## Procedural Narrative: An Introduction What do tarot, improv and M.A.S.H. have in common? This is the first in a series of posts explaining how our narrative systems work. As I (Rourke, narrative systems designer here at Hidden Door) was outlining what the series would look like I realized there are terms and concepts that need to be defined up front. ## What is Procedural Narrative? When you read a book or watch a movie or a play, the experience is (usually!) linear. There might be flashbacks or even time travel, but you, the audience, start at the beginning and experience the narrative through to the end in an order determined by the author(s). You start on the first page and travel to the last page. **Procedural Narrative** is any narrative that involves a procedure other than “start at the beginning and go straight through to the end.” That’s [a huge umbrella!](https://www.hiddendoor.co/blog/can-a-machine-run-your-ttrpg) And it’s just one subset of **procedural generation** (or **procgen**) in general. But we can break procedural narrative into three basic components: - The Input - The Procedure - The Output Let’s use three examples of procedural narrative that you might be familiar with to illustrate these points! The [fortune telling game M.A.S.H.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MASH_(game)), tarot card reading, and improvisational comedy all have elements of procedural narrative. ### 1) The Input The input is the thing that goes in and is transformed or otherwise used by The Procedure. This can be random - the result of a dice roll, for example - decided intentionally, or [some combination of the two!](https://www.hiddendoor.co/blog/art-system-characters-behind-the-scenes) The input may be more or less closely tied to the procedure, and there may even be a procedure or ritual involved with generating the input! The definitions are fuzzy - it would be reasonable to consider the act of rolling a die to be part of the procedure, for instance. Part of this input may involve generating or changing the procedure itself. These are some ways various techniques of procedural generation can interlock and compliment each other. **a) M.A.S.H.** For those unfamiliar with M.A.S.H., it’s a fortune telling game played by children to humorously predict various elements of their future, such as the [characterization of their spouse,](https://www.hiddendoor.co/blog/who-do-you-love) mode of transportation, number of children, and type of domicile. [Here is a quick video](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hpMt8DbhT-8) that offers an explanation. ...And, of course, a M.A.S.H. mockup using examples from Hidden Door: There are two types of input in M.A.S.H. - first, coming up with the list of items in each category. This is something of an art, though there are traditional elements of a category. Typically, there is at least one desirable element, one mundane element, and one undesirable or otherwise outlandish element. The classic list for domicile is something like ‘Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House’. The distribution between different types of elements is a common thing that designers of procedural systems have to consider! Once the setup has been determined, one player will start drawing a spiral outward, until the other player says stop - then they will draw a line from the endpoint of the spiral toward the center, or from one side of the spiral to the other, and count how many times it intersects the spiral to determine the element that’s selected. We’ll learn more about how that works in the procedure section! This ritual adds a lot of texture to the game - rolling a die would work fine for generating a number, but it’s not nearly as fun or suspenseful! **b) Tarot** Tarot reading is another popular form of divination (though the cards did not originate as a divination tool - that history is fascinating and I encourage looking it up!). Various divination techniques, including and especially tarot cards, have influenced procedural storytelling quite a lot! Tarot cards are typically randomized via shuffling. This can be something of a ritual or performance in and of itself, and the act can take a very different form and purpose - what is the prompt? Who is doing the reading? What are you thinking about and bringing to the experience? The art of a tarot deck is also part of the input - reading using a Rider-Waite-Smith deck will feel very different than using a deck featuring art of scantily clad anime girls, or perhaps photographs of adorable puppies and kittens, even if the mechanics are otherwise similar. A concept I find useful when thinking about tarot card art is semantic density – there are often a lot of symbolically meaningful elements on the art of each card, and even if the deck is full of cards that are blank other than their names, each card, especially the Major Arcana, have a depth of multiple meanings tied to both tradition and the individual practitioner’s experience and interpretation. Motifs may even appear throughout the many cards, drawing the deck into a whole greater than the individual cards. **c) Improv comedy** A classic type of input for improv comedy is asking for a word from the audience to inspire the scene. There are often constraints, such as asking for a place, or specifically avoiding proper nouns. Then, out of all the suggestions the audience submits, a performer will choose one - this sort of selection process in the context of procedural generation is often referred to as curation (though this is usually in the context of curating outputs). Curation is also a creative and skill-intensive process - it takes knowledge and practice for an improviser to build an intuition for the sort of prompts that are likely to lead to good scenes. ### 2) The Procedure This is the meat of the technique. It’s some procedure, algorithm, arcane ritual, or set of rules and steps that is followed, using the input, to arrive at the output. **a) M.A.S.H.** Using the input number, the players count down the combined lists they have created and cross off the element corresponding to the number, repeating this over and over down the page and starting back to the top until there is only one of each category. While this is deterministic, it is also suspenseful! It also reveals some of the art of choosing good input parameters - if the input number were too small, the game would be boring, and if it were too big the game would take forever! **b) Tarot** There are as many techniques for reading tarot as there are tarot practitioners. A common type of reading is laying the cards out in a predetermined arrangement, with each position having a symbolic meaning - for example, past, present, and future. These aren’t so specific as to strangle the artful interpretation of the practitioner, but the constraint provides further inspiration and meaning that layers onto the already-semiotically-dense individual cards. **c) Improv comedy** There are a variety of improv games, with different rules and procedures. Which game a group of improvisers selects depends on their goals, strengths and weaknesses, the type and length of scene they want to create, and a variety of other factors. Procedure selection may vary based on the size of the audience to the size of the cast, for example. An improv scene with a large cast may choose a procedure with “tap in” and “tap out” elements, allowing multiple cast members to get stage time. There are a lot of variables that impact procedure. People performing in an Improv 201 graduation showcase may (or may not!) choose a different framework for scene selection and modulation than SNL cast members guest-starring in a ticketed improv event. Similarly with procedural generation in game narratives and elsewhere, choosing the correct procedural technique(s) to achieve the desired outcomes or solve specific problems is an essential skill. ### 3) The Output The output is, appropriately, whatever you end up with at the end! **a) M.A.S.H.** At the end of a game of M.A.S.H., each player will have their fortune told, and it will likely be very silly - for example, a player may be an Astronaut married to Count Dracula, living in a Swamp with their 67 children, and their vehicle of choice is a Scooter. The outcome is not especially entertaining in and of itself - the fun and humor comes from the ritual, the suspense and the surprise. As with many other types of procedural generation, the journey, not the destination, is the point! **b) Tarot** The output of a tarot reading could be many things, but it is usually some sort of fortune, prediction or plan. Again, presentation and delivery are vital to how the result is received. It is also deeply personal - if the exact same tarot practitioner got the exact same spread for two different people, it’s unlikely that they would give them both the exact same reading. And even if they did, those two people would interpret it differently! As will all art, experiencing a tarot reading is a core part of the process, and is in many ways an act of authorship and creativity in and of itself. **c) Improv comedy** The output of improv comedy is, hopefully, laughter! And hopefully a coherent-enough scene. Some of the audience’s laughter comes from surprise at where a scene went, and delight at the skill of the improvisers. The feeling of an improvised comedy show is very different from that of sketch or stand-up comedy, since the performers are often just as surprised as the audience. Improv is a good example of why some people might choose a procedural narrative experience - it is personal, something that happened just for you, and at the beginning of the show, nobody involved, not even the performers, knew exactly what was going to happen. This is not to say that procedural narratives are better than scripted ones, or that improv is better than stand-up comedy. Many people can’t stand improv! But they are different mediums using different techniques to achieve different effects. I also have avoided using “hand-crafted” as an antonym for “procedural” - improvisational and procedural techniques are no less or more creative or skill-intensive than their counterparts. ## Look for Procedural Narrative in Games! How does this apply to games, you ask? The fundamental principles of procedural generation in games are very similar, but often applied at a larger scale - you have probably seen procedural storytelling in action in games like Dwarf Fortress and The Sims! Watch this blog for more writing on narrative structure, procedural generation, and all the ways we Do the Darn Thing here at Hidden Door! We will be posting more blog posts in this series, going further into procedural generation techniques, what they are, and how we use them to tell stories.