How to Run a Game (Part 14b) - Sample Vignettes

Alright, so I've indicated that I have this concept called "Vignettes". These are basically modular scenes that can be plugged into a session wherever they're needed to have specific dramatic effects on the narrative.  

Back in the day (2010 and 2011) I developed what I called the "Vector Theory" of gaming. It worked on the metaphor of an imaginary particle of storytelling, the Narraton. Like a photon when discussing light, various tools could be used by the Narrator, the players and the rules to manipulate the particle's trajectory. The general idea is that the same story could be run a thousand different times, and the path of the Narraton would change in subtle ways each and every time. Lenses and mirrors could change it's direction, gravity and density could change its speed. Unlike a photon moving around in 3D space, a narraton might move left and right depending on how happy or sad the story currently sits, it might move up and down based on how satisfying the current events are (things can be happy and satisfying and everything can fee good with the story, just as much as they can feel hollow if they are happy and unsatisfying... the two axes are independent). You might add other axes to measure the flow of the Narraton through the elements that guide the story... gritty versus fantastic, magical versus mundane... whatever is important s a variable in the story can be used. A key thing is that the narraton is always moving. As soon at it stops, the story has concluded. A good story will have an oscillation between extremes (or a tension where the two sides are in a tenuous balance, while other elements are shifting around them). It all gets a bit cerebral, and like most metaphors it starts to break down if you examine it too closely or take it too seriously.

At a micro level, every decision made by every player and narrator affects the vector of the Narraton (changing it's speed and/or it's direction with respect the the story axes that we've deemed important). At a macro level, scenes and vignettes are made up of a whole heap of decision points, where a Narraton goes in bounces around a few decision nodes, then shoots out somewhere else before heading onward along its story path.

From this perspective, a Scene might be considered something that has a lot of moving parts that bounce the Narraton around like a pinball machine. A scene that has been badly designed from a perspective of player agency might only have a single direction for the Narraton to travel in once it emerges from the scene. OK... enough with the metaphors and euphemisms... I'm saying that a bad scene only has two outcomes. Either the story dies in the it (through bad rolls in a system, frustration of the players, or some other reason), or the story continues in a specific single direction. That's basically the way the cut scenes in a computer game work. Better scene designs offer a few choices once they reach their conclusion, those choices may be determined by the outcomes of the randomisers and rule system, or by the players (because the narrator has already introduced their input into the process by determining whether the scene will come into play). 

Let's look at some examples...

Slow Down - A Quiet Suburban Street

The characters have been doing really well with their rolls, they are following the clues and heading to the climax of the story. It's a timetabled four-hour session, and they'll be at the climax an hour early. So we need to slow things down.

The trail leads to a quiet suburban home. Everything is quiet... too quiet. We can slow things down simply by asking for a perception check (or two). Here's where you play on a players instinctive tendency to metagame. Regardless of the roll, a narrator could tell their players that they see nothing, or throw in a bunch of red herrings and clue ideas that might hint toward other ideas (don't worry if these ideas don't tie up neatly in the current session, if you're playing a multi-session campaign, these observations can be linked into later sessions and it looks like you've had the whole thing planned). As soon as players have made a perception roll, experience shows that they get on edge, they start slowing down and start expecting the worst. You could always spice things up by having a nosy neighbour show up, which will lead to players needing to hide their presence, or deal with the neighbour in some other way...and if they choose violence here, that should lead to trouble later. But you could also add in a few more potential avenues for investigation based on any positive social interactions that the player characters have with the neighbour.  

The same concept could just as easily work with the appearance of a town guard, police officer, security surveillance drone, or even being led into a crowded location where there are too many people to deal with in a hurry. Just use whatever makes sense at the time and place where the characters currently find themselves.

Slow Down - Building Character

There are a variety of game systems where players may make a deliberate choice to make their characters weak in one area in exchange for a bonus in another area. In many of these games, players will deliberately try to angle events in such a way that their strengths more regularly come into play, while their weaknesses are ignored. That's all a part of the creative thinking that I like to see in a session, it's borderline metagaming, but it's also how people work in the real world. Most people have a tendency to avoid the things that will make them look bad, and will regularly be drawn to situation where they will shine. But what happens when people get forced into the types of situations where they have to confront their weaknesses. 

I don't remember who came up with the idea that we like characters for their strengths, but we love them for their weaknesses, but it has been a common point of discussion in various academic circles and fan groups for a while. I'm sure there's a famous quote about this idea. 

The key element here is that when players are self-identifying with their characters (typically using actor stance), they'll take more care when their characters are at risk. Those using more distant stances, and who often revel in the story of "surviving against the odds", won't really care if their character's weaknesses come into play. If they survive against the weaknesses, this just adds to their story. At it's worst, throwing a weakness into the narrative will serve as a temporary diversion; more often it will help the entire group learn about the characters and what may be important to them.

For a character with a fear of snakes, force them to confront a serpent filled chamber.

For a character with a strong religious faith, perhaps they'll need to enter the temple of another faith and not cause a scene (of course this might cause their own deity to become unhappy, and it's this kind of ethical dilemma that I really think makes roleplaying fun).

A character who takes care of an orphan finds that the child is injured as a result of recent actions. How do they deal with this?

If you aren't playing a game where strengths and weaknesses have mechanical effects on play, you might instead use moments like these to play on the characters' alignments, or introduce sequences that rely on them using skills and attributes where they haven't prioritised their stats.

A brawler needs to negotiate with a diplomat to get what they want, because they're surrounded by bodyguards.

An academic needs to climb a temple wall to read the tiny glyphs on the upper walls.

For purposes like these, I'd generate up one or two vignettes for each character. I'd use one on a character every couple of games, and once it has been used, throw it away then create a new one based on the player's reactions and the vignette's outcome. This way the character can have their own story arc independent of the group's narrative, and this builds a more interesting and complex story.

The Other Slow Down - A Fight Scene

I don't like having fight scenes as a story pacing mechanism, but they do slow things down. So they do the job, but can be too unpredictable with too many variables suddenly being added into the mix. I don't actively prevent players from initiating their own combat, that's their choice... but whenever a fight does break out, there are later repercussions. Someone who is killed might have had useful clues that would have made things run more smoothly, or maybe they owed people a bunch of favours and now that they're dead the owed parties come looking for someone else to pay them off. Once you throw in things like that, it often makes players think twice before jumping straight into combat again.  

Acceleration - Right Time, Right Place

The character have been doing badly with their rolls, or maybe they've just headed off on a tangent that's completely unrelated to what you had in mind. Time to inject a few clues into the narrative.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you're trying to keep to a schedule, or trying to get the characters back involved in the action, you sometimes just have to throw things in the characters' way and hope that it makes a suitable impact on the characters. Have the players meet critical members of the supporting cast, powerful movers and shakers... have them overhear useful conversations. I don't worry about perception rolls here, even though some people might say that if I'm going to use them sometimes, I should probably use them all the time. Characters aren't actively looking for things, they're being fed them (as clues that may be blatant or subtle). I don't force players to take specific actions with their characters, they still have full control over the choices they might make. I just provide a setting and context for the actions to occur within, and throw ideas that prompt activity. Note that I aven't saod that the characters need to be speaking to "Mr. Davidson" to get this information, nor have I said that they can only pick up a certain clue if they are "at the occult bookstore". They key of the vignette is that it can occur at any time, any place, just to prompt things along. 

Part of the problem with accelerating a narrative is that you don't want it to feel like deus ex machina. You don't want it to feel forced, or feel like the characters don't have any agency because everything is being driven by non-player characters and is outside the influence of the player characters. 

Acceleration - They're getting away 

The characters are planning a heist, they need to get into the castle's dungeon and rescue the prisoner before the following night when the Executioner's transport wagon will be coming to town. They've been discussing plans for the best way to do this over at the local tavern, but things have been stagnating and arguments have started breaking out. The game is grinding to a halt, so the narrator indicates that there is a commotion. The Executioner's wagon has arrived early, and the prisoner might be moving tonight. If they don't rescue him now, they'll face a chase scene with an armed entourage, ad they certainly haven't prepared for that. 

If the "Right Time, Right Place" vignette is a method of luring characters toward a positive goal  by giving them a wider range of tools to move forward, "They're getting away" is a threat of taking away tools that might be useful. If the characters don't get motivated quickly they'll lose possible treasure, or access to an easy path. If they screw around and ignore the hints that something is happening, then any goal they may have had become harder.   

Story Direction Turn - The tension meter

Not so much a case of speeding up, or slowing down the narrative, the addition of a tension meter shifts the focus of the game from an existing plotline to something new. I like throwing something as a potential threat in the background that only comes into play once a few bad rolls or bad decisions have been made. A tension meter may have 4, 6 or 8 segments, and every time something goes wrong, or every time a period elapses during the course of play, a segment is coloured in. The level of the problem manifested in the game is generally proportional to the number of segments in the meter. The catch here is to make the tension reflect the narrative in some way. 

A door is closing, or a stone block is slowly falling, or maybe a magical portal is starting to glitch and preventing exit if the characters don't act fast. Conversely, a door might be slowly opening, and a major threat might be ready to enter the scene once the opening is wide enough. Can the character's do something to prevent this occuring, or do they vacate the area?

Radiation in the area will potentially damage the characters. Every turn that they act, colour in a segment. Roll a die at the end of the scene, and if the die roll is lower than the number of coloured segments then the character will suffer long term effects of radiation sickness (whatever that may be...perhaps level drain, permanent attribute loss, or maybe it's magical radiation and some other effect might occur).

Maybe a car chase (or a wagon chase, or run along a rough path through a forest)... The tension meter starts at a mid point with half of the segments coloured. Do opposed rolls, and if the opponents win, colour in a segment, but if the player(s) win erase a coloured segment. If all the segments are coloured, the opponents get away, and if no segments are coloured in they have been caught.   

Story Direction Turn - Let's focus on them for a bit.

Sometimes one player is dominating the action and you can see the visible frustration on the faces of other players. There's a concept that was a big deal in game design about two decades ago called "niche protection", where each player would have a specific role in the team. You'd have the fighter, the support, the healer, the academic, etc. Each character would have a narrow area where they were the undisputed best, and maybe another area where they weren't too bad if the main character in that area was taken down. However, I've often encountered sessions where one player tries to be the best at everything, or at least tries to be good at most things and spends most of the session trying to make sure the story is focused on them. These often end badly. Sometimes the narrator just has to thrown in a situation that this character is bad at, and either let them fail (with everyone turning against them), or watch the story pivot to the characters who actually are specialists in the area required by the narrative.

Fighting has only led to everyone with the information ending up dead...now it's time for the forensic specialist to pick up the pieces and assemble the clues into a new path of inquiry.

The thief has definitely stolen something (they steal everything that isn't nailed down), but they have no idea what it is and the sorceror is getting some nasty vibes from it.

The bard is attracting the wrong sort of attention at the local tavern, and someone's going to have to think quickly to get the characters to safety. 

Chicane - A new path

A Chicane is a quick turn in one direction followed by the other, so the final direction is the same but the vehicle is a bit to the left or right of where it was before. So everyone is still aiming in the right direction but they've avoided one obstacle (and might now be faced with a completely different one before the end up at the same general place). 

The characters are facing a monster who will obliterate them, but if they are willing to call on a mercenary he can easily take out the beast... the down side is that they'll now owe the mercenary a favour that they might not be able to repay easily. If they try to betray the mercenary, he'll be able to eliminate them as easily as he was able to destroy the beast. What do they do?

Dark energies are rippling through the area and the characters don't know what their effects are. They need to get through a particularly intense field to reach their goal, and can take the risk now, wait until the worst of the field has dissipated, or try to find a way around it. Each will end up with them getting to the goal, but do they risk safety, time, or exposing themselves to new threat on the way around the outside as they reach their goal.  

An important thing to remember throughout all of these examples is the idea that there should always be a way through a scene or vignette. NEVER create a scene where the characters don't have the necessary equipment, skills, or power level to progress through the events and move onward with the tale. I had a terrible experience (mentioned previously in the blog) with a game convention module where my character was designed as an investigator who gathered clues by magically talking to animals, and I should have flown through the game module. However my character didn't have the specific investigation skill mentioned in the module, so the narrator simply wouldn't pass on the clues and the game ground to a halt roughly halfway through the session that we had all paid for. 

If I'm going to introduce a tougher scene or vignette. I'll usually make sure there is some forewarning or foreshadowing for it. I'll get to that in the next post.