Conspiracy Line I

One of the things my advisor, Dr. Clulow, and I talked about last week was the importance of having two storylines running through the game that each serve a different purpose. 

There is the surface level storyline (I'll call this the Education Line) where the player does tasks for the Medici house that force them to learn particular things about the Renaissance. The Education Line is explicit and doesn't really continue between levels. In Level One you meet main characters, in Level Two you learn about art patronage, etc. 

Then there is a storyline (I'll call it the Conspiracy Line) that does continue over throughout the levels because it is the build-up to the Pazzi Conspiracy in Level Five. This line will be more subtle and only come through in hints in each level, but it is also what ties everything together. Through it, the player is supposed to learn that the Medici family's grip on power is more fragile than it seems, and that there are people who want to seize control of Florence for themselves. Slowly, the player picks up on details of the conspiracy, but the tension between the anti-Mediceans and the Medici family is clear from the start. 

Since the Conspiracy Line is one continuous plot line that I plan to slice up and distribute over the course of the first four levels, I think it would be best to write the whole thing in one place before slicing it. That is what I have been working on recently. I started a list of things I wanted the player to learn. I wanted to make a series of conversations where each one revealed one specific thing on the list. That way, I can distribute multiple of these conversations between scenes and give the player many opportunities to learn this info. If they make choices in-game that cause them to miss one of the conversations, they will likely still run into at least one of them every level. If I need to, I can also script the level in such a way that at least one of the conversations is mandatory for the Education Line so that players can't miss it.

Here is my (tentative) list of things I want the player to learn about the anti-Mediceans:

• Who is anti-Medici? What is their personal motive?
  • Jacopo de' Pazzi
  • Francesco de' Pazzi
  • Girolamo Riario 
  • Archbishop Francesco Salviati 
  • Giovanni Battista da Montescco 
  • Pope Pius IV
• What dirt do they have on the Medici?
  • Run Florence from their dining table 
    • meeting with Florentine elites: everyone can be elected and the terms are really short for every office, so they meet with active politicians as well as elites that could become elected
    • meeting with international elites: ambassadors from different states and/or the Church, hosting important figures while they do business in Florence
  • Use Medici money to bail out Florence/fund state projects rather than using tax money so they get the credit
  • Rarely hold offices themselves, but stack the election lottery with loyalists and throw out unfavorable names
• What do they want to replace the Medici?
  • same system of corruption and manipulation, just in different hands: Pazzi in charge of Florence and using their power to help out their international allies and promote Papal interests in Tuscany
• Why do they believe the Medici can successfully be ousted?
  • Lots of allies (international, condottieri, the Pope)
  • the people are fickle - when someone makes a power grab, the people will switch sides to support the victor
  • Money and resources that rival the Medici (banking, art, palazzo, churches, papal support, etc.)
• Is anti-Medicean sentiment occurring outside of Florence? Why?
  • Riario clan
    • wants their power in Romagna to go unchallenged by Lorenzo's alliance with Milan
    • wants payback for Lorenzo past meddling in family business
  • Papal interests
    • wants there to be no competition for his nepotism, esp in Tuscany; the Pope can award cardinals hats and archbishoprics to whoever he wants wherever he wants without Lorenzo challenging him to give those positions to his family or allies

Next, I am using PixelCrusher's Dialogue System for Unity tool to make a series of conversations that will reflect these learning objectives. I'm using Unity rather than Twine for a few reasons. 1)  If I begin with Twine I will ultimately have to transfer the conversations to Unity later. 2) It is very difficult to copy and paste conversation sections between Twine files, so it will create more work for me later on if I use Twine for my rough drafts and need to rearrange things. 3) I can have people playtest all the conversations at once in a Unity build by creating a series of buttons the user can toggle on a menu - it isn't pretty, but it is very effective. 

My next dev log will be an updated list of Conspiracy Line learning objectives and a playable scene where all these conversations can be accessed.