Narrative: How I Wrote the First Draft

My goal for February was to finish a rough draft of the game's narrative in Twine. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't complete this goal, but the work I did was still significant, especially considering the multi-week power and water crisis here in Texas. The aim of this blog post is to lay out what I have done so far and explore some of the design choices I made along the way.

 Learning Objectives

I designed each level with specific aims to keep them focused. Each one only has a handful of specific, attainable learning objectives. I listed them on the homepage of each level, and I will repeat them here.

Level One, "Welcome to Florence," introduces students to key characters and places. They will become familiar with the world of the Renaissance for the first time. After playing this level, students will be able to:

1. Understand Renaissance Florence as an interconnected community rather than as isolated people, events, and themes
2. Identify famous sites in Florence, including the Palazzo Medici, the Duomo, and the Palazzo della Signoria
3. Describe the Medici brothers, as well as their key friends and enemies
4. Briefly explain why the Pazzi family joins the Pazzi Conspiracy

Level Two, "Patronage of Arts," shows students how closely connected wealthy laymen like the Medici were to the world of Renaissance art they are likely already familiar with. After playing this level, students will be able to:

1. Briefly explain why wealthy Florentines commission art
2. Explain the basic symbolism of Gozzoli's "Procession of the Magi"
3. Connect patronage of art to image-building of renaissance elites
4. Briefly explain why Count Girolamo Riario joins the Pazzi Conspiracy

Level Three, "Patronage of Humanism," After playing this level, students will be able to:

1. Define humanism
2. Identify key texts that humanists read during this time
3. Briefly explain why wealthy Florentines pay for humanists to live and work
4. Briefly explain why Archbishop Francesco Salviati joins the Pazzi Conspiracy

Level Four, "Patronage of Elites," demonstrates how the Medici can bring some people into their patronage network and leave others out. There are consequences to both. After playing this level, students will be able to:

1. Briefly explain how Lorenzo de' Medici makes friends/allies
2. Explain how people feel about Lorenzo when they are in his patronage network versus when they are left out
3. Summarize the planning of the Pazzi Conspiracy 

Level Five, "The Pazzi Conspiracy," tells the story of the Pazzi Conspiracy as it played out in 1478. After playing this level, students will be able to:

1. Summarize the events of the Pazzi Conspiracy
2. Reflect on the role of patronage in the conspiracy

These learning objectives guided how I wrote each level. I tried to keep each scene focused and not waste time writing a bunch of dialogue that wasn't necessary.

Beyond my intended learning outcomes, I think the levels can be wrung out in class discussion to teach a lot more about the Renaissance. Students might be interested in the paintings I choose for the game art, for example, or the way the Medici treat you as their servant. A great side effect of making a video game is that its immersive quality opens up tons of questions about the world of the Renaissance. 

Conspiracy Subplot

Each level also aims to lead the player towards the Pazzi conspiracy. I have been studying secondary sources on the Pazzi Conspiracy since Fall of 2018, and I still find the complex web of events leading up to Giuliano's murder pretty confusing. That complexity makes it a great research subject, but it also makes this event pretty unwieldy for students. I tried to set the scene for the conspiracy very slowly and deliberate to try to make it less overwhelming. Level 5 is totally dedicated to the day of the murder, so each preceding level needed to show who was involved, why they were involved, and what they planned to do. 

I started small. The first three levels only seek to introduce one new member of the plot and summarize their motivations. 

Level 1 looks at the conspiracy's namesakes, the Pazzi. It shows who Jacopo and Francesco de Pazzi are and why they dislike the Medici family. Jacopo is the head of the Pazzi family in Florence, which is a wealthy banking family. Francesco is his nephew. They dislike the Medici because they are jealous of their power in Florence.

Level 2 introduces Girolamo Riario, a count from the north and nephew to Pope Sixtus IV. He dislikes the Medici because they refused to loan his family money to buy important territory, keeping them from becoming powerful.

Level 3 introduces Francesco Salviati, the Archbishop of Pisa. He dislikes the Medici because Lorenzo opposed his appointment to the Pisa Archbishopric and kept him exiled in Rome for years. 

Levels 1-3 demonstrate that every conspirator hates the Medici for the same basic reason: Lorenzo tried to keep them from becoming wealthier and more powerful in order to promote his own interests. In other words, he kept them out of his patronage network. 

Level 4 is a little more ambitious. Now that we know all the key figures in the conspiracy and their motives, all that is left to learn is their plan. They plan to 1) kill both Medici brothers at once and 2) take over the Florentine government. The plan will only work if both brothers are killed so that there is no capable Medici heir to double down on their government control. In real history, this is the reason their plan keeps getting delayed, and is why the plot ultimately fails. 

I was already planning to have Level 4 be a dinner party to show Lorenzo wining and dining as he acts as a patron of other elites. In the real history of the Pazzi Conspiracy, the conspirators tried to kill the brothers the first time at a dinner party at the Medici's Fiesole Villa, so it seemed natural to combine these two dinners into one. 

Level 4 sets up Level 5 nicely because now all the conspirators' cards are on the table for the player to see. They have tried and failed to carry out the conspiracy once, and then they set up their second attempt, going so far as to name the time and place: at Mass the following Sunday in Florence. That way the player will have all the knowledge about the conspiracy before it is carried out in Level 5. So, the player will see it coming, they will understand why unfolds the way it does, and they will understand why it ultimately fails.

Final Thoughts 

At the time I am writing this, I haven't yet completed the draft of Level 5, and I haven't finished the symposium speeches for Level 3. My mental health has slowed my progress significantly, but I still hope to finish writing soon. My goal for March was to block out the playable levels in Unity, and I still hope to do this. This will be an extremely bare-bones game. The art will likely be temporary filler-art, and it certainly won't be animated. I might have some background sound because it is easy to do and will help with the narrative tone, but SFX is on hold. Basically, my goal is to just transfer what I did in Twine structurally to Unity so that I can make sure the gameplay actually works. All the visuals and the "juice" is an April endeavor.