Strange Horizons, an online magazine of sci-fi stories (alongside other genres), has an entertainingly dry list of Stories We’ve Seen Too Often in their submission guidelines.
There’s plenty of overlap with RPGs in this rundown of tired sci-fi plots — for example: “Visitor to alien planet ignores information about local rules, inadvertantly violates them, is punished.” (See: many, many Star Trek episodes.) Or the equally common “An A.I. gets loose on the Net despite the computer it was on not being connected to the Net.”
There’s even a direct D&D reference (“Story is based in whole or part on a D&D game or world.“), which — although it’s not directly relevant — leads into a GMing question: Given that no plot survives contact with the PCs, and taking the nature of gaming (especially the random element) into account, is there more tolerance for clichéd plots in RPGs than in fiction?
At least, if your players say “Know what? I’m sick of saving this darn princess, the heck with her! Let’s go get that enchanted sword we heard about last night in the tavern.” they can do that, as opposed to the TV show which isn’t dynamic.
In addition, a lot of the APPEAL of RPGs is imitation of fantasy. Didn’t we ALL start playing RPGs because there was a particular story, movie, tv show, whatever, where we said “AWESOME! I wish I could do stuff like that!” and our geek friend slid up next to us, like some greesy amalgam of the devil and a used car salesman and said “You know… there’s a way you CAN, and I can give it to you. First times’s free…” Or haven’t we all seen or read something and said to ourselves “that would be an AWESOME character to play in game X! I’m going to rip them off!”.
OK, first off, if sci-fi sites start to complain about recurring themes, what else is there? 😛 Next up: Shakespeare – did he just string together a bunch of common quotes, and stuff?
Back to the question: Is there more tolerance for clichéd plots in RPGs?
Not if you think the story is more important than enjoyment of the game or player freedom. Let’s face it, any beginning DM will tell you that most stories make terrible RPG plots, because they are all contrived by a single mind, who controls all aspects of the story. We’ve all seen our carefully crafted plots and scenes blown to smithereens by our players, some of whom never understood exactly what was going on.
This is not an excuse for lazy adventure writing. Mix things up a bit, throw in a twist or two, or none at all where they expect one, and the players will love it.
Of course there is. Firstly, most role-players are not skilled writers.
Secondly, even if they were skilled writers, unlike written fiction the narrative of an RPG cannot be edited like a story, but is finished as soon as it is played. (Not counting the rare retcon.)
And finally in fact, there is more need for clichéd plots, since RPGs are cooperative and everybody needs some idea on where the whole thing is going.
Rick, I love the idea of the RPG pusher. Its so sleazy, its beautiful. I also like martin’s comment that no plot survives contact with teh PCs.
I think that there is a lot of imitation in RPGs, especially among new players. In DND the first games so many people play are, find artifact x and destroy it/use it to save the world/destroy great evil x with it. The more people mature as players, I think they tend to take on a “let’s do something new” mentality. There may still be overlapping elements with other stories, but people become more about playing out different stories. Once a player has covered playing the warrior, doing the artifact quests, quelling the orc invasions, saving party member from alien etiquette faux-pas, etc. then they want to try something new, build a different story, worry more about the subtleties of the game and their characters.
Yes, there is more tolerance for clichéd plots in RPGs because of the players. With fiction the reader must take the events just as the author presented them. With RPGs your players may attack your plot. This can be both a bad and good thing for a GM.
If you run a cliché adventure your players may just be the wildcards that turn it into something original again. I once got stuck running an improvised adventure at the last minute (the GM for that night just didn’t feel like running a game, and I was “volunteered” by the group to run something off the top of my head). The first thing I did was call up my little brother and got him to come over, because I knew he would make the game more fun.
So I start doing a pretty typical everyone is stuck in a skyscraper with an evil monster and dark wizard on the loose bit. While the party started developing a strategy on how to defeat the monster and capture the wizard, my brother did exactly what I was hoping he would do – refuse to play along with the premise of the adventure.
My brother in character tells the group “Look, we all know this guy is on the top floor. We also know this monster is guarding him. And if years of bad movies has taught me anything it is that there will be a big explosion at the end of this thing regardless of what we do, so let’s cut out the middle act and go straight for the big climax.” And then he starts marching downstairs to figure out a way to blow up the entire building.
It was great fun for me to see the entire party start arguing about this and to hear my brother’s replies. Argument: “There are innocent people in here.” Reply: “Bullshit. They cheat on their taxes, and probably take more than one penny from that little dish on the counter of the 7/11. Besides, they are all dead to begin with if we don’t take out Wizzo the Wizard.” Argument: “We don’t know if blowing up the builidng will stop them.” Reply: “If the combination of fire, gravity, and over 300 tons of steel, glass and ugly office carpetting don’t do it then we never had a chance to begin with.”
Soon some of the party started agreeing that blowing up the building sounded like a good idea. The rest of the party refused to go with that plan and instead focussed on getting the innocnet people out before the building went boom.
I won’t go into the details, but in the end I made it clear that they did not have enough material to blow up the building with. So instead they used some very interesting techniques to blow up the top floor instead. It was still a very clichéd plot, but it was fun because I made sure to grab a player that hates clichéd plots and just does whatever he can to screw them up. A reader just can’t do that with a clichéd plot in a book, while a good RPG player will show up with a whole bag full of monkey wrenches for just such a machine.
As long as it’s new to the players — it’s not REALLY cliched. If it’s their first time to rescue the princess, then it’s OK.
I think the devil is in the details. Re-use plots, just dress them up differently. I think the context of the adventure — and the creativity of the encounters — is more meaningful than the actual plot. I think the fact the power lies with the players — their choices can dictate the direction of the adventure — allows for enough differences to mask the fact the plot is familiar.
Plus, you know, it’s just plain fun to rescue the princess and see which of the PCs gets the girl in end!
I prefer rescuing the princess then holding her hostage for a huge ransom myself, but that’s just me. 🙂
cliched, recycled, overused plots? peanuts. recycling entire adventures is where its at for DM laziness. what D&D DM hasn’t run a party through tomb of horrors again, for old time’s sake? or ravenloft, or expedition to the barrier peaks?
my personal favorite is the desert of desolation series. i’ve played through it once, long ago, and run my current group through at least twice now verbatim, and stolen elements from it for another adventure. sure, they know all about the star gems now, but its interesting because each time, they’re running different characters, with different capabilities and personalities and approaches. they notice other things about the adventure, take side trips, want to explore the time-stopped world more, etc.
or, you know, climb to the top of the pyramid and start pushing off blocks, disassembling it from the top down. 😛
If you look into anthropology and folklore studies, there’s only so many “epic stories” to be told, really less than a hundred as I recall.
You can mix story elements but you *will* be recreating “Heroic Story Cycle #22” at some point.
The thing is, these stories are archetypal. They have deep connections to elements of the human psyche which are common across our entire species and so they speak to us in a way that even a well written but non-core story can’t hope to do.
I’m actually looking for more resources on this vein with the intention of folding some of these “elemental cliches” into my games to give them a better connection to my players. It’s a combination of “every story you’ve ever heard” and “this is in your blood”.
VV_GM: I now have a new catchphrase, “sackful of monkey wrenches”.
Thank you.
I can’t claim credit for “no plot survives contact with the PCs.” Not sure where I heard it, but it’s a good one. 😉
I’m with the pack on this one — done well, I don’t mind cliches in my RPGs. To a lesser extent (IE they have to be done really well), I sometimes don’t mind them in my fiction, either.
They can be fun, there’s enough variety because of the way things play out, and they offer easy handles for players to grab onto. I definitely think there’s more room for cliches in RPGs, although it’s not the only approach (see tomorrow’s post for another one ;)).
“Visitor to alien planet ignores information about local rules, inadvertantly violates them, is punished.†(See: many, many Star Trek episodes.)
Humm. I’m going to call you on this one. 😉
Offhand w/ no research, my positronic brain can only think of 5 episodes that used this plot device. Considering there were over 704 episodes of Star Trek — not counting the Animated Series and the movies — I think that’s a pretty good ratio.
Or can anyone here write 704+ adventures and not repeat a single plot device or story element?
I didn’t think so. 😉
I bow to your encyclopedic ST knowledge. 🙂
It certainly felt like many, many episodes, though. 😛
Those ST episodes were original to each of us the first one we saw, and that’s another reason DMs and other media keep reproducing things too. SOMEONE in your audience is doing this same trite hash for the first time.
Martin: It’s a twist on an old military maxim, “No plan survives initial contact with the enemy.” Could be Clauswitz, could be Patton… Basically, it says that goals are more important than plans, which is why the US military uses the concept of “commander’s intent” instead of simple commands. As a further aside, an old Soviet officers manual stated something like, “The strength of the American military lies not in their tactics nor their doctrine, but in their commanders’ capacity and inclination to ignore both. This makes for an unpredictable opponent.”
I have to say, I won’t read another “reluctant hero” story. After practically every epic fantasy story from the 80’s, I don’t have enough life left for it.
God, how I hated the Thomas Covenant books. And I think they were before the cliche had even become a cliche.