Book of Travels is seriously the serenity I need right now. The latest dev blog details the mini-MMO’s narrative design, which Might and Delight likens to “writing a game like a picture book.”
“One of the major differences between Book of Travels and conventional RPGs is that you won’t be able to converse with the NPCs you meet,” M&D’s Helen Liston explains. “In Braided Shore NPCs speak repeatable, poetic lines – they’ll still do all the conventional work of lore seeding and world building but since they don’t simulate conversation the NPCs work more like two dimensional story characters than limited chabots. We hope that by creating them this way players will have a less wall-breaking and more immersive experience, and with its pop-up book aesthetic and 2D feel Book of Travels feels like exactly the right place to invite the player to encounter text in this bookish way.”
This format also allows the writers to craft NPCs to speak folk wisdom and drop lore nuggets – “glimmers of story” – that aren’t just backdrop but are quest-starters and event chains “with narratives that have the small-magic feel of folklore.”
