Argax Project:: Dissertation: A Rough Draft Node

Node Status: COMPLETE

Roles

A scene or action can also cast characters into certain roles specific to the particular story. For instance, a scene might establish that a princess has been imprisoned by an evil wizard. If the player then rescues the princess, the RESCUE(princess) action may cast the princess into a Friend role and the evil wizard as an Enemy.

In many ways, roles simply serve as a short-hand notation for all the possible actions or scenes that could produce a certain relationship or state. For instance, there might be a number of ways to make a Friend in the game--only one of which is RESCUE-ing them. But once the player has a Friend (by some means), that relationship can serve as an precondition for a number of later scenes that require a Friend.

Additionally, roles serve to separate relationships from character attributes. For example, the player might be greatly esteemed by a number of characters in the story world; that is, they all have high affinity for the player. Yet a Friend role can only be cast through a significant story event. Therefore, if a later scene has misfortune befall a Friend character, it should be more significant and relevant to the story than if that same misfortune simply befell one the player's many fans.

Like scene triggers, roles can also interrupt verb-to-action translation, as we've seen with Betty's jealous Girlfriend role in previous examples.

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