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By Root 387 0

These scenes will often reflect events in the story behind the game, and often come at the beginning of a new game and at key intervals. One way that cut-scenes can be used is as narrative rewards. As the player completes key steps in the game, more of the narrative is revealed. Cut-scenes can also be more purely descriptive as the read aloud text in the module. The opening of the computer game is a fairly elaborate cutscene that shows the battle at Emridy Meadows where the original forces of the temple were defeated and Zuggtmoy was imprisoned, thus establishing the back-story and history of the temple. However, the scene is purely visual. In contrast, the end cut scene is not as visually appealing but is narrated more orally. It shows a book and candle; and brief, illustrated, narrative scenes as the story of what happens after the game ends. The final cut-scene also varies depending on the actions the player takes in the game. If, for example, the party helps a noble trapped in the temple, the narration will explain that he knights the party in return. If the party allies with Zuggtmoy, the narration will describe her overthrow of Hommlet. If they defeat her, it will describe the way that Hommlet prospers. Unlike the human DM in the TRPG, however, the computer does not recognize which elements of the ending are compatible with other parts. I joined forces with Zuggtmoy and Hommlet was destroyed, nevertheless I still received knighthood from a grateful noble I had rescued, a somewhat illogical pairing of endings. Both the opening and closing cutscenes capture important stories for Temple. Another cut-scene, the entrance into to the temple itself, has no narration at all but serves more to set the mood and visual image of the temple in the player’s mind. The medium of the CRPG allows for these important scenes and images to be represented visually while the TRPG players will have to picture them in their imaginations based on the text read orally by the DM.

Another key affordance of the CRPG is the ability to go back to a previous point in the game. When I played Temple, a NPC named Otis joined my party for a while; however, once he discovered that my party was evil, he refused to keep adventuring with them. In fact, in one version of my game, he turned on me and attacked. As with other unwanted plot twists, I was glad that I had saved the game before that happened and was able to go back to a prior point, although Otis still left the party. The TRPG might allow for the player to negotiate with Otis rather than fight him, but whatever the outcome, there would be no redoing the scene.

Character is another story element that plays out differently depending on media affordances. NPCs tend to remain the same between versions of Temple as well. Zuggtmoy, Iuz, and Cuthbert are part of the pantheon of the gods and demons that run the universe. Hedrack and Lareth are their pawns in the temple. Elmo and some of the characters in Hommlet remain the same also. Again, even in the extremely different version presented by the participant quoted above, the general types of characters remained. However, the player characters are far more variable. Both the TRPG and the CRPG version offer some flexibility in terms of the player characters involved—from heroes to greedy mercenaries. At the beginning of the computer game, the player chooses the alignment of the party, such as whether they are good or evil. The opening narration offers two potential sequences—a good sequence and an evil one. Interestingly, the scene entering Hommlet is the same visually for both the good and evil openings; only the narrated text differs. The player characters have highly different motivations in these two scenarios. However, the entire party, controlled by one player in the CRPG, is given the same motivation. In the module, as with TRPGs in general, the player controls only one character within the game. Thus, each character and each player may have different reasons for embarking on the campaign.

Naturally, in the novel the reader has no control over the