This is something I’ve alluded to enough times that I think the time has come to write a definitive version of it so that I can just link back to it in the future.
One of the problems with analyzing the artistic techniques of RPG play is that it’s difficult to establish common reference points: If I want to talk about what effective poetry looks like, I can hand you a copy of Shakespeare or Kipling. If I want to talk about what shitty filmmaking looks like, we can all pop a copy of a Michael Bay movie in the Blu-Ray player.
But when it comes to RPGs, things aren’t that simple. Even groups running identical scenarios, for example, won’t necessarily have similar experiences.
This often means that when we’re discussing RPGs we often reach for examples from other mediums. I do this prominently, for example, in my Film Banging essays. This has the advantage of giving us a common reference point, but the danger is that these other mediums are linear and RPGs aren’t (or, at least, shouldn’t be). So when we use films or books as fodder for our RPG discussions it can be very easy for this linear nature to leak into the discussion: We know that Luke Skywalker is “destined” to go to the Death Star and blow it up because we’ve seen the movie. So if I talk about Obi-Wan saying that he wants Luke to join him on Alderaan as an example of what a scenario hook looks like, am I saying that every scenario needs to be a railroad? That every scenario hook has a predetermined outcome?
When we’re looking at these cross-medium examples, therefore, we need to be mindful of this risk. I generally try to mitigate the problem by discussing outcomes that are different from those found in the original work. If we’re talking about RPGs then Luke might save the Death Star, Boromir might succeed in stealing the One Ring from Frodo, and John Harker might kill Dracula before he ever leaves Transylvania. But we can still talk about Mos Eisley as an urbancrawl, the One Ring as a magical McGuffin, and Dracula as a memorable villain.
So if you see me using examples from other mediums when I’m talking about RPGs, try to remember that — at least for the moment — we’re going to pretend that these stories aren’t linear experiences. Even though, in reality, we know the outcome of each scene has already been predetermined, we can still use the example of the scene (or the story) without embracing that predeterminism in our play.
What about sports as an example? There’s similar excitement from uncertain outcome.
I think examples from books, movies, and videogames work best for individual scenes. They make nice examples for situations in which the players can find themselves, which they have to deal with and make descisions.
Which is why they don’t really work for entire stories. Players should be free to deal with situations like they want and make the descisions they want. Structuring and planning out all the possible branches the adventure might take is impossible. NPCs might need to be replaced, some planned content skipped, and new detours added on relatively short notice. Story structure is completely unsuitable for use as templates for games.
This makes me wonder how feasable actual linear gameplay is. Videogames, especially point-and-click-adventures, often are quite linear. Even great ones. Others have a linear red herring or main story (even when different “alignment” options are presented), but let the player navigate relatively freely through the single scenes. I’m looking explicitly at the old Infinity Engine games (Icewind Dale was extremely linear, but Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment also had a linear story insofar as most important scenes were connected in a linear way, although you could urband/dungeon/hexcrawl in a non-linear fashion in between). Some open world-games may offer a more node-based approach. But most video game RPGs don’t go beyond what looks quite like a Hero Quest in Glorantha. I think those kinds of Hero Quests can be fun, even if you know what lies before you, if the outcome and the means to achieve them are not completely determined.
Hmmm. Gotta say, the use of the word linear doesn’t seem quite right to me here. As a mathematician, linear conjures all sorts of one-dimensional imagery for me that doesn’t really have anything to do with predeterminism. I keep thinking back to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Emissary”, in which Sisko tries to explain our existence in linear time to non-linear aliens. It’s not that we’re deterministic, it’s just that there’s a past and a future and only one thing happens at a time.
I think we’re really talking more about “scripted” media, where the outcomes are known at the start, or at best “deterministic” systems, where given the same starting point, the outcome (while not necessarily known) is always the same.
[…] that being a better story writer makes a better GM. As Justin Alexander already has pointed out, there are dangers of using linear mediums as RPG examples but role-playing games traditionally have been inspired by fiction writing. As there are […]