Flashback

Framing Mechanic for One-Shot Tragic RPGs
Written by Josh Jordan
Edited by Levi Kornelsen

What is It?
Flashback is a method for framing tragic stories, for playing out one-shot and short-run character arcs that end with death… but without player removal, and without “chopping off” a game at some unsatisfactory point. The question here is: What if the first thing you did for your character was to narrate a spectacular death scene? The GM and players play out the story one scene at a time, but scenes are played in reverse order. The story plays out with each character needing five scenes (and characters may well share some or all of their scenes, depending on their setup), beginning with the end, in which characters most likely die or go insane. This was designed with horror in mind, but could work for any tragic storyline.

Setting It Up
In addition to whatever regular character stuff is needed (in general, this should be very little - Flashback  works best with extremely light rules systems or even none at all), every player should make a list with the following five items; some of them, they’ll flesh out at creation; others, they’ll discover in play.

• Desire: At creation, the player will note here a sentence or two about some item or goal their character wants, but which is dangerous to pursue. This desire should be tempting enough to encourage the character to make some bad choices.
• Dream: This is left blank at creation. During play, a note on how the character made early progress toward their goal will be placed here.
• Curse: This is left blank at creation. During play, a note on “compromise and near success” will be placed here.
• Doom: This is left blank at creation. During play, a note on “the low point” of the storyline will be placed here after than scene is played out.
• End: As the end of the creation process, a scene will be played out showing (but not fully explaining) the tragic end of the character, and notes on that will go here.

The Chain of Events
Use the following to guide you as you go into the five scenes. Start with scene 5: Death Wish, and move back from there. The list below shows is how the story would look if it were run in chronological order:

1. Desire: The character feels empty and incomplete. He hopes for some dangerous item or goal, which he believes will fulfill him and make life worthwhile.
2. Dream: As the character pursues his desire, he experiences major progress. It seems for a moment that nothing can stop him from attaining his goal.
3. Curse: Little mistakes and bad luck begin to catch up with the character. To prevent failure and to fight off his opponents, the character must make some painful or morally compromising choices.
4. Doom: The character begins to despair. It seems that his chances for success are almost gone, and the people around him are paying the price for his bad choices.
5. Death Wish: As a result of fate, his opponents, or his own choices, the character meets his tragic end.

The Nature of Conflicts
A game run in this fashion completely inverts one of the regular assumptions about roleplaying games. In play, the point of descriptions and actions is not to determine what happens next - you already know that - but, instead, how it came to pass, and what that says about the characters. This means that if there is a conflict of some kind, that conflict can, absolutely, contribute to the story - if the character was driven to the maddening sight of the diabolical beast out of fear of the things in the sewers, that’s not the same outcome as if they went there in full knowledge of their doom in order to hold it back long enough for someone else to plant the explosives that would seal it underground.

What Must Be Left Unknown
Given that conflicts and challenges work in this way, it means that a single hard rule should be kept in mind - you can’t explain how the characters got to the start of the scene that they're in. That’s something that will be figured out in the next scene to be played out.

The Scene Frames
What this results in is a game where each scene except for the last one played starts with a general overview (from the list of five steps), in conditions that are not explained, and that the scene doesn’t end until it can naturally lead to the last scene that was played. Explaining why the current scene started as it did? That’s the job of the next scene you play out. And remember, there should be several possible ways to get from the start of the scene to the end, so there’s room to make decisions and have conflicts over the “how”.

Foreshadowing
Since everyone already knows “what happens next”, everyone can drop little hints about it, and the GM can drop in odd obstacles when starting a scene. If the squarejawed hero is in the sewers with the spunky reporter, and we all know that the spunky reporter isn’t in the next scene… Then it needs to be determined just why that’s the case. Players can (and should) have a vision of how they’d like to solve these things, which they can reference and attempt, and the GM can (and should) challenge them.

Flashbacks
While the total contents of the next scene to be played (which is the previous one chronologically) must remain unknown, the GM can drop small hints. If the spunky reporter that has to be gone before the next scene is cursing that “bastard weasel of a shopkeeper”, that’s a hint of what came before - and, thus, of what will be played out next. The GM should be wary of overdoing this; a little goes a long ways.