Chapter 86: Story for Interactive Fiction

Many tabletop game designers think that they are very simple, therefore not requiring any new player introductions as most of the players would have played it before in real life.

But this view was incredibly wrong.

There are many local variations in rulesets for tabletop games. For example, mahjong from different areas may have different rules for ‘pongs’,’gongs’ or winning. If an international mahjong player wanted to try out blood mahjong, it would be very difficult for the player to find out the rules for himself without the help of new player introductions.

There was also another group of players who rarely have the chance of playing tabletop games, would even fail at playing Dou Dizhu, and despite that they still want to improve their skills. It wouldn’t cost them much to play these tabletop games once in a while, and would also hope they can get some newbie tips when they play.

Tecent Tabletop from the previous world had done this very well. As long as a new player knew some of the rules when they start playing, the new player guides would allow them to continue playing, receiving awards on the way as they finish quests.

Chen Mo had already managed to recreate a card game such as I Am MT, so numerical simulation such as these were comparatively peanuts.

The second was the tournament mode.

In truth, the tournament mode was designed for Texas hold ’em in mind, as it was very suited for tournaments. There would even be some who only play tournaments exclusively.

Tournaments would include a sign-up fee and assigning everyone the same amount of starting chips. The players would be spread to different tables, and they would get eliminated as they run out of chips. The winner and finalists would get a chunk of the prize money from the sign-up frees.

Tournament modes like these were similar to survival games as players were required to play in a stable manner. Without the stability, the game would be over for the player, the aim was to get into the money rounds after all. On the other hand, it required players to utilize the opportunities given to increase their chip count and knock off the chips their opponents have.

Players would often lose a lot of chips from irrational moves, making it difficult to control the flow of the game. However, in tournament settings, the players would lose the sign-up fee at most, and if they last till the final table, they have the opportunities to increase their money more than tenfold.

That was why many players preferred to play tournaments. Even though it was theoretically possible for players to lose more money (if they buy-in many times but never reaching the money rounds), the failure the players would feel was relatively small.

In his previous life, Dou Dizhu and Mahjong also had similar tournaments, but they couldn’t even compare to the popularity and universality of Texas hold ’em.

As Texas hold ’em didn’t exist in this world, tournaments for tabletop games were also lagging behind. Chen Mo had also just finished Tournament mode, and would make it one of the unique gimmicks Thunderbolt Tabletop would have over other platforms.

The Thunderbolt Gaming Platform now had five different games, Flappy Bird, Plants vs Zombies, I Am MT, Lifeline, and Thunderbolt Tabletop (Dou Dizhu, Mahjong, Thunderbolt Poker).

Most of these games were mobile games, and Plants vs Zombies and Thunderbolt Tabletop were both on PC as well as mobile.

Chen Mo planned to prioritise the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform on the PC, intending to release sales and promotions regularly, as well as allowing players to check the status of their friends as well as their achievements in game.

Of course, this didn’t need to be finished in one go and could be added periodically. The PC app for the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was currently around ten MB. However, when more features are added, it might increase beyond 100 MB, but as to not anger the fans, Chen Mo decided to keep it small at this stage.

The Thunderbolt Gaming Platform would be even smaller one the phone, and would function purely as an app-store. Chen Mo wanted it to be under 5MB, and even when more features were to be added in the feature, to never exceed 15MB.

—

Monday, Zheng Hongxi officially joined the company.

Chen Mo decided to have Zheng Hongxi work on the computers in the experience store temporarily as Chen Mo was considering moving to a bigger experience store when he would make more money in the future.

Of course it was still too early to consider this. Although Chen Mo had the funds, he wasn’t bothered to go through all the hassle.

Su Jinyu had managed to finish most of the foundations required for Lifeline. As it was an interactive fiction, the specifications were incredibly simple as chat boxes wouldn’t take too long to program.

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Chen Mo said to Zheng Hongxi, “This is an interactive fiction, and the selling point of the game is the story. I’ll need you to design the settings according to these specifications. Do a bit of planning for it and make the story seem more rich.”

Zheng Hongxi was shocked upon seeing the draft handed to him by Chen Mo.

“That’s it? The whole game is conveyed in essentially a conversation?” asked Zheng Hongxi.

Chen Mo nodded” Yep, so the only reason players would buy this game would be for the story.”

“…That’s quite a lot of pressure. Is it really fine to take up that much responsibility on my first day?” asked Zheng Hongxi.

“This isn’t really an important task, I might need you to work on the World of Azeroth in the future, and maybe even write a novel for it.”

“I’ll… give it my best,” muttered Zheng Hongxi.

Chen Mo patted him on his shoulder, “It’s fine, don’t worry about it! If you do a bad job you’ll have a second chance to do it again.”

“That’s not comforting at all!” complained Su Jinyu.

After handing over Lifeline to Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi, Chen Mo went back to his office to work on the tabletop games.

—

After three days, Zheng Hongxi handed over the first drafts of Lifeline to Chen Mo.

A key part of the first draft was to lay down the foundations, including how many different paths as well as the different endings. There would be a different choice at every step, potentially leading to different endings.

The draft was represented using a flowchart, each node containing a short, broad idea for the scene.

Chen Mo gave a quick look over the draft, there were more than seventy different scenes with four different endings.

“Yep, not bad,” said Chen Mo. “But you’ll need to redo it.”

Zheng Hongxi was speechless.

“First, there must be a build up to the story. The timeline as it is is quite messey. The in game time must be the same as real time, if the game wants the player to wait for eight hours, that means eight hours. This is to make the players feel more connected to the game.

“And evidently you haven’t paid attention to this point in your writing process. You didn’t consider what this would do to the pacing of the story.”

“Second, the story feels about the same no matter the start, the middle or the end, when it should be constantly ramping up, especially when they are trying to escape, that part was especially stale. Maybe you could add some more shocking elements, perhaps…shapeshifting aliens.

“And there’s one more thing, the content isn’t rich enough. You need to double the amount of choices to more than one hundred and twenty. You should increase the number of endings too, and ninety percent of it should be failures, forcing the players to be more careful. The players must make the right choice every step of the way to reach the best ending.”

Listening intently, Zheng Hongxi nodded, “Yep, I understand. I’ll make some changes.”

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