entertainer, or a lover, or a resistance leader, a star, and even at times, a hero. The second film culminates with Arthur deciding on a permanent identity: He rejects the mask of the Joker, taking responsibility as Arthur for his crimes. This could have worked, if through that, he experienced some sort of real redemption. But sadly, that’s not what happened. We’ll discuss the concept of Redemption shortly, but for now, let’s carry on.

2. Crimes: Arthur has murdered a total of 7 people, which sounds severe until we consider the context of each:

   1. Three arrogant Wall Street businessmen after they pursue and bully him.

   2. His former co-worker Randall in revenge for the loss of his employment.

   3. His own mother, Penelope after a life time of emotional, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her and one of her boyfriends.

   4. The talk show host, Murray Franklin on live TV, after being ruthlessly mocked and humiliated by him.

   5. Arthur may also have killed Thomas and Martha Wayne, after his fantasy of being Thomas’ son was dashed - though we never see this with any certainty.

3. Relationships: Arthur’s interactions with those around him all work to create a messy, but ultimately sympathetic portrait.

   1. His abuse at the hands of his mom, her boyfriend, the Wall Street Bankers and others is extreme, but relatable. Who amongst us has not experienced some form of bullying or abuse in the past?

   2. His relationship towards his neighbor and imagined girlfriend is disturbing, but an externalization of a very human longing for connection.

   3. His relationship with Gary Puddles is ultimately toxic, but Arthur genuinely cares for him. Gary was one of the few to show him kindness.

   4. His relationship with Harley Quinn is ultimately a one-sided deception, but through it, he is able to use fantasy to explore his desires of a better world.

4. Themes: Though films like Joker 1 and 2 lend themselves to multiple interpretations, the one that stands out as especially strong to me is:

   1. Monsters are Made: Both movies explore this theme by looking at Gotham City as a broken system. They suggest that through abandonment, alienation and the stripping away of basic human rights, such a system is capable of victimizing those it is meant to serve, twisting them into the very monsters it claims to hate. Both movies consider how, in the absence of empathy and true leadership, people and communities languish. Hiding in tribalised echo-chambers, they search for a hero to save them. And when true heroism cannot be found, they elect wolves in sheeps clothing instead.

So while Arthur’s callous murders would make sense in an equation like this:

The actual equation, by my estimate is more like this:

Redemption

Redemption can be an incredibly powerful conclusion for certain villains, though it’s often difficult to pull off. It requires an intricate balancing of accountability and mercy. When done well, it gives villains a chance to escape the broken system that created them. But while many villains have redeeming aspects, not all are worthy of total redemption.

Redemption, it seems, is a sliding scale. Let’s take a closer look.

Complete Redemption

Complete Redemption happens when a villain has a change of heart and is forgiven for their crimes by the heroes of the story. At this point, they are free to either go their own way and live a quiet life (usually one of contemplation), or they can rejoin the normal world and side with our heroes in one final showdown, a denouement, or a sequel.

A villain that commits crimes considered “socially more acceptable” than murder (i.e. stealing, deception, kidnapping etc.) are usually still able to achieve total redemption because their crimes are considered, on the moral scale (at least in storytelling), to be lesser than things like murder, or S.A.

Murder is an interesting one though. We see it as an ultimate crime, in in certain narrative contexts it is unforgiveable. But in others (as is in the case Arthur Fleck), a villain that kills can still be redeemed. In these cases, their body count is usually either very small, or it’s emotionally justifiable.

When we move into the territory of murder for pleasure, selfish gain, as genocide, or of a child or family member, that’s when things become increasingly harder to forgive.

Incomplete Redemption:

Personal Forgiveness, Cosmic Punishment

Here, the Villain has a change of heart and is forgiven by those most important to them. Naturally, this requires some set up to create sympathetic relationships between the Villain and at least one other - often the protagonist themself.

Whatever relationship is used, the audience need to understand its complexity and many nuances throughout the course of the story. The crimes of the villain, alongside the emotional position they occupy in the other character’s life, need to be heavily grappled. Forgiveness is a difficult, self-sacrificial act on behalf of the forgiver, doubling as a weapon that allows them to overcome their own internal darkness at the same time.

Ultimately though, there’s a catch. And that catch is this: Despite receiving personal forgiveness, the Villain is still required by the cosmological laws of the universe to take responsibility for their crimes. Whether or not they have turned over a new leaf is irrelevant here. If they’ve murdered multiple people, or taken part in even worse, they are required to pay the piper with their life, or something else of incredibly high value to them (their career, a loved one, a dream, etc.) Usually this payment occurs in an explosive, or emotionally poignant final scene.

This kind of redemption is one I think could have worked for Arthur Fleck in Joker 2. Arthur’s decision to accept responsibility for his crimes as Arthur, rather than the Joker, performs the narrative function of him seeing the error of his ways. If this had led to him receiving some sort of forgiveness on a personal level, whilst still being punished cosmically, then it would have worked. However, it requires the establishment of stronger interpersonal relationship between him and at least one other. Harley Quinn could fulfil this role, but her character would need to be drastically re-written. As it is, Harley is a manifestation of Arthur’s shadow. She’s not someone who can really be hurt by him, nor someone who can really forgive him. Rather, her whole agenda seems to be the opposite. She wants Arthur to give in and become the Joker full-time…

Incomplete Redemption:

Cosmic Forgiveness, Personal Punishment

In this outcome, the Villain accepts their actions as evil and set about making amends. Usually this is through taking an action that ensures the protagonist’s success. After, the Villain appeals to the protagonist, or a key relatonship in their life for forgiveness. Sadly however, usually that forgiveness cannot be given. Alternatively, some villains may find the forgivness of others, but be unable to forgive themselves. As a result of both instances, the Villain goes into some kind of permanent exile - whether by removing themselves from the setting, or by removing themselves through death. A third possible conclusion we sometime see is the Villain being forgiven by all except one. The one unable to do so, ends up becoming “villainous” themselves by taking matters into their own hands for a tragic flourish.

If Joker 2 wanted to go this direction (which, in many ways, it had already begun to), they would need to clarify how the larger “world” forgives him. Sure, we see hundreds of Arthur’s followers outside the Court room, but they are never painted as a sympathetic symbol of the larger story world. Instead, they are depicted with what I would describe is disdain. In a film that is clearly trying to grapple with the ideas of systemic societal issues, they really miss an opportunity here to show these people as genuine revolutionaries who have elected Arthur as their imperfect leader. Instead, they are presented as crazy, violent, criminal anarchists and this only muddies the film’s ultimate themes. If Arthur had admitted he was responsible, then gone on to impactfully demonstrate how the system that now judges him are the true creators of Joker, and his followers were painted in the way I just suggested, we would have a very different story. You could even keep the stabbing scene at the end - just clarify how Arthur’s killer was a relationship he had, who could not forgive him.

DEATH WITH IRONY

Moving on from Redemption types, we now come to Death With Irony. This is a relatively simplistic ending for a villain, but one that can be highly satisfying to audiences. What we want to see here is the villain getting their just deserts. More satisfying than just a simple death, death with irony uses the Villain’s own darkness (or their own plan) against them, prompting us to all jump out of our seats shouting:

“YUSS!! GET SOME! GET SOME!”

Such deaths are typically low-brow. They can be clean or grotesque, slow and painful, or quick and explosive. Some great examples include: The devouring of Ramsey Bolton by his own dogs in Game of Thrones, the explosive death of Zorg in The Fifth Element, or, for a more child-friendly example: Dorris Umbridge being carried away by Centaurs in Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix.

GETTING AWAY WITH IT

This one’s more of a bleak ending than the others, and one mostly confined to horror stories. Getting Away With It is when the villain achieves their goals, often resulting in the death of the protagonist. This ending occurs usually for two reasons:

• Because the overarching narrative themes dictate it, and/or

• Because the protagonist (who usually has less moral leeway compared to a villain) has been found guilty of an unforgiveable sin. What is an unforgiveable sin, you ask?

  It is either:

  • the succumbing to their own shadow (their own selfish internal desires), or…

  • the breaking of a meta-narrative code.

For the former, you can look to pretty much any Antihero storyline ever, and for the later: slasher movies are a great example.

In these films, characters that engage in things like sex before marriage are the first to be dispatched. They are being punished for breaking a meta-narrative. Originally, back when Slashers began, that code was comprised of conservative, Christian moral standards. These teenagers were punished for their arrogance towards God in their actions.

Eventually, as our society moved away from Christian dominance and more towards secular ideas, that meta-narrative code evolved. Now, the teenagers who “sin” in modern slashers deserve to die not because they’re rejecting the bible, but because they believe themselves to be untouchable, immortal, youthful and beautiful.

The catharsis that we feel from their deaths is more about all us older people (jealous of no longer being young, hot teens) indulging in an irrational revenge fantasy against their youth, naivety and optimism. Teenagers can still enjoy slashers too, but for them, it’s likely more about the nudity, the gore, the thrills.

ESCAPE

Lastly, we have Escape. We won’t spend too long on this one as it is typically reserved for more jovial affairs. In this outcome, the villain’s plans have been thwarted, but at the last minute, they manage to escape, ready to come back and fight another day.

Personally, I’m not a fan of this approach, and debated whether or not to include it at all in an essay about building better bad guys. But for the sake of covering our bases, here it is.

This outcome is one that lends itself well to highly serialized, episodic stories, or stories directed at young kids. Each episode can function as a stand-alone idea connected by various protagonist and antagonist threads. Here, the intention behind the story’s narrative themes is light-hearted entertainment. This kind of silly: “I’ll be back!” mentality with no serious consequences, allows for a “reset” each episode, making it simple and easy to engage with if you’re not in the mood for deeper themes.

Conclusionary Thoughts

At the end of the day, the fates of the villains in our narratives play a crucial role in shaping the emotional experience of our audiences. By carefully considering the nuances of each villain’s journey - whether through redemption, ironic justice, or a more bleak and unsettling outcome - we are able to craft endings that resonate deeply and provide satisfying moments of catharsis. By navigating the intricate dynamics of crime severity, character development, relationships, and thematic significance, we can create a rich tapestry of moral complexity to enhance the narrative interplay between our heroes and their antagonists, whilst also provoking thoughtful reflection on the nature of justice, consequence and our moral structures.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of a villain’s conclusion is found in the emotional truth it conveys. As storytellers, it is our job to yes, entertain, but also to provoke questions and honor the moral complexities of life.

Until next time,

Nick

But why is this important, and how exactly can we achieve it?

Good Bad-Guys And Why We Need ‘Em

If you jump on Google and scan the internet for the best villains in fiction, you’'ll turn up a few results that appear time and time again. And when we analyse these characters through a narrative design lens, we see some striking commonalities. We learn that in successful stories, villains are rarely ever the end-all-be-all. Rather, many of them are victims themselves. Products of a broken system - be it sociopolitical, spiritual or otherwise.

It would seem, based off the evidence, that good bad-guys are symptoms of a greater issue. They are rarely the issue itself.

A good villain is more than an antagonistic force or a challenge to be overcome. In fact, in many ways, your villain is as important as your protagonist (or player character.) They are more than just somebody who’s wickedness shines a light on the protagonist’s altruistic traits.

In this two-parter, I’m going to unpack what I mean. In this essay, we will discuss three villain archetypes I’ve identified in my career as a Narrative Designer. Archetypes that I call the Unholy Trinity. These Archetypes, when understood and utilized correctly, will strengthen your narratives and create truly satisfying conflicts between the forces of light and dark.

In the next essay, we’ll dive even deeper into how these archetypes interact with players and explore how exactly we can craft truly memorable narrative payoffs.

Those Which Already Exist

A moment ago, I mentioned this concept that good villains are not standalone bastions of evil. Rather, they are products of larger, corrupt and broken systems. When we consider some of the best nasties in video games and other media, we can clearly see this factor at play.

Sephiroth for example, is one of video game history’s most iconic shit-bags. He’s powerful, arrogant and has aspirations to be a god. And yet, even he is the result of something larger than his own darkness. Sephiroth, as we find out is the result of the Shinra Corporation’s unethical exploitation of science and nature. Sephiroth is revealed to be a weaponized superhuman, driven mad by the consequences of corporate greed and genetic manipulation.

Or lets look at Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones. A beautifully written villain that had myself, and countless others rooting for her one moment, then demanding her head on a silver platter the next. Cersei though, is the inevitable product of Westeros’ feudal system. A societal structure where dynastic power struggles, misogyny, and a corrupt nobility drive her to embrace ruthless methods in order to survive and protect her family.

What about Andrew Ryan, founder of the underwater city of Rapture in the acclaimed video game BioShock? Whilst Andrew is presented to us as an insidious evil, even he is a product. Andrew is the inevitable outcome of extreme capitalist and libertarian ideas. He is a man whose ruthless pursuit of individualism and free-market ideology turned him into a tyrant, ruling over a crumbling and decaying dystopia of madness.

We could go on and on with these kinds of examples. Let me know a few of your favourites. How would you describe them in relation to their own broken systems?

But why does this fact matter? Well, by viewing villains in this way, we afford ourselves as writers and developers, a few exciting avenues to explore.

First, through this framework, we can add deeper levels of sub-text to our stories - commenting on and criticizing the broken systems of our own world, inciting our audiences towards positive change.

The second, is that this framework creates space within the narrative for long-form continuation. By which I mean: if our villains are the products of broken systems, then removing them is not really a solution. It is the system itself that has to be defeated. Simply taking out the villain, only delays the inevitable - eventually another, possibly worse monster will rise to take the place of the first.

Can everybody say franchise potential? While I would argue that ultimately for a good story to work, it does eventually need to come to a satisfying end. Us audiences need our emotional catharsis! Usually, we’ll want to fix those broken systems - however, we can leave them broken for a little while, in order for it to keep pumping out exciting new enemies that our heroes can face.

Lastly, this framework creates space for us to add extra existential threats to the narrative - ticking time bombs that represent the end results of characters (not writers) perpetuating their broken systems for too long. Think: The White Walkers in Game of Thrones, and the evermarching threat of an endless winter. In the HBO series, these are ticking time bombs, acting as prophetic warnings of what will happen if the Lords and Ladies of Westeros are unable to get over their differences and unite against a common threat.

The Unholy Trinity

Examining villains like these, it becomes clear that there are a whole range of archetypal figures we can choose from. However, out of this range, there are three that seem to reign supreme. Three that seem to have an unbreakable grip on our collective imaginations…

Archetype 1: Evil Incarnate

The Evil Incarnate villain represents a primal, almost instinctive kind of darkness. Characters like Darth Vader, or the Dark Lord Sauron operate as forces of pure evil, devoid in most ways of humanizing qualities. Their presence in a story taps into ancient fears and drives audiences and players to seek catharsis through their defeat.

While they may have once begun their lives good, they are now less than human. They have sacrificed themselves and the things they loved long ago, to become hosts of darkness.

These villains tend to have a high body count, but their kills are rarely personal; they are more akin to a force of nature. They tend to be highly melodramatic, and can exist almost entirely off-screen as an “ultimate evil.” Alternatively, they might be more like our favourite slasher movie killers - faceless and/or voiceless, allowing us as players and audience members to superimpose our own anxieties directly upon them.

Ultimately, these villains exist because in the moment in which they are brought low, defeated and/or killed, we as audiences and players are gifted with a powerful sense of satisfaction. Because we love to see the cosmic forces of good triumph over the cosmic forces of evil. For an audience member or player, the death of this kind of character taps into a spiritual or religious component within our lizard-brains - it is the setting right of what was once wrong in the universe.

Archetype 2: The Mad-Man

While the Evil Incarnate archetype dominates through brute force, the Mad-Man acts through unpredictability. Often motivated by a fractured mind, their actions tend to lack rationality, creating a sense of chaos and fear in other characters and the audience or player. They tend to be living contradictions, declaring noble (at least in their eyes) purposes from out their mouths, whilst simultaneously executing innocents with the gun or sword in their hand.

They are typically outsiders to society and often feel misunderstood. Yet they usually only have themselves to blame. They can be highly manipulative and charismatic, but use fear and cruelty as their weapons of choice. They may lay claim to divine revelation or secret knowledge, as a way to justify their actions.

The Mad-Man tends to have a high body-count, and while each kill is personal in the sense that they take time to do it themselves, they also kill indiscriminately simply to make a point. They are typically prone to narcissism or pride. The Mad-Man can be defeated by playing off their personality defects.

Usually, their origin stories are ignored, barely explained, or shown to be gratuitously traumatic. Their origin stories act as microcosms of their behaviour in the present day.

This character exists to provide an enjoyable level of tension for your audience, as well as a high degree of spectacle. We enjoy them because of their unpredictability.

Unlike the Evil Incarnate archetype, our desire to see this character destroyed is driven by blood-lust. The Mad-Man tends to die horribly and ironically, prompting audience cheers. They are sacrifical calfs on the proverbial altar of fiction. The Mad Man has violated the sacred social contract we all agree to, thus their defeat is equal parts punishment and course correction. They die to quench our rage at injustice - even if they themselves are the victims of it too. Their ends serve the continuation of the status quo.

Archetype 3: The Morally Complex Villain

The Complex Villain archetype tends to defy simplistic categorization. Unlike other antagonists, they are more multi-faceted, their motivations rooted in personal traumas, ethical dilemmas and complex world views. Whereas the Evil Incarnate and the Mad-Man archetypes trigger base emotions in audiences and players, the Morally Complex Villain triggers abstract and ambiguous ones.

They are often the most interesting to watch, and the easiest to feel conflicted about. But they are also harder to write well. They rely on a complicated cocktail of empathy, and disgust. They tend to be people who are relatable. Figures we can step into the shoes of, and understand why they make the choices that they do.

Morally Complex Villains have a detailed backstories. Ones that paint them as normal people made victims of fate, or at the very least, abnormal circumstances. Their backstories show us how they got to be where they are, revealing a tragic inevitability.

When we look at the morally complex villain, we are provoked to recognize ourselves. We ask ourselves: If we had walked their path, experienced the things they experienced, would we have turned out any different? In this, the survival of these villains up to that point can even be seen as inspirational. A testimoy to their defiance and strength of will.

To be clear, these characters are not good people, but their agendas are understandable. It is their methods that we take issue with. Like the Mad-Man they can be intelligent, charismatic and unpredictable. Unlike the Mad-Man they don’t typically have an unreliable mind. Instead, their chaos comes from their playing their cards close to their chest.

These characters tend to have smaller personal body counts. They are picky about when to get their hands dirty. But they also have the highest impersonal body counts - usually because they order others to commit atrocities for them. They are efficient and unafraid of taking risks, moving boldly when they need to against their enemies. They can occassionally be cruel, believing that cruelty is a means to an end.

Lastly, the sacrifice of others ultimately comes easy to them. They might outwardly struggle over such a decision, but it is performative - deep down, they know that they were always going to make that choice. They betray friends, lovers and even family members, to move closer to their goal. As audience members and players, we flip-flop between loving and hating them.

When these villains are defeated - if they are defeated - they provoke both satisfaction and sadness in audiences and players. We tend to be glad that they’ve been foiled, but we might also feel for them, mourn for the loss of their dreams, or the fact that they never got to recognize the error of their ways. As narrative designs, they represent all of us - our good bits and bad bits, our complexities and contradictions. The Morally Complex Villain is a safe way for us to confront that truth and pull it apart for revelation.

Forces of Darkness, UNITE!

Understanding archetypes, like the ones we’ve explored in this essay, opens up exciting possibilities in storytelling across all mediums. Once you know how these archetypes function, you can really begin to play with them. As with many elements of narrative design, archetypes are best seen as guidelines rather than rigid rules. Mastery comes with learning how to use them - and then daring to remix them as your confidence grows.

Of course, remixing archetypes isn’t always straightforward. Star Wars for example, has had mixed results in this area. Particularly, we could point to the results of their attempts to shift Darth Vader from being an Evil Incarnate Archetype towards being more of a Morally Complex Villain Archetype in the prequel films. But it can be done. Griffith from the manga Berserk is a strong example of a villain who successfully embodies aspects of the Evil Incarnate Archetype and the Morally Complex Villain Archetype, illustrating how effective blending can work. But witha ll these sorts of thngs, it takes practice, experimentation, and the willingness to make adjustments along the way.

So, as we close up this essay, I encourage you: play with these archetypes! Experiment with switching traits, removing or adding elements, and seeing what works best for your story. At the same time, aim to master the basics. The better you understand these fundamental roles and the emotional functions they serve, the stronger your storytelling craft will become.

Till next time,

Nick.