I've been playing with the core story a lot lately, and I'm getting ready to add some episode break components. The mechanics of the plot generator are working very well, but the specifics need a bit of tweaking. The three big problems currently are that certain events happen way too often (I won't worry about this for now; things will improve as more components and tasks are added), certain events don't contribute to the story (and it's therefore possible for the plot to get stuck in sort of a holding pattern), and the stories currently being generated often aren't very compelling.
As I've mentioned before, I feel that there needs to be another plot descriptor. Right now there's only one important descriptor- the "Propp state". I was thinking at first of adding an episode state descriptor, but for now I've decided against that. Instead, I think I should add a descriptor to hold the state of the PC's personal life. Also, the Background plot descriptor can be expanded to explain the PC's motivation or the root cause behind the story.
The +P descriptor should hold the large, global events taking place in the story. The +C descriptor will hold the small, personal events. Here are some possible plot states, in no particular order:
- PC searching for someone who wronged him (the nature of the wronging can be stored in +B: parents killed, orphaned, etc)
- PC attempts to solve mystery from past (again stored in +B; this point would often lead to the above point)
- The PC and the enemy NPC share common goal/both attempt to prevent war (this was vaguely the plot of Babylon 5)
- Love triangle with enemy pilot (Amuro-Char-Lalah in original Gundam)
- Enemy becomes love interest (08th MS Team)
- PC searching for lost friend/lover/family
The "+Pla: PC learns of artifact" plot state could be changed to a personal +C state, and a new +P "sides battle to find artifact first" global state could be added. Possibly, the "+Psh: Forcibly conscripted" state should be a personal +C state as well.
If the PC is associated with a faction, then the +P plot state will likely be favored. If the PC is not associated with a faction, then the +C state will be favored.
