Scenario Design
    Story Elements

Part 1: Do we need a story?

As you might have heard or read from previous articles here or from discussions on the forums, sometimes stories do more in hindering gameplay rather than increase fun. Why is this so? To understand this, you have to realise that if you're going put a story in a map that you need to understand how players play scenarios. (In any creative or artistic project, you must know your audience, or in this case, your players.)

In multiplayer, there are two kinds of game play - PBEM and live internet games.

Most league gamers who play games live and online prefer to have small or medium size maps which are not too story-heavy. They want to concentrate on fighting it out, and they hope to do so within one gaming session. (That means in 2-3 hours usually.) Their first emphasis is on balance, and everything else is secondary. Story and instruction are of the least concern most of the time. If you are making a map for this crowd, always remember to place balance as your first priority and story as your last.

In PBEMs (Play By EMail), human players fight it out in fast combat mode, and against the AI in tactical or fast combat mode. PBEM takes one day to one week to complete one cycle of turns. The size of maps used depend on how many players and how long they want the game to last. PBEMs are the best format for turn-based gaming because they allow the player to play with other people as time allows. Heavy story-/epic-based maps are very well suited for PBEM.

It is very popular for single-player maps to have stories. Stories make a map feel more interactive and more interesting. It can also make a map more replayable if there are different storylines for each side in the conflict. Having different message events for each side, for an example, is a great way to provide different storylines.

Important: Always feel free to break away from conventional design if you feel like it. Over time, you will learn to recognize what really works and what doesn't. In the end, always remember to have fun during the process, and your maps will reflect this and will be much more interesting to players.

To begin, set up the map background story, Part 2.