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Iterating adaptation in Morte Arthure: a perspective on adapting literature to interactive media

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Iterating adaptation in Morte Arthure: a perspective on adapting literature to interactive media

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Content Iterating Adaptation in Morte Arthure
A Perspective on Adapting Literature to Interactive Media
by
Samuel Eli Lurie Sobel
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)
May 2024
Copyright © 2024 Samuel Eli Lurie Sobel

Acknowledgements
This thesis would not have been possible without the support of my family and my
partner, Marielle, who kept me going through the most difficult moments of the production
process. I also want to thank the entire 2024 MFA thesis cohort, USC Games, thesis
professors Martzi Campos and Laird Malamed, and my advisors: Professors Sam Roberts
and Jesse Vigil, and Matt Leacock.
Like most games, Morte Arthure was not produced by myself. I would like to thank
my team for their hard work and their flexibility as I navigated the constantly changing
plans: the producer, Kristine Nguyen; the design team, Kristine Nguyen, Anooj Vadodkar,
Vinny Peng, Seth Wang, and Rosa Suh; the engineering team, Anooj Vadodkar and Jeremy
Yiu; the art team, Tian Yang, Christina Wang, Dora Tsai, Gianna Besmonte, and Rosa Suh;
the composer, Mithrandir Wang; and design consultant Marielle Brady.
ii

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. ii
List of Figures ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. v
Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… vi
Chapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
Chapter 2: Before the Beginning ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
2.1 Earliest Ideas ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
2.2 Road to Corbenic ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
2.3 The Thesis Pitch ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3
Chapter 3: The Avalon Manuscript …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 4
3.1 Prototype One …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 4
3.2 Prototype Two …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 5
3.3 Prototype Three ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
3.4 Prototype Four …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6
3.5 Prototype Five ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
3.6 Prototype Six ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 9
Chapter 4: A Step Back ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
4.1 Combinatorics …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
4.2 Endings and Canonicity ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 11
4.3 Interactivity and Adaptation ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 12
4.4 A Clearer Picture ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 12
Chapter 5: The Beginning of Morte Arthure ………………………………………………………………………………………… 13
5.1 Early Conceptualizations of Morte Arthure …………………………………………………………………………… 13
5.2 Scoping Concerns ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 13
Chapter 6: Morte Arthure ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 15
6.1 Morte Arthure General Overview ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 15
6.2 Core Mechanics - Loyalty and Pledges …………………………………………………………………………………. 15
6.3 Core Mechanics - Questing ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 16
Chapter 7: Thesis Question, Answered? ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 17
7.1 Further Elaboration of the Question ……………………………………………………………………………………… 17
7.2 Systematization of Narrative…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 19
7.3 Writing “Around” the Tradition …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 20
7.4 Writing “Past” the Tradition ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 21
Chapter 8: Future Directions …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 23
8.1 Remaining Work Before Thesis Show …………………………………………………………………………………… 23
iv

8.2 Plans for Act Two ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 24
8.3 Potential for Commercialization ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 25
Chapter 9: Conclusion, or A Thesis is Like… …………………………………………………………………………………………. 27
9.1 …A Swan …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 27
9.2 …An Arthurian Quest …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 27
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 28
iv

List of Figures
1 Figure 1 - Prototype 1 Document …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 4
2 Figure 2 - Prototype 5 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8
3 Figure 3 - Bertilak de Hautdesert Character Portrait …………………………………………………………. 14
4 Figure 4 - Guinevere Character Card ………………………………………………………………………………………. 22
5 Figure 5 - Game Board …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 26
v

Abstract
This paper covers the design process of creating my thesis project, Morte
Arthure, as well as the iterations of thesis concepts that preceded it. These
versions are tied together by my thesis question, which deals with adaptation of a
loose canon of literary materials into an interactive format. The paper discusses
problems encountered when attempting to introduce player agency into a
traditionally linear story, and proposes a variety of methods for handling these
dilemmas.
vi

Chapter 1: Introduction
I have always been fascinated by the medieval; this passion has been fueled
since childhood by a love of the stories of King Arthur and his knights of the Round
Table. I have studied and read extensively on the topic; while I am not an academic
expert, from a lay perspective my knowledge and love of the subject is vast. When I
settled on Arthuriana as the subject matter of my thesis, it felt like returning home.
The Arthurian story is vast and rich, and has been adapted hundreds of
times. Any medium you can imagine, I would wager someone has used it to make an
Arthurian story - books, theater, film, music, and even games. Part of what makes
the tradition so wonderful, to me, is my belief that every one of these more modern
entries is just as rich and valuable as the medieval texts that predate them, and just
as much a part of the true canon. Yet games, unlike these other media and despite
numerous attempts, have largely failed to effectively adapt the tradition.
I mean this in a very specific sense - I certainly do not claim that no game
that roots itself in Arthuriana has been good or successful. On the contrary, I have
enjoyed a great many of those games featuring my favorite characters, stories, and
themes. Yet when it comes to adaptation, I believe that the way that the stories and
the interactivity are connected has been lacking. The story tends to play out how it
will, and the player’s interaction does not often directly interface with the source
narrative. Therefore I set out to answer the question: How does one effectively
adapt an existing body of literature, with its set characters, plotlines, and themes,
effectively into interactive media, where player choice is so important?
1

Chapter 2: Before the Beginning
I will begin by discussing the various iterations of my project, from thesis
preparation in the spring of 2023 through the end of that year, that preceded the
current project, Morte Arthure. There have been some consistent facets and
problems throughout; other aspects have changed dramatically between
prototypes. This chapter begins an exploration of the iterative process as a method
to discover answers regarding my thesis question.
2.1 Earliest ideas
The first prototypes connected with the idea of adapting Arthurian legends
to an interactive medium came slightly after those unrecognizable early ideas. For a
long time I considered the prototype/idea that came next to be far enough from
Morte Arthure that it too was unrecognizable; in writing this paper I have begun to
recognize that work as the primordial ooze from which Morte Arthure eventually
evolved. Entitled Road to Corbenic, this idea occupied much of my time during
spring 2023 to little avail.
2.2 Road to Corbenic
Road to Corbenic was an adventure game inspired by games like The Oregon
Trail (2022). It followed a group of knights of the Round Table on the quest for the
Holy Grail, utilizing a branching narrative system to allow for player choice. The high
level concept of the game was that players would make choices on this journey that
would affect how the downfall of Arthur’s realm played out.
2

In terms of interactive adaptation, I sought to inject agency through a sense
of authorship over the narrative, since the players were making choices as to what
characters said and did. This ultimately proved to be not particularly engaging or
effective, as players found the lack of mechanical complexity uninteresting, which
led to overall disengagement with the game. The proposed sense of authorship was
also absent; players noted that choosing options from a menu rarely felt authorial.
Altogether, this led me to abandon this concept shortly before thesis pitches.
2.3 The Thesis Pitch
The game I pitched to the faculty at the end of spring 2023 was entitled The
Avalon Manuscript. I described it as a “history mystery,” a puzzle game where the
player would piece together documentary evidence, as a historian would, in order to
solve the mystery of Camelot’s fall. They would seek not only the methods of the
Round Table’s destruction, but the reasons behind it. The overarching goal of this
methodology with respect to adaptation was to leverage discovery as a tool for
learning and engagement.
3

Chapter 3: The Avalon Manuscript
This chapter focuses on the prototypes that were made starting in the
summer of 2023. I group these prototypes together because they are in many ways
similar; most importantly, they share a hypothesized answer to my thesis question.
All these distinct prototypes were designed around the idea that the best way to
adapt the Arthurian story engagingly into interactive media was to allow players to
discover the story for themselves.
The prototypes in this section were heavily influenced by other puzzle
games, like Her Story (2015), Return of the Obra Dinn (2018), and The Case of the
Golden Idol (2022).
3.1 Prototype One
Since I changed my plans very shortly before the
official thesis pitches, I did not have any prototype from
thesis prep to bring into the summer and continue iterating
on. While my intention was to hit the ground running in the
summer and begin work immediately, this was not my
reality. Progress stagnated for a good month and a half
before I managed to actually produce an initial prototype.
That prototype was actually fairly close to the plan I had laid
out in my thesis pitch: players read through documents and
pulled out highlighted words; they used these to fill in a
“manuscript page” (essentially an answer sheet) that would be the illuminated
4

manuscript. The idea was to have a series of these puzzles that explored the ending
of the Arthurian narrative.
A few issues of varying severity became quickly apparent in early playtests
of this prototype. For one, the playetesters took between one and two hours to
complete the single puzzle. This actually felt like a manageable problem, though
undoubtedly a problem if I intended for there to be multiple puzzles - the puzzles
had to be easier, or at least better scaffold up to this difficulty. The far larger
problem was it wasn’t creating the experience I wanted. While it was at least
moderately effective as an interactive teaching method - by the end of the puzzle
players seemed familiar with the characters and how they fit together - it did not
provide a sense of creativity, flexibility or agency. By the nature of the puzzle there
was a single correct answer that the player was attempting to discover, and by
sticking closely to the source material when designing the story contained in the
manuscript page, I had accidentally reinforced some of the more outdated values in
my content that I desired to challenge. In short, the player was looking for a “true
version” of the story, and that true version had some problematic themes.
3.2 Prototype Two
The former problem, that players were looking for the truth instead of acting
in a creative capacity, would become a consistent problem between prototypes.
Around the beginning of the fall 2023 semester, I completed a second prototype
that attempted to address some of the issues inherent to the previous iteration,
though in the end several of them were carried over.
5

This prototype, instead of containing discrete puzzles, abstracted away the
documentary portion and instead presented players with a manuscript with
underlined words that they could change. These changes would then “cascade”
through the page, changing the following text. While this did allow players
something of a greater sense of creativity, the reminder that there would be
documents to help influence the choices in the final version was enough to leave
players searching for the truth rather than authoring their desired story.
Additionally, I felt this prototype swung too far in the direction of an “anything
goes” mentality, where some final pages bore little resemblance to anything
recognizable as Arthuriana. Still, this felt much more promising than its
predecessor.
3.3 Prototype Three
The third prototype was much smaller, scrapped about halfway through due
to infeasibility. The idea was to expand on Prototype Two but introduce rules for
characters based on the traditional stories in order to keep them bounded. This did
not prove effective, so it was dropped in favor of a fourth version.
3.4 Prototype Four
This variation was perhaps the most effective prototype. Instead of the
manuscript pages focusing around a story moment, I moved towards each page
focusing on a character, with the idea that the minor characters’ pages would
establish the major characters’ personalities, and the major character’s pages
would lead to a final page that was more narrative/story-driven centering on Arthur
and Mordred. This was, I believe, a more effective way of parceling narrative. Players
6

seemed to enjoy interacting with the story of Sir Galehaut, a minor canonical
character who challenged the hegemonic narratives with his queer undertones.
This accomplished the goal of beginning to reconstruct the value space I was
working in, and it was the most enjoyable prototype to playtesters. The major issue
with this version, which came into crystal-clear focus, was that players still wanted
the truth more than they wanted to create.
I attempted to alter the documents from Prototype Four so that they were no
longer first person narratives, but second-hand accounts that described
ambiguities that would allow for multiple interpretations. This proved both
extremely difficult and not particularly fruitful, and led me to the conclusion that
the documents were largely the impetus behind the truth-seeking player behavior.
3.5 Prototype Five
I landed on a largely different idea for Prototype Five. While I had been
dedicated at first to making a digital game, talking with thesis professors Martzi
Campos and Laird Malamed led to me considering the possibility of remaining in the
physical/paper space. I had still only done paper prototypes, and I felt I was running
out of time to lock down a system to begin digitizing. Prototype five, as a result, was
concepting for a physical interactable. It would still be a manuscript, a book. There
would be pages of fixed text describing characters paired with captioned
illuminations/illustrations. These illustrations, however, would be blank, and the
player would have cards depicting the characters described that they could slot
into the manuscript. The manuscript would “detect” which card was used (either by
physical computing or, at least at first by a “Wizard of Oz” method) and compile
7

these into an ending for the player that would be the only generative writing, and
would be displayed on a screen that was the last “page” of the book.
This for a time felt like the most solid idea I had so far. It felt compact and
(with some physical computing help) doable. It maintained the core concepts of the
manuscript, simplified the input methodology without making it disinteresting, and
repurposed much of the work that had
already been done. I felt determined and
locked in with this plan.
That lasted about twenty four hours,
unfortunately. The first hint of trouble was
talking to an advisor, Jesse Vigil, and
realizing that the construction of a
physical book that did this wasn’t nearly as
straightforward as I’d imagined. The final
product would be thick and clunky if it
worked at all. This felt surmountable,
though. We brainstormed about similarly
physical things that could accomplish much of the same
effect, but I felt as though leaving the manuscript behind was not in my interest. I
left questioning why the manuscript was so central to my conception of the
project, and this led me to what I now believe was the single greatest stumbling
block all along: if the medium of the ending is the written word, any meaningful
8

amount of choice will lead to a combinatorial explosion that would make for a
challenge for any writer.
3.6 Prototype Six
For Prototype Six, I was still tantalized by the idea of the character cards or
some similar simple object being used as an input with titles - a quickly toyed with
but later discarded idea was a round table with epithets (The Advisor, The
Enchantress, The Traitor, etc.) at each place setting, and players would select which
characters to put at each seat. The challenge of educating the players about the
characters, paired with the lack of a summative piece of the experience, prevented
me from committing to it. The latter was, of course, the greater problem, and goes
to what I had been encountering all along: if I wanted to give lots of choice, how
would I show impact without writing hundreds of different endings, or variations of
an ending? Conversely, how could I make the endings feel distinct enough without
writing so many vastly different ones, when every piece of traditional Arthurian
literature leads to roughly the same conclusion?
9

Chapter 4: A Step Back
Towards the end of the fall 2023 semester, I decided to take a step back and
reevaluate. It was through this distance from my project and my process that the
seeds planted during Road to Corbenic and tended all through The Avalon
Manuscript were able to bloom into Morte Arthure.
The overarching questions I left The Avalon Manuscript with were essential
to the formation of Morte Arthure. As such, in this section I will enumerate and
explore several of these questions, the conclusions I drew, and how those
conclusions informed my process moving onward.
4.1 Combinatorics
One of the biggest stumbling blocks in earlier prototypes was combinatorics.
It took several weeks to produce each prototype, with the time divided between
ideation and writing. The latter was of more concern - once the systems and
ideation locked in, I thought, it would just become a matter of content-creation. The
question became, then, would I be able to produce the amount of content required?
The answer, again and again, seemed to be a resounding no. Creating variation
within a contained prototype was difficult enough, and the system simply was not
scalable. The more agency I introduced, the more directly the player changed the
stories, the more writing was necessary. And the return on investment was
miniscule - the amount of writing needed to flesh out even a single major choice
was substantial, the amount necessary to make a meaningful interactable felt
incomprehensibly large.
10

4.2 Endings and Canonicity
One of the major suppositions with which I began my project was that there
was no single true Arthurian canon. The literary tradition is, in my opinion, a
beautiful tapestry of complementing and contradicting tales. These stories share
characters, themes, events, and more. Together, they create a body of literature
that has a definite shape. There are boundaries to that shape, and there is a
distinction between works within the tradition and those without.
Even still, there is not the same firmness to the shape as many other literary
works. Someone attempting to adapt, say, The Three Musketeers would have little
trouble delineating the canon of that work. What happens in the original book is
canon; anything else is the invention of later interpreters and adapters.
Arthuriana does not have that same clarity. While one might adapt specific
works, like the foundational Le Morte D’Arthur (Malory) or The Once and Future King
(White), with clear canon delineation, the internal ambiguity of the entire literary
tradition problematizes such attempts. What is one to make of the Grail Quest being
completed by no less than four different characters across various clearly Arthurian
works.
One place the Arthurian tradition is remarkably consistent, however, is the
story’s end. From some of the earliest medieval tales to modern renditions, King
Arthur meets a tragic end at the hands of Mordred. The details of Arthur’s fate, and
whether he is truly dead, vary across tellings, but the final tragedy is almost always
there.
11

4.3 Interactivity and Adaptation
In keeping with my supposition that there was no Arthurian canon, I believed that a
key point of interactivity would have to be the story itself. To truly show the flexibility of
Arthuriana, to emulate the simultaneously amorphous yet bounded nature of the tradition,
the player had to be able to influence the story. Some of my prototypes achieved this better
than others, but none in a scalable manner.
This led me to broader questions about what I meant when I set out to adapt
Arthuriana. Was I simply attempting to make something that utilized characters from the
tradition? No, that was not it. After substantial consideration, I came to a tentative
conclusion. My goal was to make a piece of interactive media that honored the traditional
medieval stories while containing more modern values, a piece of media that gave agency
to the player while maintaining the shape of the Arthurian tradition. In effect, I was hoping
to give players a tool to co-tell, with me, their own Arthurian story.
4.4 A Clearer Picture
Together, these three quandaries constrained my design space. I wanted to
make a tool, something flexible enough to accommodate various stories, but with a
fixed ending and very little combinatorial writing. Some of this was in keeping with
previous prototypes - I had, I realized, always been trying to make this sort of tool,
and I had for quite some time had one eye on the amount of writing necessary. The
biggest realization was that changing the ending was a fool’s errand. It was neither
necessary nor productive to attempt to give players the ability to change the
story’s end. The meaning-making would have to come from somewhere else.
12

Chapter 5: The beginning of Morte Arthure
This realization brought me to the final conceptualization of my thesis, the game
Morte Arthure. Once I accepted that the game was not about changing the ending,
the design space shifted radically. I started to move away from puzzles and
documents, away from the digital entirely. I began to design around the idea that
meaning in the game could come not from averting catastrophe but from what
outlasts it. In short, the game was not about saving Arthur. It was about saving his
values, the just world he fought for. It was about saving Camelot.
5.1 Early Conceptions of Morte Arthure
Morte Arthure began its life as a game in two acts. The game revolved around
the climactic Battle of Camlann, where Arthur and Mordred’s forces annihilate each
other. The first act of the game was the lead up to the battle, and the second was
the aftermath. The players would control and role-play as characters from the
Arthurian tradition - Gawain, Lancelot, Guinevere, and more. They would undertake
quests inspired by the source material as they attempted to garner support for
Arthur in his final battle. This would ultimately prove fruitless, however, and Arthur
would perish in the battle. The remaining gameplay would be the same, but now
with the goal of preserving order in Britain.
5.2 Scoping Concerns
Fairly early on it became apparent that in the one semester I had left, I would
not be able to complete the entirety of this concept. While both pieces were, in their
ways, important to answering my original question, I would have to find some way
13

to take on less content if I wanted anything in a presentable state at the thesis
show. As a result, I made the decision to only work on the production of Act One of
the game - henceforth, any reference to Morte Arthure will refer to the project as it
exists now, that is to say a polished Act One meant to stand alone, but intended to
one day be complemented by a second act. This will be discussed more in the
penultimate chapter of the paper regarding future directions.
14

Chapter 6: Morte Arthure
This chapter will focus on the current state of Morte Arthure, as well as some
design decisions and design problems from the game’s production. The purpose of
this chapter is to establish the key features of the game in order to give essential
context to answer in subsequent chapters the question posed at the beginning of
this paper.
6.1 Morte Arthure General Overview
Morte Arthure is a four-player cooperative board game in which the players
work together to counteract the plots of the villainous Sir Mordred and bolster the
strength of King Arthur’s forces as the two prepare to meet at Camlann. Each of the
players begins the game controlling three characters from the Arthurian tradition.
On a player’s turn, these characters may travel across the board (a map of Arthurian
Britain), fight the agents of Mordred, rally kingdoms to Arthur’s cause, and/or go on
a quest.
6.2 Core Mechanics - Loyalty and Pledges
The core conflict of Morte Arthure is Arthur and Mordred’s struggle for the
loyalty of the various kingdoms that make up Arthurian Britain. This contest is
represented mechanically by loyalty and pledges. Agents of both Arthur (the
player characters) and Mordred (the enemies) travel the board placing loyalty
markers in specific kingdoms. Once a certain threshold is reached in a kingdom,
those loyalty markers are removed and replaced with a pledge marker - pledged
kingdoms are permanently aligned with one faction and can no longer be swayed.
15

While player characters place loyalty markers as a result of either the “Rally
to Arthur” action or a successful quest, Mordred characters are controlled by a deck
of cards, the Mordred Deck. This deck controls the enemies’ movement and their
placement of loyalty markers, as well as serving as a kind of timer for the game.
Within the Mordred Deck are cards that move Arthur closer to Camlann, bringing the
game closer to its end.
6.3 Core Mechanics - Questing
The central narrative mechanic in Morte Arthure is questing. The game
contains a deck of forty-six quest cards set in the different kingdoms of the game
board. At a given moment, five of these quests are available, and a character in a
kingdom corresponding to one of these “active quests” may begin the quest by
taking the card. Every quest consists of a series of entries in a book called the
Tome of Quests. This book works like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, with
players selecting different paths for the characters to follow, making rolls to
determine the success of their actions, or following character-specific storylines.
Each quest has one or more potential rewards, from loyalty markers to new player
characters.
These quest materials are drawn from the vast Arthurian tradition,
predominantly from medieval works but with some allusions to works spanning the
Victorian era - Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859) - to personal favorite modern
tellings, such as Gerald Morris’ The Squire’s Tales series (1998-2010). A partial list of
sources is included in my Works Cited page.
16

Chapter 7: Thesis Question, Answered?
As promised in the preceding chapter, I now return to my thesis question, and pose
three potential answers I found. I by no means intend to imply that these are the
only answers, or that they are mutually exclusive - in fact, I applied all of them in
Morte Arthure. For the ease of the reader, I will reprint here the question from
Chapter One: How does one effectively adapt an existing body of literature, with its
set characters, plotlines, and themes, effectively into interactive media, where
player choice is so important?
7.1 Further Elaboration of the Question
The question is, as most are, somewhat more nuanced than the above, which
is an attempt to consolidate a great amount of thinking in a single phrase. The
Arthurian tradition is, in ways I have noted before, unlike most literary works. It is
more akin to a body of mythology, like that of the ancient Greeks or Norse, than it is
other literature. There are numerous sources, sometimes complimentary, other
times contradicting. This poses an additional challenge when attempting to adapt
it, but also grants freedom. With the tradition being so vast and diverse, it is difficult
to make something that honors the entirety of it, but perhaps easier to make
something that feels like a part of it.
My project, however, was not to make an Arthurian game. Even amongst
board games, this has already been done with Shadows over Camelot (2005) and
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon (2019). My goal was instead to adapt the Arthurian
canon, which to me has specific and key differences as a task.
17

Firstly, I sought to honor the source material - as much of it as I could. Of
course, I could not reconcile all conflicting characterizations and portrayals, but I
attempted to draw from as many sources as I could, as directly as I could. Where
other games draw characters and broad concepts from the literature, I tried to
translate stories as directly as possible. For instance, the quest “Beheading Game”
in Morte Arthure is inspired by the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- the main path of the quest reproduces, in my own writing, the events of the
original story. Almost all the quests in the game have specific, identifiable medieval
sources that inspired them.
Second, I wanted the players to have agency over the story - in many
Arthurian games, the “Arthurian”-ness of the game is its setting, and there is very
little the players can do to interact directly with this aspect. The setting is like a
tablecloth over a table - the first thing you see, and perhaps what you remember,
but not a sturdy structure. Many of these games might just as well be set elsewhere
- take Avalon (2012), which is just the publisher’s earlier game The Resistance
(2009) with a new setting. I wanted to make a game where players embodied and
participated in the Arthurian story. The agency and choice within the game were to
be directly related to what made it Arthurian. This is what caused me to have the
players role-play as the most recognizable characters.
This is actually an uncommon phenomenon in role-playing games (RPGs)
about Arthuriana. Tabletop RPGs Chalice (Rose) and Pendragon (Stafford) both
have players take on the roles of new, minor characters. These player characters
brush shoulders with the big names, but the main, recognizable stories belong to
18

non-player characters. In essence, the main Arthurian story happens around the
players, who follow small, thematically similar sub-stories in which they have
agency. That is perhaps the main difference between my goal and what I have
found that came before: the ability of the player to embody major characters and
affect major events.
7.2 Systematization of Narrative
As mentioned above, the player characters embody major characters from
Arthurian legends, and role-play as them while using the questing mechanic. These
player characters each have their own unique character ability; it is here that the
first answer to my question can most directly be seen.
These character abilities were designed after substantial research, with an
eye to turning narrative into mechanics. Take the character of Sir Percival, for
example - his ability is called “Redemption Seeker,” and it forces him to always
attempt to further the quest for the Holy Grail if possible. This reflects the character
of Percival in the medieval tales, where he fails to heal the Fisher King and spends
much of his life attempting to rectify this mistake and attain the Grail.
By taking the major theme of Percival’s story and turning it into his core
mechanic, the player controlling Sir Percival is inherently acting in line with his
canonical depiction. The emergent narrative of Sir Percival will reflect his traditional
appearances, with the choices of the player altering the course of the stories. By
making the narrative a part of the system, the player is forced to interact with the
“Arthurian”-ness of the story.
19

7.3 Writing “Around” the Tradition
The second answer to my question is something I have come to think of as “writing
around” the tradition. Perhaps counterintuitively, this practice involves taking elements of
the original stories and making them fixed and unchangeable. This may seem completely
the opposite of what I have stated as my goal, but doing so deliberately and sparingly
produces a pattern of interaction that effectively accomplishes what I set out to do.
Take for example the quest I mentioned earlier, “Beheading Game,” which is based
on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The quest takes the events of the poem as having
already happened within the game’s timeline - Gawain has already been through this
ordeal, and his path reflects this. While the generic path re-treads the same route with
acknowledgment that it sounds like one of Gawain’s fireside tales, Gawain’s own path is
entirely different. His history with the Green Knight informs the writing of the quest and the
choices Gawain’s player can make.
The player cannot change what Gawain did in the quest, just as the player cannot
change that Percival has already failed to heal the Fisher King, as mentioned above. These
events form the history of the characters, and inform what they do next. This creates a
space for narrative to emerge around what the source texts do not cover. Importantly, not
every key moment can be relegated to the past or solidified in this way - to do so would
prevent me from allowing the players to interface with these moments. But by choosing
key moments to be in the past, as opposed to letting players follow them exactly, the
stories of those characters are enriched. Conversely, other characters can now follow in
their footsteps, but with their own unique perspectives. What does it mean for Arthur’s fool,
Sir Dagonet, to succeed where Gawain failed? By establishing Gawain’s failure and allowing
other characters to take his place in the story, perhaps the answer can emerge.
20

This also allows me to subvert moments where my values disagree with the original
stories. By writing from new perspectives, I can challenge the assumptions of the medieval
tradition. While this was not a goal inherent to adaptation, I wanted to be very cautious
throughout to ensure that the game would feel as welcoming to others as Arthuriana has
to me. This is largely a moral purpose for me; I believe it is a good endeavor to make these
traditions accessible and welcoming to broader audiences. It also serves a function,
however: players who feel comfortable use their agency to affect the story more readily.
7.4 Writing “Past” the Tradition
The final answer to my question goes hand-in-hand with the previous one; I call it
“writing past” the source material. In many ways it is effectively the same - the goal is to
use the sources as a jumping-off-point and then create new room for meaning where the
original authors left things unspoken. To me, the difference between “writing around” and
“writing past” is the scale. “Writing around” fills in moments in the story; the idea of “writing
past” was to extend the saga beyond it’s traditional conclusion.
As I mentioned earlier, all Arthurian roads lead to the same end: the Battle of
Camlann. Indeed, the lead-up is often the same, though not always. The illicit affair of
Lancelot and Guinevere is revealed by Mordred and his accomplices; as a result Guinevere is
sentenced to death, but Lancelot rescues her, killing two of Gawain’s brothers in the
process. This causes Arthur and Gawain to make war upon Lancelot, who retreats to his
castle, Joyous Garde. Eventually, Arthur and Lancelot make peace, and Arthur accepts
Guinevere back but exiles Lancelot to his homeland on the continent. Gawain, still vengeful
over the death of his brothers, convinces Arthur to follow him there and continue the war.
Arthur leaves Mordred in charge and goes, somewhat willingly, with Gawain. Mordred
usurps the throne, Arthur and Gawain return. Gawain dies, the Battle of Camlann happens,
and most of the characters wind up dead.
21

This particular version is drawn from one of the most popular sources, Le Morte
D’Arthur (Malory), but it appears in many preceding and almost all later versions of the
story. The Battle of Camlann is mentioned in connection with Arthur and Mordred as early
as the tenth century (Annales Cambriae) in one of the earliest surviving sources of the
Arthurian tradition. In both Road to Corbenic and The Avalon Manuscript, I accepted this as
the natural ending point of the story, and was attempting to make variations on this ending
that felt correctly Arthurian.
One of the most important changes I made between The Avalon Manuscript and
Morte Arthure was discarding this assumption. Morte
Arthure was always intended to extend beyond the
Battle of Camlann and deal with the reconstruction of
Arthur’s kingdom. While the execution of this plan has
been delayed for the purposes of scope, see the future
directions chapter of this paper for a more detailed
elaboration of the planned second act; this section will
focus on its importance more than the particulars of it.
The source material deals very little with this part
of the Arthurian legend. The question of what comes
after, what Arthur’s death means for Britain, is barely
touched. Many sources identify a successor. The
Post-Vulgate Cycle has a bit more detail regarding an
invasion by King Mark of Cornwall that devastates what
little remains of Arthur’s kingdom. But the lack of writing on this question, to me, creates a
fertile ground for new stories. At its core, then, “writing past” is the practice of exploring
unanswered questions in the source material.
22

Chapter 8: Future Directions
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss potential future plans for Morte Arthure. I
will cover the work of the remaining weeks in this semester, plans for Act Two, and
briefly touch on the potential of commercialization.
8.1 Remaining Work Before Thesis Show
There remains much to do in the time between now and the thesis show in
the beginning of May, where the project will be publicly showcased for the first
time. The mechanics of the game are locked in, pending balance and polishing, but
the content is not at all done. At the time of writing this, only half of the quests are
written, and an additional quarter are storyboarded but incomplete. The character
biographies have mostly been drafted, but none have been edited or put on the
cards.
In terms of art, the character portraits for the player characters are done,
though if there is time, I will be adding alternate portraits for three of the
characters. Only two of the eleven Mordred/enemy characters have portraits as of
now, however. I am also lacking key art, like the box art, the Tome of Quest cover,
etc. The instructions are written, but the diagrams and illustrations are not yet
complete. Lastly, I have used a template for the various cards; if I have time the plan
is to replace the template assets with custom ones.
Our biggest remaining task is, of course, to tune, balance, and polish the
gameplay. These adjustments, while small, will hopefully make the gameplay even
more enjoyable for players.
23

8.2 Plans for Act Two
As I’ve mentioned throughout the previous chapters, Morte Arthure was
intended to be a two-act game. What is being produced now is the first act through
the Battle of Camlann, which would serve as the midpoint/dividing line between the
two acts. While the current (Act One only) version of Morte Arthure is meant to
stand alone, I still have planned for the eventual addition of a second act.
As previously discussed, this second act would be the implementation of
“writing past” traditional Arthuriana. It would cover the reconstruction of Britain
following the death of both Arthur and Mordred. The themes explored here would
be about the persistence of Arthur’s ideals beyond his death, a way of
meaning-making in the face of predestined tragedy. The current iteration begins to
toy with these themes, but they would really come into focus in Act Two.
Mechanically, the core loop would be roughly the same: there would be some
quests, the ability to combat enemies, etc. The Mordred Deck would be replaced by
the Anarchy Deck, which would include events such as rebellions, schisms, and
King Mark of Cornwall’s invasion as depicted in the Vulgate Cycle. The choices made
by the players in Act One would have structural impacts; the largest of these would
be the player’s choice of an heir to the throne.
A key difference would be the success metric. While Act One guides players
to complete quests and pledge kingdoms to gather support for Arthur, Act Two
supports a wider variety of objectives. The concept is to have a kind of tug-of-war
between the player characters’ pull towards unity and justice, and the downward
spiral towards anarchy that Mordred began. This would be represented by a sliding
24

spectrum; various actions the players can complete (collecting all the relics,
pledging entire regions, etc.) would pull the marker towards unity while the Anarchy
deck would push it the other direction.
8.3 Potential for Commercialization
While mostly beyond the scope of this paper, a brief discussion of
commercialization is merited, mostly in terms of what work is needed. The service
being used to print the game, The Game Crafter, is capable of handling
crowdfunding fulfillment if that is the project goes that route, so that much is not
an issue. The biggest changes would be in the pieces that aren’t being produced
through The Game Crafter and the assets that I have non-commercial licenses for.
At present, the game pieces representing each character are 3D printed by
one of my advisors, Jesse Vigil, based on .stl files purchased from a website called
Hero Forge. This presents two problems for mass production. First, Hero Forge does
not allow resale of miniatures designed using their service. Second, for obvious
logistical reasons, I cannot expect Jesse to print miniatures at a commercial scale.
Therefore, any commercial production would need to take one of two options. The
first option, which is cheaper and easier, would be to represent the characters with
cardstock standees instead of miniatures; I already have the art in the form of
character portraits and The Game Crafter can produce these. The other option
would be to outsource design and production of custom miniatures, which is
possible but likely expensive. The Game Crafter likely could handle integration of
custom miniatures from a third party, and maybe even produce them.
25

The other problem, that of non-commercial licenses, is something I already
intend to address. As previously mentioned, the cards currently use a template that
I have a non-commercial license for; as far as I’m aware this is the only licensed
asset in the game. If there is time this template will be replaced with custom art,
solving this problem.
26

Chapter 9: Conclusion, or A Thesis is Like…
In this paper I have covered my thesis question, on how to adapt a literary
tradition into an interactive format, and the three answers I discovered in my work -
Systematization of Narrative, Writing “Around,” and Writing “Past.” This chapter
serves as a final reflection in the thesis process.
9.1 …A Swan
The production of Morte Arthure was by no means a smooth process, and
until very recently I could not be certain it would end positively. I worried for many
months that I would not be able to successfully complete my thesis project. While I
have presented here each variation preceding Morte Arthure as a series of logical
iterations on a concept, this is not the whole truth. Yes, each was an attempt to
seek a better solution to my thesis question, but they were also somewhat
desperate scramblings to find something that worked. Perhaps a takeaway from
that is that the production of a thesis is like a swan - potentially serene on the
surface, but paddling furiously beneath. What may seem, or be presented as, calm
and rational may not feel so at the time.
9.2 …An Arthurian Quest
The most important thing I learned in this entire process is, at its core, the same
thing the knights of the Round Table learn on most of their quests: You may not always
accomplish exactly what you set out to do, but the end result is often stranger and more
wondrous than you could have ever imagined.
27

Bibliography
Alliterative Morte Arthure.
Annales Cambriae.
The Case of the Golden Idol. Color Gray Games/Playstack, 2022.
Chretien De Troyes. Erec and Enide. 1170.
---. Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. 1181.
---. Perceval, the Story of the Grail. 1190.
---. Yvain, the Knight of the Lion. 1181.
The Game Crafter. www.thegamecrafter.com.
Heinrich von dem Türlin. Diu Crône.
Her Story. Sam Barlow, 2015.
Hero Forge. www.heroforge.com.
Malory, Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur. 1485.
Marie de France. Lanval.
Morris, Gerald. Parsifal’s Page. 2001.
---. The Ballad of Sir Dinadan. 2003.
---. The Legend of the King. 2010.
---. The Lioness and Her Knight. 2005.
---. The Princess, the Crone, and the Dung-Cart Knight. 2004.
---. The Quest of the Fair Unknown. 2006.
---. The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf. 2000.
---. The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady. 1999.
28

---. The Squire’s Quest. 2009.
---. The Squire’s Tale. 1998.
The Oregon Trail. Gameloft, 2022.
Palamedes.
Perlesvaus.
The Resistance: Avalon. Don Eskridge/Indie Boards and Cards, 2012.
The Resistance. Don Eskridge/Indie Boards and Cards, 2009.
Return of the Obra Dinn. Lucas Pope/3909, 2018.
Perceval.
Rose, Noora. Chalice. Monkey’s Paw Games, 2019.
Shadows Over Camelot. Bruno Cathala and Serge Laget/Days of Wonder, 2005.
Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Stafford, Greg. King Arthur Pendragon. 5.2, Chaosium, 2016.
Stanzaic Morte Arthur.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. Krzysztof Piskorski and Marcin Świerkot/Awaken
Realms, 2019.
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson Baron. Idylls of the King. 1859.
Tolkien, J. R. R., and Christopher Tolkien. The Fall of Arthur. 2013.
The Vulgate Cycle.
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle.
White. The Once and Future King. 1958.
Wolfram Von Eschenbach. Parzival.
29

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Asset Metadata

Creator Sobel, Samuel Eli Lurie (author)

Core Title Iterating adaptation in Morte Arthure: a perspective on adapting literature to interactive media

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Degree Conferral Date 2024-05

Publication Date 04/08/2024

Defense Date 04/08/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Arthurian,Arthuriana,board game,game design,King Arthur,USC games

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Russworm, TreaAndrea (committee chair), Bolas, Mark (committee member), Nealen, Andy (committee member)

Creator Email ssobel@usc.edu,ssobel25@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113871260

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