Storytelling Arcs: Radio...

On Monday, I began discussing storytelling arcs as seen in other media. Today, I'd like to take a look at everyone's favorite yesteryear storytelling device, the radio. For many years, our grandparents generation would tune in to radio serials, which told stories in a very different way than television or movies do today.

Situation and Interaction

Most radio programs are structured in a narrated situation/interaction style of prose. Often, you will find a dissociated narrator to the story that sets up a scene, wherein voice actors play out their roles for a small vignette and then the plot progresses. These small plot pieces are sometimes last the entire length of the episode, and the listener must continue to tune it to see how the story slowly unfolds.

To my mind this format is easily digestable, fun, and interesting because it focuses on strong character interaction. The narration is second to the interplay between the voice actors and this can directly map to your roleplaying campaign. This approach really focuses on roleplay, and has the added benefit of being quite easy for the DM to manage. Simply put your characters in a situation, give them some sort of a catalyst, and let the player interaction both entertain and color the story for you.

The main difference between the classic radio storyline and your campaign is that you will have to be sensitive to how long the "episode" lasts. If your players get tired of talking to one another, are confused, lack direction, or are just plain ready to move on you have to be prepared with the next piece of campaign content to continue the story along, but knowing when to let your roleplayers take center stage can really enhance your gaming experience.

For those of you that have never heard any radio serials before, I found that OpenCulture has provided old Abbott and Costello shows, The Lone Ranger, and more for your listening pleasure.

Roleplayers Trying to Survive the Office

I came to the realization that my desk has actually been overrun with tiny paper elementals that are constantly in battle for supremacy of my work space.

For those of you who haven't imagined the horror of my desk, it is in fact covered with several piles of paper which are growing at a distressing rate (the aforementioned paper elementals). They have taken over all visible flat surfaces of my desk, four in-boxes, three file cabinet drawers, and they are making serious inroads in their goal to take over the floor space surrounding my chair.

I joined in battle and attempted to eradicate this infestation, and what a spectacular battle it was. I subdued many of paper elementals with the use of my +1 Stapler of Organization, which does not completely eliminate the problem but certainly makes it easier to manage.

The paper elementals fought back valiantly, summoning assistance from the distant lands of the Fax Machine and the Email, and both factions provided reinforcements when the battle looked to be turning to my favor. In the end, I took 1d4 damage to the webbing of my left thumb as one of the tricky little devils bit me.

It is with a heavy heart that I report on my inability to properly defeat this infestation of the paper elementals. It is my hope that when I re-join battle, I will be able to summon the divine power of the Document Retention God, who will grant me the ability to throw away these horrible little monsters.

Pray for me, friends, that I may be victorious.

Storytelling Arcs: Television...

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the crafting of story arcs and how this is best achieved in a roleplaying environment. Before long I started considering the story telling mechanisms employed by other mediums.

Let's have a look at the moving picture victrolla first

Before I launch into this too far, I'm going to be totally transparent: I finally got around to watching the season premiere of Heroes and that is where much of this discussion stems from. I will attempt to discuss things at a macro level and will avoid spoiling things. Consider yourself warned.

Some dramatic television shows tend to go for the long story arc that will span an entire season. This was similar to the first season of Heroes, however in tailoring a story this way you set yourself up for either a big payoff or a big let down. Most D&D campaigns I have been in build their storylines in this fashion, for better or worse. I have found that unless something unexpected happens at the end, most of my players fail to remember how the campaign resolved itself but remember more the actions of their characters along the way.

Other shows tend to break things up into parallel storylines, which interweave and wrap around each other from time to time and all aim toward a common endpoint. This is somewhat similar to the second season of Heroes, but the downside to this style of storytelling is confusion and the fact that when you're focusing on one set of stories the rest of the characters (your players in the RPG world) are left out of the mix unless you involve them in some other fashion.

Since there's not much data yet on the latest season of Heroes, I would like to look at the sum of the existing parts that we have seen so far. The third season has started out in more of a "pressure cooker" mode. In this method of storytelling, a lot of activity and plot happens in a short time. This is intended to put the familiar (and even not-so-familiar) characters on a path so you can get ready to follow them.

This method is usually best reserved for the start of campaign or restart of campaign sessions, where you must quickly reestablish the plot and create some compelling reasons to stay tuned. This mechanism is also quite useful when you've noticed that the interest in your campaign is waning or your player characters have recently gotten into something they are not interested in but had to finish by virtue of the task.

A good real-world example is the time I combined a compelling plot point with a pre-constructed module and the module proved to be much longer than I expected. By the end, all the players wanted to do was get done so they could move on, and the time spent finishing the module was grating on them. Once we got out of the module, I kind've hit the fast-forward button in order to get them moving forward along the plot again and the new developments made things more interesting for them again.

Stay tuned for more!

I will periodically be selecting a different medium and trying to find out how we can learn by the way they tell their stories. By standing on the backs of these giants, we might be able to build our own stories in a better way!