Playing out the Story

Forms of narrative development in roleplaying scenarios.

Some debate on how narratives can be achieved with the Tefr system have already occurred on this blog. The debate, I believe, stems from some confusion over what I mean by narrative. Playing out any scenario will result in some form of narrative, by their nature roleplaying is about cause and consequence. But I am talking about offering what seems to be a structured narrative, with a beginning, middle and end. This will most likely seem to be counter to any notion of freedom of choice on the part of the player characters, but bear with me; it is possible to use a progressive narrative that will still give the players freedom to act within the framework of the system and the constraints of the environment in which they find themselves.

  Delivering any kind of designed plot without forcing the players to follow a linear path will be more down to the style of the narrator, the players, and the scenario they are undertaking than the system itself. Some narrators simply create a situation, a place, a set of non-player characters, encounters and objects then let the player characters explore the environment at will; allowing the actions of the characters and the system itself to determine the sequence of play and the way the story develops. This is usually the simplest form, though it is not the same as gameplay, because it relies on the players to roleplay within the situation they create. With only a small amount of help and adaptability from the narrator, this can result in some quite fabulous narrative created amongst the players themselves.

   For example: the characters learn from a messenger that a nearby city may need mercenaries. They travel there and try to find work (or they don’t, end of story), but are offered the chance to help smuggle a child out of the city to avoid a powerful mage extracting his essence.


If they accept this work their narrative will turn one way, if they refuse, it will take a different direction.
The resolution will depend upon the character's actions following their initial decisions.

    The next form is to use an unconnected plot arc that occurs at the same time as the type explained in the previous paragraph. The characters learn snippets of this story as they are undertaking the scenario, but their actions cannot influence its outcome. However, clever delivery by the narrator can sometimes lead the players to believe that the characters are involved in this other plot arc, even though their actions and choices will not change it. Their actions will only change their immediate, and usually unconnected situation.

   The characters encounter an exhausted messenger and learn that his Duath and his army have been defeated by an army from Tukis. The Tukisi had a mage with them who could unleash incredible destructive forces. The messenger must get to the Duath’s home city and warn them that they are soon to be besieged.

    In this example the city will be besieged, even fall, whether the characters chose to help the messenger or not, but they feel somehow involved. If they deliver the message, they will meet people in the city, perhaps even get hired to try and smuggle a child out past the enemy lines. But the city will still be besieged, there is nothing they can do that will prevent that.

    A more complex narrative will involve storylines which the player characters can influence. This requires a degree of further adaptability on the part of the narrator. Generally, outcomes are based on the way the narrator believes the non-player characters should react to the actions of the player characters in the context of the plot arc. While most good narrators will write, or at least consider, a number of outcomes for various encounters and conjunctions in the scenario, if the story changes in some unpredictable fashion, then the narrator must adapt it on the fly. With this method there is always the risk that whole chunks of pre-planned story can be lost or altered. Either the narrator comes up with a secondary plan to bring the story back on track, or simply goes with the new direction and rewrites when there is time.

   After warning the people of the city, the characters are asked to try and smuggle a child out of the city, but they learn that the child is rumoured to be Aren, The Lord of Light re-born in human form, and is the reason the city is under siege. The Tukisi mage wants the child, believing he will gain god-like powers by capturing his essence. The child, however, knows a way to deactivate the magical artefact that allows the mage to wield such destructive forces.

   Thus the characters can now learn the means (if they ask the right questions) to directly influence the plot arc in several ways, how, or if, they use the knowledge, is down to them.

   Plots like this can often be nested within even wider plots, perhaps the war is on an imperial scale, perhaps whoever has the child can influence some even greater event. A good example of nested plots can be found in a fantasy book series. In general the same characters will feature in each book, and all the books are connected by some overarching global story, a story that progresses in some small way in each book, but only concludes in the last volume. The individual books also have their own complete narrative stories, and within each book, every chapter will have some independent narrative structure. There will also be sub-plots, and secondary characters that appear and play out over longer plot arcs that might cover several chapters of a book, or even several books of the series. It sounds like it ought to be complicated to implement, but for the most part such plot arcs are all things which can be delivered in discrete packets, and for the most part are self sustaining. For example if the player characters have an encounter with a non-player character, the plot element of this might simply be why that encounter occurred, or perhaps the non-player character is there to tell or let slip some piece of information that builds on some ongoing story, like the exhausted messenger detailed earlier. There is no reason why that same character might not reappear in a later scenario, developed in some way by the story, ready to deliver some new information, or perhaps the reason for his reappearance is as a result of the characters’ own actions.

   Using combinations of the above types of story delivery, it is possible to create arcs within arcs; arcs the players themselves have created; long and short arcs that cross over; subplots and backstory that combine to make a strong overall sense of narrative progression for the players. Nested plot arcs will allow them to feel like they are playing a key part in an ongoing story, raising the interest above that of a simple game, to a feeling of participation in the events of the world in which the narrative is set.

Can't, or Won't, Write a Narrative

Chances are you already know how to write a narrative roleplaying scenario.

What is a narrative? "Cass hit Jargo" is a statement; there is action, but no true narrative. A simple narrative needs a description of cause and effect. "Cass hit Jargo, so Jargo him back" has narrative; each element alone is merely statement, but together they start to tell a story, albeit simple. This kind of narrative is already implicit in any roleplaying game. Going from a simple narrative to a simple story is not a difficult leap at all, it merely needs a structure. A beginning, middle and end is the simplest: "Cass hit Jargo, and ran off. Jargo pursued Cass and hit him back" has a structure. Without any particular intent most roleplaying scenarios have a similar structure, the inciting incident at the start that makes the characters undertake whatever the mission, investigation, or journey that the middle of the scenario/story comprises. The resolution of the scenario: finishing the mission, the objective of the investigation discovered, completing the journey, or even failure to do these things marks the end of the story, and is a natural consequence of the first two elements. Building on these elementary premises is something we learn from being read stories as children, it isn’t hard.
Roleplaying systems also intuitively lend themselves to the creation of character motivations, both for player-characters and non-player characters. Such character motivations can be used to create sub-plot and narrative tension within the story structure. If the players begin to see motive for the way the story is turning, they begin to feel a much greater sense of narrative involvement. Detail adds the final flourish.
Using all these elements could transform a simple story, like the interaction between Jargo and Cass, into something more epic: "Cass, the bastard eldest son of the Lord of Toramas beats his brother Jargo senseless, and flees the scene. The following day Jargo hires a group of bounty hunters to search the town for his brother. After some investigation, the bounty hunters learn that Cass left Toramas in the company of a hooded companion, heading for the neighbouring province of Sekris. Jargo accompanies the bounty hunters on the journey across the mountains and corner the fugitive brother in a Sekrisian village inn. Outnumbered, Cass is subdued and bound. Jargo beats his defenceless brother demanding to know the whereabouts of a girl called Lirande, but Cass refuses to tell him". As it is possible to see from the example, the original story kernel is there, but within that we now have character motivations, as well as a developing plot with the Lirande. The story is also leading towards a point where the other characters involved, the bounty hunters, may wish to choose to switch loyalties to Cass, rather than their current employer Jargo (creating a sub-plot). A story will still happen whichever they choice they make, it will just be a different one.
As has been shown, creating a storyline is not difficult, nor is using character motivations to flesh it out. In the example above the narrator is expecting the player-characters to side with one brother or the other, but there is always a possibility that they might do something that wasn’t as predictable. Presumably, he was also banking on the player-characters successfully learning that Cass had fled across the mountains into Sekris in the first place, and that the characters manage to make that journey, but they might not have. Being adaptable and able to re-think a narrative plot-arc on the fly, or between sessions is not that difficult either, but it is the key to being a good narrator. Even if some part of a plot is compromised, a new course for the story will be available, and such dramatic and unexpected turns of events can be one of the great attractions of roleplaying.

Backstory

Continuing with my short narratives in the Prelude to Rhapsody book, I've just completed a piece introducing the theme of background for the characters. I've attempted to make it work in such a way that a character might tell the others about his background, as well as create a small amount of backstory (about a  spider in a pot) which in itself contributes to, or appears to explain, the way that the character behaves.
Like the previous short narrative, it is still a little rough in places, I'll give them all a final go through before the book is published.

The Spider in a Pot

‘Squelch, squelch, slog, slog, is there no end to this god-forsaken swamp?’ Said Endingas. He liked complaining, he was good at it.
  The other three trudged on in a line through the mud in silence, as the thin dawnlight revealed more mud-flats and reed-beds in each direction.
  ‘And just look at the state of my boots, and it stinks as well. Stink stink, squelch, squ...’
  ‘It isn’t a swamp Mexotan.’ Kebri Soor’s low voice sounded from the front, his thick accent turning each a sound into au.
  ‘Swamp, marsh –same thing– A muddy, squelchy, stinky, struggle.’
  Kebri Soor picked a wide bulrush leaf and examined it.
  ‘You know nothing of struggle Mexotan, I grow up in the swamps of Earchamon, filled with mud dragons, stinging insects, deadly snakes and silk spiders. Leaving the hut in search of food is dangerous, Mexotan, but if we don’t, we starve. Then the rains come, and the waters rise, so we starve anyway.’ He tasted the sap from the leaf he was holding, spat, and threw it away. ‘My father, he was our herb man, he know what plants to eat, which ones heal, and which kill. This he teach me, he teach me to hunt and he teach me,’ he dropped his voice, ‘to gather spider silk.’
  The others watched him walking in the growing light, he was the most mysterious member of the group. He knew his plants, he was the best of them with a bow, but his creative ways of killing with the link knife he carried, the eery tattoos that decorated his face and lean body with strange spider-like symbols, coupled with his blood red eyes also made him the most intimidating.
  ‘When I am small,’ he said, ‘they begin training me to bring in the silk, they catch baby silk spider, and put it in a pot. I am to feed it, look after it. Each month I am to put my hand in the pot, and be bitten. It hurts, I am sick for two days. As the spider grow bigger, it’s bite grow stronger, the sting hurt more, so much pain,’ he rubbed his hand as if the memory alone had reawakened the old hurt, ‘but the more times it bite you, the more you are resisting, so by time it grow to full, the poison not kill. Then we can gather the webs, the spiders spin in the swamp. Sell the silk to the Eamani, but if the webs are poor, then we get small money and we starve.’ He stopped and turned round to look at Endingas. ‘When I am grown, the Eamani say I am gods gift, I cannot stay with my people, so I am outcast, I live in the swamp alone, hunt and find plants alone, each day avoid death alone. So Mexotan, with your boots, don’t tell me about struggle, and don’t tell me marsh is swamp.’
  He turned fluidly and resumed walking, the others shrugged and followed. Endingas opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and continued the trudge through the marsh in silence.