Every PC should get their fair share of the spotlight. Image by ATIQUE AHAMAD from Pixabay, cropped by Mike.

My co-GM and I have almost finished designing the next adventure in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, entitled “Lucifer Rising”. This will be the 33rd adventure in the main continuity (which doesn’t count a half-dozen of fill-in adventures along the way).

This adventure is notable for having a slightly different structure to most of them, and the differences have given me a fresh perspective on game spotlights for PCs and being the focal point of an adventure or part thereof. (I’m going to be extra-careful not to give anything important away, so our players are welcome to read this article without hesitation).

At the same time, though, the structure is clearly very similar to our usual style; this is an evolution, not a revolution. And that means that the past posts on the subject remain relevant and the starting point for this discussion:
 

There may be others, but that group provides a solid foundation for today’s discussion, I think.

Normalities In Structure

A normal adventure is divided into Acts, in each of which there is a major change of direction and fortunes for the PCs. That’s the essential definition used by discussions of story structure like the Three-Act structure, the Four-Act structure, and so on.

Each act is divided into a number of scenes. Whenever the location in which the action is set, or a significant NPC enters or exits the plot, or there is a deliberate change in tone, that signals a new scene. An act can have anywhere from one scene to many scenes – in fact, to as many scenes as necessary.

Sometimes, a change of PC spotlight focus can also trigger a change of scene, sometimes not. You really need to adopt an adventure structure that specifically suits the particular adventure, evolving the way you structure scenes to best communicate what you need to tell the players, and to share the spotlight around as evenly and equally as possible.

It is not abnormal for one or two PCs to be more central to a plotline than others; at the campaign level, it’s also important to monitor the resulting spotlight focus to ensure that one particular PC doesn’t dominate (unless that’s by deliberate campaign design, of course; in the Dr Who campaign, the fact that there’s only one player and one PC makes disproportionate spotlighting inevitable, for example).

That usually doesn’t impact scene-to-scene spotlight focus within the adventure; it simply means that some scenes are more central to the importance of the plot, not that they are more frequent or receive more or less attention.

Abnormalities In Structure

So, “Lucifer Rising” starts, as many of our adventures do, with the four PCs in different places, doing different things, and generally, just living their lives. Unlike most such plots, many of these individual plot threads will become relevant to the main plotline.

Normally, there would only be three or four of these before everybody comes together and the adventure structure changes as a consequence. Sometimes, there are only one or two – and on at least one occasion, we pitched the PCs directly into the main plot. But this time around, there were many more than usual, at least for one PC – call them ‘A’.

And, while characters ‘B’ and ‘C’ each had their own plotlines, it seemed inevitable (for content reasons) that ‘C’ would find themselves entangled in B’s plotline repeatedly.

In terms of adventure-wide focus, this shifts – it starts with A, then shifts to the B+C combination, then returns to A, and then finally shifts to D! Everyone gets their own share of the dominant position within the plotline, and everyone will have crucial contributions to make to a successful outcome.

This led us to settle on a radically different structure to the normal, and the change is rooted in the principle of sharing the spotlight.

Abnormal Composition

To rotate the spotlight, and ensure an equitable distribution of the focus, we decided that each Act would consist of 3 or 4 scenes – an A, a D, and either a B+C or a B and a C, in terms of which PC(s) would be targeted by the spotlight.

These would not occur in the same sequence in each Act; in fact, the only rules were that whoever went last in the previous act would not go first in the next, and the same character should not feature in the same position within one act as in the one prior to it. The spotlight would shift from one act to the next.

But it wasn’t long before we started to get hung up on nomenclature, using the same term – Act – in both its traditional sense and in this revised approach and occasionally talking at cross purposes as a result. So we defined a new term, Sequence, for these ‘groups’ of scenes.

The consequences of these decisions were that the number of Sequences would be determined by the number of scenes to be experienced by the PC with the most engagement (A), and that additional content would need to be created to ‘pad out’ the sequence.

So the structure of the adventure became:
 

  • Plot, divided into several Acts;
    • Each Act is divided into a number of Sequences;
      • Each Sequence is split into a group of Scenes;
        • Each Scene advances the narrative from the perspective of a single PC or a group of PCs who have coalesced in consequence of a prior Scene.

Act 1 would have the PCs following 4 individual plot threads that would eventually begin coalescing. It would end when the PCs reunited as a group, a reunion explicitly resulting from developments within individual plot threads. In fact, the natural flow of action would first unite two pairs (A and D, B and C) as an interim step. In terms of dominant contributions to the main plot, there is a natural flow – A, B, C, A.

Act 2 would follow the PCs as they crossed a wilderness after reuniting, having a number of encounters, until they reached the location of the third Act. This is all about overcoming the natural challenges of the circumstances and environment while racing the clock. For most of this act, B is dominant, followed by C. A and D are relatively minor contributors in comparison.

Act 3 delivers the PCs to a particularly challenging confrontation, and just as it looks like things are headed toward a resolution, we up the Ante by dealing the PCs a serious Reverse. D is dominant, but everyone has vital contributions to make.

Finally, Act 4 will resolve the various conflicts, and may or may not lead to an Epilog – this is what we are writing at the current time, so that decision has yet to be made. Personally, I think an Epilog is likely, but we haven’t even discussed this yet. All four PCs have essential contributions to make, but D is slightly dominant.

Ultimately, this is an adventure that starts out as an A story and morphs into a D story with vital contributions by B and C along the way.

The Rotating Focus

While it might seem that the rotating focus from one scene to another within a Sequence is random and anarchic, in reality, these are very tightly controlled. A lot of factors come into play – overt significance, emotional intensity, even player preferences – but ultimately it comes down to when do you break one scene into two?

This question obviously becomes critically important when one string of encounters is setting the pace for the whole Act, as is the case with Lucifer Rising.

Ultimately, our approach is expository; we break a scene when it’s logical to do so, when the story progresses. That sets a standard, and creates a guideline for use on those occasions when there is no natural break point, but the scene is too long to remain whole.

Complications

There is a fine degree of nuance that becomes possible. You can shift a moment of introspection from one scene to another, move a moment of revelation from the start of a scene to the end of the featured character’s previous scene (or vice-versa), and so on, purely to trim and equalize length and other parameters between scenes.

There are also knock-on effects that sometimes have to be considered, relating to the psychological impact of information.

Let’s say that the sequence of scenes at one point is A12, B12, C12, D12, B13, A13.

If a particular moment of revelation takes place at the end of A12, then B12, D12, C13, and B13 all occur after the players have heard this revelation, even if their characters don’t know of it. This can shape context and interpretation.

If that moment of revelation gets shifted to the start of A13, those scenes no longer take place in the “shadow” of the revelation. This may or may not be a good thing; the specifics will differ from one example to another. It might be that making this change may force some of these other scenes to also be amended.

The sequencing of scenes and their content is a continual juggling act where the ultimate basis of judgment is the story that you are creating and sharing. Is that story better served by shifting the moment of resolution, prolonging the mystery? Or does the revelation become an anticlimax? Does having it at the start of the scene make for a stronger connection between circumstances and a player decision about what to do next?

There are too many variables for there to be any hard-and-fast rules. But the rule of thumb is that there is a lot more flexibility than there might seem.

Balancing within a Sequence

One of the primary reasons for shifting material from one Sequence to another is to balance the spotlight focus within the Sequence. This isn’t always possible, it depends on the content of the scene, but it’s always worth trying to achieve.

The example offered above can be even more illuminating, in this context; say, for example, that scene C13 contains its own revelation that places the A12 revelation under an entirely different light. That would make it important that the A12 revelation stay where it is, even if that makes the A12 scene slightly larger or more important than the A13.

This is not as unbalanced as it might appear; the significance to the A plotline of the C13 revelation means that a small part of the significance of the C13 scene can be considered to be transferred to the next A scene, A13, and illustrates how complex these considerations can sometimes become.

Padding A Plot Thread

Another way of thinking about all this is to consider all the “A” plotlines as forming a singular plot thread, all the “B” plotlines as forming a second, and so on. The Act/Sequence/Scene structure thereby becomes a way of interweaving and interleaving those plot threads.

This perspective can be extremely useful when it comes to padding such a plot thread to make it ‘bulk’ the same amount of screen time, or close to it, as each of the other plot threads.

‘Lucifer Rising’ is fairly typical in terms of the challenge this creates for the GM. I forget exactly how many ‘A’ scenes we had in the first act, one to a sequence, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that it was 10.

We also had 3 B scenes, two C scenes, and 3 B/C scenes, a shortfall of 2. Or is it a shortfall of 4 B scenes and 5 C scenes? The latter seems more correct, because otherwise we have the question of what B is doing during the C scenes, and vice-versa.

And, finally, we had 4 D scenes, a shortfall of 6.

Filling The Gaps

All these gaps need to be plugged, and that means additional content within those plot threads. Complications, setbacks, conversations, plot twists – and anything else you can think of – have to be used to expand the scope of the plot threads into a more significant and substantial narrative, just to keep it in lockstep with the ‘A’ plot.

But it is also true that each of these additional scenes adds to the complexity of both the plot thread and the overall plotline, and represents an additional opportunity for both to get seriously messed up. And that doesn’t even address one of the biggest dangers – that of miscounting, and ending up one scene short of, or one scene over, requirements.

This happens more often than I would care to admit.

Compounding this problem is that the default assumption is that all scenes will be of a similar size – whether you measure it by the word, by the line, or by the minute – and this assumption is more often wrong than it is right.

Solutions

If you break the plot thread down into bullet points, one to a scene, you can generally avoid the worst of the latter problem – by introducing a heightened risk of the first.

It was to get around that issue that we started labeling the scenes in Act I “A1, A2, A3” and so on. The presence of a numeric index (the “1, 2, 3” part) makes it more obvious how many holes have to be filled.

Signposts

Some of the scenes are signposted, i.e. fixed in place by another scene. If, in scene A7, character A sends a message to B and C, the B / C scene(s) in which those messages are received should follow scene A7. They don’t have to be B7 and/or C7 – B8 or whatever would be perfectly acceptable – but B6 would be a problem.

The signposts define both the length of the inserted plot points and where in the adventure they have to take place. this in turn restricts the content that will ‘fit’, and that in turn means that the ‘shape’ of that content is defined by the signposts.

It’s no good inserting a three-scene complication if you only have two empty scene-slots to fill. And even if that weren’t a problem, it will often be the case that the empty slots are non-consecutive in sequence.

Sometimes you have to add an ‘A’ scene or two just to make enough space to properly pad out the B, C, and D plot threads. That’s certainly what happened in the course of plotting Lucifer Rising.

The Hand-wave

However, there are times when you can eliminate an empty slot just by hand-waving a particular scene out of existence. Three scenes will certainly fit into two slots if you can hand-wave the middle one. Or perhaps an entire set of shortfalls can be eliminated by hand-waving one of the “A” scenes.

Some scenes should never be hand-waved – any scene in which a PC has to make a decision, for example. It’s far more acceptable to hand-wave the consequences of a decision, employing alternate forms of a scene and its content that reflect the choice made – insofar as the possible options are not too many in number.

There’s often a lot of playing around before balance is achieved.

Linearity vs Granularity

There are two fundamental approaches to crafting material to fit the shape of the plot threads indicated by the signposts. The Linear approach is to break down each thread, playing around with it until you get the right number of scenes within the thread. The Granular approach is to deal with all the “3” scenes, then move on to all the “4” scenes, and so on. This is the sequence in which they will take place when the adventure is actually played.

Neither approach, we have found, is entirely satisfactory or complete; a combination is often the most useful answer. We usually break the basic plot thread down using the linear approach and then fill out the content – narrative blocks, conversations, etc – in the granular fashion. This enables tone and pacing to be matched up within a particular Sequence – which in turn helps to balance the spotlight distribution.

This can provide additional tonal information that helps to define the content of any signposted ‘gaps’, which is why the approach is more useful, while placing strong emphasis on the coherent flow of action through each thread.

It’s more useful for the content of an inserted scene to contrast with the defined content that accompanies it in a given sequence. You don’t want all the plot threads encountering setbacks at the same time; you want thread A to encounter a setback and resolve it just as thread B is encountering a setback, and so on.

Emotional Roller-coasters

It’s sometimes helpful to consider these plot threads to be emotional roller-coasters that are in simultaneous operation – you don’t want them all to peak at the same time, or none of them will stand out.

The emotional intensity of a scene is also a factor in judging the balance of spotlight distribution, and is something that hasn’t really been mentioned so far. This perspective helps take that into account.

It also produces a natural ebb and flow both within a single Sequence and across several Sequences, in which one plot thread will briefly dominate before yielding the spotlight to another.

In the long run, the spotlight focus will even out, but in the shorter term, variation can be tolerated, even welcomed, because it elevates each plot thread (and the PC who is the focus of that plot thread) in prominence, one at a time, giving each the chance to shine.

Balancing across multiple Sequences

This process of balancing with a tolerance for drift from the ideal over multiple sequences naturally balances on the larger scale to a satisfactory standard; this is because it will be clear to the players that the deviations are story-derived, and that everyone has a share of that story that is reasonable for that specific story.

Balancing within an Act – group sequences

But this technique only works when the party are separated and pursuing individual objectives and plot threads. It needs modification to serve once a group has assembled in furtherance of some common objective.

An initial balance, and a critical one, is to ensure that each character has some specific contribution to make to the achievement of those shared goals. In some stories, this alone is enough to achieve a satisfactory balance. In some cases, though, such as Lucifer Rising, this is not enough because there is no direct contribution from one or more of the PCs.

The problem character in this case is the C character; as noted earlier, the others have significant parts to play in resolving the plotline.

When this occurs, there are two additional steps that are needed – the first is to ensure spotlight balance at the campaign level (see below), and the second is to ensure that the character in question has more instances of being a supporting character within the plotline than any of the others, using quantity of contributions to overcome the deficit in primary focus.

Sometimes we have achieved this by making the character in question – and it’s not the same character on every occasion – a communications hub. Sometimes, we achieve it by making them a conduit for essential information. Sometimes we use an NPC with whom that character will particularly relate or connect. And sometimes – relatively rarely – we are able to make the character’s non-involvement a central plot point.

That last requires some further explanation, I think. If you have a character who is an expert in something – let’s assume they are an expert in the supernatural, for example – and there is an event with multiple possible explanations, once of which is supernatural in nature, then a negative finding by that expert regarding the event can state more about what the event is not than any number of positive contributions by others.

In it’s own way, then, sometimes the lack of a direct contribution to the solution is as useful to the group as a whole as any other contribution.

Wider Interactions

The same technique can also be used on a smaller scale to balance temporary shortfalls in spotlight share.

It only stands to reason that every NPC encountered should relate to one PC more than the others, just by virtue of their particular circumstances, identity, or personality; recognizing this and harnessing it gives you another tool to employ for evening out spotlight share.

This sometimes requires fine-tuning or expansion of the characterization of NPCs. Often, you can hang such interactions on the smallest of details – the character may have spent a brief time in a place that was formative for the PC, and so have come to become a supporter of the same football team as the PC, for example. Or they may share a social issue, or a political opinion, or a love of the same specific foodstuff or cuisine. Or a form of music that the NPC and the PC have in common. Or any of a dozen other pieces of trivia.

What’s that? Your players haven’t generated such trivia?

No problem. Most players won’t have any objection to your adding such color to their characters, especially if it ‘fits’ with the decisions they have already made. For example, if a PC has a preference for supporting underdogs, it should not take much research to pick a team in an appropriate sport that are perennial under-achievers, whose fans live for the day when it ‘all comes good’.

For a long time here in Australia, the AFL team of St Kilda would have fit this description – and I know that, despite knowing almost nothing about the sport. (Actually, my co-GM is a fan of the sport, so I’ve picked up a little more than ‘almost nothing’ over the last 20 years or so, but my awareness of this fact predates this heightened knowledge by decades).

Who put their hand up to state that they can’t simply look things like that up because their game is set in a fantasy world, and they don’t even know what the sports are that are played there?

What an excuse to get creative!

The most important thing to do is to be aware of which characters need a little extra spotlight for a little while and create whatever background material you need to make that happen.

When possible, you can even let the player come up with the material you need – you simply ask the question (in advance of needing the answer) without telling them why, and make notes of the answers.

For example, we once got all our PCs to decide which newspapers they read regularly so that we could insert a story relevant to the current plotline in one of them – again, making that character a conduit for information that the PCs otherwise would not have had. That specific method won’t work in a fantasy campaign, but there are others that are the equivalent.

“What Temple do you routinely visit?” – and then you have an NPC with the information that you want the PCs to have attend the same Temple even if they don’t do so regularly,, have them bump into the PC and start to gossip/chat. Let them impart three or four partial stories – one of which happens to be the relevant information.

Balancing within a Campaign

We’re always aware of who the dominant drivers of a plotline are going to be within an overall plotline. In the case of Lucifer Rising, as I explained earlier, it starts as an A plotline and morphs into a D plotline with major contributions by B and C in the middle.

The current adventure – if I were to use the same coding scheme – starts out being fairly evenly spread amongst A, B, C, and D, but becomes a strongly C-oriented plotline without much warning.

We keep adventure synopses on index cards so that we can shuffle them around as necessary. These summaries include the PCs that we expect to dominate. According to those cards, the plotline planned to follow Lucifer Rising is “The Temple Of Nitrocris” – but I think we will reshuffle them, because that is another C-focused plotline, and I think we need a “B”-focused plotline first.

Equitable balancing of the distribution of the spotlight never happens by accident, but – used properly – the need can be a spur to creativity, and can unlock a richer and more diverse continuity. These are all good attributes to have within a campaign!

Non-exclusion

I wanted to particularly emphasize, in closing, that making a plotline, or a group scene, or an encounter, or an Act, or a Sequence, dominated by a particular PC does not mean that the other PCs are excluded. This approach either gives them their own narrative thread – even if that’s a “b”-plot – or gives them a role to play in the primary plotline, even if that isn’t as central a role as the featured character.

The spotlight is a tool, a constructed perspective that assists in creating inclusiveness for all your PCs. It’s just that it’s an incredibly useful one if nuanced correctly.

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