Jonathan Lessard - A Simulation with a View

Roguelike systems are often full of rich, intricately generated environmental and historical details. Most of it is lost on players who typically navigate the world through the perspective of a single or small party of adventurers. This makes sense in terms of aligning player and character perspective in their journey. It does, however, limit the information they have access to in terms of discovering interesting or quirky emergent details and stories.
Our current project takes the opposite stance of exposing as much of the simulation as possible to allow players the fun of perusing and discovering the intricacies of its generated histories. This led to a series of novel design problems: how to present this massive quantity of information? And how to give players reasons to engage with it.
In this quick talk, I will quickly explain our approaches to tackling these issues. First, I will present our Chroniqueur interface which affords players an immediate, accessible Wikipedia-like interface documenting most of the world’s simulated history. Secondly, I will touch on the Divine Affaire gameplay which positions players as higher entities responding to the needs of simulated characters. To devise wise plans of actions, they first need to investigate the simulated lives and understand the given situations. Given the complexity of the simulation, miraculous meddling does not always yield the expected results and much of the fun comes from uncovering the consequences of one’s interventions in the characters’ timelines.