Even better, from a GMing perspective, discussing the subtext means that you can take the commentary and feed it back into the game as the basis of future scenarios. For example, if it is granted that Demonic Posession is real, are the victims tainted by the act of posession itself or by the deeds that they are driven to perform by the posessing entity? There are all sorts of places that this discussion could go – you could have it five or six times with different people and end up in a different discussion every time. Religious doctrine, free will vs authority, the ‘only following orders” defence, etc etc.

I’m afraid that I have no further tips on the subject. If I did, I would either have shared them in the comments, or made them in a blog post of my own here at CM!

@Mad Brew: Talking about the social or educational benefits of gaming directly often comes off sounding defensive about the hobby. On the other hand, if you learn something through gaming that you can introduce into the discussion at hand, it can sound quite natural – the difference being whether or not the benefit is the primary subject of discussion or simply the vehicle by which you obtained the information you are contributing to the subject of conversation. The first is bad, the second is great.

I think another approach is to talk about the out-of-character social/personal aspects, how it allows you to connect with your friends and test your creativity/wit. If you can tie the experience to something that others consider rewarding (connecting with friends) then it might be even more interesting for them.

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Mad Brew recently posted..ENnies 2010 Choices

Good advice about synopsis. I haven’t thought of that before when I do summaries. Got any more such tips?

Good clarification on keeping stories as short as they need to deliver their payload. Comedic timing is a great example.

I disagree on the interesting sub-text comment though. Not that sub-text is not interesting, but I also think stories that are purely entertaining work well, possibly even better for some audiences.

For example, my friend Jeff told me about a funny gaming moment a couple years ago where the characters were stealthily sneaking up on their enemy. His character, a bit of a sneak, decided to climb up on the slippery trunk of a fallen tree so he could avoid the main path. He’s not a tough guy and wanted to avoid direct confrontation. As the enemy approached from up the path, he tripped, causing the log to swing out into the main path with him on the end of it, right in front of the bad guys!

A cartoon moment, but I thought it humorous, and a good simple and short story.

“The point of the narrative” is what you have described as the “resolution”. Those who have mastered this technique are said to have “comic timing” because in any comedic monologue or action, anything that gets in the way of reaching the punchline weakens the impact of that punchline, but the same advice holds even for non-comedic narratives. If you can, you should even exclude the Introduction and Conflict and combine the Hook with the Resolution into a single statement, which you use as a conversation-starter; you can always fill in the additional details afterwards.

“I was in a game the other night and the GM posed some really tricky questions about the justice of punishing parents for their crimes and the flow-on effects on the children of the criminals.” No need to mention that the ‘criminals’ in question were Evil Kobolds and that the question was framed after the players had wiped out said Kobolds and then discovered the nursery afterwards; no need to go into the personalities involved. This narrative combines the hook – a philosophical question with no easy answers – and the introduction. And it immediatly elevates the game in question from blow-by-blow mechanics into a forum where interesting questions can be posed, and the answers explored.

What if your game-master didn’t include such ethical dilemmnas? Almost any confrontation that is interesting to an outside party will have some point to it – it might be humerous “and then the super-sneaky beggar who had spent the last ten minutes worming his way past all the armed guards sneezed”, or philosophical as above, or ethical, or political, or theological, or historical, or scientific, or whatever. Just take the subtext of what was going on and make it front and centre, and you’re all set.

And if you can’t find an interesting subtext? Then your story is probably not going to be that interesting to a non-gamer, and you should probably choose another.