Podcasting Peregrinations: The Book of Travels, Unarchived
Submission Type
Panel
Start Date/Time (EDT)
18-7-2024 4:45 PM
End Date/Time (EDT)
18-7-2024 5:45 PM
Location
Narrative & Worlds
Abstract
(Experimental Track Submission) The Playable Stories: Unarchived podcast provides a forum for discussing, through a pedagogical lens, digital games that offer innovative approaches to and insights into digital storytelling. While the podcast’s partner project, the Playable Stories Archive, provides written guides for narrative games that, from a pragmatic perspective, could feasibly be included as an assigned ‘reading’ in a college or university course, the Unarchived podcast explores story-rich games that would be impractical (due to length, difficulty, etc.) as a required course ‘text.’
For ELO 2024, the Unarchived podcast team proposes to offer a roundtable extending the discussion of a special ELO 2024 podcast episode on developer Might and Delight’s Book of Travels (2021-). Inspired by a rich array of media across historical periods and cultures, Book of Travels has a number of particular features that have not been addressed in previous Unarchived podcasts and that challenge traditional conceptions of story and game. Book of Travels does not have a pre-scripted linear story--it’s closest literary relative is the picaresque--nor does it have the discrete quests or achievements that most open exploration-style games are built on. Indeed, the game provides almost no direction to the player: “it sets you adrift in an intricate fairytale world designed to inspire exploration...without the restraints of linear quests and plotlines” (Mister Wekonu). While it contains familiar elements from the RPG (Role-Playing Game) and Survival game genres, it also deliberately challenges the expectations that players come to these genres with (e.g., “Events that are usually trivialized in RPGs [like death] are instead made into strong emotional moments” [Mister Wekonu]). Combat is present, but it is optional and avoidable: it is on the periphery, not at the core of the gameplay.
Book of Travels also has a number of features that complicate it as an object of study and teaching in terms of digital storytelling. It is an early-access game, that is, it is unfinished/in development and contains bugs and features that may be fixed, modified, removed or added. It may also never be ‘finished,’ whatever that might mean for an open world game. It is an online game that requires connecting to a game server, but the developers refer to it as a TMORPG: a Tiny Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, with a maximum of seven players on any given game server--players with whom you can’t verbally communicate, trade, or battle, and who you might not even encounter.
For this experimental track offering, the Unarchivedpodcast team will make accessible online the draft script of the episode prior to the conference for feedback from conference participants (see link below) and will release the finished episode as well as a video demonstrating the Book of Travels gameplay shortly before the start of the conference; during the conference itself we will hold the roundtable discussing the production of the podcast episode, and further issues that the podcast discussion prompted but did not address.
Draft script:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W2Js4vTxUx3kquiHbOrwvhok_ETYsQli9ai1YfCQoM8/edit?usp=sharing
Recommended Citation
Boyd, Jason; Andriano, Jeremy; Dolan, Patrick R.; Ghouchandra, Kevin; and Russell, Chelsea, "Podcasting Peregrinations: The Book of Travels, Unarchived" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 23.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/narrativeandworlds/schedule/23
Podcasting Peregrinations: The Book of Travels, Unarchived
Narrative & Worlds
(Experimental Track Submission) The Playable Stories: Unarchived podcast provides a forum for discussing, through a pedagogical lens, digital games that offer innovative approaches to and insights into digital storytelling. While the podcast’s partner project, the Playable Stories Archive, provides written guides for narrative games that, from a pragmatic perspective, could feasibly be included as an assigned ‘reading’ in a college or university course, the Unarchived podcast explores story-rich games that would be impractical (due to length, difficulty, etc.) as a required course ‘text.’
For ELO 2024, the Unarchived podcast team proposes to offer a roundtable extending the discussion of a special ELO 2024 podcast episode on developer Might and Delight’s Book of Travels (2021-). Inspired by a rich array of media across historical periods and cultures, Book of Travels has a number of particular features that have not been addressed in previous Unarchived podcasts and that challenge traditional conceptions of story and game. Book of Travels does not have a pre-scripted linear story--it’s closest literary relative is the picaresque--nor does it have the discrete quests or achievements that most open exploration-style games are built on. Indeed, the game provides almost no direction to the player: “it sets you adrift in an intricate fairytale world designed to inspire exploration...without the restraints of linear quests and plotlines” (Mister Wekonu). While it contains familiar elements from the RPG (Role-Playing Game) and Survival game genres, it also deliberately challenges the expectations that players come to these genres with (e.g., “Events that are usually trivialized in RPGs [like death] are instead made into strong emotional moments” [Mister Wekonu]). Combat is present, but it is optional and avoidable: it is on the periphery, not at the core of the gameplay.
Book of Travels also has a number of features that complicate it as an object of study and teaching in terms of digital storytelling. It is an early-access game, that is, it is unfinished/in development and contains bugs and features that may be fixed, modified, removed or added. It may also never be ‘finished,’ whatever that might mean for an open world game. It is an online game that requires connecting to a game server, but the developers refer to it as a TMORPG: a Tiny Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, with a maximum of seven players on any given game server--players with whom you can’t verbally communicate, trade, or battle, and who you might not even encounter.
For this experimental track offering, the Unarchivedpodcast team will make accessible online the draft script of the episode prior to the conference for feedback from conference participants (see link below) and will release the finished episode as well as a video demonstrating the Book of Travels gameplay shortly before the start of the conference; during the conference itself we will hold the roundtable discussing the production of the podcast episode, and further issues that the podcast discussion prompted but did not address.
Draft script:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W2Js4vTxUx3kquiHbOrwvhok_ETYsQli9ai1YfCQoM8/edit?usp=sharing
Bio
The Playable Stories: Unarchived team consists of (for this special episode): Jason Boyd, Ph.D., Associate Professor, English, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU); Jeremy Andriano, M.A. Candidate, Communication and Culture Program, TMU/York University; Patrick R. Dolan, Ph.D. Candidate, Communication and Culture Program, TMU/York University; Kevin Ghouchandra, M.A. Literatures of Modernity, TMU; Chelsea Russell, Ph.D. Candidate, Communication and Culture Program, TMU/York University.