Aside: Proc Gen

At this point, I'd like to have a more "seeded" version of the games' universe present itself. I like the idea of replayability, I like the idea of the player "writing their own story" in progression through a game. In 2017, and somewhat earlier, a trend was occurring on the fringes of Games journalism where players were recording their own experiences, telling stories about the actions and reactions games enabled, creating in many ways their own play and using the games' engines as a platform or ruleset from which they could jump off on their own.

Proc Gen and deep story often seem at odds because many story cues are either experienced out of order, or don't exist. I think Dwarf Fortress has done much to dispell the idea that they could be completely at odds. The story points however do have to exist more on the fringe of the player's experience. The story is the story of the world. The environment and the events that shaped it are interrelated. 

Aspects of games I've liked rely heavily on environmental storytelling in the design. The world is intentionally crafted to tell about itself, its events, and the relation of the player to the events. (What's the point in fighting at all?)

A challenge of integrating or incorporating proc gen is describing these points without doing too much telling." Much like the adage geared toward writers "show, don't tell" a player generally benefits more from "experiencing" events. The "experience" is analogous to exploring a national park or historic site. Often NPCs may function well as "billboards" to explain the surroundings, without resorting to "just telling." In some ways the proc gen areas need to be "staged" but without losing the aspects that may influence their relation to the player's own experience.