Quote from: Nazgul;334035A good long campaign would run like Babylon 5. An over all plot/theme with enough small 'single episode' things to break up the overplot. Yet still have a good continuity.  

I didn't care much for B5, but I get your point about the story arc; most of my campaigns have timelines but DON'T have story-arcs, and that makes them not a lot like TV shows.
The Legion, on the other hand, was planned from the start to detail the story of the LSH from its origins as a bunch of teenage superheroes, to their rise in prominence, to their "golden age" in the 80s, to their decline and collapse in the early 90s, to their rebirth and return to glory in the late 90s. So the Story Arc is basically a story about growing up, disillusionment, and redemption.

Of course, its far from finished yet (the current year in the game is 2990, in the middle of the "decline" period), so we've yet to see if it will all pan out, but so far so good.

RPGPundit

Yes, absolutely for the last campaign - it had explicit seasons (each themed) and explicit episodes (including two-parters) and season finales and such.  The plan - which we didn't always quite stick to - was 13 eps per season, four seasons, and done.

We didn't have a theme song, but certain episodes definitely had theme songs (the flashback-70s blaxploitation episode had one sweet soundtrack).

Most of mine I see more like well done comic books. Even the fantasy games are just a detailed and lovingly painted water color or oil graphic novel.

Yes. I've split my modern horror campaign into five "seasons," and when we talk about the characters, we tend to use TV series parlance as others have said (season finale, "to be continued," etc.) I've even sat down with my players and talked about what "themes" I wanted to do for a particular season -- my group has been very much on board with this, and it's worked out well.

One of my players has even made a video "opening credits" featuring some animations and the names of the players. One weekend, he actually had a friend of his record a "director's commentary" (which floored everyone, because it was almost entirely taking potshots at our gaming group -- it was absolutely hysterical).

I tend not to run sandbox games, at least not for long.

And I will agree that there are very big limitations on how much RPing can emulate TV shows or movies, but after five years of play our group has found those break points and learned how to deal with them.

Quote from: ticopelp;334182One of my players has even made a video "opening credits" featuring some animations and the names of the players. One weekend, he actually had a friend of his record a "director's commentary" (which floored everyone, because it was almost entirely taking potshots at our gaming group -- it was absolutely hysterical).

I don't suppose that he put that on youtube or something? I've seen one or two other vids that people did for their group and they were rather interesting.

Quote from: ticopelp;334182And I will agree that there are very big limitations on how much RPing can emulate TV shows or movies, but after five years of play our group has found those break points and learned how to deal with them.

Care to share with the rest of the class?

Quote from: Nazgul;334193I don't suppose that he put that on youtube or something? I've seen one or two other vids that people did for their group and they were rather interesting.

I have the video files, but they're not anywhere public. If you really are interested, I could probably upload it on Photobucket or something.

Quote from: Nazgul;334193Care to share with the rest of the class?

Sure -- a couple of examples. One was that our group didn't have the right chemistry to bicker constantly. We tried to set up a team where people disagreed about leadership and got into a lot of disagreements about things -- this can work on TV, but in our game it just brought gameplay to a halt most of the time while people argued. That's not to say that a lot of inter-character conflict can never work, just that it didn't work in this game. So people reconciled their in-character differences and moved on.

Another was having characters change slowly over time, if the player makes a deliberate decision to make that happen. That didn't work for us either. On television, since things are often planned months in advance, you can see characters dropping little hints that they're changing in some way, perhaps eventually leading up to some epiphany or surprising action. In an RPG, where most things are improvised, it's really hard to do that over long periods. Players would just forget to follow up on whatever they were trying to foreshadow, or (much worse) vacillate and noodle over the same plot point, trying to find the "perfect moment" to reveal whatever. It's better to just give players a single focal point on which they can hinge a "big decision" and then just flip the switch -- no angst, no screwing around.

For example. One of my PCs was duped by a major villain into planting a magical "bomb" in his team's base of operations. The explosion killed a lot of people and put the PCs on the run from the law for awhile. I set this up because the player was constantly telling me he wanted something "dramatically strong" to make things interesting... but then he refused to deal with it for over two years of gameplay time, covering his tracks perfectly and pretending it never happened. By the time he worked up to his "big confession," no one cared anymore, and the plot point was long gone. So, a chance for interesting narrative, wasted.

And that's why you can't (IMO) get too ambitious when it comes to storytelling in gaming... because there's a limit to how much you can plan ahead, or how complicated you can get. Because it's gaming, not writing. You can still have cool, dramatic stuff happen, but in general I find it works best when it's straightforward, a bit over-the-top, and slightly formulaic.

I think S. John Ross said it best: "if you want Shakespearean five-act hoozits, plot trees, Man Versus Himself and other serious literary bunkum, try Writer's Digest . This ain't Oxford, baby."

Quote from: Silverlion;334176Most of mine I see more like well done comic books. Even the fantasy games are just a detailed and lovingly painted water color or oil graphic novel.

Couldn't have put it better. Did think a bit like TV shows with cliffhangers at the end of game sessions and regular arch-eneemies . . . until I read Scott McCloud's I think it's 'Understanding Comics', which kind of brought a more visual/ cinematic spin. Happened to see Persopolis as a movie last week and it does a great job of showing how graphic novels are a lot more than cartoons.

Quote from: RPGPundit;334031Structurally, I mean. Do you envision it like it could be an episodic TV show?

I don't for most of my games, particularly the "sandbox" type ones; but for some I undoubtedly do. Most notably the Legion of Superheros campaign, which I realize now comes complete with sound-track, two part episodes, and season finales.

RPGPundit

No. I try to avoid imitating other story-telling media in my games beyond using the basic structures of Western story-telling (rising actions, set-backs, climaxes, denouements) and then only when necessary. The only exception to that is that I will sometimes use "camera shot descriptions" to describe particular scenes (e.g. "The camera pans around and you see... the Dracomeister!") but I've been steering away from that in recent years. I'm more likely to use that style in a modern game than in a fantasy game though.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;334267No. I try to avoid imitating other story-telling media in my games beyond using the basic structures of Western story-telling (rising actions, set-backs, climaxes, denouements) and then only when necessary. The only exception to that is that I will sometimes use "camera shot descriptions" to describe particular scenes (e.g. "The camera pans around and you see... the Dracomeister!") but I've been steering away from that in recent years. I'm more likely to use that style in a modern game than in a fantasy game though.

Why the avoidance, Pseudoephedrine ?

Regards,
David R

Another reason I think RPGs can't emulate TV or movies very well is because TV and movies often work best when protagonists make bad choices, put themselves in bad situations, and otherwise get themselves in trouble. A lot of players will not willingly put themselves in bad situations or make wrong choices that also happen to be dramatically interesting.

Heroes getting captured, tortured, victimized, or left for dead can also be great dramatic stuff in a movie or show, but a gamer will often only find that irritating. And, depending on the circumstances, rightfully so. So there's another whole area of storytelling that's potentially off-limits, depending on what your play group likes.

Let's just say that after many years of play, I know which of my players will relish and enjoy their PC getting captured and interrogated, and which of them will complain about it for weeks afterward.

It's kinda of tricky. I find the most interesting games ( TV, books and movies) are not about (strictly) bad or good choices but rather choices that conflict with the created personalities of the players.

Regards,
David R

I'm always wary of comparing RPGs to other mediums, but there are some techniques and ideas from TV that I like to use in my GMing.

Firstly, I normally come to each session with at least one thing I want to cover in it - even if it's just PC "housekeeping" - and try to make sure it's covered in the course of the session. And if a suitable cliffhanger or dramatic revelation presents itself towards the end of an evening, I like to say "...and we'll come back to that next week" and wrap things up, so the end of the session stands out in everyone's mind so we have a minimum of "uh... where were we?" at the beginning of the next session.

Secondly, I keep an eye on the development of the main theme, conflict, or event of the "season"; even in sandbox games, a combination of random chance and the natural tendency of player groups to develop a particular long-term agenda usually means that a season theme presents itself (although it can suddenly and violently change without warning, which is also cool). When the season's "gimmick" is wrapped up, I tend to give serious thought as to whether to keep the campaign going (at the risk of diminishing returns, but with the possibility of taking it in a new direction for a new "season"), or finishing it off (at the risk of lacking closure - although a wrap-up session or two can solve that - but with the benefit of ending on a high point, without stagnating or otherwise going sour).

Quote from: RPGPundit;334031Structurally, I mean. Do you envision it like it could be an episodic TV show?

It's certainly not how I plan for a game, though the end result may sometimes come to resemble one a bit, like an ensemble dramedy perhaps.

I don't see RPG play as akin to TV, film, comics or any other medium.  I see them as being nothing less than life itself, and the reason is because of the aforementioned known phenomenon of common gamers doing all that they can to avoid doing dumb shit even if it would be dramatic.  Why?  Because that's what real people do in daily life, as best that their abilities and knowledge allow.

Treat the milieu and characters as if it were reality.  Would you really want to run with that loser dipshit that kept fucking things up, especially if you had the means to get rid of him permanently?  Yes, you would- in a heartbeat if your life depended on it (and in most RPGs, it does).  That's the strength of TRPGs, and why trying to ape other media means setting sail for Fail.

TV series are sickeningly predictable. Unless a game is trying to deliberately emulate the structure of another form, I don't try to shoehorn a game into that structure.

The exception would be Hong Kong Action Theater!, where the game itself is emulating a series of movies.

In fact, if I'm playing something based on a popular property--Star Trek, for instance--I pay particular attention to re-imagining the material independently from the show. If a player says, "That's not how they would do it on TV," I say, "It isn't them; it's you," or "You're not watching TV."