---
name: narrative-design
description: Use when writing or structuring story, dialogue, barks, item text, tutorials or world-building that players meet during play. Keeps narrative tied to mechanics, pacing and readability.
---

# Narrative design

Draft from the Game studio skills library by THE DREAMING JESTER. Adapt it to your game, team and engine.

## Goal

Make the story something the player experiences through play, not something that interrupts it.

## Before you start

- Know the tone, the player's role and what the player is doing when they meet each piece of text.
- Find the systems that can carry story: progression, items, enemies, places and failure.

## Process

1. State the narrative promise in two sentences: who the player is and what is at stake.
2. Map story beats to gameplay beats. Each beat should change what the player wants or knows.
3. Choose the delivery for each beat: environment, systems, short lines, scripted moment or optional lore.
4. Write the shortest line that does the job. Lines heard during action must be understood at a glance.
5. Give recurring voices distinct speech patterns and consistent knowledge.
6. Keep text in data with stable IDs and context notes, so it can be edited, localised and tracked.
7. Read every line in context, in the build, at real speed.

## Quality bar

- No essential information exists only in long text.
- Barks and prompts are short enough to read during play.
- The tone stays consistent between a tutorial prompt and an item description.
- Every line has an ID, speaker, trigger and context note.

## Output

Narrative brief, beat-to-gameplay map, text in data with IDs, and a list of triggers and conditions.

## Avoid

- Exposition dumps before the player cares.
- Text that contradicts what the systems show.
- Hardcoded strings that cannot be localised or tracked.