Chapter 20 Exercises

These exercises are designed to move you from conceptual understanding to craft judgment. Most require playing specific games, watching gameplay videos, or writing short design documents. Do not skip the writing exercises in favor of the reading exercises — the writing is where the skill lives.

Some exercises assume you have access to specific games. If you do not, substitute games you know well from the same genre. The principles transfer.

Exercise 20.1 — The Ludonarrative Audit of Three Games

For this exercise, pick three games from different genres — ideally one linear story-driven game (e.g., The Last of Us, God of War, Final Fantasy X), one open-world game (e.g., Red Dead Redemption 2, The Witcher 3, Skyrim), and one systemic game (e.g., Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld, Crusader Kings III). If you have not played these, you may use long-form gameplay videos (at least 3-4 hours of footage) as a substitute, though direct play is preferred.

For each game, write a 500-word audit addressing:

  1. What does the game's story say about its protagonist or protagonists? (e.g., "Arthur Morgan is a dying outlaw who is learning to reckon with the harm he has caused.")
  2. What does the game's gameplay say about its protagonist? (e.g., "Arthur is a violent man who solves almost every problem by killing everyone present.")
  3. Where are the story and gameplay in harmony? Where are they in dissonance?
  4. What specific design choice would reduce the dissonance without damaging the experience?

The goal is not to dunk on the games. It is to train your eye. Even the greatest narrative games have seams. Learning to see them is how you learn to not recreate them.

Deliverable: Three 500-word audits (1,500 words total). Include at least one game you love — it is easier to be clear-eyed about games you like when you also feel the affection.

Exercise 20.2 — Write a Linear Scene

Pick a simple dramatic situation: a breakup, a reunion, a betrayal, a rescue, a refusal. Write a one-scene, linear interactive sequence of approximately 400-600 words that puts the player through the situation.

Your scene must:

  • Open with the player already present (no passive spectatorship).
  • Include at least three beats of player input — not choices that alter the story, but actions the player must perform to move forward (pressing a button to knock on a door, walking into a room, picking up an object).
  • End with a clear emotional beat.
  • Require no dialogue options — this is a linear scene.

After the scene, write a 200-word reflection: What does the fact that the player did these actions (rather than watching them happen) add to the scene? What would be lost if this were a cutscene instead? Would anything be gained?

The goal of this exercise is to practice scene construction in the medium's native grammar — scenes in which the player is the agent, even when the story is fixed.

Deliverable: A 400-600 word scene plus a 200-word reflection.

Exercise 20.3 — Write a Branching Scene

Take the same dramatic situation from Exercise 20.2. Now write it as a branching scene with two meaningful branches.

Your branching scene must:

  • Include a choice point where the player chooses between two options.
  • Produce genuinely different outcomes in at least three subsequent beats.
  • Have both branches be emotionally valid — no "good" choice and "evil" choice, just two different responses to a hard situation.
  • Converge, if at all, only in a way that honestly acknowledges the chosen branch.

After the scene, compare it to your linear scene from Exercise 20.2. Which one was harder to write? Which one would be more expensive to build? Which one does more for the player's sense of authorship? Which one does more for the designer's control of theme?

Deliverable: A branching scene (probably 800-1,200 words, since it contains two branches) plus a 300-word comparison reflection.

Exercise 20.4 — The Agency Taxonomy

Choose a narrative game you have played substantially (at least 10 hours). List every significant choice the game offered you across your playthrough. For each choice, classify it as:

  • Real agency — the choice genuinely altered the subsequent game.
  • Theatrical agency — the choice appeared to matter but did not.
  • Calculated agency — the choice altered things within a contained scope but reconverged.

Then rank all choices from "most meaningful" to "least meaningful" based on your own emotional experience. Did real agency always feel most meaningful? Did theatrical agency feel hollow? Write a 400-word reflection on what you find.

This exercise helps you build the instinct to distinguish the felt meaning of a choice from its mechanical weight. Games whose theatrical agency feels meaningful are not failing — they are successfully managing the player's experience. Games whose real agency feels hollow have another problem.

Deliverable: A choice inventory (expect 8-20 choices depending on the game) plus a 400-word reflection.

Exercise 20.5 — Design an Emergent Narrative System

Design a simple story-generating system. You are not writing the stories — you are designing the components that will produce stories.

Your design must include:

  1. A small cast of characters (3-5) with interiority — traits, history, relationships. Not stats — personalities.
  2. At least three systems that can produce events (e.g., relationships change, resources run out, disasters strike).
  3. A memory system — how does the game remember what happened?
  4. A legibility system — how does the player see the events as they happen?
  5. Two example story transcripts showing stories your system could produce. (You are writing what your system might generate, showing that the design could yield the transcripts.)

The setting can be anything — a post-apocalyptic family in a bunker, a pirate crew, a medieval village, a space station. The setting matters less than the system design.

Keep the whole document to 1,000-1,500 words. The goal is a design, not a product. But the design must be concrete enough that a collaborator could read it and implement a prototype.

Deliverable: A 1,000-1,500 word emergent narrative system design document with two example transcripts.

Exercise 20.6 — The Three-Layer Diagnostic

Pick a game you know well. Diagnose its narrative along the three-layer model:

  1. Authored plot layer: What is the scripted structure? What beats are guaranteed?
  2. Player agency layer: What choices does the game give the player? How meaningful are they?
  3. Emergent moments layer: What stories does the game produce that were not scripted? How frequently?

Then rate the game's emphasis on each layer from 1 (minimal) to 10 (dominant). Does the game's profile match the way it is marketed? Does it match the way you remember experiencing it?

Finally, propose one change to the game that would shift its profile — strengthening a weak layer or trimming an overfull one. What would that change cost, and what would it gain?

Deliverable: A 600-word diagnostic with the numerical profile and a 200-word proposal.

Exercise 20.7 — The Dissonance Acknowledgment

Pick a game that has a significant ludonarrative dissonance (most AAA cinematic action games qualify). Design a single scene or sequence that would not fix the dissonance, but would acknowledge it in a way that makes the player feel the game is aware of the tension.

This is a craft exercise about tonal maturity. Sometimes you cannot fix a problem in a shipped game without rebuilding the whole thing. But you can acknowledge it — give it a nod, name it, make the character feel the weight of the contradiction. The Last of Us Part II does this. Hotline Miami does this. Spec Ops: The Line does this.

Your scene or sequence should:

  • Name or show the dissonance in the narrative layer.
  • Let the character (or the player) feel something about it.
  • Not break the game — the player must still be able to continue after the scene.

Keep it to 400-600 words of scene plus a 200-word explanation of your reasoning.

Deliverable: 400-600 words of scene plus a 200-word designer's note.

Exercise 20.8 — Convert a Cutscene

Pick a specific cutscene from a narrative game you have played (be specific — the scene, the moment, the game). Rewrite it as an interactive sequence that preserves its emotional content without a cutscene.

Constraints:

  • The player must take at least three actions.
  • No text on screen longer than a single line.
  • The emotional beat of the original cutscene must still land.

After the rewrite, reflect (300 words): What was hard? What was easy? Did the interactive version lose anything the cutscene had? Did it gain anything?

The goal is to practice the conversion muscles a writer-designer uses constantly — turning scripted moments into interactive moments. Most narrative-game writers will do this hundreds of times across a project.

Deliverable: An interactive rewrite of a specific cutscene plus a 300-word reflection.

Exercise 20.9 — The Writer-Designer Dialogue

This exercise is best done with a partner. If you do not have a partner, play both roles and notice the seams.

You (as writer) write a one-paragraph scene description for a dramatic moment in a game. (Example: "The protagonist arrives at the clearing where her brother died. His body is still there, dried to the earth. She kneels. She needs to bury him, but she has no tools.")

Then you (or a partner, as designer) reply with a one-paragraph design for the interactive version of the scene. What does the player do? What inputs are required? What mechanics does the scene require that the game does not already have?

Then you (as writer again) respond to the design. Does the design preserve what the scene needed? If not, rewrite the scene to fit the design. If the design does not fit the scene, propose changes to the design.

Iterate at least three rounds.

Deliverable: A conversation transcript showing at least three rounds of writer-designer exchange. Minimum 800 words total.

This exercise models the actual work of narrative game development. The scene is never finalized by one role. It is co-designed through iteration. Learning to iterate well is the single biggest craft gain a narrative designer can make.

Exercise 20.10 — The One-Page Arc

This exercise is the progressive project for this chapter, formalized as an exercise for those who prefer structure.

Write a one-page story arc for a game of your own design. Use the structure from the chapter:

  • Premise (1-2 sentences)
  • Beginning (1 paragraph)
  • Middle (1 paragraph)
  • End (1 paragraph)
  • Theme (1 sentence)

Then write a harmony map: list the three to five core mechanics of your game. For each, state whether it is in harmony with the arc, and if not, what you will do.

Deliverable: One page of story arc plus a harmony map (total ~600 words).

Keep this document. You will use it through Chapters 21-25.

Exercise 20.11 — The Emergent Recognition Test

Play a systemic game for at least four hours in a single session. (RimWorld is recommended for accessibility; Dwarf Fortress for depth.) During the session, keep a running log of moments that felt story-like. Write each down as it happens, with a timestamp.

After the session, review your log. For each logged moment, answer:

  1. Did I feel like I was participating in a story, or merely managing a system?
  2. Did I decide something, or did the game decide something, or was it ambiguous?
  3. Was the moment memorable? Will I remember it in a week?

Write a 500-word reflection on what made some moments feel story-like and others not. Use this reflection to inform Exercise 20.5 if you have not done it yet, or to revise your Exercise 20.5 design.

Deliverable: A session log plus a 500-word reflection.

Exercise 20.12 — The Interactive Medium Manifesto

Write a short (400-600 word) personal essay titled What Games Can Do That Nothing Else Can. The essay should:

  • Make at least one specific claim about a native capacity of interactive storytelling.
  • Ground the claim in at least two specific examples from games you have played.
  • Take a position — disagree with the chapter if you want, but have a view.

This exercise is partly a craft exercise (clear short-form writing) and partly a designer-identity exercise (forming your own position on the medium). You will be a better narrative designer if you have a view. You will be a still better one if you can change your view when evidence demands it.

Deliverable: A 400-600 word essay.

Reflection

When you finish these exercises, you will have produced a portfolio of narrative design artifacts: audits, scenes, a system design, a diagnostic, an acknowledgment, a conversion, a dialogue, an arc, a session log, and a manifesto.

Keep them. The ones you return to later will tell you what your instinct gravitates toward. That instinct is not irrelevant — it is the seed of your voice as a designer. Nurture it. Challenge it. But do not ignore it.