kienbui1995/narrative-design

Narrative Design

When to Use

When designing the story, world lore, characters, and dialogue systems for a game.

Core Jobs

1. Story Structure

Games aren't films — story must interweave with gameplay:

• Environmental storytelling: world tells story without cutscenes (notes, ruins, NPC behavior)
• Emergent narrative: player actions create their own story moments
• Authored narrative: scripted story beats at key moments Good games use all three. Great narrative games balance player agency with authored moments.

2. Character Design

Per character:

• Want: what do they actively pursue?
• Need: what do they actually need (often different from want)?
• Wound: what in their past drives them?
• Arc: how do they change (or don't) by the end?

Player character: be careful with agency — player agency and authored arc can conflict.

3. Branching Dialogue

Design principles:

• Meaningful choices: must produce different outcomes (not just different flavor text)
• Player expression vs player influence: sometimes branches express personality, sometimes they change outcomes — be clear which is which
• Convergence: branches that recombine need clear narrative justification
• Tools: Ink (by Inkle), Yarn Spinner, Twine for writing and testing

Document per choice node:

• The choice options (player-facing)
• What each selects for (tone, faction, stat)
• Consequence (immediate + long-term flags set)

4. Lore Architecture

• Build only what players will discover (unused lore = wasted effort)
• Layer: surface lore (visible to all), discoverable lore (for explorers), deep lore (for completionists)
• Consistency bible: world rules, timeline, faction relationships

Key Outputs

• Story outline (major beats, act structure)
• Character bibles (key characters)
• Dialogue script with branching (Ink/Yarn format)
• Lore consistency bible

Anti-Patterns

• Story delivered entirely through unskippable cutscenes
• Choices with no real consequence ("illusion of choice" players notice)
• Lore dumps in opening monologue
• Building lore that players will never encounter