As we all know, RPGs are not movies and the Principle of Using Linear Mediums as RPG Examples reminds us that there are fundamental differences between the books, movies, TV shows, and graphic novels we love and the fundamentally interactive medium of the roleplaying game.
(Or, at least, there should be.)
Nonetheless, who among us hasn’t dreamed of playing through our favorite stories? Of actually experiencing an adventure that we’ve seen or read? Or maybe we’re just GMs with a session to prep and a desperate need to find some quick and easy inspiration. Either way, what would it mean to take a traditional, linear story and adapt it to your gaming table?
ADAPTING CHARACTERS
Let’s start with the relatively easy proposition of bringing your favorite character to the gaming table: Luke Skywalker. Lara Croft. Sherlock Holmes. Sister Frevisse. Oedipus. Whoever has captured your imagination.
To start, you’ll want to identify the precise version of the character you want to play: The Luke Skywalker who was living with his aunt and uncle on a moisture farm is a very different character from the one who confronted the Emperor on the second Death Star. Other characters will literally exist in multiple versions, drawn from different myths or continuities.
(Actually, upon reflection, that’s also true of Luke Skywalker.)
On a similar note, rather than capturing an existing vision of a character, you might actually set out to create your own variation of the character: Out of all the Batgirls which have existed, you’re creating your own unique gestalt Batgirl.
(You can do this even with characters who currently exist in only one canonical form.)
In practice, this will quickly become true in any case, because it’s of vital importance to recognize that your character’s destiny from the medium you’re adapting them from does not exist: From whatever point in their personal continuity you may be drawing them, once they’ve been injected into the gaming table, their future is unwritten. Maybe your Luke Skywalker falls to the Dark Side (or never becomes a Jedi at all). Maybe your Sherlock Holmes never meets Moriarty. You’re playing to find out.
ADAPTING PLOT
Now let’s swap to the Game Master’s side of the table.
Obviously we don’t want to prep a plot, so the first thing we’ll want to do is get rid of the plot from our source material.
Step 1: Remove the main characters and every action they take.
Step 2: What you’ll be left with is a situation. Identify the best structure for modeling the situation. (A node-based structure will probably work 4 times out of 5.)
Step 3: The original story had a hook for getting the characters involved. Re-hook it for your PCs. (In some cases you’ll be able to use the same hook that the film/book did. But often you’ll get better results customizing the hook to your PCs.)
Unsurprisingly, this looks a lot like how I rebuild railroaded adventures, as described in How to Remix an Adventure. (And you can check out that essay for some specific details of how to identify and implement various scenario structures.)
A place where this can get tricky is that a lot of films/books will actually dedicate a large chunk of narrative to “getting the group together.” These sections are usually heavily dependent on the specific characters and the specific choices those characters make, plus often a large helping of random coincidence. You can easily get lost trying to recreate those specific story beats at the table. (And even if you do successfully recreate them, it usually means that some players are sitting around for an hour or more waiting for the narrative to onboard their character. Which obviously isn’t ideal.)
For example, in Star Wars the “adventuring party” is Leia, R2-D2, C3-PO, Luke, Obi-Wan, Han, and Chewie. It not only takes half the movie to bring them all together, but it’s all based off of a chain of very specific events (the droids have to be sold to Luke, R2-D2 has to escape, they have to specifically hire the Millennium Falcon as opposed to any other ship, etc.).
Similarly, in Lord of the Rings you have to get all the way to Rivendell before the final adventuring party is assembled.
All of this, of course, should disappear when you strip out the main characters and the actions they take. It’s just that in the specific case of “bringing the party together,” you might be surprised by just how much stuff hits the cutting room floor.
EXAMPLE: STAR WARS
Let’s actually zoom in on Star Wars for a moment as an example of what this might look like in actual practice.
Having removed all of our main characters, what’s the actual premise of the film?
To get the Death Star plans to Alderaan.
Okay, so what’s the situation at the beginning of the movie?
- The plans have been stolen.
- Darth Vader is in pursuit onboard a star destroyer
- The Death Star exists (and has a hidden weakness).
- The rebel base is on Yavin IV.
- There are rebel contacts on Alderaan.
What about all the stuff on Tattooine? Well, its relevance kind of depends on whether or not we ever go to Tattooine in the first place, and that will likely depend on how we exactly we frame the beginning of our adventure and hook the PCs into it.
For example, one option would be to back the clock up and have the PCs be the ones who steal the plans in the first place. This could very easily result in them never going to Tattooine at all, since they could just as easily attempt to flee from Vader’s star destroyer to Naboo or Kashyyyk or Hoth or Cato Neimoidia or an asteroid belt.
Alternatively, maybe you launch the adventure in media res when the group’s escape pod lands on Tattooine: They need to avoid the Imperial soldiers who are pursuing them and they need to get off-planet quick. If that’s the case, we can add:
- Their escape pod lands in an area of Tattooine with moisture farms. (We can prep an example moisture farm.)
- Jawa transports crisscross the area. (They like to steal droids.)
- The PCs need a ship: Mos Eisley is where they can hire or steal a ship. (We could perhaps prep three different ships that they might be able to take.)
- There’s a local crime syndicate run by the Hutts.
Another option would be that the PCs actually have two goals: Steal the Death Star plans and also recruit General Obi-Wan Kenobi, a retired hero of the Clone Wars (who we are now considering an NPC instead of a PC). We could even imagine the PCs perhaps deciding to recruit Obi-Wan Kenobi first.
Or maybe the adventure hook is “recruit Obi-Wan Kenobi” and then, unexpectedly, they’re beamed the Death Star plans as they arrive at Tattooine… and now there’s a star destroyer dropping out of hyperspace on top of them.
Notice how all of these different hooks are going to frame and shape the adventure in slightly different ways, particularly once the players’ choices start interacting with them, but most of them are still going to play out across the top of the same situation-based prep.
On that note, what scenario structures would we actually use to prep our tabletop Star Wars adventure?
Probably several.
First, if we include stealing the Death Star plans, that’s almost certainly a heist.
After they steal the plans, their goal is to deliver them to Alderaan. We could:
- Let them go straight to Alderaan. (Skip ahead to their arrival.)
- Come up with an explanation for why they have to go to another planet on their way to Alderaan. (Fuel?) For this you might just show them a hyperspace network map, let them choose their course, and then have the encounter with Vader’s star destroyer happen, followed by prepping whatever planet they end up on.
- Radically expand this part of the adventure by turning it into a full-fledged McGuffin keep-away.
The advantage of prepping this for your own table is that you don’t need to prep every single planet they could conceivably go to: At the end of the heist, have them choose their escape vector and end the session. Then prep whatever planet the star destroyer attack will strand them on.
(Or, alternatively, have them choose their escape vector, trigger the star destroyer encounter, and then cut as their ship/escape pod crash lands on the planet.)
Regardless, there’s now a clear prep vector: They need a ship. The ship will take them to Alderaan. They’ll discover that Alderaan has been destroyed and see the Death Star (which might result in their ship being tractored in).
However that plays out, they now have to go to Plan B, which is delivering the Death Star plans to the only other rebel base they know about: Yavin IV. The rebel base is pretty straightforward in terms of prep (a brief overview plus some NPCs).
For the Death Star itself, you’ll likely want to prep:
- What happens if the PCs end up inside the Death Star. (See Raiding the Death Star for what that prep would look like.)
- The Trench Run (as a series of spacefighter combat encounters, possibly with some fluid tactical choices about which squads are dealing with which obstacles to clear the run).
Alternatively, you could forego the Trench Run, declare that the “secret weakness” of the Death Star requires a commando raid of the station, and collapse everything into your Death Star raid scenario. Or maybe there are two different options and the players can choose which one they want to pursue.
Notice that, other than the mission objective (“deliver the Death Star plans to Alderaan”), we’re not assuming that things will play out the same way that they did in the movie. We’re just putting the various pieces of the scenario into play: Rebel ops on Alderaan and Yavin IV. Death Star plans are here. This is the route (or routes) to Alderaan from where the Death Star plans are. The Death Star has just blown up Alderaan.
And you’re ready to play to find out.
If you want to see another example of how to do this featuring The Lord of the Rings, read this.
DISGUISING YOUR PURLOINED ADAPTATION
What if your players recognize the source material you’re cribbing from?
Well, sometimes that’s the point. But if it’s not, then you just need to make sure that you either pick source material the players aren’t familiar with and/or scrub off the serial numbers.
This can be a bit harder than it looks. (Changing the One Ring to a magical tiara might throw them off the scent, but the volcano named Mt. Bane might tip them off.) One of the surest ways to hide your inspiration, though, is a complete genre shift.
For example, replace “spaceship” with “spelljammer,” “Mos Eisley” with “Luskan,” and “Death Star” with “Illithid uber-mind.”
They won’t suspect a thing.
Great post, really useful. But the last link ‘Raiding the Death Star’ doesn’t seem to go anywhere?
Fixed! WordPress apparently went a little wonky there.
The Film Reroll podcast is entirely based on the premise of adapting linear stories into RPG form. They have actually done Star Wars (as a sequel to their version of Rogue One – https://www.filmreroll.com/?p=536), and reading this strongly reminds me of their game, down to considering Obi-Wan an NPC and having multiple ships to take off Tatooine.
Strictly speaking, Leia and Obi-Wan weren’t in the party together. I think one player got tired of playing a Jedi and decided to be a warrior princess instead. Obi-Wan became an NPC.
Another great article, and it reflects a lot of the same thoughts I’ve had on the subject over the years.
One place where I struggle, though, is that there’s still a certain je ne sais quoi that gets lost when you try to rip out the guts of a plot like this. You can play through a simulation of the literal events of Star Wars this way, to use your example, but you don’t get the *feeling* of Star Wars.
Because ultimately a plot isn’t just a sequence of events; the events are designed to evoke a specific sequence of thoughts+emotions in order to create a particular narrative experience. And it’s that experience that we’re looking to recapture.
You raise the great point about how there are many different Lukes depending on which point in the story you’re pulling him from. But the experience that we’re often looking for is the satisfaction of seeing Luke’s journey from one version of himself to another.
@ sai #5
To a certain extent, I think the problem you raise is unavoidable. As I believe Justin has discussed elsewhere, a well-made non-interactive narrative like a book or a movie will always have tighter pacing and narrative and a better-shaped emotional arc than even the best roleplaying games, that’s just inherent in the difference between the two media.
What you get in exchange is the excitement and wonder of playing in (or guiding) a story that you can genuinely influence, the power to make real choices and see the consequences of those choices play out. That’s why railroading is such a dumb idea, it trades the unique selling point of a roleplaying game for something that non-interactive media still do better.
On the gripping hand, I look at Star Wars and see an example (however theoretical) of how tight the pacing can look in hindsight when the GM rolls with the punches of even very unexpected results. Or, more accurately, that’s what I see in The Empire Strikes Back.
Think about it: the main characters fail virtually every single thing they attempt during that movie. No outcome which is remotely up to chance goes their way, from random encounters (“sure, you can hide out on the asteroid but there’s both mynocks AND a starship-eating death worm”) to NPC reactions (“Lando smiles and goes for a hug…”) to perception checks (“…he seems friendly and relaxed”) to combat (“welp, I guess the other speeders get shot down, and with no Rebels left in the air the Imps quickly destroy the shield generators – strike teams will land within minutes”). They fail at big PC plans so often, most people forget stuff like the two different attempts to intercept Fett and rescue Han.
And as a result, the movie is… the most beloved in the franchise?
I think that’s because, even as the heroes take one loss after another, they never lose that sense of action. And that momentum is something we can learn from for the tabletop! A lot of people seem to get confused or defensive about the idea of failing forwards, but Empire is a masterclass on how to use it really well. Let’s say that our metafictional GM doesn’t want to have the PCs get captured by The Empire (we had a jailbreak when Leia joined the party just a few sessions ago, after all). As such, they are expecting the group’s ace pilot to escape from the Star Destroyer closing in on the base. This… doesn’t go to plan.
Han blows his first roll so badly, he’s left without a working hyperdrive (depending on system, that might be a narrative consequence of a failed piloting check, or the result of failing some mechanical skill during repairs earlier). As a PC, he immediately comes up an insanely risky backup plan, but fails to defy the odds – though the fighters the GM brought in as a more manageable challenge than a capital ship are destroyed, the Falcon takes even more damage and has to land for repairs. Even worse, the GM doesn’t see how mere asteroids could be a threat to the Star Destroyer, so that remains unchanged – the GM rules that the ship pulls back briefly for unrelated reasons, to give the PCs a sporting chance.
Of course, they then blow that chance and have to take off without a working hyperdrive. At this point, like most PCs on a losing streak, the group resorts to stealth. They fail this check as well – rather than having the group get either captured or atomized (and out of ways to reasonably prolong the chase any further), the GM invents a bounty hunter (“who’s the guy who tracked us?” “oh, um… they’re wearing totally concealing armor, you can’t tell more than that”) who not only sees through the stealth, but beats Han to wherever he’s headed.
That would probably set up a thrilling skirmish against the hunter (and maybe a few mooks) to stop him before he can get word to the Empire. Unfortunately, our PCs continue their run of bad rolls, and it turns out that Han’s contact is working against him, and nobody notices anything amiss on Cloud City until it’s too late. At this point, there’s no helping the PCs’ capture, but we still don’t want that jailbreak, so the GM has Vader keep them in place for torture, prolonging their period outside of a real Imperial stronghold and justifying Luke finding them nowhere near the rendezvous point now that his player is back.
But, of course, neither Luke nor Leia succeed at their attempts to catch up with Han’s frozen body at Cloud City (Luke gets pretty badly trashed all around, really, and the group’s hacker goes to critical health after failing at that most dreaded skill check: opening a door), and we do finally wind up in the jailbreak scenario the GM wanted to avoid, but spiced up by involving a theatrical crime boss who will use cool setpieces which would be total nonsense for the established nature of the Empire.
Even though our GM had their back against the wall a bit there, they succeeded at the real goal: every failed roll meaningfully changed the situation and presented the players with a different set of choices, but none of them could be accused of lacking impact or not having real consequences.