The Player And The Pentacle: Folkloric Motifs For Narrative Design

by Nick Jones, Jeff Gomez (Foreword)

Folklore is a genre that at its heart, is all about intimacy and immediacy. It’s not about looking outside ourselves, rather, it's about looking within. By encouraging players to take part in the ever-growing world of folklore, we can connect them to ideas that previously, they may have never before considered, helping them to empathize with people and causes they’ve opposed, ignored or been oblivious to in the past.

In his premier book, Narrative Designer and Transmedia storyteller Nick Jones shares his personal Narrative Design model, developed through PhD research in collaboration with other experts in the field.

The Player and the Pentacle offers a new way of considering world building in your games, but more importantly, how to create a player character that your audience can, in Nick’s cohabitate with. When implemented, this “cohabitation” will lead to greater levels of player immersion, and increased longevity for your creative IP.

157 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 20, 2022

About the author

Nick Jones is an author, editor and writer based in Lewes, East Sussex. In 2000, he moved into sci-fi and genre publishing, editing TV and movie tie-in titles (including Star Trek Magazine) and comics/toys collecting magazine Memorabilia, before taking charge of the graphic novels Dept. at Titan Books, where he edited Dan Dare, James Bond, Modesty Blaise, Wallace & Gromit, and DC Comics graphic novels. He is the author of DC Comics Cover Art and Guardians of the Galaxy: The Ultimate Guide; co-author of Marvel Universe: Map by Map, DC Comics Encyclopedia, and The Mysterious World of Doctor Strange. Currently, he is the editor of the DC Heroes & Villains Collection and Star Trek Explorer magazine.

He blogs at Existential Ennui.