I’m really bummed. After a long run this morning, I cleaned up and wrote this beautiful blog supporting the topic. I pressed the”update button” and nothing. Everything went away. Thus now I must try to regurgitate what was once very warm in my brain.
One of the big differences between game engines and the Raconteur engine is the motivation to keep the player “in the game”. I must emphasise the Raconteur engine is not a game engine. Thus many of the core mechanics must change. Visitors of the Raconteur engine are not really players in the game but visitors to the story world. However for simplicity, I will call visitors of the story world as “players in the game” since both serve a simmilar function.
Growing, expanding, leveling, defeating your opponnent are all the rewards which keep the players playing within the game engine. What sets the Raconteur engine apart from other “game” engines is the reward system – the reason to keep participating. With a game engine the goal is to win, grow, get larger, go further, collect more dots, beat the other guy; win. The Raconteur engine is not a game engine. Therefore another must be established.
What draws us to film, books, television and other print media? It’s certaiinly not the opportunity to win. I think rather its about curiosity and resolution. What builds that curiosity is rapport. Rapport is an extremly human “feeling” that controls almost everything we do in life. Why Rapport is so important to us and why it is a cornerstone to our foundation of happiness is the subject for another article. Regardless, the curiosity we have for the characters is what compells us us to participate and resolution is the reward we get for playing.
Since Rapport is so important to pull us into the storyworld then perspective must be one of the primary parameters. Almost any situation can be perceived in almost any emotional context. The rapport we have with the character dictates the emotional response to every situation. Therefore, perspective must be one of the primary tools for keeping the audience in the game.
Perspective is such a very illusive topic. What complicates things is that perspective is not bound by time; it is four dimensional. The brain can tell no difference between the memories of the past, the perception of the present and the visions of tomorrow. All of this contributes to the emotional state of every character, Thus exposure to perspective must be independent of time. Iif some characters are devoting their perspective to the past and others are focussing on the future,how will the Raconteur engine deal with the characters in the present? Two timescales must be established. The first is the story world time. This is constant and moves very similarly to to our own time. The second is the per character perspective time. This time is ultimately bound by the story world time. However, it is not bound by the same restrictions. in fact it is bound only by the exposure to any other perspective it can get in contact with.
There will be more on each of these topics.
