Hamlet is almost universally acknowledged as Shakespeare’s greatest masterpiece. Among his plays it is also, without doubt, the most complicated of texts. (One might even say convoluted.) Some of its mysteries may never be truly unraveled, but I think we can achieve a fair degree of certainty in a great many matters. Doing so, however, is going to require a great deal of untangling. So before we tackle that seemingly overwhelming task, let’s get straight to the scripts:

HAMLET – FULL SCRIPT

HAMLET – CONFLATED SCRIPT

(If you want to follow along come Monday night, you want to grab the Conflated version. That’s the one we’ll be performing from.)

THE THREE TEXTS

We have three source texts for Hamlet. (More than any other play by Shakespeare.)

The First Quarto (Q1) was published in 1603. In addition to the date, its title page reads, in part: “As it hath been diverse times acted by his Highness’ servants in the City of London : as also in two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere.” Although this text has been periodically identified as Shakespeare’s “rough draft” such theories seem to have little merit. Instead, this heavily corrupted text shows clear indications of memorial reconstruction: An actor (most likely one hired for the touring company) attempted to reconstruct the play from memory and possibly his sides (a written copy of his lines and his cues).

(The tour referenced on Q1′ s title page also may explain one of the most significant changes to the text: The characters of Polonius and Reynaldo are renamed Corambis and Montano. Robert Polenius was the founder of Oxford University and John Reynalds was the President of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. The similarity of the names might have been interpreted as a veiled insult at the universities, which could explain why the names would be changed.)

Although its heavy corruption and abbreviation may be largely the result of its memorial reconstruction, Q1 may also record the gross structure of a probable theatrical cut intended for the touring production. (The quarto text of Richard III shows evidence of being derived from a similar script cut and conflated for touring.)

One year later in 1604, the Second Quarto (Q2) was published. Also referred to as the “good quarto”, Q2 shows evidence of having been derived from the author’s foul papers. Whatever manuscript it was derived from, however, appears to have been difficult for the compositors at the publishing house to read. (This can be deduced from its many errors.) Q2’s text also shows evidence of the compositors referring back to the text of Q1 for certain passages, most likely as an independent reference whenever they were having difficulty reading the foul papers. (We can identify the Q1 influence whenever spelling and punctuation of the text suddenly matches Q1’s precisely. A similar practice can be found in the second quarto of Romeo & Juliet, which was similarly published after a first quarto based on memorial reconstruction was released.)

The fact that the good text of Q2 was published so rapidly after the appearance of Q1’s bad text has led many people to conclude that it was specifically published in response to Q1. There’s no supporting evidence for that theory, but it certainly sounds plausible.

Hamlet next appears in the First Folio of 1623. And this is where things get complicated: In virtually all cases, when a good quarto of a Shakespeare play existed, the First Folio text was typeset using the quarto text as its source. This isn’t the case with Hamlet: Punctuation, spelling, and even word choice varies considerably between the Q2 and F1 texts. The F1 text also includes 70 lines lacking from the Q2 text, but simultaneously omits 230 lines which can be found in Q2.

And to make matters even more complicated, there are points where F1’s compositors were clearly referring to the Q2 text in the same way that Q2’s compositors were looking at Q1’s text.

UNIQUE PASSAGES

During the 18th, 19th, and much of the 20th century, the standard editorial practice has been to conflate the Q2 and F1 texts into a single text. Recently, however, Hamlet has gotten swept up in a scholastic movement based around the premise that Shakespeare rewrote/revised his own plays. Under this interpretation, F1 is interpreted as a revision of Q2’s rough draft. (Or, occasionally, the reverse.) Most notably, the third edition of Arden’s Hamlet went so far as to print the Q2 and F1 texts as completely separate plays, editing them largely independently of each other.

The truth, however, I suspect lies somewhere inbetween.

Let’s start by looking at the sizable passages missing in one text or the other.

F1- ONLY: There are, according to the third Arden edition, three passages of 4 lines or more which are present in the First Folio but not in the Second Quarto: 2.2.238-267 (starting with “Let me question more in particular” and ending with “I am most dreadfully attended”); 2.335-399 (starting with “How comes it? Do they grow rusty?” and ending with “…Hercules and his load, too.”); and 5.2.68-5.2.81 (starting with “… to quit him with this arm?” and ending with “Peace, who comes here?”).

The last of these passages is clearly a mistake in the Q2 text: It leaves behind a dangling and unresolved sentence fragment.

But what of the first two? They were topical allusions to the acting companies of children that were popular at the time Shakespeare was writing the play. It has often been assumed that they were cut from the play when they were no longer topical, but this only raises the question of why they can be found in F1 and not Q2 (when F1 is the shorter script which appears to have been cut). Thankfully, there’s a solution. James Bednarz in Shakespeare and the Poet’s War argues convincingly that the references were specifically cut from the Second Quarto for its publication in 1604 because the allusions were too topical. By 1604 the Children of the Chapel had become the Children of Her Majesty’s Chapel under the patronage of Queen Anne. Moreover, Queen Anne was from Denmark. Lines that had been harmless fun 5 years earlier could now be seen as political attacks on England’s new Queen.

If we accept that as a plausible explanation, we can now explain the absence from Q2 of all three major F1 “additions” to the text: Two were cut for political reasons, and one was cut by mistake.

Q2-ONLY: According to G.R. Hibbard’s Oxford edition of the play, there are 18 passages of 3 or more lines found in Q2 which are not found in F1. I’m not going to cite them all here, but what I find interesting is that removing these passages from F1 requires “mid-line cuts”. While it seems unlikely that someone making additions to a play would split a single line and splice in a dozen new lines of verse, people cutting verse plays will often mend an incomplete verse line created by their cut by matching it up with another half-cut line later in the text.

Thus it seems very likely that the Q2 passages were removed from the F1 text, not added to the Q2 text.

CONCLUSION: So we can hypothesize that the F1-only passages were, in fact, present in the original Q2 text. And we can further hypothesize that the Q2-only passages were cut from the F1 text and not added to the Q2 text. From this a clear conclusion emerges: The F1 source text was created by cutting lines from the Q2 source text.

WHITHER THE Q1 TEXT?

How does the Q1 text fit in here?

Let’s again turn our attention to the large passages unique to either the F1 or Q2 text. Of the three F1-only passages, two of them can be found in the Q1 text. (The third is missing from a scene which is badly mangled and heavily abbreviated above and beyond the absence of this passage).

Even more notable, however, is that none of the eighteen Q2-only passages can be found in the Q1 text. In fact, many of the cuts are precisely mirrored. For example, after 1.1.107:

F1: “The source of this our watch, and the chief head / Of this post-haste and rummage in the land. [gap] But soft, behold, lo where it comes again.”

Q1: “Is the chief head and ground of this watch. [gap] But lo, behold, see where it comes again.”

And after 1.4.16:

F1: “… it is a custom / More honored in the breach than the observance. [gap] Look my lord it comes.”

Q1: “It is a custom more honored in the breach than the observance. [gap] Look, my lord, it comes.”

CONCLUSION: The source of the Q1 text was a touring script prepared prior to its memorial reconstruction and publication in 1603. Since it includes the F1-only passages and excludes the Q2-only passages, we can conclude that this touring script was prepared from the F1 source text. Furthermore, we can conclude that the cuts made to form the F1 source text were made to the Q2 source text and not the published version of Q2 (since, obviously, Q2 had not yet been published).

THE BIG LOOP

From this we can now draw a clear conclusion regarding the textual history of Hamlet: The Q2-source was cut to form the F1-source. And the F1-source was then cut to form the Q1-source.

The Q1-source was then published, through memorial reconstruction, as Q1. But now it gets tricky, because Q2 was published from Q2-source but was also influenced by the Q1’s text. And F1 was published from F1 source, but was also influenced by the Q2 text.

So Q2-source to F1-source to Q1-source to Q1 which influences Q2 which influences F1… The textual history of Hamlet is basically a big loop.

Which goes rather a long way towards explaining why the text has been confusing editors for four hundred years.

TEXTUAL PRACTICES

Assumptive Conclusion 1: We know that cuts were made to Q2-source to form the F1-source. Those cuts may have been made by Shakespeare, but there’s really no way to know. On the other hand, we know that there was a Q2-source which was almost certainly in Shakespeare’s hand (or as close to that as we will ever get). Ergo, we use the Q2 as our source text, but we also conflate in the F1 text to more accurately reflect the original Q2-source (since we know those passages were removed from the publication of Q2, but not from the Q2-source text).

Assumptive Conclusion 2: Q1 is a corrupted text and Q2 was known to reference it. Ergo, a Q1/Q2 agreement against F1 is paradoxically more likely to indicate that F1 is correct and that Q2 is copying an error from Q1. On other hand, an F1/Q1 agreement could contra-indicate Q2, but could just as easily reflect a change made during the cuts to the F1-source and so are generally not followed unless the Q2 text is nonsensical. (Where the texts of Q2 and F1 agree with each other, of course, there’s no problem at all.)

Assumptive Conclusion 3: Q1 is based on memorial reconstruction of a touring production. Ergo, it reflects actual stage practices contemporary with Shakespeare (but not necessarily Shakespeare’s direction in all cases). Thus, its directions are generally useful. (In addition, some of its new scenes, perhaps written for the purposes of tightening the play, might provide some clues to original interpretation on key questions of character.)

See Also:

• Hamlet: Disasters in the Sun
• Hamlet Writes (Never Trust an Editor)
• Hamlet: Of Acts and Scenes
• In a Web of Tragic Flaws: Hamlet as the Anti-Tragic Hero

Special thanks to the Enfolded Hamlet, without which it would have made a full comparison of Q2/F1 readings too time-consuming for the limits of this project.

Source Text: Second Quarto (1604)

1. Original emendations in [square brackets].
2. Emendation from Q1 in [italicized brackets].
3. Q2-only passages in <diamond brackets>.
4. Emendation from F1 in {curled brackets}.
5. F1-only passages in {italicized curled brackets}.
6. Speech headings silently regularized.
7. Names which appear in ALL CAPITALS in stage directions have also been regularized.
8. Spelling has been modernized.
9. Punctuations has been silently emended (in minimalist fashion).
10. Act and Scene divisions corrected.

Originally posted on November 18th, 2010.

Tagline: A game of mind-benders which prove to have answers that are either too simple or simply cheats.

MindTrap is a very simple game: You get several hundred cards and a disposable pad of Escheresque mazes. Each card is printed with a mind-twister. A correct answer advances you one square along the maze – a wrong answer doesn’t do anything. First player (or team of players) to the end of the maze wins.

Ta-da.

Because of the Escher-inspired design of the maze there are two different paths you can follow to victory – one short and one long. Although the rules don’t mention it, you could conceivably use this as a crude form of handicap.

The game is competently put together, but at its heart it fails to be something to waste your money or your time on because of two fundamental flaws with the questions they ask:

Far too many of them prove to be either too simplistic or cheats. Simplistic because they are basically “mind twisters” of such a cliched sort that you were trading them with your buddies in elementary school.

Cheats because some of the answers are basically varieties of, “Hey, look at this piece of information we didn’t give you! It solves everything!”

Don’t waste your time on this overpriced, glossy paperweight. It’s another good example of why Cheapass Games is so desperately refreshing.

Style: 3
Substance: 2

Author: MindTrap Games, Inc.
Company/Publisher: Pressman Toy Corp.
Cost: $35.00
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 2000/03/12

This review marks the end of a series of reviews written between October 1999 and March 2000 in which the only RPG-related products I reviewed were a set of character sheets for Sailor Moon. The reason for this was remarkably simple: I was between gaming groups and I wasn’t actually playing or reading RPGs. But I was able to get together with people and play board and card games with them. I initially wasn’t writing reviews about them, but then I started getting e-mails from people wondering why I had stopped writing reviews. Since I wasn’t actually digesting any RPG material, I responded by reviewing the games that I was playing.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Bangs are the explosive moments that define the agenda of a scene and force the PCs to start making meaningful choices. But you don’t necessarily need to come up with all of your bangs on the fly. In fact, prepping bangs can be a very flexible and effective way to prep. In Sorcerer, Ron Edwards talks about prepping a bandolier of bangs. It’s a great image. The GM goes into a session armed with his bangs, ready to escalate and respond by hurling the material he’s prepared into the fray.

For example:

• Suzie calls. She’s pregnant.
• A death knight kicks down the door.
• Your muse starts howling. Your system is getting hacked by something ugly.
• A dark miasma creeps across the surface of the moon. The werewolves begin bleeding from their eyes.

Grab any of those and toss ‘em like a grenade.

SPOTLIGHT BANGS

Bangs force choices. If the choices forced by a particular bang – and the agenda it brings into play – are focused on a particular character, then the bang will shine a spotlight on them. One easy way to create a compelling session is to simply ask, “What interesting thing is going to happen to each of the PCs today?” Hit them with those bangs and then see what develops.

One technique for developing spotlight bangs is the flag. The idea here is that a player’s character sheet and background can tell you a lot about what they’re interested in: If they’ve handed you a PC decked out with investigation skills, you should probably be tossing them juicy mysteries. If their character background is drenched in orders of chivalry, they probably want to get involved with the royal knights. And so forth.

(Of course, this is more of an art than a science. Some times, for example, people put points into an activity not because they find it interesting but because they find it boring and would rather dispatch with it quickly. But those exceptions are rare and, when in doubt, you can just chat with them.)

KEYS

In The Shadow of Yesterday, Clinton R. Nixon introduces the concept of keys: These are motivations, problems, connections, duties, and loyalties that players select during character creation. For example:

---

Key of Bloodlust: Your character enjoys overpowering others in combat.

• Gain 1 XP every time your character defeats someone in battle.
• Gain 3 XP for defeating someone equal to or more powerful than your character.
• Buyoff: Be defeated in battle.

 

Key of the Mission: Your character has a personal mission that she must complete.

• Gain 1 XP every time she takes action to complete this mission (2 XP if action is successful).
• Gain 5 XP every time she takes action that completes a major part of this mission.
• Buyoff: Abandon the mission.

---

I’m going to genericize the term here and use key to refer to any mechanic or method of character creation that formalizes the creation of flags. These mechanics allow the player to specifically say, “This is important. You should use this.” And when these mechanics exist, the GM needs to respond to them with key scenes: Opportunities for those keys to be turned.

Key mechanics are often called out in a lot of indie games from the past decade or so, but you can find these mechanics lurking all over the place. For example, the keys of The Shadow of Yesterday are mechanically almost identical to the “Individual Class Awards” found in the AD&D 2^nd Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. The rules for creating covenants in Ars Magica are similarly filled with mechanical cues for the GM to use.

KICKERS

In Sorcerer, Ron Edwards uses the concept of a kicker: A specific, life-altering bang that the player defines during the process of character creation and which basically happens at the moment that play begins: Their mother is murdered. They win the lottery. The village is burned to the ground. By getting the players involved in the creation of these “initiating bangs” you can give them a lot of agency in defining the shape the campaign will take. But even if you create the kickers independently, this is still a solid technique for getting the PCs involved in the campaign.

For example, one of the quickest ways to customize a purchased adventure is to figure out how to tie the initiating bangs of the adventure directly to the PCs (their interests, their cares, their goals). Once you’ve done that, everything else will flow naturally.

The kickers in Sorcerer are epic in nature because Edwards uses them to launch (and drive) entire campaigns, but the basic concept of the kicker can be used to create adventures on a smaller scale, too.

If you use an episodic approach in structuring your campaign, for example, you can set up your situation like a toolbox (see Don’t Prep Plots), and then figure out the big, effective bangs you can use to launch that situation into motion. You don’t have to do anything more than that. From that point forward, you can just react to what the players are doing.

In this guise it may become clear that you know kickers under a more common name: Scenario hooks. But the idea of hooking players into a scenario often seems to result in a limited palette: It’s the guy in the tavern who wants to hire them. Thinking about these hooks through the lens of the bang can help to expand your concept of what a “hook” really is. Instead of just thinking, “How can I make the PCs aware of this cool thing?” You can start thinking about how you can kick things off with a bang.

To put this more prosaically: There’s a tendency for scenario hooks to be delivered with a really weak agenda. (“Will they accept Bob’s job offer?”) Strong kickers means using hooks with more compelling agendas and higher stakes.

A TIMELINE OF BANGS

Of course you don’t have to limit your prepared bangs to the beginning of a session, either. One effective way of organizing prepared bangs is a simple timeline: Bang X happens at time Y. Other things may be happening in direct reaction to the choices made by the PCs, but the clock keeps ticking and the next bang that will complicate their lives keeps drawing inexorably closer.

I’ve also found that timelines are often a useful conceptual tool for people who are struggling to grok the concept of bangs in general. For example, here’s the timeline from an old campaign status document from my Ptolus campaign:

• 09/27/790: The PCs gain access to their Hammersong vaults.
• 09/28/790: Arveth uses the dais of vengeance on Tee.
• 09/28/790: A Pactlords strike team arrives at Alchestrin’s Tomb.
• 09/29/790: Maystra and Fesamere Balacazar approach the PCs. They want to hire them to break into the White House.

Some of these things are appointments the PCs have made. Others are ambushes. But every single one of them is a bang waiting to happen: When the clock reaches that moment, we’re going to frame a new scene, set an agenda, and bang our way into it.

(This is why I generally find it useful to keep two separate timelines in my campaign notes: One for stuff that’s generally happening in the background and one for stuff that’s going to directly affect the PCs.)

One other thing to note about these timeline entries, though: They aren’t fully-formed bangs. They’re more like bullets that are waiting to be fired. When the moment arrives, the actual bang will be customized to the circumstances of the PCs.

For example, if the PCs are at home when Maystra and Fesamere come looking to hire them, then the bang happens when the well-known members of a criminal family that bears them a grudge come walking through the door. If the PCs aren’t at home, then the bang happens when they come home and find the letter that was left for them.

BANGING ON THE TABLE

Another form of prepared bang which is often not thought of as such is the random encounter.

I’ve talked in the past about the effect OD&D’s 1 in 6 chance per turn of generating a random encounter has on dungeon exploration. If you think of each random encounter as a bang, the net effect of this system is to automatically deliver a steady pace of them. (This is another example of how the classic dungeoncrawl structure delivers effective pacing in the hands of neophyte GMs.)

One problem with this form of bang, however, is that it is so often just the same bang (“A WILD POKEMON APPEARED!”) leading to the same agenda (“Can you defeat the wild Pokemon?”). As I described in Breathing Life Into the Wandering Monster, you can solve that problem by finding new ways to contextualize the encounter.

For example, if you generate a random encounter of “8 skeletons” you can go for the predictable bang by saying, “You see eight skeletons and they attack you.” You can enrich that by varying the bang and saying, “From within the sarcophagi to either side, you hear the sounds of bone scratching against stone.” Or you can switch it up by changing the agenda and saying, “You see eight skeletons. They are arrayed around some huge mechanism of wooden gears. Some of the skeletons are pulling at levers, others are pushing on wheels.”

OD&D accomplished agenda shifts mechanically through the use of random reaction tables. Judges Guild applied similar techniques to urban encounters, separating the generation of what you were encountering from how and why you were encountering them.

BANG, BANG, BANG GOES THE RAILROAD

One risk in preparing specific, evocative bangs before play begins is that it can encourage railroading. (Or directly create it depending on the techniques employed.) A few tips for avoiding this:

First, bangs should never dictate a character’s response. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, the best bangs are the ones that provoke the most choices. Note the subtle distinction between:

• “Saving the princess” / “Discovering that the princess is trapped”
• “Killing the wolf” / “Hearing the wolf howl”
• “Escaping the police” / “Hearing the police sirens pull up outside”

Second, as I described in my use of timelines above, you can often prepare bullets instead of bangs. These half-formed bangs can be quickly actualized during play based on the current circumstances of the PCs.

Third, don’t over-prepare the bangs. As the name implies, bangs are supposed to be short and sweet in any case. If you’re writing more than a sentence or two about your cool ideas for bangs, you’re probably investing too much in them. Invest less time in bangs (which will make it easier to let them go if the players go a different direction) and invest more time in preparing the toolbox of your scenario.

At the beginning of this I talked about having a bandolier of bangs: Bandoliers give you explosive options, but the stuff in the bandolier isn’t loaded. You haven’t pulled the pins. The bangs are there and ready and waiting for you; but when you pull them and how you pull them and where you throw them is stuff that gets discovered during play.

Boom.

I’m generally a fan of Sherlock (the modern reimagining of Sherlock Holmes by Steven Moffatt and Mark Gatiss that’s so ubiquitous I’m just going to assume you know about it). I have some rather lengthy thoughts on how Moffat’s handling of Doctor Who has gone off the rails that I may spew across the Alexandrian at some point, but Sherlock has managed to mostly avoid those problems.

Mostly.

Unfortunately, there’s a real danger that the problems Sherlock is currently laboring under could turn into a metastatic cancer on the series (as evidenced by Doctor Who).

Let’s first consider the decision to simply not resolve the cliffhanger at the end of the second series. The ambiguity they attempted to embrace is arguably interesting, but it’s a burnt earth approach to writing: They presented a seemingly insoluble puzzle, implied that the solution to it would be amazing, and then deliberately failed to deliver. Fair enough. But that means the one thing that won’t be effective again is hanging a cliffhanger on a seemingly insoluble mystery: No one is going to take it seriously because you’ve already made it clear you have no intention of providing a satisfactory conclusion.

And yet what do they do literally three episodes later? Present the exact same cliffhanger a second time, but this time featuring a different character.

That would be lazy and uninspired writing at the best of times. But it’s particularly anemic because they’ve already established that they have no intention of following through.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I stop watching your show.

The more insidious problem, however, is the sloppy writing in the third series. (Exactly the sort of sloppy writing that we’ve been seeing a lot of over in Doctor Who.) A key example is the end of the season finale: It depends entirely on Magnussen failing to search them for weapons, despite the fact that the episode explicitly established that Magnussen has everyone he meets with searched for weapons. (It’s particularly silly because the only thing establishing Magnussen’s paranoia about weapons accomplishes is to render the ending of the episode into nonsense.)

In order for Sherlock to work as a series, it has to deliver sharp, clever scripts that support the conceit that its main character is sharp and clever. If it stops doing that it’s going to die a quick death, no matter how sexy and talented its two main stars may be.

Film Banging: Avengers – Alien

As in our previous installments, the standard disclaimer about using linear mediums as an example for running RPGs definitely applies: We know how these scenes end in the original movie, but if this were an actual RPG each scene could end in any number of ways.

It’s been awhile since we banged Alien, so you might want to review The Art of Pacing before we dive into The Matrix as a way of understanding how bangs can be used.

SCENE 1 – BANG: “You’re strapped to a chair. Electrodes have been attached to your head.”

The agenda is: Will Morpheus break?

This particular scene – the interrogation of Morpheus – is heavily broken up using the technique of simultaneous scenes: This single scene will thread its way through multiple scenes with Neo and Trinity. As it progresses, there are a number of interesting techniques to notice.

First, the Wachowskis use a series of escalating bangs. The injection of the silver fluid into Morpheus’ neck. The agent entering to say, “There may be a problem.” Agent Smith telling the other agents to, “Leave us.” And so forth. Note that, frequently, the Wachowskis will cut on the bang.

Note that the stakes for this scene’s agenda are laid in the next scene: If he breaks, he’ll betray the location of Zion and the war will be lost. This is an example of crossover. There’s an interesting effect achieved here by cutting on the bang, using a simultaneous scene to establish necessary exposition, and then returning to the original scene: It keeps the tension in the moment high while clearly communicating the stakes.

Another great example of crossover is when Agent Smith removes his earpiece. That moment both escalates the stakes in this scene while simultaneously having consequences in the simultaneous scenes playing out with Neo and Trinity (since he takes himself “off the grid”).

SCENE 2 – BANG: “You’re going to kill him. Kill Morpheus.” “It has to be done.”

The agenda is: Will Neo believe the Oracle?

Superficially the scene seems to be about whether to unplug Morpheus or rescue him, but that decision is pretty firmly subservient to the question of whether or not Neo will believe the Oracle; whether or not he will embrace the choice she says he’s capable of making.

The other thing to note here is that this agenda is not resolved at the end of this scene. The question of whether or not Neo will believe the Oracle remains unanswered for several more scenes as the stakes continue to escalate.

SCENE 3 – BANG: “Okay. So what do you need? Besides a miracle.”

The agenda is: What is Neo’s plan?

This is a pretty simple, very short, and extremely effective color scene. Viewed from one angle, it’s actually a very simple example of the principle of the second lull: The first lull happens when Neo asks for, “Guns. Lots of guns.” The hypothetical GM doesn’t leave the scene, however. Instead we sustain through Trinity escalating the stakes (“No one has ever done something like this.”). Once she’s done that, we hit a second lull and the hypothetical GM cuts away.

SCENE 4 – BANG: The metal detector beeps.

The agenda here is: Can they rescue Morpheus?

This bang is a beautiful example of understatement. You know he’s loaded to bear. The stakes have been cranked up repeatedly over the last 5 minutes of the film. So the only thing you need to trigger an explosion of awesome is a simple beeping noise.

This scene, as combat, is obviously a textbook example of slow time… quite literally so with the Wachowskis’ use of bullet time and slow motion cinematography.

This is not the end of the scene.

Instead, we sharp cut back to the interrogation of Morpheus multiple times over the next minute or so in order to smoothly use abstract time while hitting the interesting beats of this scene. (“I think they’re trying to save him,” it should be noted, is another example of crossover.)

And the scene still isn’t over. This single combat sequence has flowed smoothly from lobby to elevator to roof. But I want to call attention to this interaction:

Trinity: How did you do that?
Neo: Do what?
Trinity: You moved like they do. I’ve never seen anyone move that fast.
Neo: Not fast enough.

It’s a short little beat, but notice that this is a callback to the agenda of Scene 2. The question of whether or not Neo would believe the Oracle was left unresolved.

Let’s call this an agenda echo. If this were an actual RPG session, the players of Neo and Trinity would have been the ones to introduce this particular echo. But as a GM you can also use little mini-bangs like “I’ve never seen anyone move that fast” to call back unresolved agendas that are haunting your session.

At this moment, all the crossover elements that have been getting sprinkled through these scenes are abruptly brought to a climax as both scenes are resolved simultaneously and we discover that “Will Morpheus break?” and “Can they rescue Morpheus?” are actually both the same question. (Or, at least, both have the same answer.)

This true unification of two simultaneous scenes into a single conclusion answering both agendas won’t happen often, but when it does the payoff is huge and immensely satisfying.

Before the scene comes to an end, however, the mini-bang of “He’s not going to make it” triggers another seemingly impossible feat that calls back to whether or not Neo is the One. This moment lasts from “I knew it, he is the One” until Morpheus asks, “Do you believe it now, Trinity?” Which is, in itself, an incredibly elegant moment because the Wachowskis are layering in the Trinity/Neo love story. And that love story is also linked to the question of Neo being the One (due to the prophecy the Oracle gave to Trinity).

SCENE 5 – THE BANG: “They’re not out yet.”

The agenda is: Will Neo escape?

Note the interesting technique here of delivering the bang at what is essentially the end of the previous scene and then performing a sharp cut to the scene itself. I’d never really considered doing something like that in an RPG until just now, but I think it has a lot of potential.

A little later in this scene there’s an escalating bang when Trinity says, “I want to tell you something… Everything the Oracle told me has come true. Everything but this.” This has the effect of connecting this scene to the escalating meta-scene of, “Will Neo believe the Oracle?”

SCENE 6 – THE BANG: “Agent Smith shoots the phone. Trinity just barely escaped. But your exit has been destroyed.”

This is a new bang. And what makes this scene particularly fascinating is that it links, “Will Neo believe the Oracle?” explicitly to “Will Neo escape?” through his physical mastery of the Matrix and his interactions with the agents. (“He’s beginning to believe.”)

Now all of these agendas – Will Neo escape? Will Neo defeat Smith? Will Trinity love Neo? Will Neo believe the Oracle? Will Neo become the One? – have been welded into a single mega-agenda. Everything between this moment and Neo’s escape from the Matrix is a single scene despite, once again, a multitude of location shifts. (Note that the individual agendas will be knocked down one at a time as we build to the culmination of the mega-agenda: Neo abandons the identity of Anderson. Trinity confesses her love. Neo ascends the rules of the Matrix. Neo defeats Smith. Neo escapes.)

The other thing of interest here is how this single combat scene flows fluidly across all four types of pacing timing: Slow time during the fight in the subway. Then a sharp cut to the street corner where Neo steals a phone. Now time from that moment until he reaches the crowd, then a shift back to slow time for the chase through the apartment building. Abstract time moves him to the hotel, now time takes him into the hotel, and then a final culmination of slow time (once again emphasized with actual slow motion) as he enters the hotel room (and lasting until the EMP blast).

SCENE 7 – THE BANG: “The Proximity Alarm screams. There are Sentinels. You’ve got five, maybe six minutes.”

One could argue that this is actually the same scene despite its completely different locale (since the agenda is so closely linked), but in practical terms this is probably another simultaneous scene with multiple crossovers (Tank’s assistance, the need for Neo to escape before the EMP blast, Trinity’s kiss) that serve to raise the stakes in Neo’s mega-agenda scene.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

About 15 years ago, there was a time when The Matrix pretty much perpetually lived in my DVD player. I was living in a studio apartment at the time and, whenever the mood would strike me, I’d hit the play button and let the movie spool out. I’ve probably watched the movie – with varying degrees of attention – several hundred times. Like pretty much everything the Wachowskis have done, it’s a brilliant and revolutionary piece of cinema.

Back in 2007, I mentioned the movie as part of Random GM Tips: Running Combat. I recommended that GMs watch movies like The Matrix – or 300 or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – while narrating the action as it occurred on the screen; as if they were describing it to their gaming group. The idea was that it would build your action vocabulary, break you out of your habits, and expand the dynamic range of your combat descriptions.

My initial intention in film banging The Matrix was primarily to focus on how they wove scenes – particularly combat scenes – across multiple locations. As I began breaking the film apart, however, I discovered just how much the Wachowskis also had to teach me about effective pacing. I was not anticipating the creation of new concepts like agenda echos, meta-scenes, mini-bangs, and mega-agendas when I started writing this essay. I’m not even entirely sure how best to realize some of these incredibly complex ideas at the gaming table.

Which I guess, ultimately, brings me back to what I said at the beginning of The Art of Pacing: RPGs are a fresh-faced medium. And we still have a lot to learn about how to master this new art.

Go to The Art of Pacing