Theme as lodestone

Any

Yesterday I mentioned theme as lodestone, and in some ways the idea of “theme” in a roleplaying game is ludicrous. If the players can do anything how can you enforce a theme?

And frankly, the discussion of theme is so confused in English classes and writing books throughout the English-speaking world that it's totally understandable if someone says, “Man versus Nature? What does that mean? ‘Love makes you do stupid things’? What noise is this?”

Okay. Here are thoughts from an unsuccessful author and game writer.

Most statements of themes given in English classes are banal and trite statements. If they summarized the novel or story, there wouldn't be a reason to write the novel or story. So in that sense, &lquo;theme” is a pile of crap. I strongly suspect that theme is of little use as a post mortem thing. Nobody has ever finished a novel and said, “Wow. What a great statement of ‘Man versus the world!’”

However, I think that it's undeniable that well-crafted fiction has a mood. That mood can be supported by the setting, by the characters, and by the events.

• A story that takes place in Edge City is very different from a story that takes place Utopia Village, British Columbia.
• A story where all the men are crap to the female protagonist is different from a story where some of the men are helping the female protagonist.
• A story that starts with a bus jumping the sidewalk and killing the protagonist's spouse is different from a story that begins with the first evidence of a years-long plan.

(In a sense this part of the trend in fiction of piling on small details. It does require an educated audience, but that's a discussion for a different day.)

I think that “lodestone” or “shibboleth” is perhaps a better metaphor but I think of it as the wall of a handball court. (Why, I dunno; I don't even play handball.) You're a writer; you have a billion ideas. You throw ideas at the wall of theme and the ones that bounce back in the right direction are the ones you take.

In this sense, “theme” is a creative tool, not an analytic tool. Your statement of theme might be as focused as “Bob is an abusive dad and his kids can’t escape” or as broad as “Men are crap.” It's a sieve; it's a measuring stick (ldquo;You must be this tall to sack the city”).

By picking a theme or mood early in the creation of a story or adventure, you can discard ideas that don't fit. By calling it something separate than setting or character, we also make it larger and more influential.

I hope that helps in using theme. I'll expand this later, but now it's time to go to work.

Random Adventure Structures

Any

I'm reading through the Covetous Poet's Adventure Creator (that's not the full name, but it will do), and they're strongly influenced by story structures, so the point where when creating a pre-written adventure, he divides it up into overall, act 1, act 2, and act 3.

In one way, this resonates with me because I've also absorbed so much of those articles about structure (without fully believing them: those structures are not the only way to write a story, and there's a lovely article in the Guardian, I think, exposing the lifework of the late Blake Snyder, the author of Save The Cat...I'll try to find the link again and append it. Edit: here it is, someplace else: less a scholarly article and more of a rant.)

So recognizing that these structures are not the only way to write a story and it shouldn't be a straitjacket, Covertous Poet organizes things so you have an overarching idea (who's my villain? What's he or she or it trying to do? What theme am I using as a lodestone when I have ideas?), a set of events in the first act, and a set of problems or challenges in the second act. In the third act, you try and bring it all together, and I haven't yet run across much guidance on that.

Caveat: As I've gotten older, it is much more difficult for me to absorb information from PDFs and that's the only way I have Adventure Creator. PDFs are far superior if I'm searching for a specific bit of information...they have a search function, with all the good and bad that entails...but for initially absorbing it, not so good. Soon I will provide a review of PGC 1: The Blood Saga, an adventure the author asked me to review years ago and I couldn't get into it because it was PDF. It took me literally years to realize I could print it out and read it. Apologies to the author.

Anyway, CP has broken it down into three acts: beginning, middle, end. But one of the things I've noticed with random roll adventures is that they can go on forever: in Mythic GME for instance you might not roll the scene setup that says "Close a thread" and you keep adding stuff and adding stuff, and you've got this unwieldy mess.

Here's the four parts as devised by Syd Field, I think, and modified by others, such as Larry Brooks:

1. We get involved. This is the part where we see what “normal” is and have some kind of event that sucks the characters in. In a movie or a book, this can be quite protracted, but for other things, like TV shows where we know what normal is, it can be quite short. Also, stories that are mostly about people meddling in the affairs of others (cop shows, doctor shows, superhero series) can get by with a brief description in a scene: “He was fine this morning, doc, and then this afternoon he complained of some vague pain in his abdomen and fell over!” In these schemes, this usually ends when your hero is committed to helping.
2. We react or investigate. The heroes flail around, discovering that everything they know is wrong. Well, maybe not everything, but this is the “Yes, but” stage of improv: If they do something right, it gets them in bigger trouble. This part typically ends when they figure out what they're up against and are correct, and traditionally it's a bigger problem than they thought.
3. We give it our best shot and fail Well, now they know what to do, but something stops them, either in fiction because they haven't resolved some inner problem or in adventures because they aren't in the right place or haven't collected enough plot coupons or something. This ends when they lose catastrophically, about three-quarters of the way through the adventure. This is the last place where you can introduce new characters.
4. We resolve the problem and win. The obstacle is removed and the heroes achieve victory. Nothing new gets introduced here; it's all re-incorporation and re-interpretation. Because there was a mention back in part 2 that Super Secret Spy Agency is interested, it's okay to discover that the hero's sweetie is actually a spy operating under deep cover, but if you don't have that mention, it's iffy. A new device? Did you mention that somebody was working on it in an earlier part?

(My summary is snarky, but this works. I just want to emphasize that it's not the only way that works. Still, if what you want (as most roleplaying adventures want) is something that feels complete, this is a good model. Heck, it's in one of the Star Trek narrator guides, though I don't remember which one.)

So let's say you add a roll to see if you're ending the first half. Is this the end of the half? You don't start rolling for this until after your heroes have become involved; you put some target value that gets more and more achievable as you go on. And the point of the scene becomes reveal the actual problem. You might do the other things your solo system requests, but you definitely do that.

Once you've done that, you've established the length of your last three parts: all of them will be roughly the same as this part. (The first part might vary a lot.)

In fact, if you could do something similar with all three of the closing parts: This is the thing that ends the quarter; is this the scene where I introduce it?

I'll have to play with it and see if it works.

A solo adventure done with Mythic...excerpt

Icons

I'm doing a solo adventure with Mythic, trying to see what it does in a larger adventure. (I'm at scene 7 now.) Then I'll do with with the third system I have, and we'll compare.

Anyway, I'm tickled by the latest scene, and it's short, so I'm putting it here without some of the dice rolling. All you need to know is that Screech Owl is a hero and that Mynah has been forced by circumstances to work with him.

Scene start: NPC Action. Activity Expectations. Interrupt. CF 8

I left the fence’s through the alley door and did the whole coat/mask/bathroom thing again. Nobody even looked at me when I left the bathroom, which I thought was odd, considering I had gone in two hours earlier, but it was Progressive Euchre Tournament night, whatever that is.[Mythic: Does she notice she’s being followed? Unlikely, CF 8: 81% No.]

I stood at the bus stop with a seedy guy who needed a hair and chin transplant. The glamorous life of a supervillain. It started to rain, big fat drops of rain.

I sighed. “How long to the next bus?”

The seedy guy looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes.”

We were quiet for a minute, and then he said, “You work in an office?”

“Yes,” I said, because it used to be true. Truth is easier to remember.

He nodded. “You must make money,” he said.

Surveys show that’s a sure sign this encounter was going nowhere good.

“Nope,” I said. “Still paying off student loans.”

“But you’re dressed nice.”

“Thrift store coat,” I said, because it was. I have to hide it every time I go out as the Mynah, and some day it won’t be there when I return for it. “Remember, I’m taking the bus. No planes, no bikes, no motorcars, not a single luxury.”

In costume, I’m okay. Out of costume, I babble.

“Give me your purse,” he said.

“Really?” I asked him.

“Even your walking around money’s better than what I got.” He pointed a gun at me.

“You know there’s a fence for supervillains about two blocks from here.”

“Uh?”

“So like, anyone you hold up could actually be a supervillain in disguise.”

He shook his head. “Supervillains got, like, ray guns and stuff.”

I didn’t want to go all sonic on him because I wasn’t wearing a mask. I was hoping we could resolve this peacefully…but it had not escaped my attention that I had over two hundred thousand dollars in bearer bonds in the messenger bag inside my big purse.

He was not getting the bonds.

“And real supervillains ain’t women.” He held up a hand before I could say more. “Yeah, yeah, but those are sidekicks.”

“Really?” I said again. Dodge in on the side without the pistol, knock his arm sideways, kick him— I really had to learn some martial arts. I tensed.

His eyes widened and he backed off and started to run. “See? A sidekick!” he shouted.

I didn’t even have to turn around. “I will have no rep and no cred by the time this is done.”

“You were late,” said Screech Owl. “Of course I came looking for you.”

I didn’t turn around. “Could you look away? So I can at least get the mask on? I feel naked without it.” I fumbled in my purse and found the mask, but it was stuck under the envelope of bonds and I was pulling very carefully.

“I know your build and hair colour.”

“All the more reason for me to wear the damned mask!” There! It was free.

“He might have shot you!”

“I had it under control!”

“You did not.”

I hooked the purse on one arm and got the mask on. “We can’t talk here.” Before I could turn around to face him he had grabbed me under the armpits and we were in the air.

“Really?” I said, for the third time.