86 Things I've Said On Twitter, the 9th and final part

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86 Things I've Said On Twitter, Part 7

Wow, part 7. This is awesome. Hope you're enjoying this series.

Before we begin, did you know I got interviewed? It was really a pleasure. And Pete asks awesome questions.

Now, to Part 7!

Rejection doesn't mean stop writing altogether. Rejection means "Change your approach, try again."

On Chuck's blog, there's been some talk about self-publishing versus traditional publishing. It's rather contentious. But then the one guy called some lady a "bitch" and everything sort of when downhill from there.

The one thing not mentioned in this conversation is that rejection exists. It's a thing that happens. It's a thing that happens that can drive people away from traditional publishing and to different avenues, sometimes without a net or an education or a plan, because they're working so hard at just not-being-rejected.

Rejection happens. I'm sorry. It does happen. You might get rejected for a date. You might get rejected by an agent. You might get rejected for a loan. You might get rejected by an audience who thinks your published book is tired or not as interesting as you think it is.

Rejection only has whatever meaning you give it. If you tell yourself that rejection is the cue for hanging yourself in the garage with a string of holiday lights, then it is. Maybe rejection is the neon sign that you shouldn't be writing at all.

But maybe rejection is a sign that how you took your shot wasn't accurate, that the method you took to build your better mousetrap was flawed, not the mousetrap itself. What I'm saying is - there's a chance that the manuscript wasn't even read if the pitch to entice readers wasn't appealing.

See, because if the query letter doesn't engage the reader, they're not going to look at the manuscript. Why should they? They've not been lured to its words by the query's siren song.

True, the manuscript might also suck. But I'm assuming here that you've done everything in your power to make it not suck.

Rejection doesn't have to be the end of things. It may be a bump in the road, but don't drive into the median just yet.

You don't have to be an "expert" in the industry in order to write a good book. You need to be an "expert" on you and what you love. 

Lots of people (especially in self-help) call themselves experts. And some might very well be. I have met people who are legit experts in their fields. I have met people who couldn't hope to be an expert, let alone spell expert without assistance.

Oddly enough, the experts I recommend are the ones who have actually put the time into the work and not the ones who toss around the word or the concept in some self-elevating (and masturbatory) way.

And everyone's an expert on two things, when you think about it. You're the best expert on who you are and what you love. Other people might have an idea about these things, but really, you're the best in that field. Nobody knows you like you do.

Use that to your advantage. When you speak about what you like and don't like, when you talk about yourself, speak from a place of authority, not arrogance. You're not "better" than anyone else, but you do know yourself better than anyone else. Let that authority permeate your writing

To tell a story, you need to tap into your own confidence and authority about who you are (though if you're on the fence about who you are, this may be a little hard), and write from that place of security and comfort. Yeah yeah, writing a thing makes you subject to other people at some point in the process, but never ever let it detract from your sense of who and what you are.

By being you, by telling the story you can tell in the way you can tell it, with the artful practice of your craft, with assistance from others, you can make your thing a reality that other people can enjoy. Really.

Readers aren't going to know what goes on in your head. If you don't paint a clear picture, don't expect them to "figure it out".

I look at a lot of manuscripts in a week. Some are for games. Some are for books. And sometimes I get a very clear sense of what's going on in the scene I read. I can count the characters, I can see their motivations. I can see game mechanics and what they accomplish. It's spelled out for me, but never in the same way that my uncle Steve always talked down to me at family gatherings.

When you're communicating an idea, whatever that idea might be, you want to be as clear as possible, without being lecture-y or a bully. You need to respect your reader's intelligence, and trust that they came to read your thing (hopefully) excited about what they'll experience or learn. Talking down to them, or worse, being incredibly vague (either because you make the assumption that everyone already knows this, or because what you're thinking/saying is so advanced other life forms won't understand it), doesn't respect your reader.

It's also a waste of your talent as a writer. People come to read your work because they want to see how you weave words and ideas together. Paint the reader a full picture on their mental canvas, and they'll keep coming back for more. Hastily scribble them a stick figure or abstract diagram, and they'll run. Often fast.

Game Designers - Ask yourself: Is there a reason you put this rule (and its text) ahead of that rule (and its text)?
When I edit games, I ask this of the designer - why are the rules in the order they're in? Sometimes it's because that's the order that the person wrote them, sometimes it's because one rule follows another. Maybe sometimes there's a third option where they're alphabetized or something. But on the whole, there should be a reason as to why one step in a process (creating a character, combat, economics, whatever) comes before or after another step, other than the arbitrary "That's how I wrote it".

Now, yes, if your game is pretty rules-lite, then maybe the order of the rules isn't so critical. In that case, swap the word "rule" for "paragraph". Why is this paragraph ahead of this other paragraph? Where are you leading the reader? What do you want/need them to know before they go further? How are you illuminating their path from point A to point B?

And yes, there should be some kind of answer beyond "I don't know" or a passive shrug. There should be a method to the madness that is game design so that ideas flow logically and naturally, so that the reader walks away understanding the big mechanical picture and not confused by how the words just seem random coked up and tweaked out on the page.

Fun fact - You don't want ellipses in your exposition. Just don't.

This...is...incredibly...hard...to...read...after...a...while...don't...you...think...? The ellipsis (the dot-dot-dot) is a really abused punctuation mark. Like abused enough to be in one of those late-night Sarah McLachlan pet adoption commericals.

I get it, you're trying to say that an idea trails off, or pauses before it reaches a follow-up thought.

But have you considered saying "trails off" ? I know, it's more letters to type, but it actually says what you mean better than .... (That's dot-dot-dot and a period, honest) When I see ellipses, especially in exposition or rules text I assume the writer got lazy. And looking at the name of the writers who have done this on things I edit, I know they're not lazy people.

The exposition text of a document is supposed to express to me, the reader, a clear sense of what's going on. It's telling me things. It shouldn't trail off, even if the narrator is all loopy on cold meds or stoned or an Ent or whatever. Let me insert those pauses in narration mentally (or even better, leave it for the audiobook), don't force your reading-style on me. Just tell me what you need to, and do so clearly.

Not every character needs to be stand-out memorable. Sometimes they're just a barista. Or "people on a crowded street".

I went to a writing conference (actually it was the last dedicated writing conference I ever went to) and sat in the audience, waiting patiently for a writer I didn't know (and later grew to loathe, thanks to homophobic and sexist comments made at the bar) to tell me all about how characters "work in a story".  You know, as if I didn't already have an innate sense because I've been reading since I was a little kid. As if I didn't watch TV and grasp that GI Joe fights Cobra, Hulk Hogan loves America, and the A-Team is amazing.

This author said "Characters, from the lowest peon to the highest protagonist should be memorable."

Whoa, cue the siren. Flag on the play.

That's a really potent statement. Because it suggests that every character should be memorable to the same degree. Which is like saying that if we're all special, no one is special.

Some characters matter more than others. Your protagonist, for example, should matter more than the lady who made them a soy latte that morning. I mean, yes, there can be a scene all about soy-latte-lady, but on the whole, this is the protagonist's story. I might remember soy-latte-lady because of how she was described or some snarky line she delivered, but really her job in the story is to give our hero/heroine the cup of coffee and get out of the way so that the story can move forward.

I once listened to the Godfather as an audiobook. It was something like 33 CDs, just HOURS of story. And it often stopped the main thrust of the story to detour and tell me all about how some character got their start and how they eventually ended up in the scene I was first hearing about when the detour started.

That's a great approach if we're talking about a huge story, fat with details and every detail is something I need to stuff into my head because later on the story picks up steam and I have to be able to distinguish Carl from Carlo from Kelly from Craig.

But that's not always going to be the case. That's not always the best approach. Not every character should be as memorable as SOME characters - the ones that have the impact in the story you're telling.

I'm not saying they can't have names, or details about them that distinguish them or make them enjoyable, but not every character needs the full autobiography and character relationship tree that your protagonist and sidekick do.

Sometimes characters are just there, just for a purpose, or they're nameless because "the street was crowded." I wouldn't expect you to tell me the name of every person on the street as your protagonist comes out of the building and gets in their car. I'd kind of freak out if  I read a paragraph that said:

"Bob came out of the building on a mission, eager to get in the car and drive to the hotel for nap. He passed Susan and Margaret and Tommy and Tommy Junior, and Nunzio and Flor and Steve, and Stephen and Mark and Marcus, Terry, Terri and Theresa, Brian, not to be confused with Bryan who was standing next to Chris, who was talking to Kris about something Cristina said to Christina who heard it from Christine."

That's bananas. Don't do that. Tell me what's important. Also, don't forget that what you are telling me, I'm assuming *IS* important, so all those details are somewhere in my head, hoping you make use of them later. (otherwise, why would you tell me something if it's not important?)

Thus ends Part 7. Part 8 will be up later in the week. Until we talk again, happy writing.

How You Can Use Fate Core to Write/Design A Game

Yesterday I wrote about how you can use Fate Core to write a novel. Today, I'm going to tell you how you can use Fate Core to write a game, or a setting, or a scenario, or a campaign...even if that game doesn't use Fate.

Now, I know what you're thinking - that sounds crazy. But really it's not. We're just going to look at the applications of what we talked about yesterday, and leave the mechanical constructs (fate point economy, dice rolling, etc) to the side for now, else we'll muddy waters and confuse people (including myself).

Note though, this is how I design things, and my design style may be an entirely different approach than what you do, what you like or how you go about even starting it. I say this not to ward you off, but rather tell you to make this method your own, and that you're free to change elements to suit your tastes, rather than clone me.

A brief overview is in order:

1. Characters and scenes have aspects.
2. There are four actions - overcome, create an advantage, attack, defend

(see, wasn't kidding when I said that was brief)

To start this discussion, we have to pick a thing we're making. Let's say you're making something that you can run with your weekly group, but something that if you polished it up enough, you may consider releasing for profit if all goes well. This way, we'll keep the conversation "local" and free from business-y distractions.

Now we take our first steps and decide what sort of genre this game is going to be in. Will it be steampunk? Will it be swords and sorcery? Will it feature struggles against zombies?

Step 1:: If you haven't already, write down 1 sentence or phrase (try and center it on the topmost line of the legal pad, if you're like me) that summarizes the experience of this yet-untitled-game.

Here's one straight from my little blue notebook of designs --

Prison escape, investigation and catching of real culprits 

Already from this one sentence expression we can pull out concrete requirements for the game. Mine will need a prison to escape from, some badguys to catch, and good guys (the players) who will try to clear their names (suggestive of drama, tension and investigation).

Yours may have aliens, trolls, clowns, goat-bartering or vampires. Whatever you've got on your paper, look for the concrete elements. If your sentence doesn't have any, give it more thought, and write a different sentence.

When you've gotten that down on paper, we go forward.

Step 2:: For each concrete thing you can pull out of that sentence, create three to five aspects for each element.

For mine, I divide the legal pad into 3 columns: Prison, Badguys, PCs

Note: I don't want to dictate what aspects the PCs have - because I want my players to have some creative ability and input in my game. But I can create a loose framework for what sort of aspects work best...essentially crafting boundaries for the field the players operate on, and later (as we'll see) giving me sentences that I can use to describe the game to others.

Prison
Formidable
Thought to be inescapable 
Made of the best materials available
Heavily guarded
Wretched hive of scum and villainy

Badguys
Veterans of crime
Scarred and broken people
Rough and tumble
Thick
Hungry

Players
Innocents among the guilty
Never going back
Always on the run
Schemers, Fighters and Planners
Adjusting to life on the outside

Step 3:: Using the Aspects as a reference, apply your mechanical base to your elements In my case, that's NPC(s) and location(s).

Here is a point where we may go down radically different paths. Depending on what mechanical engine you're using, this step might take some time. That's okay, this process isn't quick. Think about how you've described the elements of your game, and using your best judgment, convert the words into numbers.

If the Prison is formidable, how many feet thick are the walls? Does your game have an armor rating? Maybe the walls rate a large number. If the badguys are veterans of crime, just how good are they at the criminal skillset your game may have?

When this step is done, you should have stats for some of the components of the thing you're creating. Over time, as you give this more thought and as we get to applying the four actions, you can flesh out the rest of the stats.

Step 4:: Find the adventure's best starting point. 

Whether you've got adventurers meeting in a tavern, intrepid reporters responding to a Craigslist ad, or a bunch of mercenaries gathered on Gamma Beta Seven, every adventure has a starting point. Now if this adventure is a campaign, then we're looking for this "episode's" best starting point.

Starting points are most often exposition dumps, where everyone goes around the table and says who and what their character is, and it can be WAY boring. There are ways around it, by intermingling the backstories of characters (as in Fate games) or by withholding backstories and focusing on the task at hand (as is done in Call of Cthulhu). Keep an eye out for boredom generators (far too much talking, not enough doing, the players don't engage the mechanics right away), and the adventure can start before you know it.

Step 5:: Map out the adventure, using the four actions of Fate.

Every type of scene the players get into can be expressed as one of the four actions.

Overcome Scenes are those scenes where there are skill-based challenges or puzzles that require the players make use of the mechanics of the game. This could be a sphinx's riddle, orchestrating a jailbreak, sweet-talking guards instead of fighting them, or anything where a player uses skills or abilities against opposition but doesn't get into combat.

Advantage Scenes (scenes where the players create an advantage) are those scenes where players use the environment or story detail to improve their situation(s). A super scientist spending time in the lab to create power armor, a thief spending time with the local guild, a cop shaking down informants -- all are situations created because the world/environment of the game has made them possible. Yes, the line may blur a little between overcome and advantage scenes, but to distinguish between the two, look at your focus -- is the focus on the skill-check? Then it's an overcome scene. If the focus is on the end result, or you're likely to handwave the roll, then it's an advantage scene.

Attack Scenes are combat, most often initiated by the players, where they brandish sword, fists or guns and take on enemy forces. Most often the climax of an adventure is an attack scene or "boss fight". It doesn't have to be that way, if your game centers more on investigation (as in Gumshoe) or in self-discovery ("I learned something new about myself!"), then your climaxes aren't going to be fight-y. Attack scenes are also opportunities for the mechanics of your system to be tested, so if you're home-brewing, make sure your combative ducks are in a row.

Defense Scenes (scenes where players Defend) are NOT just part of combat. Yes, defense is inherent in combat, as a reaction to a fighting action, but Defense scenes can also lay the groundwork and advantages for future scenes. In an investigative game, these scenes pit clues against reality - as players work to rectify what they know already with new information just acquired (it was old man Jenkins who killed Robbie!) Defense outside of a combat scene is most often a narrative experience, giving characters a chance to explore feelings, situations and experiences to find their place in-game.

There is no standard formula for how many of each scene you have to have, or that every sixth scene must be a combat. But there is a progression within a story of scenes, as tensions rise and build to climax.

Often, Attack scenes sit atop the pyramid, having been set up by Overcome Scenes and Defense Scenes, all predicated on the work established in Advantage Scenes, and lesser Overcome Scenes.

Let's come back to the earlier prison game example...

I want my players to start by escaping from prison (Overcome scene), possibly fighting their way out as needed (Attack scene), and making their way to an established safehouse (Advantage scene). From there they'll investigate the crime that sent them to prison (Overcome scenes, Advantage scenes, Defense scenes), ultimately confronting the real villains (Attack scene) and getting them to confess before escaping the pursuing prison forces (Defense scene, Advantage scene).

That's episode one of my campaign, or if this is a one-shot deal, that's the adventure as a whole.

Step 6:: Prepare anything you may have missed, now that you have an outline.

Going now scene by scene, give each scene the needed details. Write in those clues for the investigators to find. Fluff up that flavor text that you can read to players so they'll know what to expect. Make sure any opposition the PCs will face has proper stats and equipment and make sure any treasure available is appropriately balanced (or wildly off-balance, if that's your preference). This is also a chance to read over the work as a whole and make sure that scenes connect to each other, either for narrative reasons (one scene comes as a result of the previous) or mechanical reasons (you need a hospital after getting beaten near to death).

Step 7:: Go play your game.

Enjoy yourself. Change whatever you need to, on the fly, to make sure you have the best time possible. It doesn't matter that the players totally skipped the sweet action you had planned on page 4, the bottom line is always this -- have the best time possible with your friends. Rules and games change accordingly.

See you next time, happy writing and gaming.

What Total Recall Taught Me About Storytelling and Gaming

I just came home after seeing the new version of Total Recall. I will avoid spoilers and will avoid specific commentary on the film, but before I go into what the movie taught me, I'd like to make a few points:

* I tire of the idea that the only way to demonstrate a "strong female character" is to give them a gun, get them bloody and occasionally make them grunt. There are many kinds of strength, and I am eagerly waiting for the next batch of media creators who realize that "strong women" aren't limited to action beats.

* I do not like Kate Beckinsale's nose. It seems quite shaved and pinched, and I'm concerned that she's not taking in enough oxygen. It was rather hard to look away from it, since 90% of her shots were facial close-up. (That's not a spoiler, just look at the trailers)
Note - for those who think the above point was too dysmorphic or sexist, my intent was just to point out that  it bothered me, much the same way people pointed out Christian Bale's moles in Batman.

* I'm beginning to conclude that lens flares are used to conceal green screen composite shots - and are used to distract from what I call "blurry CGI motion syndrome", those parts of scenes where suddenly a character moves too fluidly and hurriedly, seems to bleed a little (colorwise) on film and looks...sometimes cartoony. (See: Legolas in LOTR, several stunt-beats in the early Harry Potter movies and some parts of Twilight.)

Now, onto what I learned.

I. Subjective Reality

At its heart this movie (and the short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale) plays heavily with the questionable nature of reality, of what's real and what isn't, and what/who you can or can't trust. This concept is often a goldmine when done well and lazy writing when executed poorly.

In writing, this idea is explored most often as an unreliable narrator, so that it is more often the audience and not the narrator who must navigate the blurred lines of truth and untruth. (In film this task often falls to the protagonist who is also the audience surrogate.)

In gaming, it's a lot harder to pull this off, because most people want to play characters that have much of their facets already in place and seek only to improve upon them. Reality is expected to be somewhat dictated as a response to mechanics, as well as what (if any) expectations the players have based on what they bring to the table in terms of character ideas, themes or concepts.

A game that toys with this idea to my great satisfaction is Rite Publishing's The Demolished Ones - a game that takes the idea of "I don't know my character" (thanks amnesia!) and allows you to have an absolutely present-tense experience because you "remember" things in order to put them on your character sheet. So at once, the player is co-conspirator in the unreliability, having to choose whether or not a particular item, idea or moment is one they will use to their advantage for character improvement.

In my own writing and gaming, I tend to avoid explorations into what is and isn't the case - this is in part because I doubt my ability to keep a daisy chain of misdirections going long term, and also I find it grating trying to figure out just how long a narrator is supposed to be unreliable, or if the degree I'm being uncertain is strong enough. Too many questions cross it off the writing list. In gaming, my players, well they get testy when they can't figure out what is and isn't happening.

The strength of subjective reality is not the adversarial nature of I-know-something-and-you-don't, but rather the idea that whatever story you're telling, you can throw a wrench into the chronology. Changing the "when" component of an event allows you to constantly reshuffle the order of development around, freeing you up to tell the best story possible.

Also, it allows you to play with the nature of expectation...but we'll talk about that next.

II. Expectations

Expectation is one of the three E's that you manipulate to create tension (the other two being Emotion and Excitement). Expectation what drives play and storytelling forward. We expect the protagonist to win, we expect the "boss fight" to be at the end of the film, book or adventure, and we expect three-act structure to permeate our experience.

In same cases there's a spin on it (Nolan's Memento presents the end of a story at the beginning, so the Third-First Act creates a sort of mobius loop, Leverage presents a heist or caper through flashbacks that bend the Second Act into the Third Act based on the lead-out of the First Act).

But expectations are not just macro views of story development. You can change expectations in-scene as well. The most common version of this is the betraying-character, who turns against the protagonist(s) when either the reasons are valid or when the story gets tired and needs a perk (I'm looking at you, Crystal Skull)

The same is true of objects. A gun can malfunction at the worst possible moment, the bomb could fail to detonate (or detonate too soon) or the printer could run out of paper just when you need it the most.

No expectation should be permanently set in concrete - it's your story, do all that you have to make it the best story you can.

III. Psychic Distance

I talk a lot about Psychic Distance in Workshops. It's the imagined camera between audience and character - zooming in for close-ups and emotional display, pulling back for exposition and demonstrations of scope.

Understanding that as a creator (author, game designer, GM, Storyteller, Director, etc) you control the speed of the "camera" by parceling out what and how much detail you give to your characters and non-player characters makes storytelling that much more a richer experience.

Remember too that players (and the audience, for you book types) will respond sympathetically rather than quantitatively -- they'll respond to a positive emotion positively and a negative emotion empathetically -- rather than assess the situation mathematically and end up with emotions going to 11 as if to complete an equation of solving for X.

* * * 

Think of these elements as sliders, with the creator of the story able to ramp them up and play with them throughout the experience of the story (don't think this is something you set once and then walk away from) - in fact, I would go so far to say that 'riding the levels' will keep the story experience fresh and evocative for the audience/players/readers.

Happy writing.

The Nine-Step Checklist

We start today with a story from my youth.

I was about ten or maybe eleven and my family was heading down to our shore house for the month of July, which meant that my dad got use "The Checklist". As if he was prepping an Apollo moon launch, he made sure all the bags (I have a feeling we always overpacked, a trait I've inherited from him) were first staged in the living room the night before, and then loaded into the car just after breakfast while my mom packed the huge Igloo cooler with food  (I don't remember if we yet realized there was a grocery store ten minutes from the house, or maybe it wasn't built yet or something). The cooler would go in last, and we'd be all set to go. And then we'd be in the car, all buckled in, me with my books, dad behind the wheel, mom in the backseat with my brother and some cross-stitch. But we wouldn't leave.

My dad began the next stage of his checklist. He'd check his wallet, to make sure he had money. He'd check the front door (3 stiff pulls, practically slams) to make sure it was locked. He'd look in every first-floor window to make sure the lights were out. And then he'd start the questions, aimed mostly at my mother.

"Is the oven off?" (It wouldn't matter that this was late June/early July, and my mom hadn't likely baked anything since mid-May.)
"Did you lock the back door?" (No matter how she answered, he'd go check, meaning he'd open the front door, check the back door and then re-check the front on his way out.)
"Is the TV unplugged?" (This later became my responsibility when I was twelve. I remember getting this job because my wrists were narrow enough to slide behind the monster set and pull the plug out.)
"Is the freezer closed?" (In filling the cooler, my mom emptied the giant basement freezer, and would go so far as to defrost it if she got up early enough. Years later she started stacking things in front of the empty freezer in case it 'just popped open', but I think it was more to fuck with the old man.)

The answer to all these questions was, "Yes John." (A sentence to this day that makes my skin crawl.) And I was impatient - the beach was waiting! While this checking took maybe five minutes, it felt like it took hours, and I remember being incredibly frustrated with every slam-slam-slam of the front door and the sound of my father riffing through the stack of bills in his wallet. I don't know what he was expecting to find or not find, but I just wanted him to get the car moving.

I asked my dad once, "What's with all the checking?" And his answer was, "It's just what you have to do, to make sure you get everything together before you move forward." Now, the chances are great that I rolled my eyes while he answered my question, in fact I'm sure I even threw in a sigh for emphasis.

The sigh was my sign that I'd never be like that, that I'd be able to leave the house without the almost superstitious dance of pocket and door checks.

That sigh was way wrong. I might not check the door three times, but I've definitely caught myself a little freaked that maybe I didn't put my wallet in my pocket, or maybe I didn't put my credit card back in my wallet after dinner, or maybe I didn't shut the freezer door all the way six hours ago when I put that bag of ice in there. There's a little wrestling match in my head about whether or not I did or didn't do something, and usually it's resolved either by me going and checking or by whoever I'm with at the time reminding me I did.

Checklists are good tools, and you don't have to take them into Super-OCD land for them to be effective. Here now is my not-so-OCD checklist for your story or script or game, so that you can make sure everything's together before you move forward.

Act 1

Have you set the table? "Setting the table" means have you rolled out the three P's (Protagonist(s), Place(s), Plot), so that your readers (or players, if we're talking games) know who's doing what where and why.

What's the palette like? By the time we're well invested into the first Act of your creation, we should have a pretty firm grasp on the tone, feel, vibe and scale of the story. If you're writing about a save-the-universe sort of sci fi adventure, then I'd sort of expect the story to be a certain size and scope. Your word choice will tell me the "color" of the story: if your protagonists are fighting an uphill battle, if the world is "gritty", if the badguys are more intense, etc.

Is it clear what the next action will be? If you can't get an idea of what's next based on what just happened, (it doesn't have to be a directly linear idea, it can be somewhat inferred or logical) then what just happened wasn't enough. Or it's not done cooking. Or you need to spice it up a little. Insert your favorite food metaphor here.

Act 2

Are we seeing skills (gamers: the opportunity for skills)? By this point in the story, we should be seeing the protagonist doing what they do (and hopefully that means doing things different or better than how we do them) and how the results (successes AND failures) drive the plot forward (don't confuse "forward" for "success", failure IS an option that can transform and evolve characters).

Do the options you've created have purpose? "Options" is a broad term meaning the off-shoots of the main plot. This could be the suspects in a crime story, the different avenues or routes to take in a travelogue, the number of topics in your book of essays or anything that demonstrates that you just don't have a really simple plot that can be wrapped up in like six pages and you're just filling space and killing time.

How high is your climax? While you're still in the bulk of the book, and while you're still laying out the dominoes so they can topple later, it's a good time to start seeing how high this stack builds up so you know how far (and how fast) it will come tumbling down. The climax is the highest point in a story. The greatest moment of tension, the most intense scene(s), the most knockdown fight. If your story ratchets up the tension, emotion, action or stakes AFTER that, then that new scene is the climax. Map out your scenes, climb that ladder (I guess in a future post I'll have to talk about the climax ladder) and adjust accordingly.

Act 3

How are your loose ends? I know, a lot of writers want to be "edgy" or "creative" or "smart" and they lay out these intricate plots where you have to super-focus on some detail because it's the lynch pin of the whole book. And there's nothing worse than realizing that the detail that clinches the story is something you (or gamers, your players) overlooked because it didn't seem important at the time. Likewise, those characters you drop into a scene, just for the sake of the scene, they're only momentarily memorable. You're not breaking new ground in having that three-line-delivering guy from Chapter Six show back up in the end and play a bigger role. You don't need to tie EVERYTHING up in a nice (read: convenient) bow anymore than than you need to trim the number of loose ends down to the barest essentials. Just keep track of them. If you've got a few that don't go anywhere and sort of disappear, maybe they don't need to be there in the first place.

What's the resolution look like? So the climax happened. And now the story's emotional and action roller-coaster coasts back down to a normal range of possibilities. Here we can start to see things end both internally (the plot) and externally (the book is running out of pages), so what happens AFTER climax? You don't need to spend an equivalent amount of time bringing us back down to earth as you spent getting us into the heavens, but you do have to spend a little time so that we can catch our breath and start to organize ourselves to end the story. Again, mapping it out is CRUCIAL.

Is the door open or closed? The "door" here is whether or not you've explicitly or not created the possibility to revisit this world and these characters again. NOTE - I am not saying that all stories need to be serialized, I'm just asking you if this particular one is built for it. If the door is open, then we as readers are free to continue these adventures in our imagination, essentially taking the storytelling reins from you. If the door is closed, then we better be satisfied by how things wrapped up, else we'll just take the reins from you and pretend it didn't go down like that (I'm looking at you Sopranos, third Hunger Games book, Lost and the Mary Russell series).

That checklist will help you take your stories wherever they are, in whatever shape they're in, and help them go forward, so that you can too can go to your vacations (metaphoric and literal) fully confident that everything is awesome.

Happy writing. Enjoy your Cinco de Mayo.

See you Monday (now if there's no blog post on Monday, it's not because I partied too hard this weekend, it's because I know Monday is PACKED with work, some of which I can't yet talk about it.)

Forward Vs Lateral Movement

No, not football.

What I'm talking about today has both a writing/gaming component and a writing-lifestyle component. I'm not really sure where to start, so let's start with the broadest and work our way down. 

How's Your Life?

Lately, I've been doing two things differently -- I'm eating decadently (on a budget!) and paying for it afterward. I guess it's because I'm in my thirties now, so this shouldn't be a scientific breakthrough or great revelation for anyone, but I can't eat the same things or the same way I used to, say, ten years ago. 

I can eat pretty much anything I want, barring allergies, but not that doesn't mean, I'm discovering, that I should.  Big heavy meals weigh me down and put me in a fog. Meals that scream "Yeah I'm healthy, look how cruciferous I am!" often taste like lint and leave me ready to gnaw off someone's arm. I will even admit to getting way too freaked out that what I'm eating (which is seldom fried, seldom battered and seldom wrapped in other foodstuffs) is going to immediately kill me (thanks scare tactics of diets and nutrition, way to make me feel powerless). 

After one weekend where I ate far too much, I started taking stock of my food-life. Sure I'm getting the 8 glasses of water a day (sometimes more), and sure I'm avoiding too much junk food (because there just isn't any in the house), but I look over my life and see that I'm not in the best health. Forget the shape, forget muscles, I just want to be healthier. 

To that end, I'm making better food choices, eating regular portions, eating regularly and doing my best to stay hydrated. It's not a thorough diet plan, it's not a complete panic-inducing revamp of the food I eat. This is forward progress, I'm moving towards my goal.

Lateral progress was all that time I spent thinking about getting to the goal, but not taking any steps to get there - reading reviews, putting off going to the bookstore, listening to podcasts talk about the book, etc. 

This same question of lateral-vs-forward comes up every time I look at other things in my life.

My book -- GOAL: Finishing it

Forward Progress - Writing new pages

Lateral Progress - Buying/reading books about how to write those pages, watching movies and tv shows that demonstrate how scenes look, talking about writing pages.

The state of my office -- GOAL: Cleaning it

Forward Progress - Cleaning the desk off, filing papers away, throwing out/shredding what I don't need

Lateral Progress - Buying organizational racks, shelves and items to sort out things (while still leaving so many piles), thinking/feeling that I'll never make any headway

My income -- GOAL: Having more of it

Forward Progress - Being visible and helpful to others, finding clients, doing work, sending invoices

Lateral Progress - Bitching about how after I pay my bills I don't have much money left, scrounging up change out of laundry, swearing to never again buy stuff all week (see above)

See what I'm getting at? 

Sometimes, the lateral progress looks like forward progress, and for whatever reason, I guess because it's not difficult or changing the state of anything, it feels like I'm making progress to my goal. 

Forward progress isn't always fun. Forward progress on eating better means I have to amend my grocery lists, exercise some willpower and spend time actually cooking better things rather than settling. It takes work, but the goal is worth it, isn't it? So why not do it? That's the lesson I'm learning now. 

Forward and Lateral Around The Table And At The Desk

We revisit this idea of forward and lateral progress when we sit down to play a game. Board and card games aside, let's look at role-playing experiences. 

The Forward element is the plot of the campaign. Whether that's killing the dragon, solving the murder mystery, reaching level 10 or defeating the conspiracy against you, Forward comes in when the player(s) do things that bring them closer to resolving that goal. 

The Lateral element is a little trickier, since sometimes people will argue that the lateral movements are just as important as the Forward ones. For example, my brother and I spent WEEKS playing Final Fantasy X when it came out, maxing our characters' stats, acquiring all the items and weapons and basically lording over everything on the digital landscape. We didn't advance the plot too far while this was happening, because we were too busy in making it easier for that to happen.

You see, we had this idea in our heads that if we did all these side quests and branches off the main plot tree, the main plot would be easier. And while that's true (the items we got as rewards totally made the endgame simpler), it speaks to the underlying issue - we thought the endgame would be hard, and that we were too unprepared. 

As GMs we can offer players a lot of paths to follow, no matter the game system. We can give the paladin a sidequest to get a horse, we can tell the secret agents to spend some time protecting their family members from attack. Sometimes, the players jump at these actions because it's a break from the main story, or because it offers them a chance to be at the center of attention for a little while, but other times they take based on how it's sold to them.

If a side quest is sold with the same intensity as the main quest, you can't expect them to be able to make the distinction that one is superior to the other, and by extension, that they should or shouldn't throw their full weight of focus towards that new (and perceived important) goal. 

A lot of this has to do with how the hook is baited, and if the players are invested in their characters. A lot of this also has to do with the reward offered. Too great a reward, or if the reward is thought to be bigger, more immediate or more useful than the reward of the main plot, naturally the players are going to jump at it. How could they not?

Some games mechanize around this possibility by creating conditions that lead the hero(es) into side quests so that they gain material or knowledge they must apply to the main quest -- Link can't fight Ganon until he has all the pieces of the TriForce nor can Mario reach Bowser without first traversing the level(s) of the castle. 

Writers I didn't forget about you - many genres (detective in particular) hinge on the idea that the bigger case is related to the smaller case or its solution. Likewise, we can bog down protagonists with side quests that develop emotions or responsibilities or new character arcs outside of the change represented by the main plot. 

So What Can We Do?
Writers, it's time to face the possibility that you're going to finish your book. And that this book isn't going to be perfect, but it will be complete - with a plot and character development and all the trappings therein. Forget the idea that you have to X number of plots and subplots, that you have to have exactly this number of scenes that develop specifically this or that idea and that flashbacks all have to be a certain and specific length. Accept that you're going to finish the story, and it's going be a good thing, and it will get edited and become a better thing.

Gamers, take a good look at your players. (Designers, you take a look at your audience) There is a very good chance that they're not going to take the bait on many of the hooks you throw at them. The problem is that you don't know which hooks they'll take and which they won't, so you just have to keep putting them all out there. Sometimes they'll move laterally, sometimes they'll go forward. What you can do is offer them the best path forward (the most compelling, interesting, superlative story) and the most evocative path laterally (so that when they step off the plot, they're immersed in the flavor and the world(s) you've built).

Remember - this isn't a one-or-the-other, all-or-nothing prospect. You can do very well for yourself making steps forward while laying out side routes along the way. It's also not required that you sprint towards the finish line. We all want that end goal, we all want our work to be published, there's no reward for finishing ahead of other people, because the market(s) we're going into are wide enough to support all of us. Don't fall for that scarcity-trap. We can all "win" at this.

Happy writing

Writing/Gaming - Show versus Tell

Time for a classic debate. Time for some good ol' fashioned barroom brawling over what-to-do-when-and-what's-better. Time to roll up our sleeves and get really INTO our work.

Today we're talking Show versus Tell.

I haven't brought this up on the blog before, but I think it's time. Now I'm going to come at this first for the book people but then for the game people, because while many of those elements overlap, the game design aspects have a spin on them that changes the nature of the debate. Let's introduce the sides of the debate...

Show 
This is more explicative, and treats the reader as more of a current viewer of the story. Also, this gives the reader the sense that the story is unfolding AS they read it, which helps make them feel like they're more a part of the story, and they enjoy it more, so they read more, so in theory if you've written more, they'll buy more. This is also a slower approach to developing characters, scenes, settings, and actions.

Were I to show you what I'm doing now, I have the option of treating your eyes like a film camera and zoom you all the way in to show you my fingers striking the keys on my awesome ergonomic keyboard. Or I might show you the room I'm writing in, describing it as the stunt double of a book and game store right now. Or I might start you in from above the scene, and sweep you into the office via the window, past the curtains and in over my shoulder to watch me write this sentence.

Regardless of how I choose to do it, the important thing is that the action and the character and nature of what's going on is unfurling around you in a relative real-time. I'm showing you that I'm writing this, because...that's what I'm doing now. I'm showing you the laundry basket of clothes I need to sort together for this weekend, because it's relevant to the distracting thought I'm having while I write.

Remember Rule #1 - Writing is the act of making decisions. And I, the author, am deciding to give you a view of the action AS it happens, so that you feel like a part of it, so that you can take advantage of all the details I'm providing, so that you have the most complete picture on your mental canvas.

Showing can consume more space, use more details, take more time and tax a writer more (because there's more work to do) than Telling, but the payoff is greater. Even on a egoic sense, through good use of Showing I can show-off (see what I did there?) my ability to write pretty sentences or describe things really well or demonstrate just how much "in charge" I am while you're reading.

Tell
Telling is more direct, but it does require the assumption that the reader trust the author. The author is giving specific details and specific explanations of details so that the reader knows what went on and what is on-going. It's a little more clinical, but also more subjective (if the voice doing the telling is biased or unclear or not omnipresent).

If I were going to tell you what I'm doing now, I can start in any fashion I want - If I want to set a tone that I dislike my work or my day or whatever, I can tell you that detail while I tell you what I'm doing. I also don't have to describe or paint any picture outside the relevant facts to what I want - When I tell you that I'm really sort of worried about X because of Y reason, I don't need to involve the awesome description of the wind chimes out the window if I don't want. (Remember, decisions)

Also, telling compresses time. It's fast-forwarding through actions you may not want to dive into, it's speeding through the lulls in action. This is particularly true if you go so far as to tell me that time has passed. (Two months went by...)

Telling allows the world to pass by, change, develop and grow outside of the bubble of the story, which we can cut back to when the action/story/drama/stuff resumes.

So What's All The Fuss About?
People, books, careers and media outlets make a huge fuss over showing and not telling. Yes, it's a problem. Yes, it's something a writer should be aware of. Yes it often requires a writer work harder to paint the picture for rather that telling me about the picture they're seeing.

Telling when you should be showing IS NOT a sign of a "wrong" writer. It's a mistake, for sure, but it's not enough to ban you from all forms of communication and shun you to some weird leper colony.

Like so many things, there should be a balance between the two -- you shouldn't be all one-or-the-other, and I'd be a little leery of anyone who advocates so strongly to exclude one side too often.

There are going to be things you tell, and things you show, and it's important that you figure out which is which in your story.

What Can I Do?
If you're expecting a checklist here, there isn't one. I'm sorry. But since we're all telling stories differently, the checklist is too circumstantial. But what I can tell you to look for are some key elements:

1. How close (or far away) do I want the reader to be in this scene? Do I want them over the shoulder of a particular character? Do I want them floating above the entire scene? Where do I want them focused?
2. What's important in this scene? Is it one character more than another? Is it the environment around them? Is it some tension that's conveyed without speaking?
3. What comes AFTER this particular scene? Where are we going from here? Do I have to ratchet up the emotion/action to get things rolling forward? How can I help this scene go into the next one?
4. What do I want the reader to take away from this scene when they're done? Should they have gained plot-critical information? Should they get some character-developing info? Are they just going to read that same description about the same chair over and over? Is anything new here?

In a later post I'll likely explore specific examples of each. Right now, authors, tell your stories. Get them all out of your heads, past the scratch notebooks and into some drafts. Just produce material for now. There's a whole other round of editing and developing that can happen AFTER you get the story out. But that's later....go tell me the story first.

Authors, happy writing.

Gamers, you're up.

For you, this debate has all the elements discussed above with the added issue of mechanics.

Because a game has to on some level be instructional, and teach the players what they can do, mechanics have to SHOW you HOW and TELL you WHAT.

Show me (the player) how to adjudicate different situations. Do I roll dice? Which dice? Show me the examples.

Tell me how to handle combat. Is there one mechanic I apply repeatedly? Are there steps? What am I allowed to do? What can't I do? (And why, don't forget the why).

There's still a blend required, still a balance to strike in the economy of show-and-tell, but you can use the mechanics as a lens and a bridge to walk the reader/player through the base of the story so the players can expand it as they see fit -- and yes, you do have to let them.

(Note - I really thought it would take me longer to say all that, but I'm satisfied.)

Happy writing.

Writing/Gaming - Roles!

So somewhere on the internet right now, a lot of people are very very upset about the loss of "roles" as a component to the next edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Oh right....yeah...disclaimer time....


DISCLAIMER! This post is going to start off a little nerdy, but I promise you, it'll get back on track shortly, just ride the dork-wave back to shore. 

Now in the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, there are these things called "roles", which were card-based pieces of organizational material that helped players figure out what their characters could and couldn't do. (Yes, gamers, I'm way simplifying that for the reading audience, but today's post isn't ALL about gaming.)

And that is a terrible idea.

Your Character Is Not A Note Card
Let's try an experiment. Go get your favorite book and go get a note card. If you really want to, go get the HUGE note card that your grandmother used to keep track of what pies she had to make for which social event, you know, those big huge ones that are practically half a page unto themselves.

Now, label the note card with the name of the book's protagonist, or your favorite character or the antagonist or whatever - just write down a character's name. And then all over that note card, I want you to write down all the relevant NOT-BIOGRAPHICAL facts about the character. This isn't a space for a history of their life, this is where you can write down a list of their attributes and qualities, write down their skills and what makes them awesome, write down any relevant story actions (like "saved a cat out of a tree" or "totally defeated the bad guy in Book 2").

It doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be a list. Here, I'll do one too with the first thing I grab off the shelf -- The Complete Third Season of Night Court (what, you guys don't have DVDs on a shelf in your office?) And from that cast of characters (which I own strictly for research purposes, I swear), let's look at Harry Anderson's character of Judge Harry Stone.

Judge Harry Stone

He's a Judge

Comedic

Caring

Tall

Likes magic

Only child, broken family

Unlucky in love

That list has left my indie-gaming-senses tingling, because from that list (which I know is totally incomplete), I can generate a lot of Aspects (FATE), points (GUMSHOE) and verbs (Technoir).

But by no means did that list of seven lines sum up the character that is Harry Stone. And at no time should anyone think that a well-defined character can be completed summarized by half a note card. Yes, sure, we can do our best to find the right words that cover the most real estate of who the character is and what they stand for, but at some point, we cross a threshold of who they are and what they do.

You Are Not Your Khaki Pants
One of my great peeves in writing and gaming is that people have characters and define them by what they do. "Oh, he's a wizard, so he's some sort of Gandalf clone with a great sagely beard and staff." or "He's a detective, so he has to be a boozy, plodding womanizer."

This is where roles are more harm than good.

There's nothing wrong in summing up what a character CAN do in a few words or sentences - it's nice and helps other characters know how best to coordinate and collaborate. But there is a difference between "can" and "only".

If you've got a character with one particular skill, let's say they're the best chef in the county, are you only going to put them in situations where cooking is what gives them an edge? How many times are you going to imperil them with a mega-dangerous chili cook-off?

Just because a character has a go-to skill, it doesn't mean they have ONLY that skill. Come back a minute to the best chef in the county. Sure, they make a mean lunch, but cooking also means they know how to boil water, work a knife and prepare lots of different dishes. "Cooking" is a broad term for a whole suite of skills.

So too must the role of the character be bigger than their best or strongest skill and attribute. It's that fixed thinking that they're all one-trick ponies that developed the great cliches and tropes of our time:

Barbarians are stupid, fur-wearing, berserker thugs.
Blondes are stupid.
Women are secondary citizens, good only for birthing babies
Librarians are dotty old ladies.
No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley.
Clerics are just walking first aid kits.
All detectives need to have a drinking problem
Brown-skinned people are property and inferior.
Every cop is either on the take, or they're the only good cop in a world gone bad.
Wearing a hoodie makes you a criminal.
To work in a cafeteria, you must have at least three moles with hair on them.
Bad guys will always tell you their plan just before leaving you cornered in an easily-escaped trap

When crafting a character, it is paramount that you get away from these thoughts and craft a character that exists OUTSIDE of these structures, not in defiance of them (because a defiance-built character is just a one-trick pony in the opposite direction).

So What Is My Role?
Gamers, your role is to participate at the table. Gamers, your character's role is to make the game enjoyable for the people to your left and right.

Writers, your role is to produce the best story possible and practice your craft to the best of your ability.

That's it. No pigeon-holing. No limitations. No restrictions based on personality, preference, or philosophy.

Gamers: Don't let your characters be pigeon-holed by anyone, anything or any arbitrary or capricious sentiment. Note: This is NOT permission to act bat-squeak insane all the time, but this is a permission slip and big thumbs-up to acting how the character would, based on philosophy, desires and interests.

Writers: Don't let the characters lapse from your creations into the commonplace templates of your literary forebears. Let them stand out, in their own ways, as you intended.

And with that definition of 'role' in use, that can never be taken out of a game. (Just like it never should have been adjudicated in the first place.)

Happy writing.

Writing/Gaming - Hooks!

What's a hook?

It's a critical pirate element.
It's one half of Velcro Theory.
It's also what gamers need to feel like what they do matters at the table, that it's not just rolling dice, scribbling pencils and a way to spend an evening at a friend's house.

What I'm going to talk about today is types of hooks (for different types of players) and how to figure out how to hook whoever you have at your table (or your future audience).

Now, a disclaimer - I broke gamer-types up into 4 types, just for the ease of writing this blog post, it is BY NO MEANS CONCLUSIVE. I just picked 4 because 4-is-a-nice-number-that-satisfies-my-OCD-eccentricities-no-don't-make-that-face. You may not have ANY of these players at your table or in mind for your audience, and if you have a group that isn't listed here, leave a comment below and/or send me an email, I'll do a follow-up.

I'm supposing here that you're designing your own game, or you've recently picked up a new game and you want to bring players into it.

What do I do for a new player, someone whose never played this game (or any game like it)?

For new players you want to create what I call 'Hooks of Ease'. Regardless of whether or not the player has ever played a game before, you want to make sure that this experience (the experience of playing YOUR game) is easy, so that they come back, or want to play it more.

Hooks of Ease are anything that makes play EASY to do, EASY to understand and EASY to repeat. On a mechanical level, this may be reflected in a lack of complexity or in a straightforward and unvarying checklist of steps.

Example: The GUMSHOE engine uses a six-sided die, terming a roll of 1-3 a failure and 4-6 a success. 
Example #2: Most board games have a roll dice/spin the wheel mechanic that doesn't change as play advances. 

Hooks of Ease are anything (mechanical, narrative, etc) that create a sense that "I can do this", because encouraging action is the first step to securing enjoyment and immersion. People like to do things (and repeatedly do them) if the task was not complicated, produced a result without too much effort and had a benefit for them.

The vulgar version of this is "If they get it, they'll do it, and want to do it again."

What about rules lawyers who are used to a very literal interpretation and strictly go by-the book?

I know, they're tough. I play with a few, and they can leech the fun out of the room faster than a bad cabbage fart.

The first step is realizing that for ANY type of "difficult" player, you have to remember you are NOT at their mercy. They are not the boss of you, and you cannot let their existence act like an unseen hand in crafting the overall game. In short, you're not playing FOR the rules lawyers of the world, they just happen to be a part of it, like midgets, clowns or the strange guy at the supermarket who talks to the produce as he bags it.

Chances are the rules lawyer is looking for control of the experience. In bad cases, this means they want to be "the guy" at the table (this is not a sexist thing, you can be "the lady" too), meaning all the plot and the decisions of the table go through them. This is likely because outside the game they're unhappy with something, and in this fun-time, they get to correct their unhappiness, even if they do so somewhat obliviously to how the rest of the table may feel about their bluster and possibly douchebaggery.

Hooking the rules lawyer involves Hooks of Consequence. This isn't consequence like punishment, more like an understanding of Newtonian laws -- what the players do will generate reactions/ripples within the world. Knowing that following the rules and still creating good experiences will pacify even the most crusty of rulesmongers.

Narratively, this applies as well. When the player cries foul because the NPC has done X Y or Z, which may be mechanically supported, but not what they're counting on having happen because it means the player(s) (read: they as individuals above all) won't "win", point to the actions that caused the response -- and take note that their narrative argument, the fact that they're bitching at all about what's done, has proven them to be engaged.

Note -- Just remember you don't have to cow to the rules-lawyer or rules-lawyer-bully both at your table and as a designer. Stand up, put down those things at the ends of your legs (we call them feet) and have fun, above all else. 

What about the other end of the spectrum, the player who isn't so rules conscientious? 

Someone who's just sort of at the table, interested in having a good time but not too terribly invested in knowing that the particular combat mechanic is on page 44, second column 3rd paragraph, or that you can't roll d10 for damage with a short sword, is a good person to have a table, because like the new people, they're often malleable. (Unlike the aforementioned rules-lawyer or the later discussed jaded player who both may just be curmudgeonly or creatively-sedentary). With a good experience you make a light player into someone more serious or more invested, and that's a great thing for your gaming.

What you need to offer them are Hooks of Potential. Like the line in the Aladdin song, you can show them a world...(I'll let you keep singing). By showing that the game has a lot of opportunities to do things (both narrative options in-game and mechanically in-system), you spawn a stream of opportunities and if you pair these with a Hook of Ease, make these opportunities into easy decisions. 


Easy decisions become fun decisions very quickly, because they generate consequences and feedback (Are you starting to see how these things all come together?).

Help! I have jaded players (or "I'm writing a game that has a lot of competition in the marketplace!")

I am apparently, a jaded player. I work in the industry, I write/edit/play games with designers and writers, I play multiple games a week if I'm lucky. No, I'm not bragging - I'm telling you that overexposure has dulled my sense of newness. I don't get all aflutter over prestige classes and skill suites. I'm not entirely too jazzed about a constant evolution and progression of medieval and Renaissance fantasy. This tiredness is what drove me towards "indie" gaming - where settings, mechanics and play types are vast and hugely different from game to game and session to session.

I've asked Mike my GM about this, and he's often expressed a concern that I'm bored with traditional model gaming, and I keep telling him I'm not. It's not the game itself (because that's inert), it's how it gets developed at the table. This is the attitude I want to impart to all the designers who think about their game getting into the hands of people who have played more than half their lives or who are developers themselves. What brings the jaded to your game with a spark and interest is a Hook of Demonstration. When they see the game DO something, handle something mechanically, resolve a crisis narratively, introduce elements a certain way, they will sit up and take notice.

This is what happened to me at my first Dresden Files RPG game - I arrived early, and was still eating my turkey club. The GM (not Mike, this was another group) laid out the books and gave each player a legal pad. No dice yet. Just pad and pencil. He also didn't let me crack open the books. Now, this was not typical of this group, who normally get very handsy with materials.

The rest of the players arrived and we got started. And our GM led us through City Creation. (We made some sort of amalgam between Newark, Elizabeth and Hoboken with a smattering of Atlantic City and Cape May -- very different cityscapes within NJ). We consulted no charts, we made no rolls. We did however do a lot of Googling and Wikipedia reading (yes, it's a credible source! Ask your local rockstar librarian!).

I took notice because this allowed me to combine my passions - storytelling, writing, creating with gaming into a new synthesis of awesome. I was no longer jaded (and many months later enjoy the game still).

So we have Hooks of Potential (show them what the game can do), Hooks of Consequence (show them that what THEY do has ramifications, responses and reactions), Hooks of Ease (that it's not hard to try/do these things), and Hooks of Demonstration (show them how the game does something in a way that others don't).

Remember: Hooks are not only mechanical, but can and should also be narrative tools as well. Remember also it is the combination of narrative and mechanics that create the game experience.

Happy (game) writing.

Party Balance, Narrative Weight - Gaming/Writing

Today I'm going to try and explain a gaming concept that closely mirrors a writing concept. I can't say they're synonymous, but they're pretty close. Game designers and players, this one's mostly for you.

There's a sense, I think due in part to more recent editions of products as well as a great deal of MMO-play, that an adventure/episode/campaign/game should be forever balanced or scaled to the party, that is to say a 4th level party should almost always encounter things within the range of 3rd to 5th level (3rd level presenting no obstacle, 5th level to challenge them), because that's what a party can "handle".

I completely disagree and find this a cowardly way to create play opportunities. I say this quite strongly because I'm a player in a group that is currently at odds with the idea that a party of more-or-less 4th level characters is having trouble with essentially an apex predator in its natural habitat. Because we're not able to kill it quickly and celebrate gloriously then boo-hoo the game must be broken, or our GM must be an idiot.

This all smacks of selfish, spoiled play. And to go further and lob accusations that a GM is engaged in a game of "anything you can do, I can always do one better" is entirely the wrong attitude to take when your character struggled in a fight moments previously.

My opinion: It is the role of the GM and the players to work together to tell a story. The GM presents the plot, and the players offer characters and actions (hopefully) in line with the plot. The game, whether a single session or a campaign is a result of BOTH these things coming together. When one side believes they're carrying all the weight (a GM who has to pull teeth to get things moving, or players who just roll dice and deal damage, giving no interest in story), then play stops. And when play stops, it's a good chance to evaluate why and what can be done to make the process better.

Note: I didn't say 'empower' the players, because no one side of the table is subordinate or superior to the other. The whole table is in this together.

'Balance' is a tricky concept to handle in a game. Mechanically, you have to appropriately seed the possibilities of actions and reactions so that things work with almost a Newtonian elementary precision. Narratively, the story has to offer challenge and incentive for future challenge so that rewards may be had.

But, if you're looking to create either a realistic or immersive world, you have to chuck balance out several windows. The world is not balanced. Balance is not the focus of worlds that present great danger or texture. There will be times when players are out of their element. A game should seldom be locked into zones where low-level creatures cluster, then they may head down a road to where there are tougher creatures, and the further still live the stronger beasts. This is the legacy of MMOs, creating pockets of gameplay that emphasize a need for mechanics over story. It is unlikely that a low-level character will ever have a reason to wander to the dragon's lair, because they'll know they'll not survive - so they just won't do it. Although still an option, the game restricts the likelihood of it occurring by incentivizing alternatives - closer zones offer more immediate rewards without the problems of character death.

However, looking at fiction, the opposite is true. The "low-level" character embarks upon a huge quest where failure exists and seems likely, but through the application of skills and equipment, succeeds in the face of great danger: The peasant kills the giant, the squire eliminates the dragon, the farm boy blows up the planet-exploding superweapon.

At the heart of fiction lies something called "narrative weight", which is the idea that some portion of the character-pool (a single protagonist, a group of heroes, etc) is doing whatever is necessary to move the story forward from plot-point to plot-point, while the rest of the world keeps turning or while other characters go about their day/lives. The 'weight' refers to the decisions/reactions/consequences made at Point A that drive the character(s) to Point B. Often this can be traced down to a single character's action or decision (the one party member who needs rescuing, the one who commits the rest of the party, the one who charges into battle, etc), and it can be said that this one character carries the bulk of the weight.

What's funny is that when a single character carries more weight than others in fiction is that no one ever stops to question the balance. It's only in gaming, where egos bubble up, that people worry about balance, because there exists the chance that they're not getting heard or rewarded.

Example: You can argue that Lord of the Rings is as much Frodo and Sam's story as it is Aragorn's.The other characters serve a function, but it's usually to assist one of those two branches in the narrative. Were this a game, this would be unbalanced, since the the mechanically disadvantaged characters (the hobbits with no combat skills) are 'superior' to the wizard, the ranger and the fighters (the combat-capable characters).

This is the danger of 'balance' - it requires that the game be about who has mechanical rather than narrative advantage, because the party only moves forward when the mechanics make it reasonable, rather than possible.

And gameplay should exist more in the possible rather than the reasonable (since it's a subjective assessment), because that's ROLEplay rather than ROLLplay.

If the goal of playing is to create a collaborative story, then there needs to be a synthesis of mechanical potential and narrative merit. Sure, the party can stroll through the fields until they reach the dragon's lair on day 1. They have that option. If it makes for a good story, let them do it. If however the point of playing is to roll dice, feel superior to imagined scenario and gain stuff, then they should probably be dissuaded from moving forward and instead roam the fields and kill a billion mice until they gain the strength and prowess needed to make the dragon less of a foe, right? Which one sounds more fun?

I play a lot of level-less games, because without the emphasis on accruing improvements, it's a chance to focus on story and let that build and reflexively shape the character. My characters are not a pile of numbers that translate into which-die-do-I-roll-to-beat-the-imaginary-beast, there are feelings and ideas I'm trying to express beyond hitting things with sticks.

So what's a designer/GM/ST/DM to do? Take another note from writers. Just tell the story. If the party keeps hitting first and asking questions later, then perhaps its time there are consequences for those actions. A group of adventurers roaming the land killing creatures / endangering the peasantry is just a different flavor of danger to a nobleman's land, right? Will the players balk? Possibly. But if you're trying to reduce rollplay and insert even a smidge of roleplay, there aren't many easy balk-less solutions.

I appreciate you reading this long rant. We'll go back to more proper writing theory next post.