Discovery story development primer

[jammi]

Hello everyone! This isn’t a dev diary, but does act as a sort of primer for anyone who is interested in contributing writing to Discovery, or potentially becoming a story dev.

This isn’t an immutable bible for writing approach, but it does set out some of my mentality on approaching the story and the style guide I’ve adopted.

Firstly, we’ll start with some bullet points for style guides on infocards, because that’s much less pretentious than talking about the philosophy of game writing and narratives.

• Where possible, try to mimic the writing style and structure of the base game. Departing from this style should be an intentional choice for a specific purpose. Tone varies based on the type of infocard - the tone and style of a base infocard is typically closer to a Wikipedia article than a blog post, while ship infocards can read more like a lurid sales pitch.
  
  
• If you can look at an infocard and tell that it’s a Discovery submission / edit without even reading the contents, that is likely through a failure to adhere to a consistent style and structure, and a sign that further revisions are needed.
  
  
• Infocards are all written in US English. If you’re used to Bri’ish English, I would suggest manually setting the proofreader in your word processor of choice to US. That’ll catch any stray U’s that slip in or Z’s that are missing. Proofreading is vital, and should be used to catch any typos or major grammatical errors before submission.
  
  
• Brevity is the soul of wit. It can be tempting to drop an enormous exposition dump into a base infocard, but consider whether all of the details you’re trying to convey need to be in that location. There is more than one way to convey worldbuilding or history, and frontloading all of it into the main base infocard is an extremely blunt approach.
  
  
• Base infocards should generally have no more than three roughly equally sized paragraphs. This is not a concrete rule and exceptions should be made for particularly important assets, like faction HQs, capital planets, or especially plot-important bases. It is essential that the infocard accurately describes the base’s current purpose and function. An infocard that is entirely fluff and history but no actual function is not fit for purpose.
  
  
• Rather than a base infocard effectively being a timeline chronicling all the things that have happened there, consider offloading those descriptions into news articles that are written to be contemporaneous with those events. This preserves an immutable record about those events for future players, despite future infocards changes. This way is a way to add local character to particular bases (unique articles), while also creating a means for new players to diegetically learn about the world and setting without having to resort to 3rd party tools. This is important for both cultivating an immersive experience, and a cohesive game world.
  
  
• News articles should aim for a single paragraph that does not create a scroll bar on a typical 1920x1080 resolution screen. This will usually be around 700 characters of text. The vanilla game represented longer stories as multiple linked articles - for example, The Road to Rheinland I through to III. The CNS subforum can also be used to add much more dense levels of detail to supplement in-game material (but never as an alternative to in-game resources!).
  
  
• Rumours should only ever be a single paragraph. If your rumour has a scroll bar, you’re being shortlisted for a ban from future submissions. Remember that rumours are assigned to a particular NPC, but can be generated in any order. This means they should be written with non-linear storytelling in mind. If your rumour has multiple paragraphs, consider splitting it into multiple rumours instead, as this spreads the narrative out and creates longer-lasting content for future visits to that base.
  
  
• Where possible, try to write infocards as if they were diegetic - they are elements that exist within the narrative world alongside the characters people are playing. This is admittedly an aspirational goal, and not all infocards are currently written this way. Due to this, players currently need to exercise common sense on whether their characters would reasonably know some of the things overtly stated in a base infocards. This isn’t a great situation and throws up invisible barriers to new players immersing themselves deeply in character roleplay. Obviously something we would prefer to fix as examples present themselves.
  
  
• Information in a base infocard or solar object should usually be limited to details that would reasonably be accessible to characters docking with / viewing it. The infocard in this sense, could be explained as your onboard computer scraping the local neural net or assembling sensor readings to try and relatively objectively summarise the target’s history, purpose, features, community, etc. Base infocards should not contain overtly biased / incorrect information, unless this is a genuinely believed truth, in-setting. As noted above, the vanilla game generally adopted a tone similar to an encyclopedia article, and that’s something we should preserve here.
  
  
• News articles can be less objective than base / object infocards, and may be presented from the point of view of either the neutral Colony News Service, or the a specific faction. News articles should not outright lie to players, but can represent the same sets of facts in different ways depending on the author’s bias, and make use of more emotive language. In situations where an article is being written to intentionally mislead players, this should be telegraphed (the deception is overtly propaganda) or they should be given the tools in-game to uncover the deception. For example, a government cover up about the outcome of a battle could lead the player to investigate the site and find wrecks that contradict the official story.
  
  
• Rumours are the most subjective and unreliable source of information in the game, but are excellent tools to further worldbuilding. Even if a rumour is objectively false or incorrect, it can still enhance a player’s understanding of a faction’s way of thinking and how they perceive the world. This too provides more data points for players to create inferences about the objective truth (see “Scaffolding of Lies” below). Rumours that have nothing to say about the wider world should generally be avoided, however introspective rumours about the offering character can simultaneously be used to further the above aims. Good writing can do multiple things at once.
  
  
• Infocards that rely on an omniscient narrator should be avoided. For example, a wreck infocard containing details about a pilot’s final thoughts before they died would be difficult to justify, unless it is diegetically explained how these are known, i.e. a looping audio broadcast, etc.

The above points are there to help guide the micro level style, tone and structure of Discovery’s infocards, however I’m now going to talk a little about some of the macro considerations that go into story writing. These are arranged in no particular order.

Designing for your audience:

Freelancer is a sandbox that is filled with intrigue and adventure, conflict and corruption. Discovery in particular attempts to take that experience and turn it into an MMO. Therefore, you can broadly categorise any writing we do into two main camps (although there is naturally a lot of overlap): immersion and action.

Immersion is the construction of a cohesive world and roleplay environment that is capable of inducing a willing suspension of disbelief. This doesn’t mean it is a realistic setting, just that it has the correct qualities of “realiness”; it is sufficiently internally consistent to avoid the illusion being popped by a jarring mismatch between expectation and actuality.

Frequently this kind of immersion-generating material can be found in slice of life news articles or rumours that describe things that can shape and inform people’s roleplay, but have no tangible impact on gameplay activities whatsoever. A good example of this is the multiple vanilla news articles about plasmaball tournaments and teams, or material describing the economic impacts of the ongoing Kusari/Liberty dispute.

There is no way to play plasmaball in Freelancer (sadly), but the existence of these elements adds colour to the setting, and provides inspiration for your own character’s experiences and backgrounds. Perhaps they’re a ride or die fan of the Glasgow Ghosts and are feeling pretty cut up about losing the finals. Maybe they carry that attitude into work, and are about to make that your problem.

Of course, immersion alone isn’t enough. A novel can be incredibly immersive, but a novel is not very fun as an interactive video game. Story devs are not writing their perfect novel that you’re forced to read, they attempt to provide a playable, interesting and dynamic game environment you can tangibly interact with. That brings us to action.

The primary purpose of Discovery’s story writing in that sense is to provide a consistently progressing and changing narrative that can be expressed through actual in-game activity. Often this means advancing plot hooks in ways that generate conflict or adversity. Gaining a story dev’s attention usually means you’re about to be subjected to some degree of suffering, but this isn’t malice on our part. Conflict drives activity, and adversity and restrictions foster creativity.

This does mean that when we are weighing options for progressing a story arc, a primary consideration must be: does this help or hinder roleplay and gameplay? A player faction may be stringently pushing for a ceasefire with their faction’s primary enemy, but the story is unlikely to progress in that direction if this is effectively going to kneecap the average player’s ability to do anything interesting with that ID.

A very good example of this in practice is the aftermath of the Rheinland Civil War, where both the Bundschuh and Unioners were legalised. This effectively annihilated both factions’ primary gameplay loops, making factions that were already extremely difficult to play borderline impossible. What might look like sensible politics / diplomacy to a player in the moment, can result in long term stagnation and other detrimental impacts on a macro level.

Cascading Consequences:

No story dev is working with a clean slate, and we all inherit the work and contributions of our predecessors. Due to that, very rarely are we working on producing plot elements completely from scratch. Instead, we are trying to progress existing story elements in a way that is internally consistent, with cascading consequences.

It feels profoundly dissatisfying when major story elements spring from no-where. A cascading story is a way of having build-up, exploration and pay-off emerge organically from the structure of the story in a way that gradually spreads across the entire game environment.

Faction A does a thing. Faction B reacts to that thing. Faction C and D react to B’s reaction. The consequences continue cascading, being mutated and modified by each factions’ motives and agendas until you’re left with a number of completely different plot points to the one you started with. The cycle then begins again, and those produced plot points are themselves subject to further reactions and mutations.

This kind of approach requires a detailed knowledge of the environments you are developing for, which can also be assisted by reaching out to players who bring local expertise. This requires consideration of which factions will be impacted by a development and how, and a thorough understanding of previous developments, the timeline of events, and the interplay between that history and the intended progression.

This framework largely necessitates looking at the story as it exists currently and extrapolating where it might reasonably go from that setup. There are of course limitations to this approach.

Allowing the story to endlessly branch is obviously impractical to manage with one or two volunteers, so the approach should be selectively applied or plot arcs “concluded” based on the time and resources we have available. The more story devs we have actively working, the more complex the web of arcs and reactions we can pursue.

Inference of Competence and Faction Motivations

The Inference of Competence is the basic assumption that NPC factions are generally capable and competent, and they have a rational basis for doing the things that they do. If they do something that is seemingly irrational, it may be because there are extenuating circumstances that have forced their hand, or other more seemingly reasonable options have not panned out for whatever reason. This principle can also be applied backwards, by looking at the implications a future development would create for existing factions.

For example, a request is made for Planet Pygar to become wholly self-sufficient, using an ingenious assortment of hydroponic farms and recycling. On the face of it, this sounds reasonable as hydroponics are an established technology and people speculate that this may be feasible with fairly basic materials.

However, we already have an example of long-term, planetary settlement in the deep Omicrons, and the highly inhospitable worlds there: Crete. If supply chain issues could be resolved through relatively basic hydroponic farms, the Corsairs reasonably would have done this centuries ago.

The Zoners figuring this out on Pygar leaves the Corsairs holding the idiot ball, and the inevitable question, "are they just stupid?". Well, no. The Corsairs will have explored all reasonable options to resolve their existential food issue. Crete does produce food, however the conditions are harsh enough that it only takes a poor harvest to make famine a serious issue. Pygar's settlements are underground, yes, but Crete would reasonably have caves too.

Clearly hydroponics have not solved this issue, even if it has potentially mitigated it to a degree. The factor that solved the issue for the Corsairs was material wealth, and external supply chains. They later decided that internal security was more important than food security, and that tension led to the situation in Omicron Theta.

Discovery’s story writing generally does not generally focus on individual, named characters. There are VIPs, red forum accounts, and named characters that are present in the fiction, yes, but they tend not to be the driving force behind momentous events. Using the Theta example, newly appointed Elder Garcia pushes heavily for the attack on Freeport 9, but she was simply the face of a larger, more aggressive Corsair ideology that was reacting to a long-running, historic grievance.

The Vanilla Freelancer sandbox and Discovery following on from it largely bases its writing around large-scale societal forces. The Red Hessians, for example, aren’t described as forming because of the revolutionary leadership of a particularly charismatic firebrand; they emerged from the economic devastation of the 80 Years War, the failure of post-Empire reform, and crushing corporate corruption.

This style of impersonal fiction is well suited to a video game environment like MMOs, because it means the players exist inside that larger ecosystem of factions and forces, rather than playing out the melodrama of a particularly important NPC. Change happens in Sirius through the aggregate efforts of thousands, through the struggle of life and death of countless pilots, rather than the heroics of a singular protagonist (and yes, I do fully realise the irony of this paragraph, given the campaign’s plot).

The Scaffolding of Lies:

This is an approach to how information is distributed and seeded across the game environment. As noted above, information presented to players comes on a spectrum of reliability, and it's up to the player to interpret that and draw inferences on their own. Bar NPCs in particular may lie to you, be misinformed themselves, or only have access to part of the facts.

A scaffolding of lies is a narrative structure used to generate activity by starting fights in the Discord server’s lore channel. Effectively, the story team has a central idea of what the objective truth relating to a situation is. Despite this, the NPC factions involved in the situation are either subject to the fog of war, or have a partisan interest in misrepresenting this situation.

The objective truth will not be found in a singular infocard somewhere in the game. Instead, you will have various conflicting accounts seeded across multiple infocards and rumours, either focusing on different facts or contradicting one another with conflicting accounts of the same facts.

By assembling all of the material, you can begin to establish the outline of that central event the scaffolding is constructed around. This is a more interesting way to approach the fiction, in that it rewards exploration and critical thought - particularly when it is part of a strategy of hybrid storytelling, i.e. fiction that is integrated into the game world through system design, as well as the written word. Showing, in addition to telling.

This links back to the style guide point way above, about conciseness. Does this information need to be imparted in the base’s infocard? Can it be split up and seeded across news articles and rumours, or even other bases? A good example is Planet Stuttgart - it previously had a 1,000+ word infocard describing the minutiae of old Empire farming cartels, up to the LWB’s methods of rebellion. However, much of this could have been (and was) displaced into news articles, and content on Darmstadt Depot.

When developing a plot point, have this in mind - how can this information be communicated to players? How do we add layers and depth to that information? How do we reward exploration and expertise with a region and its lore? Some of the most interesting ways to move the story forward come from factions operating with incomplete information, and that is the intersection of cascading consequences and the scaffolding of lies.

Hybrid Storytelling

Knowing how to do some system development is incredibly useful for story devs, even if not essential. Being able to work closely with system developers is a close second. Hybrid storytelling is the ability to convey your story and worldbuilding through more than just text on a screen. It's the integration of story on a practical level in system design.

Worldbuilding can be expressed visually through all aspects of the mod. A faction on the forward foot in an offensive can be reflected through a boosted spawn weight on patrol paths, or a reduction in their spawn timers. As a result, the reality of the game - more enemy ships, appearing more often - aligns with the fiction of a major ongoing assault.

It could come in the form of stations being arranged to highlight the local personality and ethos of the residents. A good example is Bethlehem Station in Pennsylvania, which now has a very compact model that is heavy on habitats, has its own solar array, and is studded with weapon platforms. This (and the warning buoys) sells the idea that they are isolationists who will go to extremes to be left alone.

The Retcon Responsibility

Discovery's story has not exactly progressed in a straight line from its inception to its current state. I of course refer to retcons, or "retroactive continuity". This is where the past "official" storyline is altered in some way. This could be because a system has been overhauled or even deleted, meaning events that took place there now... didn't. Or it could be that a faction or even region has been reworked, causing bases or diplomatic arrangements to wink out of existence.

In roleplay communities in particular, narrative stability is extremely important. It is irritating or potentially even upsetting when material you were previously invested in and potentially integrated into your character's roleplay and personality abruptly vanishes. Due to this, story developers have a responsibility to the broader community to minimise retcons to only those that are strictly necessary.

This does not mean fundamentally rewriting history because you disagreed with a previous team's output, although there may be some exceptions - for example, if an NPC faction's core identity has been inadvertently damaged by an incautious change. Where retcons are applied, they should be used proportionally. This means changing the least amount of material necessary to remedy the issue in question.

My preferred method of doing this is "recontextualization". This is effectively taking the end result, preserving the shape, tone and outcomes of the event, but reworking the specific content to fit within the contours of the mod as it currently exists. This was the approach taken to reworking Rheinland's early mod history, which relied heavily on systems and assets that had been previously retconned.

Regardless, whenever a retcon must be applied, it should be as a scalpel rather than a wrecking ball.

Player Agency and Roleplay

Left the spicy meatball for the end. Over the years, Discovery has gone back and forth on how much player agency there should be in the story. Typically, where there has been player agency (and people vastly overstate how much there was in the past), this was filtered through requests / lobbying by official factions in the form of "story working groups".

These honestly mostly served to burn story developers out, and often devolved into whoever could scream the loudest getting concessions. They weren't pleasant to work in, and rarely actually generated useful outcomes.

There has also been varying approaches to how faction power is measured and how this has impacted storytelling. For example, at one point in the past, there was a spreadsheet that measured relative faction population counts, industrial capacity, available military force and a few other factors. Players did not have access to any of this information (or even know it existed), but they could clearly infer which factors were impacting the story, and how to try and game them.

This led to factions doing whatever roleplay they could to acquire population (hence why millions of Bretonian refugees appeared in various places), because it was obviously having an influence on how story arbitrated. This led to many trying to play the game like an RTS, and while Discovery: Stellaris would be an enjoyable mod in its own right, I don't think it did the health of the community here any favours in the long run.

My approach to this is a little simpler. I'm not trying to run a simulated reality where the number of fighting age men and faction GDP are decisive. As noted above, the feeling of "realiness" is the most important aspect, so I mostly roll with what is admittedly my subjective vibe check on what feels narratively satisfying and sensible.

As a part of this, I do monitor the comm section and occasionally the stories area, and will take inspiration from material that particularly catches my eye. This is particularly true of roleplay associated with official server events, and this is much more likely to shape post-event lore if it seems interesting / on-brand enough.

An example of this is a diplomatic crisis that broke out between IMG and CR players during the event around the evacuation of FP10. Players from both factions had been asking for progress on their collective relationship for some time, so incorporating some of the beats from that player RP seemed like an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

My inbox is open to anyone who wants to discuss the lore or their proposals for it (although I frequently forget to respond to messages as I am very bad at managing my notifications and get a lot of them). I also routinely reach out to individuals or factions to consult on areas I'm not as sure about, or to ask for proactive engagement in a story beat.

Boiling all of this down into a few points, I suppose my mentality on player agency is this:

• Lore should be a framework for player RP, but not a straightjacket. There should be considerable latitude to interpret canon for your characters, but player roleplay must still be suitable for the actual setting we're playing in.
  
• Extreme caution around allowing PvP to influence significant story events - this can rapidly incentivise toxic behaviour and bandwagoning, which is miserable for all involved.
  
• I am happy to incorporate player RP into canon that strikes me as well written and interesting, within reason. Despite that, there are always risks around creating perverse incentives like our Stellaris example above. Roleplay should really be happening for its own sake, rather than in an attempt to game a power boost for a chosen cause.
  
• Open to suggestions from anyone who wants to talk about story direction - this is probably best done in the lore channel for random questions rather than my DMs.
  
• Official factions have an open channel to me through the faction leaders lounge. I'm also happy to discuss faction or regional development plans with leaders who proactively show an interest and are actively attempting to drive interest in their regions.
  
• All of the above is subject to my own limited resources, given that I'm a one individual doing this around a full-time job and a young family.

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I have very much run out of steam at this point, but feel free to ask in this thread if you have any questions about writing approach.

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News article library, feedback and content requests.

[JadeTornado]

anyone who is interested in contributing writing to Discovery

Too busy writing Gaian things, sorry.

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