Story Design - Tent Poles

Tent Poles

Mind out of the gutters, people. "Tent poles" is a term you hear a lot in story development circles. Basically, it is the key story points in your arc.

Most movies have 5-7 tent pole moments; these are the scenes you are most likely to see in the trailer. As the name suggests, tent pole moments are the key structural points of a story, and just as an actual tent would fall apart if you were to kick down one of its poles, so will your story’s structure.

So how can we use this concept in RPG story creation?

Let’s start with the two key moments in any story: the beginning and the end.  
All stories are about the resolution of a conflict, and the moment that this conflict is set into motion is known as the inciting incident. And guess what? This is our first Tent Pole. 


So let’s think about what gets the ball rolling in our story, and then create a scene for it.

Let’s say the main conflict of our story revolves around a plot by Izz’gard the Spoiled One and his plot to secure his inheritance through murder. How do we bring our characters into the story?
....
...nothing? 


Oh, fine, I'll do it. How about, while our characters are minding their own business, they stumble across a dead body floating down the river, with evidence of murder abounds. Let’s write that down.

Tent Poles

1.       Inciting Incident - Characters discover dead body in the river

2.        

3.        

4.        

5.      

Okay, now that we know how it starts, how should it end? 


Well, I’ve had a hankerin' to try out a new monster, a Treasure Golem, so why not use this to build our climax? Let's plan an epic battle to take place in the royal vaults, where the party will have to battle the very gold that Izz’gard has been killing to secure.

Tent Poles

1.       Inciting Incident -Discover dead body in the river

2.        

3.        

4.        

5.       Climax – Treasure Golem - Epic vault battle

So, a climax is where everything comes to a head. I said minds out of the gutters people! This is where the conflict of the story is resolved, either happily or tragically.

Okay, looking at our list we still have some blank spaces in there, so let’s find a good midpoint turn.

The midpoint turn is a term used to describe a reversal in the direction of the story, usually taking place in the middle (surprise, surprise) and setting us up for the turn of the climax. It’s usually the point where everything seems hopeless, or where victory seems within the heroes grasp just to find out that what he was seeking wasn’t what he was after.

To bring it back to our game, let’s say that Izz’ard is the one who hired the party to investigate the murder, and our midpoint turn occurs when they discover they’ve been used to kill off the last man standing in the way of Izz’ard's fortune, and that he was the murderer the whole time. Unfortunately, this revelation comes as the party is dumped into the dark caverns of darkness from which not even darkness can escape.

So, let’s add it to the list.

Tent Poles 1.       Inciting Incident - Party discovers dead body in the river 2.         3.       Midpoint Turn – Izz’ard is the real villain! Thrown in Dark Cavern of Darkness. 4.         5.       Climax – Epic vault battle

The final two tent poles basically write themselves... well, with a little help from your creativity.

Since the party killed someone for Izz’ard, we’ll need a place for that to happen. How about Tent Pole number 2? It makes sense.

Tent Poles

1.       Inciting Incident - Party discovers dead body in the river

2.       Rising Action - Track down killer & chase through streets!

3.       Midpoint Turn – Izz’ard is the real villain! Thrown in Dark Cavern of Darkness.

4.        

5.       Climax – Epic vault battle

And number 4 can become the escape from the Dark Caverns of Darkness.

Tent Poles

1.       Inciting Incident - Party discovers dead body in the river

2.       Rising Action - Track down killer & chase through streets!

3.       Midpoint Turn – Izz’ard is the real villain! Thrown in Dark Cavern of Darkness.

4.       Heroic Rising Action - Escape from the DCD – Battle with Shadows

5.       Climax – Epic vault battle

After this is done, it is just a matter of fleshing out the scenes, creating NPC, settings, clues, etc, until you have a well-structured story.

Now, before you start shouting about railroading, pre-destination, and all that, there are a few caveats about how you should use tent poles.

For starters these encounters are targets, and moving targets at that. They supply you, as the story teller, with destinations you can aim the players towards. 

If your players circumvent, destroy, or flat out miss the target: you may have to create another option to put them back on track, or even scrap the original story and devise a new path.

Tent poles are the iconic moments that you think of when someone mentions the game. Take a moment and think about some of the movies you’ve seen, and books you’ve read. What are the first scenes to pop into your mind? Odds are good these were the tent pole moments.

Good Gamin’

The Three dimensions of character (Part 3) – Psychological

The Three dimensions of character (Part 3) – Psychological

So when you take the physical (Nature) and you combine it with the Environment (Nurture) you get the third aspect of characterization the psychological.

To be clear when I talk about the psychological aspects of your character I am not talking about listing your character derangements, or determine on a sliding scale from one to a hundred how many croutons short of a salad your character is. Not that these elements aren’t a part of character design, but the psychological aspect encompasses more than having to yodel Chopin, while hopping on one foot to avoid a two dice penalty to basket weaving.

Really what matters most to us in the psychology of a character comes down to motivation. What drives your character to act the way he does? How does he react to certain situations, and stimuli? What experiences from the character’s past lead to this reaction? How did these reactions lead him to become the person he is today? These are the core questions we are looking to answer when we ponder the psychological aspects of our character.

The most overused cliché in gaming can serve as an example of this methodology. Fenris Orckiller’s family was killed by a party of rampaging orcs when he was a child, and now he hates them so much!

So applying what we were talking about before to this example we can surmise the following:

What motivates fenris?
Fenris’s hatred of orcs fuels his epic sojourn across the globe to eradicate the vile creatures.

What drives him to act the way he does? The loss of his loved ones at an early age has left him distant, and unwilling to forge close ties with others for fear they will be lost in a similar way.

How does he react to certain stimuli? When he sees an orc he kills it. When others get to close to him emotionally he lashes out to push them away.

How did this lead him to be the person he is today? He’s a battle scarred warrior, with no friends, or allies, who has become an expert in the field of orc genocide.

Now let’s throw a wrench in there. Despite his best efforts to push her away Fenris has fallen in love with a beautiful princess, based upon his past what reaction do you think he would have to this stimuli?

Well, considering the lasting damage done to his psyche by the death of his parents, the death of his true love would be equally, or far more traumatic. So in order to defend himself from this trauma Fenris would stop at nothing to protect his true love, even if it puts him at the mercy of some cunning evil doer with plans of over throwing the Imperial Senat….KING, I mean over throwing the king.

This is what separated role players from roll players in my book, simply because you can’t play a role if there isn’t one, and character motivation stemming from the psychological is what defines the role of the character. Great stories derive from great characters. Great characters generate conflict, both internal and external. I’m not sure if I said it here before, but the best advice I ever received as a story teller was, “Keep the story simple, and let the players fuck it up.” This can happen in a lot of ways, but the best ways are when a character’s in-game motivation is the cause of the swerve. (note: this doesn’t mean your character’s motivation supersedes the fun of the other players, always weigh the good of the story vs. the good of the game)

Well, you are now primed and ready to create your own 3 dimensional characters. As always questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcomed.

Good Gamin’

The Three dimensions of character (Part 2) – Sociological

The Three dimensions of character (Part 2) – Sociological

Where and how a person is brought up can effect a great deal about that individual. Factors such as religion, Socio-economic status, and even climate can affect how a person develops and grows, and it is these aspects that I mean when I talk about the sociological elements of a character.

Primarily, our sociological traits dictate our value system. What is good? What is evil? Our determination of right and wrong are strongly affected by the what, where, when, and how of our upbringing.

Let’s take religion for starters. Religion is what supplies most people with the foundation for a moral compass. If your religion dictates that if 3,000 souls are not sent to the underworld every March Jellotrix the Smuckinator will destroy the world in a deluge of grape jelly, then were does killing fall on your moral scale?  If you don’t kill aren’t you damning the entire world to an early grave, is that more evil than ridding the world of 3,000 “evil” souls every spring?  Throw faith and doubt into the mix, and now you got some story fodder.  What if your character is at 2,999 souls at 11:58, on March 31^st and the only person nearby is his son? Does he hold fast to his faith, or give into doubt, and what effect will the result have on his world view? What does it mean if nothing happens? Take a minute to think about your character’s relationship to the divine. What are his beliefs, and how strongly does he hold them, and why?

Socio-economic status is another important factor. Is your character rich, or poor?  Does he know the value of a hard days work, or has he never worked a day in his life? Supply and demand, our level of need dictates the value we place on things. If you have a hundred swords, but only one loaf of bread what do you place a higher value on? The ease in which you acquire your livelihood is also a factor in your value system. A farmer, who toils sixteen hours a day in the fields, sees his purse much differently than an aristocrat living off his father’s wealth. So, think about how your character earns his living. In which socio-economic strata he was raised. What resources were plentiful and which were scarce.

There are many other factors that play into the sociological aspect of your characters background.  Look to your own past, think about the people, organizations, jobs, hobbies, climates that affected your development. What values did these relationships instill?  Where we come from says a lot about who we are, and this is just as true for our characters.

Next up, the psychological.

Not Lazy Just Busy

Sorry about the lack of posting, I'm in the process of moving, and all my stuff is still in boxes. Will be back to posting soon.