I'm going to vote for storyline, just because there are so many RPGs on BYOND that don't have an ending. I like to be immersed in a good story every now and then. =)

Well I spent the last few days without power or money so I went through and read most the way through one of the books I got for one of my earlier semesters at Digipen on game design. I ran into a quote which I like.

"The danger for designers is that they get hooked into their story and they forget that storytelling is a linear narrative-type thing. And the more you flesh out the story the more you remove the interactivity, and the more you remove the player from the game. It's kinda like 'Oh, the outcome has already been determined. So what is the point?'"

- Eugene Jarvis

Heh what a nice way to start the chapter on storytelling :). The chapter contains some great information not on writing strories themselves but the various ways of incorperating them into games and what to be wary of. The book has too many good points to go off quoting them all so I'll summerize what I think is the highlight.

When playing the game there will be two distinct types of general stories going on. First off there the one which is written by the developer which is your standard plot. Then there is the story which the players themselves make while playing the game. If the game is well built the ones of the players experiences will be much more potent and likely to result in a good playing experience.

For example I played a game of Starcraft over a LAN with 7 other people. It was a team game with 2 teams. I had the misfortune of starting between two opponents directly to my left and the other two directly to my right. So I just happened to be the first target of a large assult with my main base entirely wiped out early on. However since it was early on I managed to sneak a few of my builder units into and past the enemys base to the edge of the map. I was the cyan protoss and I was hiding behind the blue protoss's base. I then spent most of the game mining minerals along with his units and he didn't suspect a thing since our units were close enough in color to not be noticed. I then proceded to build a huge army behind the heavy defenses which were set up at the choke points leading to the inside of the map. Unfortunantly my army didn't manage to do enough damage to my opponents before it was taken out by air support. Though I did manage to survive the longest out of my team despite being mostly wiped out from the start.

Another great experience was going though the "zombie" city of Half Life 2 in the single player campaign. The game just happened to auto save at the wrong time when I didn't have enough health to withstand any blow and no more ammo. This was at a point with one of those annoying guys infected with the quick long jumping head crabs after me. So my only option was to run. I finally managed to find some ammo for my magnum. Then I turned around only to see the annoying infected guy midair about to kill me. With one quick shot(probably mostly a reflexive twitch) I managed to take him out just before he managed to get me.

These types of plots which the players create within the framework of the game are much more memorable than anything a designer could script out and like my second case are very rewarding. Though its important to note that if you try and force a scenario like the ones above it doesn't work out nearly as well as when they spontaniously occur like they did for me. The important thing to do is set up an interactive world in which such things are possible to occur. This isn't really limited to any type of genre as long as interesting situations can occur though it is generally from a challanging situation which is barely managed. So at the very least your game needs some kind of challange to pull this sort of thing off.

True, that!

Me and my friend spent quite a few hours on an adventure on Freelancer- lost in a dangerous part of the world, both with no money and very low health, it was pretty interesting how we got back to Liberty space.
It's all about giving your game the capacity, I s'spose.

Well I was leaning more storyline style also, but earlier I kinda had problems with making it multiplayer. But after reading what you guys said, I can incorporate the story without taking away from the players' experience.