2. The Player and the Pentacle - Preface

By Nick Jones

In early 2016, I was beginning the final year of my undergraduate studies at the Auckland University of Technology. I’d been studying a double major in English/New Media studies and Creative Writing with the intention of one day becoming a High School English teacher. I was twenty-six years old, and this new career path was a decision I made somewhat radically after I'd experienced a complete burn-out while trying to be a christian evangelical youth pastor.

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…

"Once upon a time there was a scorpion and a lizard, the Scorpion killed the lizard. The End."

...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