--T.S. Eliot
As storytellers, we all want our work to be unique and original. Even in a game that’s as necessarily dependent on outside sources and established mythology as is Dungeons and Dragons, the fact is that there are times that we want to take our players by surprise. We want to innovate. We want to find a common theme or trope and turn it on its head. And, y’know, that’s good. It’s good to want to get outside the norm, to want to push the envelope, to want to, as Simon Cowell so often puts it, take something established and “make it your own.” And yet, even as we acknowledge that desire to be different, to stand our from the crowd, I think it’s worthwhile to take a minute to realize that without some seminal works from which we all draw inspiration as a community, well, there probably wouldn’t even be a crowd from which we could stand out. Because before you can innovate, I think you have to understand the basics. You have to be able to see the common forms and have a feel for how and why they work. And then, too, I think it’s important for storytellers to understand their own motivations and internal tics, and those are often formed as a function of our innate tendency to imitate our favorite works. I don’t say that’s a bad thing, merely that making the best use of our influences depends in large part on understand what those influences are and why. To that end, I’d like to take a little time to go through some of my personal influences, looking a bit at what I liked and why, and if nothing else, you can at least take some potential recommendations for your own future reading.
No discussion of influences of any kind—much less storytelling influences—can start for me with anything except the movie Star Wars. I saw Star Wars for the first time when I was four, and I’ve been a confirmed Sci Fi and Fantasy junkie ever since. And, y’know, Star Wars is a great influence for a D&D campaign because, bottom line, everything you could ever hope to see in your own game is laid out clearly right there in perfect detail. Epic hero? Classic bad-ass villain? Princess in distress? Myriad exotic locales serving as both background and character? Effective role-based party structure? Heck, that movie even has a few obvious skill challenges, complete with at least one titanic skill challenge failure! I mean, how else would you describe that escape from the Death Star?
Skill Challenge: Escape from the Death Star
Level X, Complexity 5 (Requires 12 successes before 3 failures)
Primary Skills: Stealth, Athletics, Bluff, Perception
Secondary Skills: Acrobatics, Streetwise, Intimidate, Insight
Success: Our heroes get away clean
Failure: The heroes have to fight their way out, and the Empire tracks them back to their home base
For me, there are basically two lessons to take away from an examination of Star Wars as an influence on a D&D campaign. The first is an understanding of the inherent structure. To a certain extent, both the movie and the game follow the monomyth structure, perhaps better known as “The Hero’s Journey.” If you’ve never heard of it, author Joseph Campbell described it this way in his landmark book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (from Wikipedia):
“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
Sounds familiar, no? It ought to. The Hero’s Journey is one of the most common storytelling structures in western fiction. You see it in everything from the myth of Hercules (back when he was called Heracles) to the marketing of NFL quarterback Brett Favre. Seriously, stop me if you’ve heard this one: a good old boy from a backwater farm in Mississippi journeys to the mythical land of Green Bay, where he learns under the mystic sage Mike Holmgren, eventually leading his team to unheralded heights of greatness. In time, Favre is forced to go on without his fabled mentor, journeying alone with only his super-powered arm, his semi-divine status, and his inherent knowledge of the Great Game to guide him. Still, he passes new and greater tests, leads different teams to victory, and triumphs repeatedly against overwhelming odds and the ravages of age. Is there any doubt, then, that one day Favre will defeat Tiamat and ascend to take his place at the throne of his father atop Mount Olympus?
In fairness, though, I should point out that with the Fourth Edition, D&D has taken some substantial strides to distance itself from some of the basics of the monomyth. For example, where once I think D&D assumed that you started out life as a purely typical underpowered waif from a rural backwater, in today’s D&D you actually start the game as an established local champion working towards tangible and significant local objectives. These days, you never really start as one of the “common” people. Still, to the extent that the game has an inherent structure, that structure is The Hero’s Journey. You are expected to journey into fabled, magical lands, to overcome ever-increasing challenges, to grow via your accomplishments, and to eventually ascend to a kind of fabled, legendary status. You are expected to raise yourself above the level of the common man by your own works. And you will eventually either ascend to some kind of immortal godhood or simply ride off into obscurity, perhaps spending your days driving your tractor back in Mississippi.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with The Hero’s Journey. It works because it resonates powerfully with most people and because, to a certain extent, it plays up to our expectations. Who hasn’t spent their share of days toiling in obscurity, ever hoping for something more and greater? Really, isn’t this what drives most of us to play D&D? Maybe you’re satisfied with your life, and maybe you’re not, but either way, I think we all have days where we wish we were somebody else. And then, too, I think that stories are sometimes more comforting and occasionally more satisfying when they play off the way we expect them to. After all, real life is chaotic, brutish and occasionally mean. It’s nice, then, to have a part of life that’s predictable, rational, and sane. In today’s economy, I suspect we could all use a second helping of predictable rationality.
And yet, there’s obviously a breaking point. There’s a point at which predictable become too predictable, at which rational becomes boring. And so this is where we look to innovate by keeping an eye on the standard conventions. How? Well, let’s look at the tropes. The Hero:
- Is a common man
- Has a Mentor (i.e. Obi-Won Kenobi)
- Journeys
- Overcomes challenges
- Grows by these challenges
- Loses his Mentor
- Faces ever greater challenges
- Overcomes and eventually reaches legendary status
So then you can turn any one of those on its head and have a new and perhaps innovative story. At a minimum, you can catch your PCs off-guard for a while. For example, maybe your PCs are already world-famous celebrities, and the world expects them to triumph in the face of overwhelming odds despite their manifest unreadiness. Here, I picture Paris Hilton as a first level tempest fighter who’s expected to battle the numberless hordes of the Underdark as they ascend from their lightless homes below. Or maybe your PCs have a mentor that they respect and follow, only to discover that he’s jealous of their growing accomplishments. Can you imagine Star Wars with Obi-Won turning Sith and hunting the now-famous Luke after his success at the Battle of Yavin? Now that’s a game I’d like to DM!
And yet, the movie Star Wars has more to offer than merely an established story structure. Let’s look again at that failed Skills Challenge back on the Death Star. That failure might have been bad for our heroes in the short-run, but it was a totally awesome turn for the story. It upped the stakes immeasurably, setting up a climactic battle after which the world can never be the same again. As DMs, that’s the kind of moment that I think our campaigns ought to be geared towards creating. To that end, then, we have to not only prepare for failed skills challenges but I think even actively encourage them at times. Because a failed skills challenge sets up a beautifully for a disaster that changes the campaign. A failed skills challenge ups the stakes, complicates the story, and thus, ultimately helps draw our players more fully into their characters. Because, bottom line, it’s the act of overcoming challenges that makes the hero great. Thus, the greater the challenge—the worse things get in the story—the greater the Hero ultimately becomes.
So that’s it for this week. If you know what’s expected in your story, then you’ll know how to innovate in a way that’s surprising—or at least interesting. And if you realize that your players’ failures are a perfect ready-made excuse for upping the stakes in your campaign, then you’ll be ready to take advantage when they do something that’s totally unexpected—and maybe a little stupid. And yeah, it’s true. That’s a lot to take out of one story. But when the story’s as seminal to our common culture as Star Wars is, well, maybe that’s just what we ought to expect out of it. A phenomenally successful and popular story ought to be able to tell us something useful, no?
Next week we’ll take a look at some more of my favorite story influences and talk a little bit about setting and maybe a few my favorite stolen plot complications.
Until then, happy trails!
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