Story Structure

One of the most important changes in my approach to RPGs since discovering the self-published RPG niche involves story structure. By story structure, I mean the framework and pacing of the events narrated in the game. Indie games like Primetime Adventures, Dread, and Fiasco have led me to reflect on how this pacing occurs in a game and have helped me address something I disliked about my previous game experiences.

(Now, in the interest of full-disclosure, I have an English degree, and my parents would say that I have been telling stories for a long, long time, so I have probably spent more time thinking about what goes into a good story that your average John Q. Half-Orc Barbarian. But I'm going to intentionally describe what I've learned without using technical terms like five act structure or denouement.)

Essentially, what I've learned about story structure is that it is always best to skip to the interesting part. By interesting part, I mean anything that actually involves tension for the characters and that is, therefore, fun for the players to work through. Anything that involves actual risk or reward is interesting. Anything that simply advances the timeline is not. Back when the neighborhood boys were playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the RPG, we assumed that the GM should narrate a story chronologically. If the characters had to wait for the big boss to arrive, the GM would describe how we sat around, not doing anything interesting. The players would say (in a Ben Stein-like voice), "and we're waiting, and we're waiting..."

It came to me as something of a revelation that we could simply cut scene and skip to the interesting part of the story. Assuming we had finished our preparations for battle, the GM could simply say, "Five hours later, you feel the earth begin to tremble and the door to your hideout begin to shake." This ability to cut scenes could have saved us from narration of boring events, and given us more time for mutant ninjitsu action!

Furthermore, games like Primetime Adventures, Dread, and Fiasco have story structure built right in. In Primetime Adventures, the players know the general shape of a campaign/season, and they know which player characters will be the focus for individual game session. Fan mail helps the players to encourage each other to be interesting storytellers. Players have an incentive not to spend time on the boring parts of the story that they could narrate, but instead to skip to the interesting parts. Similarly, in Dread, we know that the game will last for only one session. We know that tension will slowly increase throughout the story, and we can make educated guesses as to when characters are starting to risk death. Thirdly, in Fiasco, there is an explicitly drama-geek-esque pacing mechanic that tells us when the story is half over, and what will make the second half of the story more intense than the first. The structure of the game itself discourages players from describing anything except the moments of tension for the characters, when they have something to gain or something to lose.

Now whether or not I'm playing a game that specifically encourages skipping to the interesting parts, I try my best to do so. Certainly, were I to find myself playing TMNT again, I would do my best to push the story from one action-packed scene to the next. If the GM needs a break in order to gather his thoughts, that's great, but there is no reason to spend time on parts of the story that no one finds interesting.

Maybe you think it's silly that this was a revelation for me. Or maybe you have had a similar discovery about improving story structure in your games. Let me know.

Write it Right

Ambrose Bierce

I have recently been reading Write It Right by Ambrose Bierce, an American short story writer, punctilious grammarian, and wry wit. In this book, Mr. Bierce delineates a blacklist of improper, or at least misused terms. He states his intent as follows:

The author's main purpose in this book is to teach precision in writing; and of good writing (which, essentially, is clear thinking made visible) precision is the point of capital concern. It is attained by choice of the word that accurately and adequately expresses what the writer has in mind, and by exclusion of that which either denotes or connotes something else. As Quintilian puts it, the writer should so write that his reader not only may, but must, understand.

I highly recommend this list, as it is both helpful and humorous to writers who wish to improve the accuracy of their speech. Some of the blacklisted terms have become acceptable to professional English speakers in the past 100 years. It's no surprise that some terms considered slang in 1909 are now acceptable. For example "an hotel" and "an hero" have been replaced by "a hotel" and "a hotel" in American English. Here, however, are just a few of the blacklisted words which still vex careful editors today:

• Anticipate for Expect. "I anticipate trouble." To anticipate is to act on an expectation in a way to promote or forestall the event expected.

• Fail. "He failed to note the hour." That implies that he tried to note it, but did not succeed. Failure carries always the sense of endeavor; when there has been no endeavor there is no failure. A falling stone cannot fail to strike you, for it does not try; but a marksman firing at you may fail to hit you; and I hope he always will.

• Have Got for Have. "I have got a good horse" directs attention rather to the act of getting than to the state of having, and represents the capture as recently completed. [We Midwesterners are particularly guilty of overusing "get" -JJ]

• In for Into. "He was put in jail." "He went in the house." A man may be in jail, or be in a house, but when the act of entrance--the movement of something from the outside to the inside of another thing--is related the correct word is into if the latter thing is named.

• Occasion for Induce, or Cause. "His arrival occasioned a great tumult." As a verb, the word is needless and unpleasing. 

• Poisonous for Venomous. Hemlock is poisonous, but a rattlesnake is venomous.

• Ways for Way. "A squirrel ran a little ways along the road." "The ship looked a long ways off." This  surprising word calls loudly for depluralization.

• Unique. "This is very unique." "The most unique house in the city." There are no degrees of uniqueness: a thing is unique if there is not another like it. The word has nothing to do with oddity, strangeness, nor picturesqueness.