Topic: the order of story elements
Started by: Matt Wilson
Started on: 3/31/2003
Board: RPG Theory
On 3/31/2003 at 5:41pm, Matt Wilson wrote:
the order of story elements
This is half baked, but I thought I'd serve it up for thought.
There's different orders of resolving fortune, like FitM and so on.
What about moving other pieces of the game around, like important story factors? I'll just throw one idea out there: character death. If you know your character can't die (or that your character is definitely going to die) that has an interesting impact on play, and I don't know to what extent that's been exploited in a game yet. Part of the story has been told before you even start playing. What does that do to the game, or better yet, what kinds of things could you do with it?
What about a game where you know at the beginning that you've saved the world from disaster? From then on your job is to describe how it happened. Or a game told out of order, a la pulp fiction, or Memento.
Any games that already do these sorts of things? I think Jared Sorenson explores it a bit with a couple games, and Ron does a bit with the story order in Sorcerer and Sword.
-Matt
On 3/31/2003 at 9:28pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: the order of story elements
We recently played a game of Universalis, where Josh begged for his character to be killed in the first scene for some reason, and then had the bright idea of flashing back to a year previous to explain how the whole original scene had gotten set up. The entire game (only a few scenes, actually) ended up being in the past of that first scene. And it became the point of play to make events fit with the future scene in a way that made a little coherent story out of it.
I can hear Ralph coming right now to make me write it up...
Mike
On 3/31/2003 at 9:38pm, Valamir wrote:
RE: the order of story elements
I can hear Ralph coming right now to make me write it up...
I'm still waiting for all the other ones you were supposed to write up...
On 3/31/2003 at 9:50pm, Paul Czege wrote:
RE: the order of story elements
Hey Matt,
What about a game where you know at the beginning that you've saved the world from disaster? From then on your job is to describe how it happened. Or a game told out of order, a la pulp fiction, or Memento.
Any games that already do these sorts of things?
For some actual play, check out Theatrix in Action. For some speculative discussion, check out Non-Chronological Play vs. Sudden Inspiration.
Paul
Forge Reference Links:
Topic 69
Topic 1950
On 3/31/2003 at 9:52pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: the order of story elements
Valamir wrote: I'm still waiting for all the other ones you were supposed to write up...I'm only aware of one. And Blair bothering me about it has made me stubborn. :-)
But back to the topic, I forgot to mention that the "flashback" mechanism is explicit in Universalis (even costs a Coin to use). That doesn't mean that it'll get used in most game any different from how it's usually used in books or movies, but obviously it can be.
Mike