It’s very easy to look at
roleplaying as a pretty black-and-white thing and in many respects it is. When
you first see classic good-versus-evil movies, like the original Star Wars, you
want to cheer the good guys and throw popcorn at the bad guys. It’s very easy
to see it as a big dumb action movie.
But what about that scene in
that movie when Luke Skywalker went racing back to his uncle’s
farmstead to find the bodies of his guardians torched, the home burning? Highly
dramatic music coupled with heart-wrenching visuals. It pretty much hit home
with everyone and made for an emotional scene. Or how about when Gandalf fell from the bridge
in Moria? Who wasn’t moved? Or Luke finding out that Darth Vader
was his father? Or when the Colonial marines are first attacked in Aliens?
Take a long hard look at these
kinds of films and you’ll see scenes far beyond black and white. I’m a bit
guilty myself; for a long time I craved adventure in the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars settings and
I simply re-created the high from the highest-octane scenes in the books and
movies. I didn’t see the drama behind the narrative or the special effects,
which was not wholly my fault considering the tension scenes are what you take
away from things like that, and after a while my games and creations started to
suffer from it. Unoriginal games gambolling over into the next one, each one
the same as the last but with different locations and names.
So, what am I talking about
here? Well, what if you could insert these emotionally dramatic moments into a
scenario or campaign and make the players do two things:
1. Throw a shocking revelation
into the works that forces the players to rethink the direction of the game.
2. Give the players something to
sink their teeth into instead of the next puzzle or threat. The emotional shock
of a sudden revelation or an unexpected incident during a campaign can heighten
emotion and make quite an impression on the players.
Important - The Golden Rule is: Don’t Embarrass Anyone!
The difficult thing is the most
important thing, unfortunately - how are you going to insert a scene that makes
sense to the story and is an emotional shock to the players?
Let’s use Star Wars Episode
V - The Empire Strikes Back as an example. The scene with Luke
Skywalker and Darth Vader is a classic and is down as one of the most dramatic
moments in cinema history. The revelation of the father and son relationship is
well placed and totally unexpected yet subtly clever. You knew that Obi-Wan
Kenobi and Vader knew each other, knew that Vader was Obi-Wan’s pupil from the talk they had
in Episode
IV, knew that Vader was supposed to be responsible for Luke’s father’s
death. The only thing you didn’t count on was Obi-Wan keeping it all a secret but
when the truth does come out you can understand why. It all slots in nicely and
makes a lot of sense, but the crunch comes when Vader reveals to Luke that he’s
his father; not in a roundabout kind of way, mind you. He waited until he’d
beat the snot out of him, cut his hand off and had him hanging off a vane over
a shaft before he told him – now that’s drama!
So how can you set up such a
thing in a game and make it work?
1. The first thing you can do is
take a long hard look at the character backgrounds the players have created for
their alter egos. There is always little snippets of information in there you
could use and more times than not the players have created things about the past
and haven’t really taken much notice of it, or have detailed friends and
relatives they knew but don’t take much notice of. You could take the details
of the person, flesh it out (without the player’s knowledge) and introduce him
or her (or it) as an NPC at a key moment, or have them a long-term NPC whose
identity isn’t revealed until later. Wouldn’t it be cool if the players spent
game after game trying to figure out who the bad guy is and it turned out it
was one of their brothers? Or a friend they bullied at school? Or a relative
they thought dead?
2. If you keep notes during a
game then so much the better. Even the smallest plot point from a previous game
might come back to haunt the players. Perhaps, in a game a long time ago, the
players hired some help and they all went on an adventure. Lets say the hired
NPC was killed and the players escaped without them. But, wouldn’t it make for
a good story if the NPC wasn’t killed? Wouldn’t that NPC swear revenge on the
PC’s for leaving them for dead? In this way, the game makes it’s own internal
plot that, because the players were involved with it, makes it resonate more.
3. Use
the game itself as the driving force behind the drama. As the game builds and
builds and more and more characters are thrown into the mix, perhaps the plot
can seem disjointed for a while until a huge dramatic event brings the
seemingly unconnected events together. Or, the actions of the players are
having an effect they have not noticed or did not count upon – the people they
thought they were saving are turning against them, or maybe it turns out their
fighting for the wrong side…
4.
Pick a location where the dramatic revelation can take place. This will have to
be a place that will be detailed to the players so that the importance of the
dramatic event has a visual representation. This could be anything – the top of
the highest tower in a thunderstorm; a deep, lava-filled cavern; the top of a
collapsing starship hull; the thin bridge over a deep rocky gorge (Indiana
Jones, anyone?).
5. In some extreme cases it can even be a situation designed
by the GM and a player, with them getting together to sort out a private agenda
for the player he carries out, and when the other PC’s find out it’s even more
of a shock! You have to be very careful with this option - the other players
who aren’t in on the secret may feel a little left out, even a little used and
offended, if they think the GM was favouring or singling out a player that was
working against them or secretly being favoured.
For example, let’s say that a
character called Jevin Dayy has had her background fleshed out in a sci-fi game
by the player. Just to make the character more interesting the player has
entered details about a father she had, who was a business man who she ran away
from because of his anti-adventure and miserly feelings, which explains her
well-spoken manner but also her dislike of safety-conscious people and
money-hoarders. She loves her father but can’t condone what he is doing. A nice
little detail she added just for effect.
Jevin has been used for quite a few games and is very
good at what she does (a technician with the group) but the GM decides that one
day on-planet she works on a vessel she recognises - one of her father’s
business vessels. What will she do? Carry on as if nothing has happened? Run
for it? She’s quite capable of doing these things but then finds out that the
man who is now running the company is her fathers’ brother, her uncle, who has
basically murdered his predecessor to take over the business. This is revealed
during a moment of high drama to increase the emotional charge of the event.
Let’s say that her uncle knows she is trying to find out about how her father
died and sent men after her. She assumes it’s her father’s murderers trying to
get her but, whilst she’s crawling to safety over an old rickety steam pipe
over a shipyard, her uncle catches up to her.
“Jevin!” he cries.
“Get away from here, uncle! It’s
dangerous!” The pipe creaks and she hangs on for her life.
“Jevin, come back, it’s dangerous out there!” he holds out a helping hand.
“It’s the men who killed my
father! We have to get away before they get you, too!” She despairs for her
uncle’s safety and grabs hold of his offered hand to pull herself to safety.
“No, Jevin, I came out here myself. These men are my
employees.” He tightens his grip.
“You’re lying!”
“I’m not lying, Jevin. I
killed him.”
“Nooooo!” she screams.
See how that works? It doesn’t
need to be a character that was created for the PC background; it can be a
long-running NPC that the players know from previous scenarios or campaigns.
You also have to be sure that the emotionally charged
scene your about to put in isn’t going to make anyone sat around the gaming
table uncomfortable. After all, some of them are there to just game and not get
emotionally involved and having one of the NPC’s suddenly leaping forward
shouting ‘I love you!” or something or other can be a bit of a shock,
especially when most of the game has centred on action and adventure. Remember,
also, that the scene you’re going to introduce has to be a shock that’s not out
of context and just suddenly appears out of nowhere. That can be embarrassing
for the GM as well as the player.
Here are a few lines you could
use as a basis to charge the scene, just for a bit of fun. Try to see if you
can insert these NPC phrases into a game and get the emotional response needed
- it’s a laugh.
1 - ‘I’m not your father’
2 - ‘I’m your mother’
3 - ‘I sold out your family/city/planet/race’
4 - ‘It wasn’t me who killed
him’
5 - ‘He’s been dead for years’
6 - ‘She’s the commanding
officer of the new garrison’
7 - ‘I am here to take you back’
8 - ‘You are not who you think
you are’
9 - ‘This is my home’
10 - (my personal favourite) ‘I’m your sister’s husband’s friend’s
cousin’s flatmate’s former room-mate’
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