Story and Campaign Creation Advice

Over the years some of the veteran fan-made campaign producers have posted on the community with advice for creating them. We have text here by TheOracle, legendary maker of StarCraft campaign Legacy of the Confederation, and Weremuppet, a poster upon the old wc3campaigns.com.

Oracle's guide was originally created as advice for people to get their campaigns hosted upon Campaign Creations (With "Des" referring to Desler, then webmaster of the site at the time), while Weremuppet's was a general post with advice for people in the abundant mod scene in WC3C at the time. All of the points are still excellent for those seeking to create a mod production (along with hosting) or simply a story.

TheOracle:

A lot of you guys have campaigns in the works for StarCraft. A lot of you may want your campaign hosted on CC, but aren't sure what Desler is looking for, so here are my two cents for:

"Getting your campaign on CC."

**Bear in mind, the decision to bring you onto CC is Desler's and Desler's alone. Pleading with him, begging him, sending him fine chocolates and roses, and buying him tickets to a Cowboys game won't hack it. Your project must be QUALITY. IF it is, you'll probably get on, but, what IS quality? That's what I will discuss in the next paragraphs.**

Style

Before you get into storyline or characterization, you need to decide on the STYLE of your campaign. Will it exist within the confines of the Bliz universe (Antioch style), will it be 'based on Bliz but develop new concepts' (Celestial Irruption and E.D.A.S.T.) but still NOT break the boundaries of the bliz universe, will it use some blizzard concepts and break others (Legacy of the Confederation), or...will it be entirely new?

Each of the above styles has a target audience. Some people are fans of each type. The 'majority' of fans lie in the first (Breaking no blizzard boundaries), because most people refuse to go outside of their nine dots and will not expand their imaginations beyond what Bliz has established. People are 'familiar' with the bliz universe, they already know it (if they play Starcraft), and so they don't have to 'think' as much. Get used to it, people in general don't like to think. If you disagree with me, tough, I really don't care.

Now, the further you deviate from the bliz universe, the less of a fan 'base' you have to work with. But, that DOES NOT MEAN YOUR CAMPAIGN CAN'T BE POPULAR AND QUALITY EVEN IF IT BREAKS ALL THE RULES. It can, but you will have to work harder if you leave the blizzard canon.

Okay, so, choose your poison with 'style' and let's move to phase 2.

Genre

Will your campaign be a serious dramatic type (Focusing on characterization through the campaign, and how extraordinary events shape characters from start to finish), anime style (Mirroring the style of japanimation flicks like Bubblegum Crisis or Ninja Scroll), documentary type (focusing less on characters and more on events and plot), or, derivative (this type is most common in the community unfortunately. A derivative work extends on the events in SC, characters seldom change and grow throughout the campaign, and the storyline is designed to fit in with the blizzard timeline. A derivative work is not likely to get you on CC, because it's wholly unoriginal, and the community is absolutely SATURATED with them. Choose one of the first three genres, be original. Originality is far more likely to turn Desler's eye than a rehash of what EVERYONE AND THEIR GRANDMOTHER is doing.

**Now that you have chosen your style, and your genre (either from the ones listed above or another variety), time to move onto POV or "Point of View."**

Point of view

Will the campaign be played from the perspective of Protoss? Terran? Or Zerg? Or will it be from the perspectives of all three? The only thing I will say about this is that with more POV's, you have to cram more characterization and more storyline into a smaller amount of maps (As less maps in a campaign can be dedicated to a race.) Any method of POV will work, so long as you compact your maps with added POV's.

SO what do we have now? Style, genre, and Point of View. Next up:

Storyline

Without a doubt, this is the SECOND most important part of a campaign. Not the first. A good story will DRIVE the characters, not the other way around. Characters don't drive a story. Your story MUST be solid, it must be original in concept, and above all, it can't contradict itself. Make sure every event in your campaigns aside from the SC stuff serves a 'purpose' in advancing the story. No one needs or wants meaningless events. A campaign isn't a movie, you don't have time to talk about WHoppers and Big Macs like John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. Your story has to MOVE.

Characters

The #1 most important part of the campaign. Players will view the events in your campaign through the character's eyes. Make the characters have personalities that people can relate to. They can be bad guys or good guys, but ensure that they have reasons for doing what they're doing. The player MUST relate, and MUST come to like (or hate) the character. If the player doesn't 'care' about the character, then you didn't do your job.

A character should change as a result of the story. A character at the beginning that is a patriot may later evolve into a rebel, while a rebel may evolve into a patriot. Let's use "Fallen Angel" as an example. You have a Confederation lieutenant "Janine Richter" that's as loyal and devoted as any soldier that ever served ConFed. One day, she's betrayed and left for dead by the very people she swore to protect. The result? She snapped and became everything the Confederation isn't, a murderer amongst other things. Will she grow 'again' and return to her original state of innocence and morality? Assuming I have done my job correctly with Fallen Angel, players should wonder this.

Characters have to change. They must be unpredictable, they must be unique and original (every character should have a unique personality that sets them apart from the rest.) So, using Desler's "Rond" as an example. You have a Protoss that isn't all prim and proper like the Judicator in the BW and SC campaign. He's just an average guy (or templar rather). A 'breath of fresh air.' Over the course of Des' campaigns, Rond has evolved into a more serious sort than when he started, and he might, in the end, after everything, become one of those serious protoss (except you got to see how Rond's experiences hardened him into that role.) Cool eh?

Now, take your UNIQUE characters and throw the story at them. How will they react? Each will react differently. Each will grow differently to adapt.

Graphics/music/sounds

ALL of this is UNNECESSARY. You need NONE of this to make a quality campaign. You don't need a budget or a hundred artists to have a QUALITY campaign, but it helps. New graphics help enhance the believability of the story and further set apart the characters (portraits), while new music sets the proper mood for various scenes. Sounds? Just make sure the acting is good. If it's not, go silent. Graphics/Music/Sound is overrated, but if you do it, it really does need to be done decently or not at all.

Missions

Very simple, they need to be fun. No one can say what that is as some people like build and destroy, others like movement puzzles, some people like thinking games, others like installation levels. EVERYONE is different. As long as 2 out of 10 people find the missions fun, you're on the right track. Hard to please everyone all the time. Missions don't need hordes of triggers to be fun, they can be very simplistic.

Just make sure the missions tie into the storyline. That's key. Everything that happens in the missions needs to further the storyline while at the same time being fun.

Simple example, you need to free a prisoner. After that prisoner is freed during an installation level, he reveals information and you can use that info. to proceed to the next part of the level.



Anyhow, this is "Cliff's Notes" for effective campaign design. If you want a more detailed account, please let me know I'll ask Des to post it on CC somewhere.

Oh, ONE MORE THING. MAKE SURE YOU INTEND TO FINISH YOUR CAMPAIGN. IF YOUR CAMPAIGN ISN'T AT LEAST 60% COMPLETE WHEN YOU SHOW IT TO DES, FORGET IT. There have been too many slackers that abandon their work. If your outside life prevents you from finishing the campaign, that's fine, but don't ask Des to be sympathetic. CC exists to provide quality campaigns, not quality (almost campaigns that people never get to play.) FOLLOW THROUGH IS PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL.

Good luck everyone,

"Destiny Awaits"

- The Oracle

Number of characters?

(Oracle also gave me some advice about the amount of characters I had in my own StarCraft campaign, Trinity:)

Magic,

The difficulty with having a huge assortment of characters is that you are spread thin. You have only a certain amount of a map to dedicate to a character so that a player gets to know him/her. The more characters there are, the less time each gets.

A few prominent characters, (3-4 per side) is fine though. Any other characters can be 'supporting'. The difference between a leading character and a supporting character is that usually, the leading character will 'change' somehow as a result of the story. Supporting characters stay the same. That way, their personality remains constant and allows you to focus on the leads.

Having dozens of heroes will detach the player because there's not enough opportunity to get to know the characters.

That's my two cents, hope it helps.

- The Oracle

Weremuppet:

Hey y'all, I wrote this article a while ago, but it didn't get much attention and it never got posted in the tutorials section at warcraftiii.net after I sent it multiple times. Considering how many new campaigns are coming out, I figured that after four months it was time to revise and repost it. Anyway...

I've played a few of the player made campaigns/RPGs that are currently released and while many of them are very noble efforts, I thought I'd offer some advice to people who have made or are making campaigns and RPGs right now. I'm a theater major, so mainly I wanted to offer some advice on what at current is the most universal flaw in what I've seen thus far - storytelling. I myself would love to make a campaign, but being a senior, I'm too busy/lazy to do it. For that reason I shall live vicariously through you creative minds out there, and offer some tips to help you make your stories more interesting and thus that much more enjoyable.

General storytelling tips

George Lucas once said that a special effect without a story is flat-out boring. And he is quite correct. Even if your layout is superb, your triggers flawless, and everything balanced to perfection, you can still fall flat if there isn't a story being told, or if it's being told poorly. So, here's how to begin:

• Introduce your characters. It can just be a .txt file, but regardless of how you do it, it's a lot easier to start a campaign if we have some idea of who the hero is that we're controlling, and what the surrounding situation is. Alternately, you can introduce your character in an opening cinematic, giving us an idea of where the action is taking place, who the characters are, and what the immediate conflict is. DON'T put a quick three sentence blurb on the loading screen and then thrust the player straight into things. If you want your campaign to be more than a bunch of neat maps, you need to bring the players into the story in the first mission.
• Create an inciting moment. An inciting moment is the point in your story, usually early on, that gets the main plot moving along. For example, the inciting moment in the Warcraft III Prologue is when Medivh tells Thrall to sail west to Kalimdor. It establishes the action for the Orcish campaign, with Thrall finally landing in Kalimdor. In the Human campaign, the inciting moment is when Arthas first encounters the Undead, leading him down the road that ends with the summoning of Archimonde in Undead mission 8. The inciting moment doesn't need to be in the first mission, if your campaign is long enough, but it should happen somewhere within the first third of the campaign.
• Be aware of what is at stake. Stakes are very important in storytelling, because they make the actions and decisions of the characters interesting, and keep the players playing. However, it's often possible to skew the stakes in such a way that ruins the story, or even makes it comedic. Keep this in mind when determining the difficulty of your missions: If the stakes are lower than the difficulty of the goal being achieved (ie saving Timmy from an army of twenty Archimondes), it's just silly. It's also silly when the stakes are far higher than the difficulty at which they're achieved (ie having to kill twenty Timmys in order to stop everybody in the world from dying instantly)
  Another problem arises when dealing with stories set in pre-established universes. When writing stories in established worlds (like the world of Warcraft, or the Star Wars Universe), it sometimes is a bit much to raise the stakes drastically high. Your characters don't have to be trying to keep the world from blowing up. Indeed, in the world of Warcraft, it diminishes the core story if you make your characters more important than Thrall or Arthas. The Star Wars novels are an excellent example of how ludicrously high stakes ruined the expanded universe. For those of you who haven't read them, almost every Star Wars novel or series placed the entire New Republic in dire jeopardy by some new, super-powerful threat. Not only does it strain credulity, but it can often ruin the feel of the world, which is often a major turnoff. Sometimes it's fine if the fate of the whole world doesn't rest on your character's shoulders. They could be just fighting for their life, or the lives of their people, or fighting for personal power, etc...
  
• Do you want your plot to be simple or complex? A simple plot is a plot where the main character (a.k.a. the protagonist) has an objective that doesn't change over the course of the story. An example would be RoK, where Krill at the beginning, middle, and end wants to get the herbs. This never changes. A complex plot then is one where the protagonist makes a discovery at a certain point in the story, and their objective changes. An example of this would be when Arthas discovers that the plague turns people into the undead, and in reaction to this discovery decides to slaughter the people of Stratholme. While there's nothing wrong with a simple plot if done well, I've found that complex plots are often more compelling.
• Make your characters active rather than passive. When I first played Warcraft III, I somehow felt as if the Undead campaign was inferior to the Human campaign, despite some very fun, solid missions. It then occurred to me, the Human campaign had a much better story. Why is that? Because in the Human campaign Arthas (the character you're in charge of) makes the decisions that bring him to claiming Frostmourne in mission 9. He chooses to slaughter the plagued citizens of Stratholme, he chooses to follow Mal'Ganis to Northrend, he chooses to burn his own ships rather than return to Lordaeron, and he chooses to claim Frostmourne even though he knows he will pay a price. Your objectives are Arthas' objectives. Then comes the Undead campaign. Guess what? Arthas isn't in charge anymore, Tichondrius is. Go there, do that, kill him, raze this... Granted, I don't know how one could capture the flavor of the Undead if Arthas wasn't a pawn in this campaign, but it makes for far less compelling storytelling if the character you're made to identify with somebody who isn't call the shots. For this reason try to guide the plot by the decisions and objectives of the main character. That's not to say that things can't happen outside the control of your main character, but your main character should at least be the one who decides how to react to a given situation.
  
• Learn how not to write dialogue and plot. I've seen on quite a few occasions uses of expository dialogue. Here's a basic example of this:
  JIM: "Hi Bob."
  BOB: "Hello Jim, my brother in law. How is Susie, your wife and my sister?"
  
  The problem with this exchange is obvious. Jim and Bob know how they're related, and they know who Susie is. The only reason Bob would say what he says is to tell us that they are related. In other words, it does not get the characters what they want, which means that the action comes to a stop. A good example of how to deal with this can be taken from the Human campaign. The manual explains how Arthas and Jaina had a love affair not too long ago. However, nobody brings it up in the game. And why would they? There's no need to. Yet at the same time this knowledge illuminates the relationship between them. While movies and plays usually shouldn't resort to presenting us with information before the story begins, in the case of Warcraft III campaigns I think it's a good idea to establish the backstory, though others may opt to use other, more cinematic devices.
  
  Anyway, dialogue. When you're writing dialogue for your characters, it can be useful if you try to think of it in terms of giving each character an objective, ie something they're trying to accomplish through their words and actions. In most cases this isn't hard, considering that Warcraft III is a lot about killing stuff. However, in the case of non-battle scenarios, or conversations between allies, it can serve you well to think of your characters as trying to accomplish something, rather than just sitting around spouting out information that everybody already knows.
  
• Use cliches to your advantage. Cliches aren't always a horrible thing, but like many dramatic devices, it's better when they're reversed at an opportune moment. Blizzard does a lot of this. Arcturus Mengsk, who we at first take to be the usual rebel leader type, turns out to be a maglomaniac. Kerrigan becomes Queen of the Zerg. Arthas the royal Paladin becomes a Death Knight. The bloodthirsty Grom Hellscream dies after overcoming the rage that Mannoroth had put into him. And so on and so on. The reason that the campaigns don't star characters like Uther the Lightbringer or Antonidas is because they're cliched. They have nowhere to develop as characters. If you're doing your job right, your main characters will not be the same as they were when the story began. Use plotting and dialogue to reflect this change.
• Proofread your scenes. If you're writing in a different language (And I've seen quite a few cases of this), be sure to find somebody who's native to that language who can proofread the campaign for you. It's just sorta jarring when you go off to fight the 'Undeads'. It's like when Ewan McGregor's accent slips in Black Hawk Down - it just takes you out of the story for a bit. Yeah, it's a nitpick, but an easily remedied one.

Notes on the world of Warcraft

Just a few continuity points, seeing as how not everybody played Warcrafts I and II, or even owns the Warcraft III manual (it's on the CD, but they don't know that). These rules aren't hard and fast, but I'm including them for the sake of canon nuts like myself.

• Don't put Blizzard heroes into your campaigns. For one, it's easy to butcher the character. For another, it defiles continuity. Thirdly, we already know their stories, and it's better if you come up with a new one of your very own. Fourthly, if you put voices in your campaign you're bound to sound nothing like the original. Have your characters talk about them, maybe get letters from them, maybe throw in a cameo if you need to, but by no means try to throw them into the mix. Poeple won't appreciate it. We're just jerks that way.
• As an addendum to my previous point, don't make campaigns that are supposed to be 'sequels' to the original campaigns. Once again, we won't appreciate it, especially when The Frozen Throne comes out and your story no longer fits by a long shot.
• Review the storylines. Yeah, there's some discontinuity between Warcraft II and the Warcraft III manual, but overall the whole thing is there. In other words, just know a little something about the setting of your campaign, in terms of history, inhabitants, etc... A nitpick, yeah, but still disruptive.

Examples of story problems in existing custom campaigns

Just to illustrate my point, I'm including here some particulars taken from community projects. I'm not trying to diminish the efforts of the creators in any way, but merely use them as examples of where there is room for improvement in how the story gets told:

(DISCLAIMER - I know I'm hardcore nitpicking here, so don't get too upset, k?)

Rise of Krill - This infamous campaign had numerous story issues, mostly relating to the fact that Warcraft continuity was thrown out the window. While we have been told in the main Orc story that the Orcs have reformed their ways, all of Krills forces are clearly still corrupt and evil. Nor does continuity ever reference the Orcs using 'herbs' from Kalimdor to fuel their bloodlust. The random appearance of Medivh also made no sense. And the ending, while entertaining, features Krill slaughtering a bunch of random Humans for no apparent reason, while the Humans at this point should be pretty much slaughtered in Lordaeron anyway. For the player this story is very confusing.

Lament - Probably the most solid campaign set in the World of Warcraft that I've seen, with a decent story and great mission design. However, it exemplifies a few of the points I was making earlier. First, the dialogue needed extensive proofreading, as the English in it was flawed in places, though not fatally so. Secondly, it used Kel'Thuzad, which isn't a biggie, but like I said earlier using existing characters is tricky. Thirdly, as far as canon goes, it wasn't explained how a Lich broke away from the "iron will" of the Lich King. Another canon problem is that Kel'Thuzad was with Arthas the entire time leading up to Archimonde's arrival, at which point the Lich King was usurped and Kel and Arthas were left without an army to command.

The High Elf Campaign - Another solid campaign in terms of design, but with a somewhat flawed story. First, this campaign creates problems by including Sylvanas Windrunner into the story. Secondly, it relies upon a made up city (not a big deal, just pointing it out. Thirdly, according to continuity the High Elves are supposed to be driven completely out of Quel'Thalas by the Undead, which doesn't mesh with the whole idea of getting revenge on them after a catastrophic defeat. Fourthly, and this is REALLY getting nitpicky, it's summer the whole way through, when it's clearly winter at that point in Lordaeron (Only Quel'Thalas gets away with having a permanent summer).

You get the point. Enough. Really. Ok, I'll stop. Now.