333vas - Techniques In Plotting & Characterization

Techniques in Plotting & Character Development Jim Vassilakos ([email protected]) Since I'd missed pretty much the entire first season of the television show 24, when I saw the DVD set offered at Costco, I just had to have it, and now that I've been watching it from the beginning, I'm really hooked. Part of the groove, of course, it just watching an excellent series, but another part of my brain likes to analyze. What is it that makes the show work? What techniques are the writers using that could be emulated both in writing fiction as well as plotting RPGs? For what it's worth, what follows is a quick analysis along with how these techniques apply to roleplaying.

Multiple Intense (Parallel Plotting)

Conflicts

In 24, there's not just one thing going on. There are several plots intertwined, and each of them are potentially powerful enough in terms of their effect on the overall story that few of them can really be called a subplot. That's a really difficult thing to emulate in face-to-face roleplaying, as it's usually preferable to keep the PCs together in a single group so you have continuity of action for everyone involved rather than hopping back and forth between characters, inevitably leaving several players out of the action. Only in a play-by-email game (PBeM) can this be effectively managed. I think that's one of the reasons I tend to prefer play-byemail over face-to-face gaming. There's much more flexibility in terms of plot construction.

Ethos-Logos-Pathos Switching Another thing 24 does well is it keeps the tension humming along

several different facets of our personalities. In order to explain this, I really have to explain what I mean by personality. I've come to think of people's alignment not so much in terms of good & evil or law & chaos as in terms of ethos, logos, and pathos. We each contain some varying degree of all three characteristics.1 One might summarize them as follows: Ethos: Our inward vs outward orientation, selfishness and greed vs empathy and

Ethos (Heart)

Logos (Mind) 1

Pathos (Soul)

I'd eventually like to devise an alignment system for NPCs based on these characteristics. One could even apply them to whole nations or even subcultures. Perhaps society itself is a war of ideas, and at the heart of that conflict are these fragments of our humanity each vying for evolutionary dominance.

compassion. Some folks might term this our heart ("He's always doing things for others; he has a great heart" vs "He's a stingy jerk who only looks out for himself; his heart is like a stone"). Logos: Our logical side devoid of feelings. One might call this simply the mind. Pathos: Our emotional being or inner child. The part of us one might call the soul. No matter where you fall on the overall scale, you have some of each attribute. Your heart can be touched, your mind reached, and your soul made to feel. That, one might argue, is the entire purpose of art is all its various forms. It is a medium for communication at multiple levels of consciousness. Needless to say, the writers of 24 clearly realize this. In one scene, they pound on our ethos, then in the next they switch to logos, then to pathos, then back to ethos. These writers know what they are doing, and they are relentless in their pursuit of captivating their entire audience: heart, mind, and soul. In order to translate this technique into the roleplaying medium would be very tricky. It would require that the GM have a very firm grasp of the elements of pacing. I really think that this is something that has to be learned through actual practice, but having a conceptual framework certainly couldn't hurt any GM who is eager to improve his or her game.

Character Promotion I tend to think of most stories as having the following framework in terms of the cast of characters:

• • • •

Main Character(s): Protagonist(s) Primary Cast: Main supporting characters (Major speaking parts) Secondary cast: Named characters (Minor speaking parts) Tertiary cast: Extras

If a story goes on for too long without a little shake-up in terms of the cast, it tends to get a little boring. That's one reason that I'm continually amazed by the sums of money Hollywood is willing to pay its top actors. So what if three of the main actors on ER (yet another show to which I'm addicted) fail to renew their contracts and end up leaving the cast in order to pursue a career in movies? Characters can be replaced, and, in fact, doing so is often good for a story. ER is still going strong, and I think that's proof that having good writers is much more important than having good actors. Good actors are a dime a dozen, but good writers are like diamonds, they are rare and precious and they make people sit up and take notice. The producers of 24 seem to realize this, as not only is the writing excellent, but there's a fair degree of bouncing around in the cast. Extras are frequently promoted to secondary cast status, and secondary cast members are promoted into the primary cast. This regular inflow of new faces, personalities, and hidden agendas keeps the plot hopping and the audience glued to their seats. Translating this tactic into roleplaying may require the occasional change in group composition, and that's not terribly easy to sustain. If a game is good, players will stay, and inviting new ones will only increase the GM's workload and make the game unwieldy. Only in PBeM format could this even be attempted, and even there, the problem of an everincreasing workload looms large for the GM. There are additional problems

with bringing in new players. If a new player assumes the role of a long-time NPC, then he needs to be fully briefed on the game. In a longlived campaign, that itself can take a great deal of time and energy. Another problem is that very often, once an NPC transitions to PC status, the character's personality experiences a radical transition. In some cases, this is good. A player is supposed breathe life into their character and flesh out the character's personality. However, if they go against that NPC's personality as has been previously established, then there's a real feeling of discontinuity, almost as if a foreign spirit invaded and seized control of the NPC. In most cases, it's probably safer to let new players into the game by handing them NPCs from the secondary and tertiary cast rather than from the primary cast.

Intelligent Proactive Characterization The fourth thing that 24 does well is that you really get a sense that the characters are real people. The writers make a genuine effort to look at things from each different character's point of view and to have them act accordingly. Hence, rather than the main character swashbuckling his way through a mostly inert society, he's continually challenged by every other character in the story, each of them pursuing their own agendas. This is something I really admire, because in most games, including my own, NPCs tend to do a lot of ghosting. What I mean by that is simply that as a GM, I often get lazy, and I don't take the time and effort to consider

events from each NPC's perspective. However, in those instances where I do make the effort to really think things out from an individual NPC's point of view, I notice a marked improvement in the game. There's something that I once read back when I was in junior high some... oh... over twenty years ago, I guess... which has hung with me all these years. I can't remember if it was a story or an essay, but the point being made by the author was that if you really want to know someone, you have to know what he wants. That's the secret. Know a man's ambitions and you know the man. Know his dreams and you will have the key to his soul. While I think there is much more to each of us than our individual ambitions, I agree that this is such an important facet of character development that I think that as GMs, we should each begin to put into practice a policy that every time we introduce a new NPC, we write down for our own use not only the character's name and what function he performs in the story, but also what that character wants, what he desires, where he sees himself in five years, and we should continually review and update this list after every gaming session. This, I think, is essential if we are to run believable, fully-realized NPCs.