Writing, playing, drama

[viktor_haag]

Thanks to toddalcott, we notice Mamet on Drama (more specifically, the writing staff's job of writing the television drama, The Unit). I am not robin_d_laws, so if you want well reasoned theoretical examination of the application of scripted narratives (as for TV, film, theatre) for gaming, you should read his blog.


Two things presented themselves as notable from Mamet's memo;

• Each scene starts with the heroes there because they're trying to get what they need.

• Each scene ends when the heroes fail at this scene's depicted attempt to get what they need.

Also, Mamet's definition of scripted drama is perhaps instructive:

Drama ... is the quest of the hero[es] to overcome those things which¹ prevent [them] from achieving a specific, acute goal.

To me, the (his) emphasis on acute is important: if the characters' needs are not acute, then there's little drama to be had in playing out the frustrations in the way of those needs.

What can we take away from Mamet's notions to apply to your game this week?

First, it seems to me that if your PCs don't have an acute need, you don't have anything driving them forward: the need could be one they all share (find the Baron's daughter before she's consumed, or worse, by the local tribe of Orc), or they could be individual needs (Mouser, as you walk down the quay this fine sunny morning, you spy your mortal enemy Brindle waddling down the gang-plank of a recently arrived ship; his head swivels in your direction, his eyes lock with yours, and his hand immediately shifts to his knife...), but in either case, if your PC group doesn't have some immediate, acute need to fill, then you'd better find one to throw at them fast (and thus the "Ninjas burst through the door" solution).

Second, encounters don't exist to provide PCs with success: they exist to frustrate the players and prevent them from resolving their immediate needs: once an encounter resolves a need, you better have a new one to throw on the table.

Thirdly, the latency between the resolution of one need and the arrival of the new one provides the pacing of the narrative (I suspect).

So -- what do you do for this week's game? First, figure out what the heroes' immediate, acute need is. Second, figure out a good way to ensure that they fail and enumerate that way mechanically. (Don't resort to the cheapness of deus ex machinae. The mechanical enumeration step tries to ensure that you know how challenging that insurance is contrary to player ability, so you can signal difficulty for the players appropriately: impossible death traps that players have no hope of avoiding or overcoming are not "enumerated mechanically" ... statting up an impossible death trap is meaningless; you might as well just say "you die". Mechanical enumeration of a frustration ensures that you have an in-game way to afford the players a way to defeat you and your failure insurance.)

At the end of each session, you might try asking your players what their characters need to do next. This might get you a head start on planning for the following sessions.

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¹ You'd think that Mamet would know a restrictive clause when he sees one. I write it off as the kind of slip that happens in passionate email or memo composition all too frequently.

Comments

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

I think the ideas can be applied to other forms of fiction as well.

He's deeply in the try/fail cycle; I'm sure there are kinds of fiction that don't make use of it, but not common ones (I can't think of any I'd call stories, anyway).

The tendency is to say something like, "Every failure will push the characters closer to this, the ONE TRUE WAY of achieving the need," but I think it's safer to say that even if the goal of the scene is achieved, until the last scene, the one that fulfils the need, even a success only reveals another problem to be solved, another need.

That way you stay away from ONE TRUE WAY thinking (certainly a bugaboo of mine). You do have to make failures educational, though, and reincorporating the causes of failure so that the characters can then beat them is also educational (and satisfying for the characters).

I'm not sure I can do it, but I see the virtue in it.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Robin's currently working game models seem built on the try/fail cycle: HeroQuest v2 explicitly had that as the model underlying gameplay structure, to the point that narrative positioning heavily informed mechanical enumeration of opposition (i.e. if your heroes were due for a set-back, suddenly that party of Orc they're facing got a whole lot tougher; if they're due for a success, then the Orc tribe should be much more beatable). It was an interesting notion, but I haven't yet gotten to try playing HQ2 for an extended period of time: my playtest run was about three months, and I can at least confirm that it made setup and prep very easy... 8)

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

even a success only reveals another problem to be solved
This was described by Sandy Petersen as the onion model, right? Each mystery's solution shows you progress - into another mystery. I never figured out if you were peeling the onion (getting to the mystery at the core) or if you started in the middle and found yourself successively in larger skins. I think I prefer the latter.

Mechanically, of course, it's just a succession of problems, like any game with levels. Perhaps the trick is to present that succession as progress to the players.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

There's something to this point, I agree.

On the other hand, I think leaning on this type of "onion" plotting can lead to exhaustion on the part of the PCs. I know from our own gaming experience (doc_lemming and I are in the same, long-standing gaming group) that there have been campaigns over the years that began to drag a bit under the overwhelming mysteriousness of the "real story" going on. Sort of like the X-Files Season Eight effect where the lack of resolution to things tends to eventually take its toll on player expectation that anything will ever, really, be revealed.