Storytelling Arcs: Radio...

On Monday, I began discussing storytelling arcs as seen in other media. Today, I'd like to take a look at everyone's favorite yesteryear storytelling device, the radio. For many years, our grandparents generation would tune in to radio serials, which told stories in a very different way than television or movies do today.

Situation and Interaction

Most radio programs are structured in a narrated situation/interaction style of prose. Often, you will find a dissociated narrator to the story that sets up a scene, wherein voice actors play out their roles for a small vignette and then the plot progresses. These small plot pieces are sometimes last the entire length of the episode, and the listener must continue to tune it to see how the story slowly unfolds.

To my mind this format is easily digestable, fun, and interesting because it focuses on strong character interaction. The narration is second to the interplay between the voice actors and this can directly map to your roleplaying campaign. This approach really focuses on roleplay, and has the added benefit of being quite easy for the DM to manage. Simply put your characters in a situation, give them some sort of a catalyst, and let the player interaction both entertain and color the story for you.

The main difference between the classic radio storyline and your campaign is that you will have to be sensitive to how long the "episode" lasts. If your players get tired of talking to one another, are confused, lack direction, or are just plain ready to move on you have to be prepared with the next piece of campaign content to continue the story along, but knowing when to let your roleplayers take center stage can really enhance your gaming experience.

For those of you that have never heard any radio serials before, I found that OpenCulture has provided old Abbott and Costello shows, The Lone Ranger, and more for your listening pleasure.

Storytelling Arcs: Television...

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the crafting of story arcs and how this is best achieved in a roleplaying environment. Before long I started considering the story telling mechanisms employed by other mediums.

Let's have a look at the moving picture victrolla first

Before I launch into this too far, I'm going to be totally transparent: I finally got around to watching the season premiere of Heroes and that is where much of this discussion stems from. I will attempt to discuss things at a macro level and will avoid spoiling things. Consider yourself warned.

Some dramatic television shows tend to go for the long story arc that will span an entire season. This was similar to the first season of Heroes, however in tailoring a story this way you set yourself up for either a big payoff or a big let down. Most D&D campaigns I have been in build their storylines in this fashion, for better or worse. I have found that unless something unexpected happens at the end, most of my players fail to remember how the campaign resolved itself but remember more the actions of their characters along the way.

Other shows tend to break things up into parallel storylines, which interweave and wrap around each other from time to time and all aim toward a common endpoint. This is somewhat similar to the second season of Heroes, but the downside to this style of storytelling is confusion and the fact that when you're focusing on one set of stories the rest of the characters (your players in the RPG world) are left out of the mix unless you involve them in some other fashion.

Since there's not much data yet on the latest season of Heroes, I would like to look at the sum of the existing parts that we have seen so far. The third season has started out in more of a "pressure cooker" mode. In this method of storytelling, a lot of activity and plot happens in a short time. This is intended to put the familiar (and even not-so-familiar) characters on a path so you can get ready to follow them.

This method is usually best reserved for the start of campaign or restart of campaign sessions, where you must quickly reestablish the plot and create some compelling reasons to stay tuned. This mechanism is also quite useful when you've noticed that the interest in your campaign is waning or your player characters have recently gotten into something they are not interested in but had to finish by virtue of the task.

A good real-world example is the time I combined a compelling plot point with a pre-constructed module and the module proved to be much longer than I expected. By the end, all the players wanted to do was get done so they could move on, and the time spent finishing the module was grating on them. Once we got out of the module, I kind've hit the fast-forward button in order to get them moving forward along the plot again and the new developments made things more interesting for them again.

Stay tuned for more!

I will periodically be selecting a different medium and trying to find out how we can learn by the way they tell their stories. By standing on the backs of these giants, we might be able to build our own stories in a better way!

Behind the Screen: Memento Mori...

Memento Mori is a Latin phrase that means "Remember that you must die." It has been used since ancient times to remind people of their own mortality, and I recently ran across this discussed by the always beautful Cory Doctorow in reference to a pinhole camera made from a human skull featured on BoingBoing earlier in the week.

Mortality is an important part of your campaign.

As a Dungeon Master, I really don't like killing my players that much. It is, however, a required aspect of a good campaign... mortality should be a very dramatic thing. This could spiral off into a discussion about how balanced or unbalanced raising the dead is in D&D, but that's not what I'm after today.

Today, I want to talk about various ways to remind your players that they are mortal.

The trick is simply to kill, poison, or otherwise terrorize them.

You can use disease, curses, or even temporary death (he's only MOSTLY dead!) to reinforce that your Level 3 players are not immortal gods among men. Gravely injure them from time to time. Make them walk around with their arm off looking for someone that can restore the damage. Give them a particularly nasty poisonous creature to deal with. Kill them once in awhile, preferably in a way that they would be somewhat satisfied with (for example, no fighter wants to die by getting hit in the head with a rock after winning a battle.)

The beauty of the D&D rules is that most of these things are not permanent, unless you wish to make some special rules to make them so. Restorations and resurrections are only as common as the characters that have the skills to cast them. If used sparingly while the player characters are too young to resolve these issues themselves, you can get all of the drama from a system designed to make these devastating events temporary.

Why is this important again?

Because, quite simply, drama is what makes good campaigns. If you are dead set against giving your player characters setbacks, you can apply these rules to some NPC that becomes close to the players in some way, but they must be VERY invested roleplayers in order for this to make much of a difference.

If you spare the pain and suffering, your campaign will quickly be like playing a video game cutscene. Even if the building blows up, you know the next level hasn't loaded yet and the game isn't over, so something will happen to make the player characters be ok. If you bail them out every single time, they will start taking ridiculous risks (sometimes subconsciously) because they know you'll bail them out of it.

This takes skill and guts to pull off correctly, so best of luck to you all. Memento mori!

Gaming with too much baggage, epilogue...

Last week, I lamented my position of having too many old gaming books and paraphernalia laying around. We ended up with a box full of loot that we needed to dispose of, and I was none-too-picky about what we got out of it.

No Longer Trapped in the Closet

I made a cursory trip to my local game shop, Gamers' Sanctuary. The nice lady behind the desk informed me that they would be happy to put up a "FREE" sign on my box of loot, but I could probably get a little bit out of it on their used rack. She recommended that I come back later on to speak with another team member who knew how to price things appropriately and they would help us.

So yesterday, SR and I made the trek back to the game shop, lousy with our box of old 3.0 D&D books, my previously mentioned and unfortunately maligned Deadlands, a Mage: The Awakening sourcebook that was never played (sadly), and some miscellaneous Gamecube games that hadn't seen the light of day in a long time and the system to play them on (replaced with a Wii). Amazingly, they did some math and gave us $71 in store credit!!

I informed them I would be spending that store credit RIGHT NOW and picked up the new Forgotten Realms sourcebook for D&D 4.0 and two boxes of Against the Giants miniatures. Stupid Ranger practiced her awesome skills in divining cool gaming stuff and we pulled a Fire Titan out of one miniatures box, pretty neat stuff!

So whoever provided the advice to take my stuff down the FLGS, THANK YOU! We converted a whole box of crap that we never play with into a shiny new sourcebook and miniatures that we certainly will play with. We also reduced one box down to almost no cargo space, so that will help with the reduction in stuff initiative!

There is still the matter of what to do with the Magic collection, but I'm going to save that topic for another day. The jury is still out!

Gaming with too much baggage...

Stupid Ranger and I have been emptying out old college boxes, closets, etc to offload excess garbage. Several days into the assess and pitch cycle, I have been made painfully aware that I have a lot of baggage. In this case, by baggage I mean "stuff" not "emotional problems." The latter is a topic for another place and time.

Trapped in the closet

In boxes that have been lodged in my closet for the four years that we have been in our current home I found the likes of gaming magazines, old sourcebooks, promotional HeroClix (which I don't collect), comic books, DC comic cards, Magic: the Gathering... the list goes on. If anyone has any bright ideas how to archive, accurately price, and sell a large set of Magic: the Gathering I would love to hear it, since that is one of my main collections that I would just as soon do without.

While we were preparing for this year's GenCon, we even found a few bags which had some items purchased on the sales floor last year, pristine and unused. About the only thing that I have identified that I can't find and want to are wire blast radii that we purchased from a vendor two or three years ago. With the advent of 4e and its miniature centric battle rules, those would come in handy.

How does everyone else handle the clutter of gaming lives past? Do you give your stuff away, sell it, just keep it on a shelf longingly dreaming of games unfulfilled? Do you go through an internal evaluation process before buying something new to enhance your gaming? Once again, inquiring minds want to know!

My evolving stance on miniatures...

As previously mentioned, I have had some difficulty mixing miniatures into my gaming experience. My arguments were varied, usually focusing on my own nature toward perfectionism but the fact of the matter remains: Fourth Edition is more easily adopted with miniatures in tow.

This has forced me to change my stripes a bit and have another look at minis and their role in our gaming experience.

Best shown by good examples

Thanks to our good buddies over at Critical Hits and one Chatty DM, I had a very positive experience playing D&D with miniatures at GenCon this year. Phil did a great job at weaving them into the campaign setting and made a very good move at pre-selecting miniatures that closely matched the player characters that he rolled up.

Obviously, utilizing the abilities in 4e that dealt with range, spaces, and areas of effect were much more easily executed in this manner versus a descriptive, non-miniature fashion. That's what the new system was designed to do.

Combine that good experience with the fact that the new set, Against the Giants, has some way cool huge miniatures and I was sold. I picked up my first booster and got a Death Titan and a Young Adamantine Dragon, both of which just plain rule. I don't know how often (if at all) I will actually play the minatures game, but I will certainly start to find ways to use them in my campaigns from here on out.

My advice to those against miniatures: find someone that uses them effectively and ask them to run you through a one-off to show you how much faster and more intuitive a game can be with them! If that doesn't turn you on, just have a look at them! What self respecting gamer can go without a small replica of a beholder to put on your desk? I KNOW I CAN'T!

Does anyone know good resources for buying/selling miniatures and the rarities in each of the WotC sets? Inquiring minds want to know!