Starting In The Middle
I have a friend, with whom I have gamed for many, many years, who has never read The Lord Of The Rings; he found the slow pace of The Fellowship Of The Ring so completely off-putting that he was never able to gather enough interest to finish the trilogy. I never had that problem – but I first read LOTR from my local library, and someone had borrowed the first volume and not returned it, so I started reading as Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas began chasing the Orcs who had captured Merry and Pippin. So I have to wonder – would I have found Tolkien’s epic fantasy as compelling if I had started at the beginning?
That’s not the only example that I can point to. I first came across the Belgariad – one of my favorite fantasy series – in a second-hand store, where parts 2 and 3 were on offer cheaply – so much so that I was willing to take a chance on the books. I enjoyed them greatly, and quickly sought out the rest of the set, and the sequel quadrilogy, the Mallorean as well. Plus Belgarath and Polgara in Hardcover. It was the scenes set in Vo Mimbre that really established my enjoyment of the series. But the Question remains, would I have enjoyed the series as much if I had started with the relatively pedestrian first volume?
And then there’s the Elenium/Tamuli double-trilogy, by the same authors. I had multiple opportunities to buy but the cover and blurb for The Diamond Throne repeatedly put me off – it sounded like a romance, not an adventure story. It was only when I was given a copy of The Shining Ones – the middle volume of the sequel trilogy, the Tamuli – for Christmas one year, and enjoyed it immensely, that I was interested enough to pick up the other five books. Even then, I found apon reading the preceding volume that much of the humor that I had so enjoyed in The Shining Ones was being read into the content by me, and was not actually part of the story as written by David and Leigh Eddings. I still enjoy the series (I’m re-reading it currently) but still experience a pang of disappointment whenever I come to one of those passages.
The common thread is that by starting in the middle, I was able to jump right into the action and figure out who the characters were as I went along. The tedium of the setup and establishing of characters and situations was bypassed.
Heck, if it comes to that, Star Wars started with Episode IV, and there are many other examples…
The James Bond movies have a before-the-credits action sequence as a standard part of their format, and it works.
So, what’s the RPG equivalent, how can GMs take advantage of it, and what are the pitfalls?
The Instant-Action Tease
Well, the obvious equivalence is throwing the PCs into a combat situation immediately, or just about so, without explanations for where it fits into the overall campaign or what its significance is and dropping dire hints as to that significance into the description of events. As the combat proceeds, the GM keeps careful notes as to where everyone is, what they are doing, what their condition is, anything important that is said, and anything else he needs to be able to recreate the events at a later date. When the battle reaches a crescendo or point of high drama – which the GM engineers if necessary – he interrupts it and takes the plot back in time to the initial meeting of the characters, the establishing of the Campaign Premise(s), and so on.
When the plot makes the encounter appropriate, the GM simply reiterates the events that he has logged, up to the point where it was interrupted, then lets the game carry on from that point.
Benefits
This gives the campaign a James-Bond style kick-start, gets everyone’s adrenalin pumping, and teases them with the hints as to the significance of what’s going on. With most difficult encounters, the question to be answered is “How do we get out of this one?”; such a kick-start adds the questions, “How did we get into this mess?” and “What’s it all mean?”
Pitfalls
But there are a couple of pitfalls in this approach to be wary of. The most serious is that the GM is committed to having events lead to the combat that was interrupted – and that can be difficult without creating plot trains. The best way of avoiding this particular problem is to ensure that the context of the encounter is undefined, or capable of multiple interpretations; this permits many plot roads to intersect at the critical point.
This is best achieved by being just a little vague about various aspects of the circumstances of the battle during the ‘Tease’. “You’re in the bottom of a pit, facing off against a giant with granite-like skin. Numerous minor cuts on your face and hands are bandaged and bloody. Make your attack rolls. [Pause for rolls] Your attacks bounce harmlessly off his armored skin. Someone yells ‘protect the Ice Crown’. The Giant snarls and raises his club and you see runes carved into its length in an unknown script – runes that are glowing blue-white with power…”
Notice all the things that aren’t stated explicitly: where the pit in question is located, how deep it is, why the characters are injured and not healed (given that they have a cleric in the party), what the Ice Crown is, who and what the Giant is, what its powers are, whether its the characters or the Giant who are instructed to ‘protect the Ice Crown’, and what the participants are fighting about. Are the PCs the Good Guys, the Bad Guys, someone else’s Pawns, or Innocent Bystanders?
There’s no context to explain these things, so it becomes much easier to match whatever context emerges in play with the battle description. The unanswered questions form a checklist of things for the GM to introduce before the battle can be restarted, a spur to his creativity. It can actually be easier if the GM has no idea what any of these things mean at the time, any more than the players do – provided the GM is confident of being able to devise explanations when the time comes, and it certainly avoids the plot train pitfall.
The Prophetic Peril
This procedure enables a GM to emulate the James Bond -style action Teasers, but we’re really looking to go beyond that and actually make the action-based introduction directly relevant to the campaign, without the cheating of building separate, semi-random elements into the plotline merely to justify the presence of those elements in the opening sequence.
Let’s be honest, then: what we are really talking about here is starting the campaign with a slightly-different form of prophecy. In my December 2009 article, “The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding The Plot Locomotive”, I offer a number of techniques on how to implement prophecies within a campaign while avoiding plot trains, but those techniques and most of that advice don’t apply to this particular type of prophecy. All the perils of prophecy within the campaign remain, unfortunately.
To resolve this problem, we need a new technique. The one suggested in the previous section is part of the solution, but is too anarchic to be the complete answer; we need a method of building direction into the plotline without building in a railroad.
The Elements Of The Encounter
The place to start is at the content of the initial encounter. Instead of a random collection of elements, we need to incorporate items that are intentionally relevant to the plot – in other words, lay down some railroad tracks. I know what you’re thinking at this point, bear with me!
- Instead of a pit, we might need to choose a castle throne room because that’s where our bad guy is going to be based at the start of the campaign.
- We might be able to keep the giant – if the bad guy’s early acts will get him control of one or more of these giants – but, if not, we will need to replace it/him with a more appropriate and equally fearsome enemy.
- We might or might not be able to keep the club with runes on it – if that weapon is appropriate to the enemy we have chosen, or to the chief villain, or if magic and/or magical weaponry is going to be significant to the campaign.
- …and so on.
That’s the key to getting this step right: making sure that every element of this battle is, or at least appears to be, appropriate to the campaign’s direction.
Blind chance is replaced with intentional relevance.
Derailing The Plot Train
Having laid very careful railroad tracks to validate the components of the action sequence, it’s time to derail the plot train that wants to run on them before it even gets going. Instead of the train tracks defining where the plot has to go, they are to serve as a navigational landmark, nothing more; the ONLY point at which the train tracks and the plot are required to intersect is at the moment that the battle commences.
I’ll say that again, for emphasis: the ONLY point at which the train tracks and the plot are required to intersect is at the moment that the battle commences.
How does this work in practice? The GM lets the game develop as usual, and one by one introduces the plot elements that justify the shape of the aborted battle. The players are perpetually free to interpret and act on these plot elements as they see fit; all the GM is concerned about, beyond running the game as usual, is ensuring that all the justification fundamentals are in place. Once that requirement is met, he simply needs to stay alert for an opportunity to ‘catch up’ with the combat.
If necessary, he can even cheat a little. The throne room within the castle might actually turn out to be a throne room somewhere else; the opponent might be initially disguised in some fashion as something else to avoid putting the PCs on their guard; and so on.
Avoiding Disaster
Whenever a GM attempts something fancy, there is always the risk of failure, and this “headlong rush into the action” is definitely on the fancy side; any serious misstep will transform the GMs attempted cleverness into an unmitigated disaster. The risk is commensurate with the rewards.
It follows that extra care and attention should be spent on avoiding those missteps if at all possible. Doing so is not difficult; all that’s required is to spend a little additional time prepping the adventure. There are four essential tasks in game prep that will collectively ensure that a catastrophic failure of the GMs designs is as unlikely as it is possible to achieve:
- Check and recheck the connecting logic between the elements and their logical presence in the battle. If possible, have multiple ways to get from A to B.
- Plan specific introductions – “cut scenes,” if you like – for each element and be sure you know how they relate to the battle.
- Double-check that there are NO assumptions about how the PCs will react in any of the introductions or connecting logics that – if violated – would break the connection to the circumstances of the battle.
- Craft descriptions for the various elements that are capable of more than one interpretation if necessary. Ensure that they are just a little vague and generic when used in the initial partial battle.
Use Prophecy As A Weapon
Not content with providing one semi-successful and one satisfactory solution to the problem, here’s a third to round out this article. I’ll present this solution in narrative form as an example is the clearest method of explaining it, but first a caveat: This involves some major precedents about various aspects of the campaign that might not fit what you have in mind; the answer offered should be customized to fit the GMs campaign concepts.
GM: “Welcome to the XXXX campaign. The unnatural fog swirls and begins to lift. You can see the granite walls of the room, broken occasionally by weapons mounted on the walls, stuffed animal heads, torches in brass fittings, and once-expensive tapestries. The shadow looming through the fog slowly resolves into a giant with rock-like skin. He looks at the numerous minor cuts and abrasions on your face and hands, and the bloody bandages that bind your wounds, and a slow smile splits his face. Make your attack rolls.” [Pause for rolls] “Your attacks bounce harmlessly off his armored skin. Someone yells ‘protect the Ice Crown’. The Giant snarls and raises a mighty two-handed sword festooned with sharpened protrusions and evil barbs. Runes carved down the blade begin to glow blue-white with power. As the fearsome blade begins its descent the crystal ball abruptly clouds over once again and goes Dark. “The crystal reveals what might be, not what will be. The more certain the future, the greater the duration of the visions it provides,” explains the Witch. “There is no more; and as I told you before we began, once a scene has been viewed the spiritual signature that binds vision to subject is dissipated. No-one can show you more.” |
In other words, Make the Prophetic Combat an actual Prophecy!
With this one change, there is only one plot element that has to be explained: ‘The Witch’. Explaining her role in the campaign and how it came to pass that she scried the PCs possible future should also explain why the PCs are together. Two or three minutes spent relating the appropriate backstory that covers these elements and the campaign is underway with a full head of steam. Assuming that the railroad tracks that you aren’t going to follow (see the previous section) are in at least moderate shape – they don’t have to be anywhere near as well-prepared as the previous solution requires – then everything is set to go, and it doesn’t matter if the PCs never actually have the encounter that kicked the campaign/adventure off.
So there you have it – three ways to jump straight into the action without railroading the players. It’s easier than you might think!
Discover more from Campaign Mastery
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
June 16th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Generally, most players will work with the GM to make the pre-defined plot scene happen, because it has already happened and they have enjoyed it. In fact, quite often, if it’s really good, players will go out of their way to direct things towards the scene, just so they can experience it again.
Only the most deliberately obtuse players actively strive to steer the game away from anything that has already been defined, and most often this is an attempt by them to break the game, just so they can prove they have more power than the GM. Of course, it doesn’t really matter – the predefined scene could easily just have been a prophetic dream, a tale that was told to them, or a re-enactment of the past, and what the PCs later experience is the true version, if they ever even get there – maybe they can change circumstances so that the pre-defined sequences is just a what could have been instead of a what is, and their adventures go down a completely different path.
Never fear plot trains or railroading – this is a stupid approach. People naturally follow paths and trails, because these tend to be the quickest and simplest means between points, and if not, in time newer paths will be created. The rails just represent the most common ones upgraded for even faster transportation. Nobody resents being railroaded when the rails go in the direction they want to go – and if the rails lead to the predefined scene that the players want to happen, then they are more inclined to go along with them. But if they want to take a different route or try to avoid the scene altogether, let them do it, and see where it takes them. They can always come back to the rails, or maybe find another set later on, or you could even let them succeed in “thwarting” your plans to direct them to a given scene if that is what they are inclined to do.
You don’t even need to figure out how the teaser scene relates to anything. Leave that to the players, and go with whatever ideas they throw up. Make them work for the information on how it’s all connected, if they are that interested (and hopefully, they will be) and if you are really good, you can have them stumble across the scene while they are still trying to figure the connection, and see how far you get before the coin drops…
Da’ Vane recently posted..And the Winner Is…
June 16th, 2011 at 1:22 pm
A great contribution as always, Da’Vane. While the approach you suggest may work with some players, others are more resentful of any percieved attempt by the GM to control what their characters can and can’t do. Players want to feel like they matter, that their participation and choices make a difference. Railroad scenario tracks deny them that, and consequently most GMs attempt to avoid them whenever possible.
But there are certainly occasions when the players demand some more direction from the GM; as always, individual circumstances lead to individual approaches, and the GM should do what works for them.
June 16th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
I removed my initial paragraph, which was basically “Don’t play with dicks.”
Railroading, unfortunately, does have that limitation of control – but like I said, if the tracks are going where the players want, it doesn’t matter. When you cut from city to wilderness encounter without going through the intervening space, that is also railroading – and only the most stubbornly obtuse players would enforce actually roleplaying every step of a journey.
The real problem, however, is how railroading is percieved because of the way it is set up. It always implies that the players are the passengers in the train, unable to leave the tracks. This is poor planning – in reality, the PCs should be the drivers of the train, and able to switch the points of the track, to choose where it goes. If you aren’t giving that choice to your players, you are simply letting them roll the dice in your story, not letting them play a game.
A little bit of psychology, a little bit of planning, and a lot of opportunities for switches and branchlines, and railroading becomes positive, rather than negative. It becomes a tool that is useful, rather than something to be avoided.
Because, originally, railroads were built on wagonways, which were built on dirt roads – that’s the evolution of the railroad right there: the connection between two points. If you decide those two points are beginning and the end with nothing in the middle, then who’s fault is that? We don’t build road or rail networks that way, so why should plot networks be the same?
Da’ Vane recently posted..And the Winner Is…
June 16th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
I agree completely with this comment, Da’Vane – it’s exactly what I advocate in the article. However, I think you are straining the metaphor for Plot Railroading out of shape; what you are suggesting is a plot network (an excellent term!), not a single rail link with nothing but the occasional dead-end spur line.
Alas, the final paragraph just isn’t correct. Railroad lines need to be straight, wagonways can twist and turn quite sharply. Most railroads cut across the landscape straight through existing property of the time.
June 17th, 2011 at 6:30 am
This is an amazing idea… I wish I could claim that I thought of it myself! I’m bookmarking this in my “GM Ideas” folder so I’ll (hopefully) remember to try this the next time my group starts a new campaign.
Josh recently posted..My Summer Disappearing Act
June 17th, 2011 at 9:49 am
@Josh: It should work when you’re just starting a new adventure as well as a new campaign, though the latter is when it’s probably at its best. Hope the new campaign works out for you whenever you begin it!
@Ivellos: The easy way is to demand (in advance) character sheets from the players showing the PCs at 4th level as well as at 1st. Or you could simply make it up if your going for the “what might happen” approach – it doesn’t matter if you’re consistent or not in that case! The second of those is almost certainly the better answer in many respects.
As for knowing what items they will have, that’s also easy: you know how many xp are between 1st and 4th level, you know how many gp worth of items the characters should find in the course of those levels (both in the DMG) – so just decide in advance that the party are going to get this, and that, and the other, in advance. Those sort of details would be included in the descriptive elements of the initial battle, promises that you have to live up to.
June 17th, 2011 at 7:26 am
Good article. I like the approach suggested but have always been leery of trying this because of one question: how do you handle combat stats and abilities for “future PCs” without knowing what abilities and items they will gain between the campaign retro-start and the teaser combat? Am I understanding correctly that the teaser combat would take place with the PCs at 4th level (for example)and then the campaign would rewind to the start with them back at 1st level? If so, how does the DM pre-determine feats, spells, weapons, etc. for the teaser in advance?
This article was helpful for DMs craft a good plot setup, but some advice on how to handle the PC side of the combat would be helpful too. Thanks!
June 18th, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Why bother snapping backward in the first place? In medias res is a useful opening, but one doesn’t need to do a lot of fishing backwards, just be a little more strict in what people bring to the table. I’ve had a few GMs who just gave us an in medias res at the beginning–one leaving it to us to explain what we were doing in the middle of a Heavenly barfight, one just explaining “All right, this is a paragraph or two equivalent summary of how you got here, this is what the battle looks like, roll me initiative now, all right?”, and I once began a game with several rolls to cover for the mechanical hazards of starting in medias res rather than going around the long way, a bit of hasty summarizing, and a wall of onrushing water. All it really takes is insisting that the players have the kinds of backgrounds that would justify them being that point at that time (all willing to work for a certain person, likely to have been thrown in jail, interested in hunting up a certain shiny rock and not too likely to kill/ditch the allies) and then writing a tight–and concise–enough bridge that there’s no real reason for anyone to object since they want to get on with the shiny stuff. And that way, you don’t have to worry about somebody misinterpreting the apparent invulnerability of the monster and spending the next dozen sessions making special efforts to fight fate on the assumption it’s infinitely preferable to fighting That Thing. (…which, I will admit, would likely be my choice if faced with the example background.)
Ravyn recently posted..Impractical Applications (Yep, I’m a Tease)