How to Run a Game (Part 16) - Cinematic Storytelling
The average length of productions has crept up by around 32%, from one hour and 21 minutes in the 1930s to one hour and 47 minutes in 2022 (see chart)
The top 10 grossing movies of the year in 1981 averaged 110 minutes. By 2001, the average was 126 minutes. In 2021, it was 131 minutes.
Center for the Digital Future, 2023
However, a typical D&D session can last anywhere from 2-6 hours or more. Some groups prefer shorter sessions of 2-3 hours, while others may play for longer periods of time.
Most D&D sessions fall within the range of 3 to 7 hours. This timeframe offers a balance between allowing for meaningful gameplay and ensuring that players and the Dungeon Master don't become too tired.
A couple of random cherry picked bits of data to start off this post...and this isn't even including the various "cinematic experiences" that are split into multi-part releases. So this generally indicates that we're basically looking at about two hours for a movie, give or take half an hour. A game session on average takes 4 to 5 hours, depending on the time available.
By these numbers, a game session is basically about 2 to 2.5 times longer than a movie (and these quoted stats basically only cover D&D).
I typically feel like I haven't lived up to my potential if I haven't included an amount of story equivalent to a movie in one of my gaming sessions. A few different types of scenes, some interesting character development, a bit of spotlight time for every character and the chance to everyone to make a couple of meaningful decisions.
Dice rolling takes time, waiting for players to weigh up their options takes time, describing things with words takes time. This sort of thing really came to the fore last night when I ran my first game with adults for almost 10 years.
6 players, nominally a 3 hour session. I think we started a little early, and went a little overtime, so it probably ended up as 3.5 hours. Roughly twice the length of a movie.
Like I mentioned in previous posts, I roughly plot the scenes with a bunch of vignettes, and time the game so that we get a satisfying rising action and conclusion to the narrative roughly when the session is scheduled to end. If things are going quickly, there's potential to add an extra narrative-slowing vignette or two to draw things out, If things are going slowly, then an acceleration trigger can add a bit more drive to the game.
| Act | General Description | Session Timing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (Context) | Begin exploring a mysterious island | 45 mins to 1 hr |
| 2 (Complication) | Reach the castle (where the treasure is) | 45 mins to 1 hr 15 mins |
| 3 (Climax) | Find the treasure and fulfill personal goals) | 1 hr to 1 hr 15 mins |
| 4 (Conclusion) | Get off the island | What's left over (roughly 30 mins?) |
So I'm keeping my eye on the clock.
Players have paid money to come to this session at a bar. They're getting a pizza, a drink and a few hours of entertainment. It's not fair to kill a character off during the first hour, that won't give them value for money...but it's probably enough time that they could introduce a new characters during the complication phase, and still get a meaningful story out of the session. The harshest time to have a player lose their character would be around the halfway point, because they wouldn't have finished their first character's story and things would be anticlimactic from that perspective...and they just wouldn't have the time to rush through a second story before the main narrative concludes. I've got no problems killing characters off in the last half hour, at least there will have been opportunity for character development and meaningful choices that can manipulate the story by this stage.
I'm generally allowing the players have free reign when it comes to exploring the island. But if I just have them land on a beach at one end, they could easily spend three hours just wandering the beach. I can probably keep the story interesting with beach activities, but that'd be a hard slog. It's probably going to be easier to keep things vibrant and interesting by changing the scenes and backgrounds a few times over the course of play.
I can also guide players by pre-loading some goals into them if I write up some pre-generated characters. A single page of background info in a large font...
I've got ten characters available for 6 players, I'm not sure who is going to be picked, so I don't necessarily know who is going to be a part of the session. However, I make sure each character has a goal that could potentially bring them into conflict with three or four other characters. Inter-character tension adds elements of characterisation during the session, but I also make sure there's a few goals on the sheets that will require characters to work together. After all, I don't want the whole session devolving into player versus player conflict.
This gives our game a kickstart, some momentum to get the story going, and a few tensions on the characters from the beginning that will pull the story in certain ways when other triggering events are activated during the course of play (as long as the players read through their goals and actually consider them during the course of play). I'm basically giving the players a guideline that will hopefully inform their decisions during play, but leaving things fairly open for where things might go next.
To add to the cinematic flavour, I've included a flashback mechanism to the scenario. The background stories that I've provided have told the players where I want them to go, but now they need to show how this informs the story. It's an offer and acceptance thing. I've given them ways to engage with possible narratives, and now it's up the them to take those ideas on board and make things interesting for themselves and for the players around them. If we were playing a campaign, I'd be injecting these types of elements over a number of sessions as threads that can tie together a campaign. Similarly, if we had a session-zero, we'd be discussing these concepts to get everyone vaguely on the same page. So, flashbacks will have to work as a substitute. It's not perfect, but it helps.
Now for some of the vignettes... I'm trying to make sure that these tie to the character goals, or the overall party goal of getting to the castle and raiding treasure.
Vignette 1: The other party (Acceleration)
The character see another group rushing to the castle.
If they keep exploring, or looking for basic treasures in the early stages of the island (if they haven't moved toward castle by the time the complication phase should have begun), they'll hear (or see) another party making their way to claim the major treasures first. I really don't care if the players keep exploring, and don't move to confront the other party (or don't chase the other group), but this gives them an idea of the time sensitivity and an understanding that they are not alone in this narrative.
In our case, the players actually had an interesting choice to follow the other party and let them set of any traps. I thought that was a cool idea, so we ran with it.
Vignette 2: The Comet (Acceleration)
When the comet is high in the sky, a magical portal opens at the palace. Once it descends again, the portal closes.
This is the whole gimmick of the quest. The ultimate timing factor. Again, I don't mind if the players ignore this element, but it's been written into a background information sheet, and most of the characters have a personal goal that requires them to get into the portal, get some kind of treasure that is only available for a few hours once every 27 years, then get out before the portal closes. I figure that if the players don't reach the castle by the time the comet arrives, then we can ad hoc some other effect when the moment is right and the stars align. Maybe a horde of creatures emerges from the palace, pouring down the hillside...??
In our case, the choices of the players actually did lead them to the palace, and they were present for the opening of the portal, so contingency plans weren't needed. We actually had a bit of time to spare, so we played with this a bit.
Vignette 3: The Apple Cart (Slow Down)
There is an old overgrown food vendors cart somewhere on the island. It has a secret old recipe in it.
If the characters associated with this storyline aren't picked, the players won't go looking for it. So it's not going to disrupt the story if it isn't needed. Finding the apple cart will be tricky, but possibly made easier with a map... and a map is the kind of thing that I'm likely to hand out as a basic treasure, because treasure maps are cool, and not really unbalancing to a game. There's nothing intentionally magical about the apple cart, it's just an interesting bit of added flavour.
In our game, had two players who were either explicitly lookin g for the apple cart, or were looking for recipes. So it was naturally found, and then we quickly moved on...but it felt like the narrative was a bit lacking and rushed with it's ending. We later had a point toward the end where a series of clues suggested that a coded message existed somewhere on the island. This was just a case of following the lead of the players and the die rolls as we developed a story together, it certainly wasn't something intentional at all. Since I had left the apple cart had a loose end, and this new narrative thread needed something to tie to, it felt like a decent fit for the two to go together. This helped us bring things full circle and added a more satisfying conclusion to that story element.
Vignette 4: The Arena (Slow Down)
An old fighting arena appears on some maps. Given that the island is known for having an assortment of treasures, there might be some old an valuable weapons there. Maybe even some magical ones.
I think I've made it pretty clear that I find D&D combat to be tedious and boring, especially if it's not furthering the story in some way. But still, there are folks who play the game explicitly for the combat side of things. If I've got strangers playing my game, I want to make sure there is a good chance that they will both encounter the types of scenes they like, and be exposed to a variety of different game elements. The aim here was to have a basic combat, but something that looked ominous. So I had a bunch of mechanical combat drones under the arena, slow to wake up, so they'd be easy to take down unless the characters screwed around too much. The arena was also designed as a place where magical weapons might be picked up on the way to the castle.
I don't know that my players were particularly going to head to the arena, but since they were following another party across the island I had that other group head toward it. The gight was relatively quick and easy, but the presence of the other party led to some interesting inter-character tension as we found out that one character had a disdain for violence (even though he was probably the fiercest combatant among them). Debates over prisoners and the morality of how to treat them led to some interesting moments of character development. It had never explicitly intended to go that way, but I liked the growth and the showing of each characters underlying intentions through this.
Vignette 5: Thresholds (Direction turn)
The characters have been seeing statues and characters turned to stone on their way to the castle. There is some kind of old residual magic that has turned people to stone, but the actual magic is long gone. There are a few points where they see more of these "statues".
This storyline is one of the main ones for the scenario. The point behind it is that there are protective measures on the island to prevent people escaping with the treasures. Basically the characters can raid as much of the treasure as they want, but on their way out, there are three points where they have to make a d20 die roll. If the die roll ends up less than the number of treasures carried, the character suffers a curse that causes them to slow down. If they get hit by the curse twice, they turn to stone...hence the statues.
For our group, it didn't really work, but added some great tension to the rush of getting off the island. One character had no treasures, but I made the player roll anyway (she had no idea why, but was dreading the roll even though she would always succeed). The character with the most treasure only had a few and always succeeded their rolls. I was expecting greedy players to walk out laden with numerous treasures, with a good chance of failing the scenario. It wasn't a combat tension, it was a mysterious unknown and it kind of worked... just not quite in the way I had expected. This was actually kind of a good thing because we'd reached the end time designated for the scenario, and wanted to tie things up rather than having players turn to stone and then have other players argue about what to do next which would have dragged out the ending.
Vignette 6: The Feast and Ball (Direction Turn and Climax)
When the portal opens in the palace's throne room, the characters see an otherworldly version of the palace through it. On the "other" side there is a grand feast and ball, and the suggestions indicate that those on the other side of the portal have no idea that time is rapidly passing them by in the real world. The planes align only when the comet passes overhead, and this is the only time when the riches of the nobles can be successfully plundered.
This is meant to be strange and almost fae in nature. The world on the other side is a direct reflection of the "real world", so the characters have probably found a ruined and overgrown museum and library that now as a reflection filled with relics, treasures and tomes of magic. This is what's meant to lure the characters as a honey pot. Raiding the museum is meant to be the climax.
In our game it basically was the climax, and most of the characters resolved their stories and fulfilled one or two of their intended goals here. As I mentioned with the "thresholds" vignette, the characters weren't as greedy as I hoped they'd be. They only took what they needed and quickly headed back out. I accelerated the ending a bit, by having the comet start to move beyond it's designated alignment in the sky, but only did this when it felt that the game was stating to slow down and stagnate.
The story ended up flowing pretty well. We had some good moments of character interaction and goal achieving. I was generally pretty happy with the outcome.
All in all, the various vignettes worked in the way they needed to. They guided the path of the session around the choice of the characters, and gave some structure to an otherwise freeform exploration. There were a few other vignettes and scene ideas I had such as a tainted botanical garden that had been turned into poison garden...
...but this wasn't encountered.
There were a few others that could have been used more intensely but we had enough interesting elements filling out the narrative.
The fact that players said they wanted to play in another of my sessions suggests that the game generally worked for the players too.
.png)
Comments