Temple at Luxor in Egypt, photo by Pixabay / famhud. Public domain image licensed through CC0. Only marginally related to the article but it looks awesome!

I’ve been aware of the CCG, “Yu-Gi-Oh”, for some time. Collectible-card games are a staple of the games store to which the NSW Wargamers migrated when circumstances made the nearby venue we had been using for over a decade unavailable to us (shout-out to Good Games in Burwood – thanks for giving us a home when we needed one!). But this article is only indirectly about the card game.

A couple of years after noticing the card game (but having no idea of how to play, and certainly never having played it), I also became aware of the children’s cartoon advertising the game (both based on the same manga series). My interest level in both immediately declined sharply; in my experience, such television is rarely worth watching.

But, over the next 5 or 6 years, I caught a few minutes of an episode here and another there, and found that the TV show was a lot better than I had ever expected. Even more unexpectedly, I started recognizing interesting things about the pacing, especially noticeable in the first series.

If you study the Wikipedia page listing the episodes, you can see part of what I’m talking about, but it’s not very obvious – you have to dig for it; and even if you do, it won’t tell the whole story.

Pacing

The pacing of the Classic Yu-Gi-Oh series (also known as “Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters”), especially in season 1, is like nothing I’ve ever seen in televised fiction before. Let’s break down season one, based on the Wikipedia page entries I mentioned a moment ago, to show you what I mean.

• Episode 1 introduces the protagonists and sets the plot in motion as a ruthless tycoon kidnaps the hero’s grandfather in order to get a rare “Duel Monsters” card in “Grandpa’s” collection. The episode is essentially a standalone introduction.
• Episode 2 begins the main plot as the main villain, Maximilian Pegasus, steals “Grandpa’s” soul to force the hero, Yugi Moto, to enter the tournament that Pegasus has arranged. An important plot point is Pegasus using the power of his Millennium Eye (a magic item) to gain an advantage.
• Episode 3 gives the story of the trip to the tournament and shows the underhanded lengths that some of the participants will go to in order to win.
• Episodes 4 and 5 are a two part episode in which the player whose conduct was so underhanded in episode 3 gets defeated. The two episodes comprise a single Duel. Several more victories will be needed before the two friends who are participating, Yugi and Joey Wheeler, can claim admission to the final rounds and a confrontation with Pegasus.
• Episodes 6 and 7 are single-episode plots as both Joey and Yugi achieve further victories and which carry the time-frame forward to the end of the first day on Pegasus’ island, scene of the tournament.
• Episodes 8, 9, and 10 are a three-part episode detailing two related duels, and reintroduce Kaiba, the duelist that Yugi defeated in the first episode, and Kaiba’s younger brother, Mokuba, only to reveal that the Kaiba that we see this time around is a fraud perpetrated by Pegasus.
• Episodes 11, 12, and 13 are individual episodes that collectively form a three-part plot detailing two duels and conveying more information about the ‘Shadow Realm’ (where Grandpa’s soul was taken by Pegasus) and the Millennium Items.
• Episodes 14 and 15 are a single two-part episode which continues the reforming of Mai Valentine, a character who was initially vain and selfish.
• Episode 16 is a single-episode plot which reintroduces the real Kaiba, who delivers a psychologically-crushing defeat on Joey. This brings the plot to the end of the second day on Pegasus’ island.
• Episodes 17 and 18 are the first official two-part episode in the series and comprise a single duel plus introduction and conclusion. The introduction deals with the consequences and aftermath of Joey’s defeat in the previous episode.
• Episodes 19-21 are a three-part episode detailing a two-on-two duel and features, as a subplot, Kaiba making his way to Pegasus’ castle, gaining entrance, and being confronted by Pegasus, who traps Mokuba’s soul in the same way that he did Yugi’s Grandfather. The trilogy begins with the cliffhanger ending to the previous episode and ends with Pegasus giving Kaiba an ultimatum – Kaiba must duel Yugi and win in order to secure his brother’s release.
• Episodes 22, 23, and 24 are another three-part episode. At last, both Yugi and Joey have qualified for entry into the final rounds, but before they can settle in, Yugi is forced to accept Kaiba’s challenge, and loses his nerve when the spirit of his millennium item appears willing to sacrifice Kaiba’s life in order to win. Furthermore, as a consequence of the duel, Yugi no longer qualifies for the later rounds. Rather than enter without him, all the companions turn aside.
• A single-part plotline occurs in episode 25 in which Téa Gardner, a mutual friend to Joey and Yugi, wins enough star chips to enable Yugi to enter the castle from Mai Valentine, after Mai’s offer to give Yugi the star chips she has in excess of her needs is refused.
• In episodes 26 and 27, The companions enter Pegasus’ castle, where, true to his word, Pegasus duels Kaiba. Once again, Pegasus uses the power of his Millennium Eye to his advantage, and eventually wins by playing a card so powerful that it was never put into circulation.
• A single-episode plotline follows in episode 28 in which the structure of the tournament is decided, one of Yugi’s companions (Ryo Bakura) reveals to the viewer that he is plotting against both Yugi and Pegasus and poses a hidden danger.
• In the first semi-final bout, Yugi faces Mai Valentine in the course of the two-part episodes 29 and 30. Yugi overcomes the doubts inflicted by his bout with Kaiba to win.
• Another two-part episode (31 and 32) follows in which Joey defeats the fourth qualifying semi-finalist, despite his cheating. This episode brings to a conclusion a subplot that has threaded multiple episodes, starting in episode 3, the rehabilitation of Mai Valentine.
• The final bout between Joey and Yugi takes place as a two-parter in episodes 33 and 34. Yugi wins the tournament, permitting him to duel Pegasus for the soul of his grandfather.
• A five-part plot occupies episodes 35-39 which tells the story of the duel between Yugi and Pegasus while the rest of the companions attempt to rescue Kaiba and Mokuba. When Pegasus is defeated, he releases the souls he has imprisoned and slips away.
• Episode 40 deals with the aftermath of the duel, answers some more of the mysteries surrounding the Millennium Items, and reveals to the audience that the hidden threat has made good on his plans to capture Pegasus’ Millennium Eye. This plotline is then left hanging, not to be mentioned or developed further in season 1.
• Episodes 41 and 42 appear to start a new plotline, are set after the return of the party from the Island on which the contest took place, and deals with how Yugi’s grandfather came to posses the rare card that initially earned the attention of Kaiba, which established Yugi’s reputation, and led to the entire conflict with Pegasus. In reality, this plotline simply fills in some of the background that should logically have been presented earlier in the series; it feels ‘tacked on’ as a result. However, the resolution can only take place after the main plot.
• Episodes 43 to 45 are a three part plot in which Kaiba is trapped in a virtual reality by his duplicitous board of directors (who had been allied with Pegasus) and Yugi, Joey, Mai, and Mokuba Kaiba combine to free Seto Kaiba. This plotline deals with subplots initiated during the main part of the season, cleaning up loose ends.
• Episodes 46-49 are a standalone 4-part plotline in which the psychological issues exploited against Joey in Episodes 16, 17, and 18 again feature, reconfirming the friendship between the two, which in turn was the jumping-off point that started Episode 1. They also show both Yugi and Joey dealing with the fame that they have accrued through their success in the tournament. While (in terms of the dramatic action) the series peaks in Episode 39, and has its denouement in Episode 40, this final piece of “cleanup” brings the story full circle, back to where it started – the friendship of Yugi and Joey. This provides closure and a sense of completion for the series. The post-tournament episodes also have the cumulative effect of showing that life goes on for the characters. Personally, I suspect that the series was originally intended to conclude with Episode 40, and these additional episodes were added when it became clear that there was going to be at least one more season of the show. But I might be wrong.

The first season leaves a number of questions unanswered, which are resolved in later seasons.

I thought about displaying the Yu-Gi-Oh Logo, which I found on Wikipedia Commons (click the link to view) but I chickened out (copyright, trademark). Instead, I’m showing “Hieroglyphs” (artist unkown) which is a public-domain image licensed under CC0.

Analysis

There are two major points to be drawn concerning the pacing revealed in the course of this season.

First, the major plot points are whatever size the plot requires them to be. One episode, two-part episodes, three-, four-, and even five-part plots take place.

Second, while the show is not afraid to compress time when absolutely nothing is happening – while the characters sleep, for example, or in the period of time between the end of episode 2 and the start of episode 3 – these are the exception and not the rule. Beyond this, while some time compression takes place, the show makes great efforts to begin each episode where the previous one ended, and to fill the time with events rather than simply hand-waving the interval between significant plot points. Instead, it introduces or furthers subplots, explores relationships and backstory, and even lays foundations for what will later turn out to be substantial plot developments.

In terms of actual plot, for example, less than 1/4 of episode 28 does anything to advance the main storyline. Three quarters of the episode or more deals with character issues and reactions to earlier events, and even though those seem to have been resolved by the end of the episode, they are still in force, however weakened, at the start of the next major plot element. Viewed one way, 1/4 of the episode matters, and the rest can be considered filler; but that ‘filler’ content is then referenced in the next episode, when it becomes vitally important.

The bottom line is that the series never permits substantial time to pass without something happening, even if it’s something that won’t pay off for a dozen episodes – or even in a later series.

Is any of this starting to sound familiar? That’s right, the pacing sounds like that of an RPG, with “Adventures” of different lengths (when measured in terms of Game Sessions).

The target audience

I suspect that the pacing may have more than a little to do with the target audience. The Yu-Gi-Oh series, first and foremost, is intended for kids, and they may have been perceived (rightly or wrongly) as having a weaker concept of abstract time. Adults are more accepting of the notion of nothing happening for a while.

Try telling a story to a young person, dropping in the phrase, “A week later…” and most of them will immediately want to know what happened in the meantime. “It takes a week to travel to…” works in exactly the same way. They simply can’t accept that nothing happened for a period of time.

Most television series compress time routinely, or disregard it completely. This one is different – and, as a result, the time interval in terms of major plot developments is also quite variable. It doesn’t matter, for example, what order you screen Bugs Bunny cartoons in. The almost diary-like notion of having something to say about each and every block of time and the events therein, adding more events as necessary, is most unusual.

Interestingly, while many of the pronouncements are suitably melodramatic, there is no sense in season one that the show is talking down to the viewer – which is an occasional flaw in season 2. It’s as though the first series was pitched a little ‘high’ in age bracket for a cartoon’s typical audience, and there were some deliberate attempts to redress this in season two even though the latter is much darker and more adult in tone in many other ways.

Image of a reproduction of tutenkamun’s treasure by Pixabay / Bluesnap. Public domain image licensed through CC0. Again only tangentially related to the article.

Content I: The character Point Of View

Another element of the series design that is particularly noticeable in the first season is the focus on the main characters. While the antagonist frequently gets to gloat for the audience, that gloating rarely amounts to anything of plot substance. In fact, you can count on one hand the number of plot developments that he (or anyone else) is involved in and that the audience become aware of before the protagonists do. For the most part, when they find out about something, we find out about it – and not before.

This also has an impact on the pacing of the show. There’s less time for tension and drama to develop, so the creators have to achieve it by other means – specifically by focusing on the cat-and-mouse strategies of each opponent in one of the Yu-Go-Oh duels, and by having the PCs become aware of a threat or a problem with no immediate opportunity to deal with it, and without enough specifics to even engage in anything but the most general long-range planning.

Notice anything familiar about that? Again, with rare exceptions which are the equivalent of an omniscient narrator teasing the audience with out-of-character knowledge, this is exactly the way in which campaigns unfold in an RPG – as though we (the audience) were players in an RPG and the protagonists were our characters!

Content II: The primary plot

The primary plot is framed around the Yu-Gi-Oh game, called “Duel Monsters” within the series. The premise is that in ancient Egypt, powerful sorcerers did battle using magically-created creatures in duels with very specific rules, threatening to eventually wipe out the entire planet in their quest for power. Several mystic artifacts were created to house the power and dispersed so that no-one could summon the real creatures from the ‘Shadow Realm’, an extra-planar reality. Ultimately, the power-mad sorcerers were stopped by a mysterious Pharaoh. Since the fall of Egypt, these events have become legend and myth. The rules of these duels, and the images of the creatures employed, were preserved in hieroglyphs that were used as a source of inspiration by Maximilian Pegasus, who created the modern-day game of Duel Monsters. Eventually coming into possession of one of those artifacts, the Millennium Eye, he discerned part of the truth behind the myth and set out to reclaim the other Millennium Items so that he could use their power for his own purposes. While not inherently evil, Pegasus was prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his ends, and “villains are as villains do”.

One of the millennium items is a puzzle, reassembled by young Yugi (something no-one else had ever managed to do), and the central plot of the first series concerns Pegasus’ attempt to take that item from Yugi by staging a duel tournament. He kidnaps the soul of Yugi’s grandfather and exiles it to the Shadow Realm in order to force Yugi to participate, because the magic of the item will not work unless it is won in a duel. Of course, were it not for this last requirement, Yugi might well have traded the Millennium Puzzle directly for the return of his Grandpa, and there would not have been much of a series. It is this one ‘metagame’ plot point that propels the entire plotline.

With only minor alterations, this could easily be the plotline of a pulp campaign, or a D&D / Pathfinder campaign, or a superhero campaign, or a Call of Cthulhu campaign.

The series introduces the game and the protagonists, brings in a minor villain (who will serve in the same capacity in series 2) on the pretext of an attempt to claim a rare card owned by Yugi, and then introduces the main plot using this foundation to justify Pegasus learning of Yugi and his millennium puzzle as a result of his victory over the minor villain. It then takes advantage of the period of travel to the tournament to introduce many of the enemies/rivals that will have to be overcome by Yugi in order to reach the final confrontation with Pegasus. Most of the first season is the story of the tournament, with the heroes experiencing both successes and setbacks, confronting enemies with who employ direct attacks of great power, clever strategies, or psychological manipulation in their attempts to win the prize for themselves.

The ‘virtual game environments’ in which these struggles take place mean that even though there is relatively little physical travel involved, a variety of environments are experienced along the way.

This is exactly the sort of trick that a GM would use within an RPG campaign, overcoming the inherent restrictions of the ‘tournament’ framing device (and, not coincidentally, keeping the series visually interesting).

Content III: Flashback backgrounds

One of the greatest problems a GM faces is how to deliver background and backstory without spending hours as a talking head in the middle of the campaign. The series solves this problem in a rather interesting way.

Backstory is never presented until it becomes relevant, though it may be referenced earlier. In most cases, those earlier references are simply taken for granted by the protagonists – for example, it is established in episode 1 that Yugi, Joey Wheeler, and Tristan Tailor are friends, it isn’t until much later that the backstory of how such disparate individuals came to be friends, as the psychological pressures inflicted by the tournament take their toll.

And, when backstory is presented, there are two mechanisms employed: the first is simple narration by one of the protagonists – either the subject explaining himself, or one of the characters present telling the main cast what they know about the backstory, or some combination. This does little to delay the main action of an episode and is often integrated into it. The other device, employed when the main protagonists would all know the story (but the audience don’t), or when there is no way for any of those present to know the backstory, is the flashback.

While flashback sequences and backstory narrative passages are both equivalent in a gaming context, there are three lessons worth absorbing by GMs from the TV series.

The first is to present minimal backstory except when it’s relevant; and in fact, several of the subplots exist (from a meta-perspective) purely to justify the presentation of backstory in order to raise the stakes in future main-plot action.

The second is take the existence of backstory that has not been presented for granted, on the assumption that it will only receive exposition if and when the details (and not the outcome) become relevant.

And the third is to schedule such backstory exposition as a way to fill in “quiet periods” between main action beats.

A number of times, backstory is promised for later, so as not to interfere with the main action – providing context after the fact for behavior exhibited in the main plot.

The result is a flexibility in which backstory rarely intrudes excessively, and is presented in a flexible manner based on the required pacing of the main plot and the availability of ‘real time’.

The RPG Relevance: Zenith-3 and the merciless calendar

In the Zenith-3 campaign, activity falls into two primary patterns. In the main-plot sections, time is compressed as necessary, and side-activities only roleplayed if they are relevant in some way; the rest of the time, they get little more than lip service. Wrapped around that main action, subplots and side-plots are used to fill in ‘gaps’. Sometimes, this will involve presenting details of events previously related only as a mention during the main action.

The foundation of this is a merciless calender. Most events in the game are not locked to any particular point in time, but are instead in a logical progression that increments one of the plot threads. However, some game events are seasonal, and others are locked into particular in-game dates; and there are other events that are locked-in, relative to those in-game dates. So some parts of the campaign plan are “locked”, while others are not, and are simply arranged around the ‘locked’ material however they will fit. Gaps are left to provide flexibility, and those gaps are filled at the last minute (real-time) with subplots and side-encounters and character development.

I try very hard to derive inspiration for those subplots, side-encounters, and character developments from the themes of the adventure in question. This gives everything that is going on a relevance to the main plot, even if that relevance is not initially apparent. At the same time, it ensures that every adventure starts on common ground: the characters simply living their lives.

I also work hard to integrate anything that the players have said that they want their characters to do, actively looking for ways to integrate those activities with the themes of each adventure. I am aided in this by the creation of an overzealous bureaucracy which is discovering elements of Japanese management techniques (in a game world without Japan, I should note). They have noticed, for example, that creative people tend to find solutions to problems, and so have mandated that all personnel within their purview should spend a (paid) hour a week pursuing some creative outlet. They have noticed that those with an appreciation of music correlate strongly with empathy for the situations and problems of others, and are in general, happier personnel; so they mandate a (paid) hour a week of listening to music from some genre other than those the individual would normally choose for themselves, and so on. And, of course, there are forms and paperwork to track these things,

These activities are calculated by me (as GM) to do three things: give the characters a rich tapestry of experiences; provide a means to sneak little bits of game background into the plot; and provide lots of opportunities for the characters to interact with the game world, providing hooks into adventures, and so on. In fact, there’s so much going on in their lives that it is quite clear to everyone that I am cherry-picking which parts to actually roleplay, but everyone gets something, every adventure.

I also employ these ‘fillers’ within any gaps in the main plot, though these are rarely roleplayed. This also enables me to manipulate the pacing by making it seem that the main plot has come to an end when it hasn’t.

While not 100% the same as the Yu-Gi-Oh approach, there is a great degree of similarity between the two – which is probably what led me to notice the pacing of the TV series in the first place.

The RPG Relevance: Intermissions, subplots and introductions in The Adventurer’s Club

Th relationship between the Zenith-3 campaign that I referee and the Adventurer’s Club campaign that I co-referee is an interesting one in terms of the narrative structures employed. I’ve detailed the first above, and discussed the latter in a number of recent articles – for example in Encampments and other In-Character Opportunities, in the section “Everyday Life Creates a sense of reality” (in a nutshell, we look into the character’s ordinary lives until the main adventure starts, and when it starts, it is initially indistinguishable (most of the time) from another of those ordinary life episodes).

I had developed a similar technique in the previous Zenith-3 campaign (“Zenith-3: Earth Halo”), but it has fallen out of disuse to some extent as the campaign approached its’ big finish – in other words, as the characters’ capacity for having an ordinary life diminished. It was nowhere near as well developed, of course. That development took place in the latter years of the Adventurer’s Club campaign.

Until Adventure 14, the drive was to get the PCs into the main adventure as quickly as possible, mentioning anything else they might have been doing only in passing. Adventure 14 was a set of simultaneous mini-adventures – essentially all ‘personal lives’, and was quite well received at the time. Adventure 15 fell into the old format – get the PCs together, mention briefly any personal developments, and then bring in the main plot. The difference in the player’s reactions was noticeable. Adventure 16 broke the mold, because it was deliberately designed and intended to start slow and focus on just one of the PCs, and we needed (in the interests of giving everyone else their fair share of screen time, and not making it too clear where the main plot was coming from) to show what the other PCs were doing. So they had their own personal lives development which led into their own mini-scenario, while the main plot was bubbling away, relatively unnoticed – until it came to a head, and the whole group became involved.

This technique not only hearkened back to Adventure 14, “Scenes From The Balcony”, but worked so well in terms of making the players feel their characters were alive in the pulp world that from Adventure 17 onward. it became our standard pattern. Adventure 16 was an anomaly; written largely to write a character out of the campaign with dignity and respectful remembrance following the death of his player, it again parachuted the players straight into the main plot – mainly because it was written before Adventure 15 was played. (Right now, we are playing adventure 24, “Boom Town”, but writing adventure 26, “The Secrets Of Magnus Maximus”; adventure 25, “Lord Of The Flies”, is “canned” and ready-to-go).

It was while we were playing Adventure 18, I think, that the Zenith-3 campaign folded into it’s own sequel, “Zenith-3: Regency”, and the capacity once again arose to look at the adventure structures of the campaign. Naturally, I started with the “state of the art” as it then was, and from that point on, one has evolved in technique and the other has then ‘caught up’, and eventually pushed the boundaries still further. We are now at the point where the opening day’s play of most adventures includes just the cliffhanger intro to the main plot; the rest of the day is spent on the characters’ personal stories.

While the two campaigns are not in competition, in evolutionary terms they might as well be; each spurs the other on in its development. And again, while the adventure structure isn’t quite the same as that of the Yu-Gi-Oh TV series, there is more than a little similarity.

The RPG Relevance: Coordinating two Fumanor campaigns

There is a particular challenge involved in running two simultaneous campaigns in the same game world with at least some players in common. That challenge can be stated in a single two-word summary: Synchronizing Plots.

There were times when one campaign was inevitably going to influence another. That meant that (in order to give the campaign to do the influencing a chance to catch up to, and synchronize with, the influenced campaign, there needed to be space inserted for filler between them, for variable time factors under my direct control as GM. Because I knew that one campaign involved a lot of relatively slow travel over great distances, and the other involved relatively short and quick travel over much smaller distances, I knew that “One Faith” needed to start a long time before “Seeds Of Empire” in game time (but not in real time). The two would then synchronize when events in “One Faith” caused the “Seeds Of Empire” campaign to come into existence.

The next point of synchronization would come when “Seeds Of Empire” began to reshape the political landscape within “One Faith”. There was a lot of adventuring in the former between those two points, and even allowing for the two to have started at the same time in the real world, it wasn’t going to be enough. So I came up with a mechanism by which the campaign would divide into two strands, theoretically simultaneous, but played sequentially, with different characters in each run by the same players. One would contain a string of mini-adventures, while the other contained chapters in an ongoing saga; by adding or subtracting from the mini-scenarios, I could make sure that the “One Faith” campaign meshed, timeline-wise, with the “Seeds Of Empire” campaign. When the time was right, these two strands would recombine, and the changes wrought in the “Seeds” campaign would take effect, and then the “One Faith” campaign would again bifurcate until all was in readiness for the grand finale of both campaigns.

Things were further complicated when one of the Key players in “One Faith” passed away – yes, the same player that I mentioned earlier.

Quite frankly, it was a logistical nightmare that required (and will require) flexibility and a lot of detailed planning, and I never want to have to do that again if I can help it – but it worked, at least up until the point when both were shut down. Not abandoned, however; they will eventually restart. The major blockage at the moment is the ill health of the grandmother of one of the common players; he can only take so much time away from caring for her, and the others involved (including me) agree completely with his priorities. Or, to put it another way, I didn’t invest nearly 1000 hours in the “Orcs And Elves” series – all campaign background being revealed to the characters in the “Seeds” campaign – just to throw it all away!

Anyway, the point is that here was a quite different plotting problem that was essentially solved by a variation on The Yu-Gi-Oh lesson (at least, it would have been; that has the temporal relationship between events inverted). What took lots of planning and skull sweat would have been solved relatively quickly and easily, in exactly the same way, by observing and analyzing the TV series.

Closing The Books

That makes three different campaigns (four if you count the Fumanor campaigns separately), each of which is now on a surer footing for my having observed the Yu-Gi-Oh TV series and its’ unique approach to pacing. More than enough evidence, then, to state that it’s worth sharing.

Novels work best by compressing time between significant events. Comic books and movies, even more-so. But, as in so many other ways, RPGs are a breed apart from anything else. Make them just a little more real-time by inserting subplots, events, and interactions, and you gain an exceptionally useful tool – one that lets your players explore the lives of their characters, and at the same time, enables you to further manipulate the pacing of your games. I’ve written a two-part article (Part 1, Part 2) and an additional 4-part series (Further Thoughts On Pacing) on the importance of that subject and the techniques that I employ, and despite all this effort, the Yu-Gi-Oh TV series has still given me a whole new tool or two, and a whole new insight, that I can exploit in the quest to make my games as entertaining and fulfilling as they can possibly be. And that is news worth sharing.