Storytelling and Gaming Advice.
Hi all!
My laptop is currently in the shop, and the iPad version of WordPress is giving my some very weird formatting issues. Rather than spend an hour I could be spending writing trying to fix it, I’ve elected to wait until my laptop is out of the shop to post this week’s column.
So look towards the end of this week, where you can learn about the importance of a little chaos in the system.
Hey there. Go ahead and park your flying sports car or tie down your Chocobos. I’m just prepping dinner.
Last week we dived into Final Fantasy XV, with a focus on what worked in the most recent entry in the long-running franchise. The goal, as it always is here, was to search for things we could learn from it.
What did it do right, and how can we apply that to our own work?
But now we need to the other thing. The part where we try to understand where things went off the rails so we can avoid doing it ourselves.
2017 was not an easy year to be a storyteller. It was not an easy year for anyone, really. But to focus in on my area of expertise, it was a hard year to be a storyteller because it was a hard year to tell stories.
So I want to start this year off with five stories for 2018. Five counter-narratives that seem especially relevant as we enter into the new year.
Hi all. It’s been a while, I know. Forgive me, I was on an extended contract job that kept me busy as the proverbial bee for a few months.
But I have returned, and it’s high past time that we started talking about storytelling once again.
Now, pour out a cold one, and don’t tell me no lies. Today’s topic? Cold opens and promises.
One of the great advantages of gaming is that it allows you to spectacularly, gloriously, cock-up.
In your creative career, you are going to have some bad ideas. That’s fine. Good, even! Everyone has bad idea. Look at your heroes. Those paragons of story who inspired you when you’re at your lowest.
They had some truly horrendous idea. Indiana Jones in the fridge ideas.
GM’s love to use their notebooks as perpetration props. “In these pages, I hold the Adventure of Ages.” Maps, NPC stats, and clues. These are all well and good. A session without some idea of where it’s going is an aimless, disconnected thing, made up of a band of disjointed brothers and sisters who have no business having lunch with each other, much less saving the world.
But, by the same token, a show without a plan, or a script without an outline is a pathetic thing, a Frankenstein’s monster of plot holes and forgotten story threads.
Netflix and the advent of bing watching having changed the game on this, but as the MST3K episode “Diabolik” taught us — Pacing. Is. So. Very. Important. If you don’t get the reference, that’s alright — we’ll be talking about the importance of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in due time. Until then, pretend that was funny. I’ll wait for your pretend laugh.
There’s a myth out there. A ghost of an idea that was never alive. Picture it in your head – the lone writer at their writing machine, picking out quiet words of genius. Do you have the picture? For me, it’s Bogie at his typewriter from “In a Lonely Place”. Hey, I’m a Bogart fan.
Want to write for TV?
Grab a d20. You know, those 20-sided die you’ve seen my fellow nerds sling around. Look up — that thing I have at the top of my blog.
I’m not joking. Sure, I’m exaggerating so that I can sound super dramatic, as though I were leaning across the bar to you to deliver some dramatic secret over my half-finished scotch
But I’m not joking.
Remember Your Dice 