Babbling at the Counter #16 -
Story Structure
Having a Clear Agenda
This is something video games
are great at (and both writers and GMs can benefit a lot by learning from
them). The question is: What's the protagonist/player (or players) supposed to
be doing? Because, sometimes we all forget about it.
For example, each episode of
"Mighty Morphin (sic) Power Rangers" follows a simple script: The
evil guy tosses the Rangers around for a while, a lot of Troopers fight them,
monster starts losing, they make a ridiculous superweapon, the bad guy grows,
megazord, it dies. Say what you want, but they are consistent.
Now, think. In your story,
who are the Troopers? Do your characters have a signature weapon? How are they supposed
to defeat their enemy?
The Troopers (a.k.a.
"Mooks") are the cannon fodder; the kind of obstacle that you send to
shave away some hit points and other resources. They are not really a
challenge, but successive encounters can weaken the protagonists. In a game,
you see them all the time, everywhere in a given level or zone. In a story or
RPG, they are the easily identified creatures that the heroes eat for
breakfast. You can get some character development or set up a mystery in a
scene with them, but most of the time they provide "danger" in a
familiar setting with an easy solution.
The signature weapon is how
you expect the characters to end an encounter. It's a sure way to get things
done, and unless they cannot use it, why the heck won't they use it? If you
want to keep some level of suspense, using this weapon should require that the
characters "soften" the enemy first. Think the Ghost-trap from
Ghostbusters: first they shot the ghost with some proton pack beams, and then
they trap it.
Now, do your characters kill
their opponents? Or they just capture them for the police? Yeah, you'll want so
shake things up now and then, but most of the time it's useful to have a
"formula" or procedure to follow.
There are a lot of other
"fixed points" you can have to help you organize your ideas (like,
"where do the missions came from?", for example) but I'll save them
for a future Babble.
It's not about limiting your creativity,
it's about setting some guidelines to help yourself (and your players). As a
game designer called Mark Rosewater (maybe you've heard of him) says: “Restrictions
breed Creativity". Have fun!
- The Storeman
No comments:
Post a Comment