Inferno- Treating the Discoveries like Art

I never was one of Argento's greatest fans. True, only last Saturday I recommended Suspiria to someone, but only due to those amazing 15 minutes. Inferno, on the other hand, doesn't have this amazing quality to it which enables me to recommend it even though I don't really like the movie. Inferno is not a bad movie per se, it is just not exactly my style of horror it seems.

If I had to describe its plot in a few sentences, I would describe it as a religious kinda-slasher, with three goddesses as the slashers. I mean, there's more to that, but it will be too much of a spoiler. Let's just say that if you know what an Argento's movie looks like, you'll probably know what Inferno looks like.

And still, there are things to learn from this movie. After all, he may not be my cup of tea, but he is still one of the masters and this movie shows that. For me, the greatest takeaway from Argento's movies was always the horrifying discoveries of the bodies. Argento made them into a sick tour-de-force, showing us the monstrosity of his monsters through the way they let others see their work.

It can be said, and it won't even be too farfetched to say that, that Argento's monsters take their victims as canvases for a new painting, for a work of art. Maybe this is the reason that in some of his best movies the victims are also of artistic upbringing, as maybe they will be the ones who will best appreciate it. Anyway, though, the discoveries of the bodies are usually more sick and frightening than the killings themselves, and that's hard as they are usually presented to us almost exactly one after the other.

And this gives us a glimpse to the monsters' psyches, and adds a little bit of morbid horror, taking Shakespeare's comment that life is but a show to the extreme, up to eleven. And we can use that in our games also. We can make those discoveries like sick jokes, or like the climax of a movie or of a theater show.

Treat those discovery scenes like the pinnacle of your movie, Argento says to us, and actually it might work. It might work really-really well, if we'll give it a chance. True, most of his death scenes (and as such the bodies discovered) are pretty gory, but if we'll limit the gore to these scenes like he does… it may prove far more frightening than one would think. After all, he does know what he's doing.

And that's it for today. How about you? What did you think of this movie? And what did you learn from it?

Scene-Framing

I've talked quite a lot about scenes in this blog. I talked about types of scenes and how to construct them; I talked about what scenes are going to be remembered and how to invoke emotions using them. What I haven't talked about up until today was how to frame them, i.e. when to start and finish them.

Scene-Framing is one of the greatest tools in the GM's arsenal in order to control the pacing of the game and story, and it can also cut a lot of frustration if scenes are cut before they bore the players. So, how can we achieve that?

As we probably know by now, each scene has a purpose, a role that it should fill in the greater whole. So, even before we put it in, so to speak, we must ask ourselves if this scene will help the game in some way or the other. It can help by enriching the story or by advancing it, it can help by breaking a much too tense tension or it can help an-up-until-now-quiet player to shine. If it fills at least one of this roles, consider putting it in. and of course remember its purpose.

When we start a scene, the number one rule is that the scene should start a little bit before the action starts. This helps you to both set the ground for the action (thus building anticipation) while also cutting down the boring stuff. Don't roleplay Lisa waiting for hours for her contact to arrive, start the scene a few moments before the contact arrives, like with her looking at the clock nervously as the contact is almost late, and then a black car is seen at a distance. This way, you build anticipation, you give the sense of the time passing and you also skip the boring part of waiting and waiting and… waiting.

Finishing the scene well is also very important. We don't want the scene to drag, right? Remember that I mentioned the role of the scene? This is where it comes in handy: Once the role, the purpose of the scene is fulfilled, the scene is over. It is usually advised to ask the players if they fill that the scene should end, but if the purpose has been filled they will probably feel like it too.

Another way to know when to close the scene and move to the next one is to try to discern the amounts of energy around the table. If the levels seem to dwindle, it is probably the time to close the scene. Otherwise, the lasting taste will be bitter.

How about you? Do you have another method around which you frame the scenes? Is there anything that I've missed? Feel free to write those in the comments.

4 Scenes Are Going to be Remembered

The players are gonna remember about 4 scenes from your game. 4 scenes, no more and no less if you're lucky. You want a proof of course, and I'm gonna give you. Think about a movie that you really liked. Let's say "The Dark Night". What do you remember from it? You probably remember the opening scene, with the bank robbery where they kill each other when each one finishes his role. You probably remember the end scene, when Batman saves the day and then is hunted by the cops and dogs. You probably remember also one or 2 scenes from the middle, like the death of Rachel, or maybe it is the scene when the ships are supposed to blow each other?

It's also right in your game. The players are gonna remember about 4 scenes from the game, and they are gonna be probably the 2 most emotional scenes in addition to the opening and closing scenes. This means 2 things:

1. We have far less work than we intended or thought that we'll have.
2. We want to choose which 2 middle scenes will be remembered.

The first thing is quite straightforward. We have far less work, and we don't need to try to make every scene spectacular and unique. These are the scenes that their whole purpose is to both create and maintain the atmosphere and to create the pattern.

The second thing is quite more interesting. First of all, it talks at only 2 scenes that we have control about, not the whole 4. Secondly, it doesn't state how we can make them remembered. The first and last scenes are gonna be remembered no matter what. Not only that, though, but they are the most important scenes in the game. The agent closes on Trinity; Jack escapes from the guards saying that this is the day that he almost got captured; Vito says that he can't even call him his godfather... And so it is with the end, as another part falls from the spaceship in Firefly at the end of the episode, showing that everything is back to normal; Neo stops the bullet and makes Agent Smith explode... These are the 2 most important scenes in the game.

For the other 2, we can decide. The most remembered scenes follow one of 2 principles: They are very dramatic and emotional (Hamlet gives his famous monologue) or very spectacular (Neo saves Trinity from the falling helicopter). The scenes that are gonna be remembered are probably going to follow a few things:

• They are going to break the pattern. Pattern is created to be broken. Breaking it makes a contrast that makes the breaking scene more powerful and remembered.
• The drama in the scene is going to be high. Even if this is not the most dramatic scene in the story, it's gonna be dramatic.
• It's gonna be a spectacular scene. Same as above, there is going to be a special thing or even in the scene.
• They are gonna include a lot of build up to the scene. Having a perfect scene is not the only thing; you have to build to it. 
• They have to fulfil a promise. It doesn't matter what the promise is, whether it's the promise for a fight against the arch villain or a promise for a war council against the neighbour country. There should be a promise, and it should be fulfilled in this scene.

Let's look for example at the battle between Romeo and Tybalt and see how each of these things are fulfilled:

• A pattern is broken: Romeo, who was out of the fights and battles between the 2 families, suddenly enters the conflict with a purpose to kill.
• The drama is high: Romeo comes after his best friend has died by the sword of Tybalt. He is in a conflict also, because Tybalt is now his kinsman. Having a responsibility for his friend death also adds to the drama of his decision to confront Tybalt. But killing Tybalt is not enough. There are witnesses to the event, and the prince is now looking for him. Romeo suddenly loses all of his statues and has to run for his life.
• The scene itself is spectacular. The dialogue is short and powerful, each word is important. The body and soul of Mercutio is still there. 
• There's a build up for this scene: Romeo is responsible for Mercutio's death, Tybalt is a short tempered person, he was in the first fight of the play, and he is the one who discovered that Romeo was in the ball... Romeo on the other hand is a peaceful person, and a kinsman to a person from the opposite family.
• The scene fulfils a promise: In the beginning of the play, in the prologue, we already know that it's gonna be tragic. There is no happy ending for anything while our protagonists are still alive. The conflict between the 2 families is all too familiar, and if the protagonists are getting married, the conflict should return to destroy everything. This promise is fulfilled when Romeo kills Tybalt, thus killing the cousin of Juliet (his love) and flaming anew the conflict, on the same time he is sentenced to be exiled. The promise is (almost) fully fulfilled.

And that's it for today. How about you? Do you agree, disagree, something else? How do you create the middle story-peak scenes?

Scenes, Scenes, and a Little Bit More

So I didn't post yesterday. Real life alarm, a little bit of gaming and suddenly whoosh, no time for the blog, so sorry for that. Anyway, there's something I wanted to talk about, you know, you and me, something tiny but important: Scenes.

Every story and every movie are made of many many scenes; each one of them fills a purpose in the overall story arch. Some of the scenes are there to advance the main plot, others are there to create dazzlement, anticipation and suspense, others are there for the characterisation, and there are many many more motives for the plots.

I, personally, categorise three main types of scenes:

1. Exposition Scenes, which are scenes that are used to add information to the audience (the players in our games), and often to set the tone, mood and to place the story in a particular area. The first scenes of Casablanca, where we see the city itself, the French police in action and the rounding of the usual suspects state the tone of the movie, as does the scene with the explainer who steals the money. These scenes usually come at the beginning of the story, although they can come in other places, as in the connection scenes in Memento.
2. Spectacle Scenes, which are the scenes that are used to create awe and dazzlement in the audience. The scenes in which we first see the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, or the flight scenes in Superman are great examples of that, they dazzle us, but that's about it. These scenes can also be mesmerizing ones, like the dancing in the rain scene, from Singin' in the Rain. These scenes are there to make us forget that it's only a story, only a game, by trying to catch our attention and imagination.
3. Dramatic Scenes are, as the name implies, the most dramatic scenes. All of them contain conflicts, as big or as little as may be, and they are the main ones. These are the scenes in which the characters face their within world, and contrast it with the outer world. Scenes like the decision of Michael Corleone to kill the cop and the drug dealer, Rick's decision to help Ilsa and many other scenes are of this type. 

Every scene is not only a building block of the story, but also a story (albeit a short one) wholly by itself. Scenes are not there only to be parts of a complete thing, but should receive the same focus as the overall story. Spectacle Scenes should be big and grandiose, mesmerizing and awing; Exposition Scenes should state the mood and tone of the story, but should also be interesting in and all by themselves; and lastly; Dramatic Scenes should be as dramatic as possible, without overdoing it.

How can we do that? The main 2 tips I can give about it are viewing and reading storytelling mediums where the scenes are in the centre of the storytelling language of the medium, like plays and movies, to see where and how the greatest practitioners use and disuse scenes. The other tip is to practice it a lot, because theory is not enough, and practice is the main way of improvement after the theory is known.

Exploding Dolls, Underwater Bar Fights and Flying Castles

"Remember that battle when we were like in the middle of a factory, and all the dolls that were created there exploded?"

"Remember when we fought a bar fight under the water like in that movie, Top Secret?"

There are always this fights that are kept forever, that we look for again and again. Some of them involved great Roleplaying, or a critical at the right time, but most of them were in really cool places. At least in my games that's the situation.

When I GMed action games, I always reminded to myself one simple thing: "Every action movie has a cool, very cool, set-piece for the final confrontation of the movie". In TV series it's right also. Think about the end of season 4 of Buffy, with the fight in the dream, or one episode earlier when they fought Adam in the Initiative Basement. Think about the end of Matrix, where Neo and Smith fought in the train station. That's the kind of battles, of fights, that we remember because it's cool, because it's special and unique, because we didn't see that before.

So, after I have reminded to myself this thing all through the session, saying it to myself again and again like a mantra, I started to use it, and it paid off. I had a fight in a flying castle, where suddenly it fell and they used magic to keep it afloat while still fighting the villains. I had a battle between ships, with PCs and NPCs going from side to side and trying not to fall. I had fights in total darkness, and multi-planar battles. And after the fifth battle that I ran and was this cool and special, they started to look for it, to wait for it, to try to guess where it will be, and some of them even suggested places by themselves.

It's not a lot of work, making something like this, but it pays off, and it makes the games so much better, and the battles so much special.

Finishing with a BOOM

I think that it's time to talk about something that is a little bit more practical, about finishing game sessions. I finish my sessions with what I call a BOOM. I differentiate between 2 types of BOOMs: Those that I use to finish one shots, and those that I use to finish campaign sessions.

The first kind, that I mainly for one shots is the explosion type. It is usually quite straightforward; something explodes a short time before the end of the session. The logic behind this kind of session closure is very simple: It looks cool, sounds cool, and there is no time to further explore the characters, so the game should end with the most positive note that I can close it with. The explosion doesn't have to be physical, though, as it can be an explosion of all the bricks to remain moral or something. It should be something unique, or different, and it should look and sound like something that the characters will want to remember, like being stomped by Cthulhu or something ("remember that time when we were locked in the house and Daniel missed a shot and the blue liquid exploded and killed James and Tom, and then that yellow something came and stomped us?")...

The second type is BOOMs of campaign session endings. There I find two types: The classical cliffhanger, where something remains open for the next session ("the enemy army marched to town, and we all saw it at the horizon, waiting for something..."), and the Bang. Bang is a really important choice that lights a certain aspect of the character. There is no right choice or bad choice in this aspect, what is important is the choice itself, and what was chosen. When Bruce Wayne has to choose whether to reveal that he is Batman or no in "The Dark Night", he's faced with a Bang: What is more important, short term future or long term future? Saving a few people now, or saving a lot more lately, when it might be too late? This choice lights the moral aspects of Bruce.

Usually, I try to finish most of my campaign sessions with Bangs, as I believe it's much more rewarding than the cliffhanger. Also, I find the cliffhanger as cheating. There is no sense of achievement when every session (or most of the sessions) ends with a question mark. Also, I believe that Bangs are much more dramatic, and as such are much better suited for the stories we so strive to tell.

What about you? Do you use any of those ways to finish sessions? DO you use something else? Does it work?