The RoN Problem--How do we solve it???

[Radiant]

What is Sphinx? Link please, doesn't google well.

QC is actually a very good point. Now I haven't played as many AGS games as most of you, I'm sure, but if I think of RON the first things that come to mind are that they ripped off Commander Keen, and have a magical cow suit that rapes people. Not good advertising.

I'm sure that there aren't any plot inconsistencies, but there may be alternate pasts

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The art style inconsistancy was part of the appeal, actually.

I have to agree with Zaidyer on this one, Dave.  I think the inconsistency is one of the major problems with RoN, not because the art was terrible but because the styles and quality are just all over the map.  Sometimes you see a sprite that looks nice and sometimes you see one that is just jarringly horrible.  It's certainly one of the things that discouraged me from really getting interested.  I'm not saying the art needs to be stellar but I do think it would benefit greatly from consistency.  The other thing was that a vast majority of the games are more joke than game.  Seriously, play a few at random.  I've played pretty much every single one and most boil down to 'do one or two inane puzzles and read a bunch of dumb jokes'.  There isn't a lot of game to any of them. 

Perhaps we should just consider RoN an add-on to ags/etc for budding game designers to play around with rather than some sort of franchise in danger of being lost and forgotten.  When you treat it like that it's an excellent way for people with no art skill/etc to get a start, as long as you don't expect great games.

[GarageGothic]

What is Sphinx? Link please, doesn't google well.

http://americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/index.php/Main_Page

[Zaidyer]

Sphinx died because it was a project to create one large central game, instead of RoN's episodic universe model. That's where RoN lends itself to a greater degree of independence and freedom in terms of game design. I think if you want to "revitalize" RoN, you'll have to organize it better and offer more support for the average game designer. With that in place, you'll be able to add a few more rules for the sake of quality.

• NEVER kill off an established character.
  
• NEVER reveal the bum's true identity.
  
• RoN is episodic. Things that happen from game to game are considered self-contained, and do not necessarily need to be referenced in future games.
  
• Don't steal graphics from other games.
  
• Learn how to draw before attempting to create a graphical adventure. (To that end, a tutorial will have to be written for an easy-to-follow style by someone proficient in pixel art. That said, it would most likely be superior to the style established in the first game and all subsequent derivatives, but really, it's time to move on.)
  
• Be advised that anything you add to the RoN universe will be mercilessly exploited by the RoN community. Try not to use characters or situations you want to keep for yourself.
  

Additionally, I would offer a few crash courses in Adventure game design in general, such as Yahtzee's "Depressingly Common Adventure Flaws" series, a few websites and tutorials to learn pixel art and background art, how to write a good story, and so forth.

It all comes down to the fact that RoN needs more organization than it currently has.

[Dave Gilbert]

"Don't expect great games" is a bit unfair. "Don't expect great LOOKING games" is a bit more accurate.  The point of RoN, originally, was to create a shared universe for people to create stories.  If a game had nice art, it was a bonus, but it wasn't a deal-breaker. 

I don't think art is the major problem here, as a number of the characters were redrawn by Wogoat and look darn sweet.  He did that about three years ago, and nobody bothered to use them. 

-Dave

[Sam.]

The Art is RON was never a problem for me, people reproducing it badly and crowbarring it in under the impression that because their art was simple, it would fit in with RON often led to my annoycance in RON games, some tutorials wouldnt go amiss on RON and perhaps some gentle pruning of the games, I give you permission to take my attempts down if they are putting people off participating. Alternatively, leve all the games up and showcase some of the very best, for inspirado?

[blueskirt]

Re all stories having been told... a student of Schubert's (I think it was Schubert) once complained to him, while they were both strolling along the seaside (or at least in view of the sea), about how all the melodies had already been done, all the music had already been composed. At which point, Schubert turned towards the sea and said "Look, there goes the last wave".

If it ain't true it oughta be, so don't go spoling it by saying Schubert never once saw the sea in his life or something.

I'm not saying that in a smartass kind of way, I'm just asking the question. Pretty much like they can stir the Simpsons sauce for a thousand episodes, it doesn't mean all of these episodes will be worth watching. Or the same way people would groan if Yahtzee ever did another X Days a Something game.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

My answer remains the same, actually, since I was never under the impression that RON was supposed to be like a series - rather, a universe. I always viewed it as an existant universe anyone could add to, whoever they liked.

Of course, if it's viewed as a *series* then everything people have been saying about quality control, inconsistent art, plot holes, etc, all of that is true.

But if viewed as a *universe to be freely added to*, a joint contribution that is also a lot of fun, then all those points are rather moot.

Maybe what we have here is a conflict of these two points of view? People go to RON expecting a series of games and find what is in reality a bunch of games with little in common save for the setting and characters?

Myself, I've always preferred it the latter. A series would have to be too thought-out, too well planned, and would be a real pain to keep as a community effort.

[LimpingFish]

But adding freely to a universe creates chaos. Conflicting character traits, the layout of the town becoming inconsistent because in the last game somebody added a new shopping mall that now clashes with something someone in another game is working on, etc, etc.

About a year ago someone game up with the idea of mapping out the town, taking into account extra "plots" of land that people could add new locations to, which would then be updated on the map, and a list of constant characters who could appear in any games but couldn't be altered beyond what their character traits and such dictated. And nobody from that list could be killed off.

Eventually keeping track of a project like that was just considered too much like hard work, and interest eventually died.

Par for the course, really

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

It's a good thing adding was never cumpulsory, then.

The basic RON universe is still there. I agree that people who actually want to prolong some main story in RON (the Surrealist springs to mind) have got their work cut out for them. But the universe is still there, ready even for series like Kittens and Cacti, or The Tapestry - such trilogies are, while, rather epic, self-contained; in other games there may be a few minor references, but once they're over and done with, they're over and done with.

I've played all the RON games. I was never bothered with the occasional clashes. Maybe my expectations were never as high as the current expectation? Seems like people expect RON to have been much better organized. While that would be nice, I doubt it'd have been half as fun. And since my original expectations were never too high, I always thought "Oh goody, another RON game, let's have some fun!". And fun I did have. And then occasionally came games like Postman Only Rings Twice, or Reposessor, or Better Mousetrap, or Defender of RON, or Purity of the Surf - great games that I liked all the more because I wasn't really expecting particularly good games.

Really, if RON is to be limited to a series, something all that organized, then just do away with the whole community effort and chose a bunch of people to churn out episodes. But that'll truly be the end of RON, because it goes against the whole concept of the thing.

[Snarky]

Consistency is highly overrated.

Do you really care if the geography of Springfield is inconsistent between Simpsons cartoons? Is it a problem that Donald Duck's personality varies between hard-working family man, irresponsible wastrel and duck with an explosive temper and delusions of grandeur? Did you lie awake at night wondering how Kenny could die in every single episode of South Park, only to be alive in the next one? When two versions of a myth differ in details, does that diminish their worth?

There are hundreds of Sherlock Holmes films (and at least a half-dozen different SH adventure games). Very few of them are consistent with each other. So what? Not even the gospels are in perfect agreement.

It doesn't mean chaos, because people will generally reuse the ideas that are good, and ignore the ones that aren't. So a kind of consensus universe can evolve, even if it doesn't conform to any strict chronological continuity or geographical consistency, and even if it comes in multiple flavors and variants.

[LimpingFish]

Kenny dies. Consistently. It's a consistent joke. That fact that he didn't die in one episode is the exception that proves the rule.

The Simpsons uses the inconsistent layout of Springfield as a means to humorous ends; The episode where Marge looks out her kitchen window and sees three different things; The School, the prison, and the nuclear plant, because she happens to be thinking of each of them at the time.

To my mind Sherlock Holmes was always a detective, was always a drug addict, and always had Dr. Watson, always lived a 221b Baker Street. What you call inconsistencies are actually interpretations, a completely different subject. James Bond has been played with a number of differences over the years but the core of the character stays the same.

To say consistentcy is overrated is to ignore the basic fundamentals of storytelling, of world building, of making the difference between a believable world (in a movie/game/book) and a jumble of ideas that fail to gel...consistenly.

If the RON "concept" was meant to be played without, in some way at least, heeding what has gone before, or what was yet to come, then it was a flawed concept.

And that, like all flawed concepts, is why it is dying.

(The Donald Duck thing; it's called being the opposite of a one-dimensional character.)

[Andail]

I never cared much for slapstick-Donald, I prefered the adventurous bold Donald as Carl Barks portrayed him.
And LimpingFish; you can't possibly say that Donald Duck hasn't been portrayed inconsistently, he's in fact the epitome of inconsistency.

As for Simpsons, I found it much more settling when Simpsons actually wasn't consistent, but returned back to zero after each episode.
When they actually started to make stuff linear - like Flanders actually continuing to be a widower and Milhouse's parents divorced - it started to feel a bit alien. However, this might introduce another aspect of Snarky's inconsistency scheme;

* we have consistency when changes in one episode are reflected in the following episode, creating a natural, chronological order (like realistic series)
* we have inconsistency when changes in one episode become "reseted" and the following episode starts from scratch again (like most of the Simpsons)
* we have another inconsistency when a certain episode does not start from scratch,  but in the same time does not feature the changes from the preceding episode. This is some sort of chaotic inconsistency that makes it extremely hard to map or organise the events and elements of a universe.

It goes without saying that a perfectly logical and chronological order is impossible to achieve in a game universe with various different game writers. The only way to prevent inconsistencies would be if the writers, in advance, "claimed" a set of changes in the plot, as well as a date in real time when the game must be released.

[LimpingFish]

In my mind at least, DD would be inconsistent because of various outside forces rather than a disregard for any lack of cohesion with the character. Like Bugs Bunny changing from a borderline psychotic to more of a Humphrey Bogart - George Raft - by way of - Groucho Marx type character, to suit audience taste and popular cultural fads.

I agree that you can have "inconsistencies" within a world, if they serve a specific function.

Principle Skinner actually being Armin Tamzarian in the Simpsons comes to mind. He legally changes his name back to Seymour Skinner at the end of the episode and swears never to mention it again. Yet even this is referenced, in a knowing way, in future episodes.

The fact that he has reverted back to Seymour Skinner by the end of the episode, means that the only purpose this storyline served was a purely humourous one, and the "norm" must be reinstated.

And, as Andail has mentioned, when a big charge occurs in The Simpsons (eg. The death of Maud Flanders) it stays changed, and becomes part of the show's "bible".

That is where consistency comes in.

EDIT: I'd just like to point of that I don't equate consistency with rigidity. The two are very different.

[Dave Gilbert]

Again I ask, what inconsistancies?  As far as I can tell (and I've played every RoN game), the community has done a pretty good job of policing itself.  I don't remember there being two shopping malls, and who says there can't be two?

[LimpingFish]

Nobody, and rightly so.

RON was meant to be flexible, and I have no problem with that. But, on some level, you need to work with some amount of consistency or you run into dead ends. Like killing off major characters, and such. Unless the "reset" fuction is embraced. But some creators have tried to have some storyline consistencies, within the games they have made anyway, and that might end up clashing with the rest.

Can both co-exist? If so, then which is meant to be the "true" RON storyline? Is an "official" RON storyline even necessary? If not, then what exactly is a RON game?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think one inconsistency you really can't ignore is Davy Jones/death/life scenario.  'This is how he REALLY died', no wait, 'THIS is how he really died', 'oh wait, he's actually alive' etc.  This isn't really how consistency is handled, and I think if the Simpsons did something like this, for example, people would definitely raise eyebrows.  That's just one example to reinforce Fish's point, I think, but there are other, smaller and perhaps less significant ones.  I wouldn't even be making these statements if I hadn't played the vast majority of RoN games and personally felt them lacking in certain areas, so take it for what you will.  I have nothing against the creators of RoN individually or collectively, so hopefully some of this criticism isn't being taken as a personal attack and rather as a 'well maybe they've got a point' type thing.  RoN isn't utterly horrible and irredeemable, but it does have some flaws that keep it (at least in my eyes) from being more interesting and worthwhile, such as:

A) Weird consistency glitches that are a result of bad planning on the author's part or just lack of information

B) Artwork ranging from good to horrible that throws off perceptions and confuses the viewer

C) Stories that go absolutely nowhere or 'joke' games where you really do nothing interesting (a good portion fall into this category).

Now C isn't a bad thing at all if RoN was just a tool for fledgling game makers as I mentioned before, but if you want to take it seriously and make it something more than that (and some people here seem to, in my mind) then A, B, and C should be given consideration.  The sprites I made on page 2 are just an example of bringing a bit more atmosphere to the game; I'm not saying they're wonderful or even great but they are easy on my eyes and a single style and some solid animations would definitely raise my interest because I am at least partially a visual creature.

In my opinion, naturally!

[Snarky]

Don't you think that people who create stupid, inconsistent, unsatisfying stories would just continue to create stupid, superficially consistent, unsatisfying stories if you attempted to keep everyone in line? I don't see how it would make the games any better.

Kenny dies. Consistently. It's a consistent joke. That fact that he didn't die in one episode is the exception that proves the rule.

The Simpsons uses the inconsistent layout of Springfield as a means to humorous ends; The episode where Marge looks out her kitchen window and sees three different things; The School, the prison, and the nuclear plant, because she happens to be thinking of each of them at the time.

The point is that South Park and the Simpsons don't bother to pretend that each story forms part of a huge, flawless tapestry that depict some "objective" reality. There's no timeline by which you could plot all major events and see the consequences carry on from that point on.

It's really pretty pointless to talk about "contradictions" in these cases. The shows don't observe continuity, or at least only selectively. The fact that you can say "Kenny dies. Consistently" just shows that maintaining narrative coherence has nothing to do (necessarily) with avoiding contradictions and continuity errors. To take another example, the hero of many Norwegian folk tales is Espen Askeladden (the Ash Lad). In every story, Askeladden is a poor boy who ends up marrying the Princess and getting half of the kingdom. Doesn't matter that he just married her in the last story, he's back to where he was and has to win her all over again. The stories achieve coherence by maintaining a permanence of situation, not chronological continuity.

Relevant to the current point, these folk tales were created without any centralized quality control or consistency police. Coherence evolved because stories and elements that didn't "feel right" were ignored or changed.

To my mind Sherlock Holmes was always a detective, was always a drug addict, and always had Dr. Watson, always lived a 221b Baker Street. What you call inconsistencies are actually interpretations, a completely different subject. James Bond has been played with a number of differences over the years but the core of the character stays the same.

Actually, various versions portray Holmes quite differently. Many omit the drug addiction completely, in some it's a minor vice, while in others he's a full-on junkie. There is almost always a Watson, but what kind of person he is varies greatly between different takes on the great detective. It's also worth keeping in mind that the image that springs to mind of Holmes, with his deerstalker and calabash pipe, is not how Doyle described him, but is derived from a theatrical adaptation.

Or take another iconic character: Batman. Is he a tortured soul who inflicts his neuroses on the Gotham city underworld, or is he a wisecracking goofball in a silly suit? Depends on which story you're reading/watching. In Norse mythology, is Loki a basically good-hearted trickster, or the treacherous personification of evil? In some stories he's one, in some the other.

Another concept that should be familiar from comics is the ever-changing origin story, where multiple different explanations are given to achieve more or less the same "present" state. How did Lex Luthor come to hate Superman? There have been dozens of different backstories, only the outcome is more or less the same. Even the person behind the mask can change (think Green Lantern), because the character is to some extent separate from the person embodying that character. There are at least four different accounts of the birth of Aphrodite.

Probably the best example of a character (and "universe") that has been the subject of many different, inconsistent stories, who has been provided with different personalities, appearances, equipment, names, backstories, biographies, settings, relationships, interpretations, themes, styles, etc. ... is Robin Hood. For pretty much any statement you can make about him (lives in Sherwood forest, fights the Sheriff of Nottingham, good with the longbow, in love with Lady Marian, takes from the rich and gives to the poor, lives during the reign of Richard Lionheart, ...), I can give plenty of examples of stories that assume otherwise. Has this complete lack of consistency harmed his popularity? Doesn't seem like it.

(The Donald Duck thing; it's called being the opposite of a one-dimensional character.)

We're not talking multiple aspects of his character here, we're talking completely different personalities. Even with just the Carl Barks stories, we have at least three distinct Donalds: the spiteful Donald who always attempts to terrorize his nephews, the struggling everyman Donald who is only trying to make ends meet to take care of his nephews, and the adventurer Donald who's always up for traveling to exotic countries. If we bring in the cartoons, that's a whole other story again.

What I'm saying is that for every new story, the storyteller has to create the world and the characters anew, even if they have appeared in other stories before. Whether or not the story gels with the "universe" or set of existing stories has little to do with whether or not it maintains strict logical consistency, but whether or not it "feels" true. Sometimes, a story can even contradict earlier conventions, canon or consensus and establish a new, more satisfying truth. That's how you create a high-quality shared universe: by having people experiment and saving the good bits they come up with.

[Captain Lexington]

Just an idea as a new RoN type series:

The Adventure Game Repertory Theater!

So you have all the actors as the character packs, and you can create different costumes based on the original sprite. I'm sure there could even be a modular system for these things.

Each game would be a play played by the Adventure Game Players, working for the Adventure Game Repertory Theater, so you could do any genre you wanted. As for continuous story lines, you could make a game either a full play or just one act, and have other people make the next acts. One play could go on forever, with people making more and more acts.

As for quality control, all you need is an in-depth review by the Adventure Game Review Magazine, who review the game based on content and give it a star rating. (Naturally, all the reviews would be by anyone who wanted to review it--even if it has already been reviewed).

That way people can choose which ones they want to play based on the review, and without a dictatorial deletion of inferior games.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Re Davy Jones' death - it's becoming a running joke, really. ANd Defender of RON laid the path for anyone who wants to delve deeper into it - a nice, organised path.

Food for thought - RON is dying or dead, and Maniac Mansion Mania is apparently thriving. Bigger comunity? More restricted universe? Characters that people actually know? Discuss, if you will. Shame that it's such a restricted community, what with being german-speaking-only and all.