Plot vs. Storytelling

This is an idea that's been forming in my head for some time, and seeing a few stories that really disappointed me finally gave me the words to describe this. I apologise if it seems like idle musings, I'm just trying to get the basic concept out.

A story can be broken down in many different ways, but one important way it can be broken down is in the two basic components of plot and storyline. I believe these need to be in a pretty narrow balance in order for a story to be good, and I've seen far too many tip too far in one direction or another. I'd like to explain what I'm referring to here, however.

Plot: When I say this, I'm referring strictly to the sequence of events that take place in order to provide structure to a story, as well as all of the events that had to happen beforehand in order to set the stage for that story, and indeed all of the events the story ends up hinting will happen past its end point. While plot can indeed be artistic, it is also the more technical side of a story, as it comprises logistics more than anything else. What do the characters need to do? Where do they need to be to do it? How do they get there? Why do they need to do this? Why can't they do something else? All of these are technical questions which serve to craft an unambiguous itinerary for the plot to move through its fictional world in order to get from the beginning to the end.

Storytelling: When I say this, I'm referring to the act of telling the story absent of what's actually being told. This encompasses the more abstract side of a story, dealing with art style and aesthetics, psychology, drama, ideology and basic skill of the storyteller. This can be the more artistic of the two aspects, but it still hinges on the highly technical aspect of moderation, as devolving into rambling is just as bad as an Ikea narrative of "this happened, then this happened then this happened." Storytelling is less about what you tell and more about how you tell it.

Now, the reason I brought this up is because the games which disappointed me that I mentioned have one thing in common when it comes to their stories - they have too much plot and too little storytelling. What I'm referring to is a writer's tendency to believe that plot twists, if they are shocking enough, are an apt replacement for actual shocking or dramatic story moments, and they really aren't. In order for a moment in a story to really affect us, it needs to have been built up and established before it can be capitalised on. A lot of the time even an obvious plot twist can end up being very emotional if it's simply told right. Inversely, a very good plot can still be ruined by stilted exposition.

This problem of "too much plot" can often lead to what most people would consider padding. The most common of these is the "war plot," where much of the story is taken up by accomplishing a variety of military objectives that move the technical side of the plot forward, but really contribute nothing to the actual story the work is trying to tell, and thus come off feeling like they're wasting our time. A lot of City of Heroes actually falls under this, especially older content, where you'll often run through missions that even your contacts will admit accomplished nothing. From a technical standpoint, events happened - you went to a location, beat up some dudes and progressed to the next point in the plot. From a storytelling perspective, however, nothing at all was accomplished because the story did not progress.

To illustrate, I want to give a couple of examples, both of them from this game and from fairly old content, as well. I'm trying to be objective here

Let's start with the Dr. Quaterfield TF. Now, it's widely accepted that this may well be one of the worst pieces of content in City of Heroes, but I want to take a minute and examine why this is. Some would quote the TF's length, some would quote the Shadow Shard as being inconvenient or the Soldiers of Rularuu being a pain to fight, some would even cite the hunts. However, one look at the TF's souvenir reveals what I consider to be a much more fundamental flaw with this TF's design - it's all plot and no storytelling. There is literally nothing there to inspire or engage, it's just a sequence of events linked together by a logical timeline that has no storytelling of any sort to offer. Just take a look at an excerpt of that souvenir:

[quote]You next attacked a Crey forward base. and found information that could lead to more of their bases.
You struck the first of 4 Crey bases you found. taking it out.
You struck the next Crey base. shutting it down as well.
You took the third Crey base down. leaving one left.
You finally hit the last of the Crey bases you knew of.[/qiote]

This is the very definition of an Ikea plot - first this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened. There's plot enough for a huge story, the problem is that nothing at all is made of this plot. It's just padding with no artistry to make it interesting. The whole th

Contrast this against something like Oh Wretched Man, Seer Pia Marino's story arc. This, inversely, is widely believed to be one of the game's better stories, and there's a very solid reason for this. Seer Marino's story arc is relatively light on plot, by which I mean it's relatively light on plot twists and those are less emphasised in the story. Really, what it comes down to is a story about a misplaced vendetta, with a climax that turns the emotional content on its head, with every other plot development being more or less just a mood piece designed to aid in the overall atmosphere and emotion of the narrative. Every mission has a purpose, and that purpose is to progress the narrative in a moving way. From finding out the true identity of the Wretch to uncovering Ghost Widow's nature to the conspiracy and its eventual resolution, this is a story that's less about things happening in places all over the world and more about how those events impact the people involved in them.

At its heart, Oh Wretched Man is a story based primarily on storytelling. It's a story steeped in the personality of those involved in it and driven by the artistry in the way it is told. Everyone involved in it has a personal stake in the story, thus everyone's actions are meaningful and impacting. Pia is driven by grief, Mu'Rakir by hatred, Ohanko by greed and Belladonna by compulsion. Almost like a Silent Hill story, these people are drawn into the narrative and strike out paths of their own based on where their personalities will take them, and at the end their story arcs loop right back into the characterisation of the people themselves. At its core, Oh Wretched Man is not a story about events, it's a story about the people who take part in these events.

Is it possible to tip a story too far into storytelling and have too little plot? Of course it is. The various "walking games" that just shoot for a striking setting with no actual gameplay and plot to them are many and famous, but I can't really think of a story arc that's like this in City of Heroes. Our game is simply designed to be driven by plot because a story arc advances as we clear missions. It's still possible to create an abstract story where missions and enemies and encounters are only reference representations of broader concepts and the reality of their appearance doesn't matter, but I simply haven't run into any of these. Nor would I want to, for that matter, but that's besides the point.

The whole reason I say this is that for some time, it has felt like our own City of Heroes has been sliding into too much plot and not enough storytelling. As our plots become more complex, more tangled and more convoluted to the point where a simple story of a hero being a hero is looked upon as boring, I fear we begin to lose some of the artistry that made I6-I7 CoV so memorable. Sure, I don't really agree with the plots of those old stories most of the time, but I agree that many of them were told with a lot of artistry devoted to them. And like AAA games and their snowballing production costs, I fear our ever-sprawling plots leave little time and room stop and smell the flowers, as it were.

See, the thing with a good balance between plot and storytelling is that a lot of the time this requires "pauses" where the plot stops and we're left with just the storytelling to set up a scene. This really can't happen when there's too much plot to tell in the space given, reducing much of what should have been storytelling in the abstract sense into "story telling" in the very literal sense, by which I mean exposition dumping. The Last Airbender movie tried to tell 26 20-minute episodes of one season into a 90-minute movie, and the story that came of this was stilted, rushed and filled with exposition because there was far too much plot to deliver and no room for the "luxury" of setting tone, mood and emotion.

At the end of the day, plot is not the most important aspect of a story. It needs to be compelling, that much I don't disagree, but plot alone cannot make a good story, because a good story must also be told well.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well said. I agree, in general.

As a roleplayer, I see this problem crop up a fair bit when people run their own plots - everything becomes about moving the events forward, and there's not enough time to digest the background, to discuss, to plan, to think of ways forward before the next step in the plot pushes upon the players.

The most effective means available to avoid this problem is to avoid linear plotlines - never write "this happens, then this, then this" - but to instead have them couched as "if this, then that". The downside being that this suddenly explodes the size of the plot from "23 separate things happen in a Dr Q TF" to "dependent on player actions, something in the region of 100 things might happen in a Dr Q TF".

The only way this could really work in-game is through some form of amendment to the branching dialogue tech - branching story arcs, where if A happens in mission 1, then X happens in mission 2, but if B happens in mission 1, then Y happens in mission 2, instead. This is actually tackled a little bit in some of the new DA stuff, where if you rescue certain individuals, you get aid from them later.

I'd like to see actual alterations to mission objectives based on the outcomes of earlier missions (probably using "fake badge" tech to allow the system to determine what happens next), so that if in mission three I do the optional objective to defeat everything on the map, in mission six I have the information I need to pick out the correct objective.

Back to a point you made, though - "taking the time to stop and smell the roses". These are the beats of the plot. It can be achieved in CoH with "talk to" missions - as long as the subject being talked about is interesting. Another option is the "fake door mission" where you enter a map full of friendlies and have to talk to one of them. It breaks things up from the monotony of battering the ever-living heck out of bad guys.

If this were combined with branching story arcs, it would be possible to create truly wonderful stories, I think.

More story arcs like Seer Marino's, is basically what you saying?

I AGREE!

The tension between exposition in the plot, plot events and the trappings like character development is very tricky to resolve.

Do it well, and you have "Casablanca," which has a pretty simple story but is drenched with memorable characters and wonderful dialogues.

Do it poorly and a glaring example comes to my mind in which the film devolved into a rampant deathfest in the last two minutes in which not only was every participant in the film was summarily killed (as in, *BLAM* *DEAD* with nothing more), but a narrator then intoned that the entire planet had in fact been destroyed. The End.

CoH has had work that approaches both of these extremes. I have never played SSA1.7 which you like so well because the greatly fanfared and spoiled Death Of Statesman failed on so many levels, which I shall not belabor here. I did the next one, where Malaise attacks Sister Psyche, and have been totally put off them since. The Doppleganger arcs and what I had done in DA so far, however, are quite good.

One would hope that the CoH writers would lean towards what have been commonly acclaimed as well-done arcs and away from the poor ones, but if it were easy, they would all have been great in the first place. But here's hoping.

This is a big issue for me in AE arcs. Very few people get the idea that the missions should actually have detail.

Most content in CoX is what I call bookend content. The contact tells you something you have to do, you go do a mission with no details except the plot point (defeat boss, etc) and then the contact says the resolution.

Now bookend content is fine for teams where the goal is just to find foes to fight, but it is lame for solo play where you can have a real story and experience.

The purpose of plot is really to explain the events and motivate the player/character. Arachnos is going to blow up Atlas Park with a bomb, you need to disarm it. It is what you need to do and why.

The storytelling is what makes the actual mission fun. Rescuing innocents, witty banter from the villains, etc.

Please, don't use those terms

There's a reason: They mean different things. In narratology "plot" and "story" are two ways of looking at narrative sequence. (basically the plot is the narrative as it moves chronologically through the work in question, while the story is the narrative as it moves chronologically "in-universe")

What made the story awesome was it involved a signature character, the story actually seemed to mean something, and for redside, I didn't feel like a lackey.

Using signature characters in story arcs is one of the best things the writers could start doing.

Not having the story seem random is also a very big plus.

Marino's arc is just...that awesome! It's the story arc that I always made sure to run when I played redside.

The personal story missions are also an awesome new mechanic for storytelling.

The biggest issue with storytelling in the game is that the game design is so adverse to story telling. The only way to get everything out of an arc is if you are soloing it. The contacts that give information on the missions before and after the mission are nearly impossible to read unless you are the team leader. The clues given in mission require you to stop everything and read them to get the story. The in-mission contacts are a race to finish the dialogue, but not too quickly or else the contact will go away and no one else can talk to them. Souvenirs are a nice way of wrapping things up, but those break immersion and aren't truly effective methods of conveying the story since to get the story you have to slog through the missions with no idea what you are doing. Even then, some souvenirs contain information that wasn't actually covered in the mission, such as the praetorian souvenir that gives the history of the destroyers.

This is also one of the biggest issues I encountered while making AE arcs. During the few playthroughs of my first arc, I would get players who would admit they have no idea what is going on, even though I had clearly spelled out that information in the mission text and clues. Being built for a team, the sad part is that most of the players aren't going to get the full story since they won't stop and read the clues, the mission text, and the descriptions for custom characters.

The devs are doing better, though. With cutscenes and public chat bubbles, it is now possible for players in a team to take part in the story without having to abruptly hold up everyone so they can read a clue or race to the story contact. Though what I think is the most effective and yet underutilized tool for story telling in the game is the gameplay itself. The maps, the enemies, and the enemy's strength themselves can be an effective tool for conveying emotion in the game's content.