Storyline

From Shadowrun: Awakened

A storyline is composed of many campaigns, generally 3 to 5, that tell a long and involving story over many missions.

Game Rules Description

One of the complaints the team of Shadowrun Awakened had concerning a lot of MMOGs is that they lacked story. As we began to shape the idea of missions and campaigns, we began to realize that certain story concepts were too large to just one or two missions, or even a full campaign. We also wished to emulate the long-term, many faceted story ideas that appeared in large-scale Shadowrun expansions, such as Year of the Comet and System Shutdown. Thus, the concept of the storyline was created to present a very long-term story that plays out over many missions. In many respects, the intended scale of storylines is along the same level of single player campaigns in other games.

Storylines are a collection of campaigns, usually 3 to 5. The campaigns within a storyline a player ultimately participates in, much like missions in a campaign or scenes in a mission, is dependent on the choices the player makes during that time and the content creator's plan for guiding the players through. The first campaign is usually an introduction to the factions involved; likely introducing the primary plot actors. The middle campaign(s) will build momentum for the characters, up the ante, and twist the plot. Cliffhangers between campaigns is highly encouraged. The final campaign should present a full force climax that answers every question and deeply satisfies the player.

Campaigns in a storyline are not necessarily linear. Not only can decisions affect which campaign is perform next by the player, but campaigns in the same story may be available to the player at the same time. The exact availability will be entirely up to the content creator. For instance, a storyline could feature more than one introductory campaign, perhaps one for each major faction involved in the storyline. This same feature would allow two campaigns to be active at the same time in later campaigns as well, though an example where this makes sense is unclear. Generally, decisions regarding the next campaign should happen during a mission, not based on what mission a player selects.

Some missions in a storyline, just like in a campaign, may be optional, meaning it offers some additional advancement and some extra background story, but no critical storyline plot points. These missions would be primarily targeted to players who play long game sessions and want to examine every single bit of content.

Technical Implementation

Storylines are yet another level of hierarchy amongst campaigns, missions, and scenes. It will be script-driven, supported by unique persistence abilities. Storylines will be able to store their own values for later use. They will also receive their own events from the scripting system when a storyline is active.

In order to mesh with numbers given in Character Advancement, storylines should be about 24 critical missions long, with as many as an additional dozen as optional.