Invasion of the Body Snatchers- When Knowledge Destroys the Fear

I think that by now it's three great films in a row, if I include this last movie I've seen. And I have to confess, I expected a lot more of the campy side of the genre in this project. I don't know, some of the names sound so campy, like Braindead (which was) and I Walked with a Zombie (which wasn't), but I guess that that's the beauty of it all, right? But today I watched, or should I say finally watched, the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". True, it was the 1978 remake, but I haven't seen the original also (yeah, I know, shame on me). Anyway, let me just say that I was amazed.

To those who are like I was, this is a movie about a deputy health inspector of San Francisco who finds (with the help of one of his workers, and some accidents…) that some creature from space has come to Earth and it starts to spread in the city, creating duplicates of the townspeople. A lot of conformity and paranoia ensues. I didn't do it justice here, but honestly I didn't want to. You just have to watch it yourself.

The movie is great, and one truly becomes paranoid at a certain point (quite early, I must say), and some of the moments are just heartbreaking or utterly terrifying. But the first part of the movie is the most effective part of it, if you ask me.

You see, in the first part, all we have is a few crazy people, and the lead heroine, telling us that something is amiss (we also have a little feeling ourselves that something is amiss, but they pretty much dispute anything like that in the first hour of the film). We slowly begin to understand that there's something bigger in here, something far more horrifying than we thought, and the sense of conspiracy grows. We get the most effective fear of all- that the world itself is evil. As the film goes on, we start to get some info about how and what are those things that do the body-snatching job.

And that's the problem of the film. It shows us the monster, and it will ever be far less terrifying than what we have thought about. True, it gave us hope and then smashed it in the last scene of the film, but even so, it was less effective because at this stage we knew how those aliens work.

And that's a mistake that we can avoid in our games. In horror games, if you don't have to show and explain the monster- just don't! And if you have to explain it? It might be wiser to change the monster to something that you don't have to explain, that you don't have to describe. Because glimpses of something bad, just like we had in the first half of the movie, will be far scarier than any monster we can create ourselves, far more dread-inducing than what our players can devise. Because no one knows how to scare someone else than that someone and this person only needs some glimpses to get the engines to start rolling and to scare himself/herself.

And that's it for today. How about you? Have you watched this film? What did you think about it? And what did you learn from it?

Cronos- Making the Curse Feel Like a Curse

There are those horror movies that you see and immediately forget, and there are those that you'll take with you onward and maybe even forever. Cronos is one of them. A debut feature film by Del Toro, yet you wouldn't feel that when watching it. It is made with so much thought, devotion and emotion that you can't find anything bad to say about it. It is one of those movies that one hardly could make any better.

It is a story of an old man, who owns an antique shop, and becomes a vampire. It is a story of the relationship between a young girl named Mercedes and her grandfather. It is a story of the fear of the death, of the price of eternity. It is a film about life and living. It is mostly sad, sometimes even a little bit terrifying. I can't find the words to describe this film, to do it justice, not in English nor in Hebrew. It is this good.

And to find something to learn from it is so hard and so easy, takes so much energy and so little an amount. Watch it because it is a good movie, and then watch it again to analyze it. I don't know what else to say.

Right… lesson! I think that the moment in which I understood that I was watching something unique was the bathroom scene, the scene in which our vampire drinks blood from the bathroom floor. It is so powerful, so sad, and so pitiful. From this scene I knew that I was in good hands.

And this scene can teach us something about our games. Quite a lot to teach, actually, but I'll focus on a single thing. In most personal horrors games, the characters are very powerful, very strong and tough, with a lot of magical power. They call this state of theirs a curse, but here it usually ends. This scene can remind us of what it means a cursed state. This vampiric state of his made him do so many heartbreaking things, from drinking the blood from the bathroom floor to almost drinking his granddaughter's blood. And this can happen in our games too.

It is not enough to describe the life taking moment, the enjoyment of the act. It is not enough to say "you bite him, his blood is drawn to your bloody, his heart starts to beat faster and faster, and then slowly picks down the pace. The blood starts to run day, but it doesn't matter, the feeling is wonderful, amazing, and good like you've never felt in your life, better than the feeling of seeing your first child born. And when he dies, and the feeling's gone, you know that you just want more." No, it is not enough, not even close to it. Because it doesn't feel like a sad thing, like a sad act. Maybe it's better to not do it both ways at the same time, but by reminding the players that this is a curse, we help to bring the horrors back. We help to make them want the pain away, the feeling gone, and the horror will use this moment to strike.

Because there's another type of personal horror, besides "oh, what have I done"? This other type of personal horror is so close to the known one, yet so different from it. It is the type of "oh, what did it make me do? To what state have I been drawn?" And by reminding the players that this state is a curse, we bring them closer to the second type's embrace.

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you think about it? And what have you learned from it?

Flesh for Frankenstein- Twisting what's Known

Some horror movies are scary, and some serve as some kind of a dark and twisted mirror for our lives, for our culture. Flesh for Frankenstein is one of those movies, yet it is so campy that I almost missed that; it is so gory that I almost threw the DVD out of the window (which is bad, 'cause it's a library copy). Yet, it does have certain merits to it, if (yet again) you look hard enough.

It is yet another strange spin on the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his unnamed creation, but it is taken to an almost Rocky Horror's extreme: The Baron creates the monster to join his earlier creation, "a female zombie", in order to create "a new human race". It adds to that a lot of very dark humor, much gore and sex. It also has the infamous line: " To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life... in the gall bladder!" Yeah, that's the movie we're talking about.

But still, there is something to learn from this movie, right? Rrrrrrright…

It's quite hard to find something in there, you know, social commentary, gore and sex aside. But we can learn from it something, though, or I wouldn't be writing this piece. And what I've learned is that one of the greatest ways to surprise the audience is to build a story on something that they know quite well, and then to twist and spin it until it is *almost* unrecognizable.

The almost is the most important part- if it is too similar, we won't be surprising anyone as we don't have enough playing space. Too different, though, and it will feel completely new and thus we won't be able to utilize the prior knowledge.

When one treats a story this way, the audience gets to feel a unique kind of experience: the surprise to see how different the events turned out to be change, with the anticipation to see those changes. That's the power of the Campaign Comics, for example, and utilizing it to our games can prove this much successful also.

Think about the possibilities of having an evil Snow White and a good Queen Regina, think about the character of the prince who climbed to wake the sleeping beauty- he's a necrophilia character, to a certain respect, and by utilizing it we get the whole relationship that our culture has with those characters.

And that's it for this movie, at least from me. How about you? What did you learn from this movie? Or did you use a twisted twist like this in one of your games? How did it go?

Braindead- When Death Becomes Boring

Another day- another movie. Or something like that, at the very least. Braindead is a bad movie. It should have stayed dead, never becoming alive or even close to that. It is a campy movie drawn to the extreme, and today it's a cult movie, because its director is Peter Jackson. Yeah, that Peter Jackson. It doesn't make it any better as a film, or as a horror film. It's just bad.

It's a movie about a 25 years old virgin, who lives with his mother, and tries to start a relationship with a woman named Paquita. The mother is bitten by a rat, and becomes a zombie, thus starting to infect the entire city. If I made a mistake somewhere about the movie's plot, it doesn't matter, and it doesn't survive any kind of scrutiny. Actually, I'm not even sure that it survives a brain shut-down.

But I promised a lesson for each movie, and this one is no exception. Because, if you'll look pretty hard, and try with all of your heart, you might accidently find something positively to learn from it, like what I've found: That death is kinda boring.

Think about it this way: it is true that if the mom would have just died, I wouldn't have spent these 100 minutes almost cursing this idea of mine, to take this challenge. But you know what? Death is boring. If the mom would have just died, we wouldn't have this movie. And bad as it is, without it we wouldn't have the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and that's a shame.

So, what can I say? Death is boring, death is not scary that much. Try instead to make the characters suffer, try instead to ensure that the NPCs suffer, and then let them blame it on the PCs. And that's actually, a pretty good lesson. After all, it is far more interesting to have an NPC say to a PC "I lost everything because of you, and now I want you to repay for my loses" than to have this same NPC just die.

And maybe, just maybe, you can get the PC to kill this NPC and go the personal horror route. Or maybe I'm just exaggerating at this point. I don't know anymore, this movie messed with my head way too much.

And that's it for me with this movie. I do hope that at the very least you've enjoyed this post.

How about you? Did you find something else in the movie? Did you use something like along the lines of this lesson in one of your games? How did it go?

Come and See- Presenting Monstrosity

I've decided to try and take the October Horror Movie Challenge. In short, it is a challenge to watch 31 horror movies in the month of October. As part of this challenge (although not required), I decided to post something after each one of the movies. Being an RPG blog, I'll probably post lessons from these movies about what to do or what not to do as the horror GM or player. I'll try to keep it as one lesson for movie, and I hope that at least some of them will be applicable outside of the horror-gaming scene. For my list, though, I've decided to pick a bunch of movies that are considered good, yet not that well known, so I went to the 31 last places in the Time Out London. I hope that you'll find it interesting…

And we start with Come and See. And what can I say? It is not your typical horror movie. Actually, it is pretty far from it. It is a great movie, though, even if it is not a great horror movie. If I'll have to describe it, it is somewhere along the lines of Apocalypse Now, but done right, just like with Platoon.

It is a movie about the horrors of war, and specifically about the horrors of the Second World War, while also tackling the way that they influence a young lad who wants to be- and becomes- a partisan. The story takes place in Byelorussia, during the year of 1943

But apart from being a great movie, it is still a pretty good horror movie (even if it is more a horror movie by accident than by purpose). And like most good movies, it has quite a lot to teach us. But I wanna concentrate on a single lesson from it, derived from a single scene. It is the scene in which the Germans burn the church with all the people in it.

In this scene, director Klimov tries to show us the monstrosity of the Germans during those times. Klimov was wise enough to understand that one needs more in order to show someone as monstrous, than to just show this one committing mass murder. To make someone into a monster or to show someone's monstrosity you need far more than that.

The solution that he has found was to make the Germans behave, when committing those atrocities, like its normal and nothing worth thinking about. More than that, he showed them like they're enjoying it, a sick enjoyment. Our knowledge that it's all true makes it even more monstrous. But for our purposes we don't need this knowledge. For our purposes, the fact that he did show this is enough to make us hate those Germans, to make us terrified of what they can do. They listen to music while they murder, eat shrimps while watching the church burns, taking pictures afterwards like it is a tourist attraction. It's monstrous, it's disgusting, and it shows their monstrosity to the extreme.

And we can use that in RPGs too. When we want to show the monstrosity of the monster(s) in our games, we can use this trick. In one of my Changeling campaigns, for example, the villain made a lamp from the head of one of the major ally NPCs of the characters. But it didn't end with that, as he was so happy and smiling all over the place due to the beauty of his new lamp. Needless to say, nobody loved him afterwards. He's monstrosity showed for miles.

It is pretty much a morbid lesson from a very dark and depressing movie, but I think that it is a very useful tool in the horror GM's arsenal. How about you? Did you use a tool like this? If so, how did it go? And what other lessons did you learn from the movie?

GMing to Break the Fifth Wall- A Finale

So, this is it, the last in the "GMing to Break the Fifth Wall" series. 8 days ago, I came with the announcement, and here is the finish line, it's here smiling at me and you...

So, what did we have? We had 7 emotion posts, each one discussing a main one and almost all of them some minor related ones.

I started with the most basic and important one- interest. Interest includes all the rest of the emotions in our stories, and as such should get the most of our attention and energy. I gave a few techniques for how to catch the players' interest, and I finished with 4 important points about conflicts: 1) Always think about the outcome of the conflict. 2) You should strive to come with a different conflict for every time. 3) The conflicts should be meaningful. 4) Conflicts are not between the characters but between a desire and an obstacle.

Then I've jumped to the next one- curiosity. Curiosity is the need to know, and is one of the main reasons for continuing to follow a story. My main focus in that post was about raising questions, and many of them. The goal was to not let the players have a moment with no questions rolling through their heads. I've discussed questions from the beat level to the act and story levels, each question bigger and more important than the one from the lower level.

Then, I've went to discuss the next one, anticipation. Anticipation is the feeling of looking forward to an event. Here I've made 2 points that I believe are very important: 1) Always has the characters (PCs and/or NPCs) want something, and don't ever fulfill a goal before giving the players and their characters something else to look for. 2) The MacGuffin doesn't have to be an object all the time. It's much more interesting when it's a place or even a person (fictitious or real).

The next post was about suspense. Suspense deals with what will come next, and when will it come. I've talked about probabilities of particular events and went all the way to dilemmas. I've made 2 points about dilemmas: 1) They should never be less than black and as almost as black, or there will be no dilemma. 2) The higher the stakes, and the more personal they are, the better the dilemma will be.

After that, I continued to surprise. Surprise was used there not to change the outcome, but to change the way to the desired outcome. The most important thing came, as always, at the end: There's no point in trying to surprise the players, if the setup is not good enough.

Then, I've moved to the next one- thrills. Thrills are the moments of sheer sudden sensation. I've went through violence and sexual tension and ended with battles, where I've stated 2 things to make them more thrilling: 1) making battles short, brutal and chaotic as a way to make them more thrilling, and 2) Making the situations more complex.

After that, I've finished with empathy for the NPCs. Empathy is what we feel when we care or like a character. I've stated three main ways for quick empathic bond between your players and the NPCs: 1) Victimizing the NPCs. 2) Giving the NPCs humanistic virtues. 3) Giving the NPCs some desirable qualities.

And that's the end of the series. Hope you've enjoyed it and have found it useful.

Empathy for Your NPC

So, here it comes, this moment when after all those many posts, comes the last emotion in our series. Today, it's empathy's turn. While in most other emotions the focus was on the plot, with empathy the focus is on the characters themselves.

Empathy is this thing that we feel when we care about a character. It's one of the more powerful emotions, and it makes the characters feel likable and more realistic. Usually, characters in our stories will "dance" between empathy and the opposite of it- enmity.

Empathy is connected to compassion, admiration and contempt.

There are a few ways to make for a more immediate and fast empathy bond between players and NPCs, which we can squeeze into three main groups:

1. We feel empathy for victims and weak persons, mainly because we feel sorry for them.
2. We feel empathy for characters that have some humanistic virtues, because we want to be as good as them.
3. We feel empathy for characters with desirable qualities, because we want these qualities and we want to be the characters.

What I'm going to do in this post, which will be a little bit different from the others, is that I'm going to look at these three groups and see how we can get them in our games.

We feel empathy for victims

We can't help it, when we see a victim, we immediately feel empathy, sorry and pity for him/her. It doesn't matter if the victim is good or bad, we just feel it.

The most common way of victimising a character, at least in movies, is by mistreating them. It can be by teasing them, or by humiliating them, but there's some mistreatment there. Think about Lester in American Beauty who is being constantly humiliated by his wife and daughter, aren't we immediately drawn to him and to his side? Mistreating a character can be far more powerful if the character is falsely accused (like in North by Northwest) of if the mistreatment is brutal (like in Interview with the Vampire).

Another way of victimising a character is through sheer bad luck. Think about the death of Rizzo just before they reach their destination after so much time spent in fighting the disease, or of George's uncle losing the money a minute before the inspection. We just can't stand it there, and most of us (I'm sure) would have rushed to help them if we could.

The last common way for this is through using deformed characters. Characters with some sorts of handicaps, whether physical or mental, are just more prone to our empathy. For some unknown reason, we just really like the underdog. Use it.

We feel empathy for characters that have some humanistic virtues

Virtues are a way of acting towards others, a good way to act toward them. Giving characters some humanistic virtues, like politeness, or generosity, are one of the ways to get empathy for the characters.

Remember our victims from the first group? A character that will help them will be considered a good one, and will draw both attention and caring from the players. Players tend to defend those people that are good, even when they play "not-so-good" characters. Think about George from It's a Wonderful Life, how he helps all those unfortunate souls, is there a wonder why we like him so much? Meet your PCs with a George Bailey and you'll notice it by yourselves.

Another thing is relations with children. Children are considered weak, vulnerable and innocent. A character that is good with them, and/or the children like him/her will get the empathy from the characters for the work that this NPC is doing. Think of Mary Poppins or of Dr. Crowe and you'll see it by yourself. As a side note, if you want a character to be hated from first sight, show this character mistreating a child.

A third and last in this aspect, for doing it is by fighting for a just cause. It is rightly considered a selfless act, and an act that deserves proper recognition. An NPC who goes even further and sacrifices himself/herself for this cause will be even better.

We feel empathy for characters with desirable qualities

Actually, the shortest of them all, as this technique is the most straightforward. We like people with desirable qualities, as simple as that. Give NPCs power, glamorous jobs, passion, beauty or the like, and they'll be much more likable and easier to empathise with.

Look for example on Schindler in Schindler's List: He's not a perfect human being, far from that, and he buys the factory because it's easy money, but the courage he encompasses, when helping the Jews and saving them, makes him so much better.

Think about Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love: He writes because of the lust for women that he feels, until he falls in love with her. The passion does all the rest, hooking us to him, pressing all those buttons that we keep hidden within.

It can work for evil characters also, like the humour that is used with The Joker, a sense of humour that makes him almost as likable as Batman, and far more fun to watch. 

So, this is it for today. Tomorrow there will be a conclusion post to conclude the series, but that's almost the finish line, with 41 kilometres of the Marathon behind.

How about you? How do you create empathy for your NPCs?

Can I Get My Thrill, Please?

Today it's time for our first before the last emotion in our series. Today, we're gonna talk about thrills. Although the name is similar to the genre of thrillers, there's no real connection between the 2. Thrills are the moment of sudden sensation, when all hell broke lost.

The main way to create thrills in the players is through spectacle scenes. Think about the sinking of the Titanic in the movie, think about the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Opening with a spectacle scene is one of the best attention grabbers there are. There are 2 things to remember when opening a story with a spectacle scene:

The first is not to overdo it at the expense of the story. If it's too much, or not important, or not connected, there's no use for this opening.

The second is to think about what place the PCs will fill in this scene. If there's no role for them there, maybe passing on this scene and opening with how it affects the PCs will be better. Think about the opening scene of The Matrix, part of why it's so great is that here we get Trinity and not just some kind of hacker who talks with her. If the scene can help to establish the characters, so much the better.

When speaking of the opening scene of The Matrix, we can't leave behind the sequence it's part of, the escape sequence of Trinity. Escapes are another great way to bump up the thrills in the story. En escape sequence done right can change everything. Make everything immediate, and the story and players will thank you.

But escape sequences don't have to be done by the PCs, as they can learn of an escape done by the villain. When the characters are there to investigate a crime scene, or an escape from prison scene, narrating their findings in flashbacks to the event itself can prove quiet useful. Always remember one thing when doing this kind of thing, though, it has to be short and it has to give only parts of the crime and not all of it. Strive to give only 50-60% of the crime and let the players fill the rest for themselves (and it's always better to let them fill the dirty parts by themselves).

Another way to get this thrill we're so longing for is by using short intervals of violence. Short intervals that are brutal and dirty are far more thrilling than long tactical fighting. The villains ambush the players, and they have to get to a safe zone while bullets fill the air, the famous monster goes out of the water and advances like an unstoppable nature force into the city, destroying it like a hurricane... This kind of thing is far more thrilling than the orcs who come to kill the PCs and the battle in squares that comes afterwards.

Violence can be replaced by sexuality, though. Think about some of the horror movies we all like to see. Sex=death, and the thrill is in both of this sides of the equation. Now, I'm not saying make the story a porn story or something, but a little sexual conflict here or there does come with its merits.

A better way to use sexuality in the story is by combining it with violence. The sex=death is one way to do this, but there are also other ways to do it. If one of the characters goes to sleep after a wild night and wakes up only to find a dagger near his/her throat, you'll feel the thrilling atmosphere that controls the room.

Before I close for today, there's one thing that I can't discuss thrills and not discuss it, fights. Fights are one of the oldest aspects of the RPGs (and of stories also), but they stopped being this thrilling when they stretch for too long or become too tactical. Although I discussed how to enhance the battles here and here (and also in here), there is also one thing that we can learn from Unknown Armies: making the battles short, brutal and chaotic makes battles less common in the first place, but when they come... The thrills that come with it can challenge action movies.

Another technique is by making the situations more complex, like battling on a driving van, a flying carpet or on a train. If you'll succeed in making a battle between a motorcycle driver (probably the PC) to the villain on the roof of the train, with a chase scene combined with a fight scene, it's gonna be one of the fight scenes of the game.

So, that's about it for today, how about you? How do you thrill your players?

Guess Who's Surprised at Dinner

4 emotions are already there, and only three are left to go. Today, in our series, we're gonna talk about surprises. Surprise is the thing we use to prevent our stories from becoming predictable. A predictable story will lose its appeal and interest much faster than would a surprising one.

Surprises need not change the outcome (although it's fine) but the way we get there. The heroes will ultimately defeat the adversary and restore peace into the realm, but the way they do it can be somewhat twisted and surprising.

It's important to remember, though, that in order to create surprise we have to first establish anticipation in our players' minds. Surprise is related to dismay and amusement.

So, how can we create surprise in our players' minds?

The first and most straightforward technique is by creating unexpected complications and obstacles. They should be surprising in where they are, and in what they are, but they should not stop the PCs completely, just hold them for some time when they try to cope with this sudden change of plans. They can be flooded roads or giant rocks, having to take the trip by car and not by airplane, etc. What's important is that they'll be unexpected, or in other words- no formulae to when, where and what.

Another way to create the surprise is by using secrets. They can be a secret that's kept for a scene or for an entire story arch, but they should be there and should be revealed. When the moment of reveal finally comes, and the secret goes public, there will be a surprise.

Another way of using secrets is with reversals. Think about Some Like It Hot, When Joe and Jerry appear at the train station dressed as women; or think about the moment when the nice fella who the characters always bought groceries from turned out to be the serial killer they've been looking for. If reversals are done right, there's no higher degree of surprise that can be achieved than that, but if done wrong it can really cause some problems. Take into account, though, that these reversals don't have to be character reversals but can also be an event (like when Lester in American Beauty bribes his boss instead of being fired) or when Louis tells to round up the usual suspects after Strasser has been shot.

Reversals are a particular type of revelations and discoveries. The main difference between revelations and discoveries is that discoveries are an active process, while revelations are passive processes as information is revealed to the characters and players. The reason that I'm making this distinction is that these 2 types should be balanced, and not too much to only one of them. Both discoveries and revelations are usually learnt by both the characters and the players at the same time, like when finding a clue. Revelations, on the other hand, also have the benefit of being able to learn only by the players with the characters unknowing. This benefit can be used to great lengths in horror GMing.

Discoveries and revelations can also come at the end, usually by using twist endings. These endings usually alter the perception on what we thought about the all game, and if done right can really change the way the players think about the game (an example of this in use can be seen in this post).

Another way to surprise the players is by shocking them. Hitchcock proved how useful it can be when he killed the main protagonist in the end of the first act. It's suggested to make the shocks completely unexpected, sudden and most of all extremish. Shock can also be used in non horror games, like in the comedy film Tootsie when we Michael in drag, or when at the end of Some Like It Hot the playboy says "well, nobody's perfect".

Before we'll finish for today, a little thing to take in mind: All of the surprises should come with the appropriate setup. It shouldn't reveal the surprise, but it should make the surprise seem logical. A good setup is a one that, when the players look back at it, the surprise is seen as a logical continuation. Think about the Boxer who fails to lose a fight on purpose and has to skip town because of that (in Pulp Fiction), the decision to skip comes as a surprise, but it does seem like a logical continuation considering the situation.

So, that's it for today. How about you? How do you surprise your players?

Thrillers Inc Home Edition

And here comes the time to yet another instalment in our series. Today, we're discussing the feeling of suspense. Suspense deals with the unpredictable, with the "what comes next" as well as when will it come. Suspense is made of three main things: The character and how much we care for it; how likely a particular event is; and lastly, how uncertain we are about the outcome.

Suspense is related to tension, anxiety, concern and doubt, and to a certain extent, curiosity. There is one major difference between curiosity and suspense: curiosity deals with not knowing what our protagonists want, while on the other hand, suspense deals with the fulfilment of our protagonists' goals.

So, how can we bring suspense to the gaming table?

The first technique is by controlling and changing the likeliness of success or failure. If the characters will always succeed, or always fail, there will be no pint in telling the story. If the characters always emerge from battles victorious, why playing battles? Isn't it better to just say: "You fight hard, but win this battle and all the orcs are dead"? If we change the probability of outcomes, the suspense will naturally rise, and every dice roll comes with great tension.

Another way is to control the pacing of the game. Make things in the "now" and things will get tenser, space the time before a major event, and you'll see the sweat on your players' noses. Make your descriptions a little bit longer when trying to cut the right string of the bomb, and it will be a lot more suspenseful than, like going over it quickly.

Another way to control the pacing, and thus bump the suspense level, is with meanwhile scenes. Whether it's meanwhile to other PCs in time of a split party, or to the villain actions, stopping at a minor cliffhanger and going to another place makes the particular player's whose character is left hanging in the air to look forward to see how his action will turn out. Other way to create the meanwhile is by the "parallel scene" technique, like the one used in The Silence of the Lambs. If you can make it into a game, you'll surely benefit from it.

Another way is to put PCs out of their comfort zones (or better yet, putting the players themselves out of it) will make every act tensful and will bring doubt back to the player's minds. Think about something, ability, a trait, or anything else that the character is adept at using, and then put the character where s/he can't use this ability (or the ability harms more than it helps). The player will have to come up with a new way to do stuff, doubting every action and concerned about whether s/he'll do it "right".

Putting a character out if its comfort zone can also be used in another way: with contrasting characters. Think back, for example, on the evil twin act or when David Huxley encounters Susan Vance. Although it's being used mainly in comedy, this trick surely enhances the tense atmosphere of the situation.

In most games and stories, there's this moment of big revelation, when the big and important thing is being told. It is usually one of the most suspenseful moments in the story, as we learn the ugly truth and we have no way to escape from it. This revelation is one of the most important moments in the story and should receive the right amount of energy. Think about the suspenseful atmosphere after Darth Vader tells Luke that he's his father, this is what we strive for.

2 last techniques for today: The first is by controlling the stakes. Higher stakes means higher level of suspense, and raising them can help you raise the level of tension in your game. If you start with a single family's life at stake, and then go all the way to risking the whole country, they'll feel it. But raising the stakes is not enough, as you should always make sure that the players remember the stakes. It doesn't matter if the whole universe is at stake if no one notices it.

The second is by using dilemmas. A dilemma is the formal name for the Bang, a choice between 2 unwanted consequences. It can be a small dilemma or a big one, but there are 2 important things to remember:

1. It shouldn't be black and white but black and (mostly) black. The love of one's life or the standing in society; the morality of oneself or the family. If there is a clear right answer and a clear wrong answer, there's no dilemma at all, but another not that important and unique conflict.
2. The higher the stakes, and the more personal they are, the better the dilemma will be. Which one of Sophie's children will live is a lot more personal and important than which city will I let fall first. Personal stakes are almost always higher than the non personal ones, and they carry a bigger emotional impact.

How about you? How do you use or create suspense in your game?

To yesterday's post

When We Look Forward to...

And the third instalment of our series is finally here. Today, our topic is the dreaded anticipation, or the feeling of looking forward to something that will happen in the future. It can be a good thing, a bad thing, or even a certain flashback scene.

Once we set the information, the anticipation engines start to propel as we look forward to the next bit of info, to the time when it will be useful. A higher level of this can be seen in the famous Hitchcock's movie "The Man Who Knew too Much", where we know that the murder will be done during the cymbal note. He's the one who said that "there's no terror in a bang, only the anticipation of it".

Like with the other emotions, there are a couple of others that are connectod to anticipation: Hope, worry and fear.

So, how do we create and use anticipation in our games?

The first technique is by establishing the traits of our characters, whether they are NPCs or PCs. Establishing these traits helps us to anticipate certain courses of actions or events. More than that, it can make us want to meet someone, for example. Look for example at 2 examples from The Silence of the Lambs: The first is the famous escape scene of Lecter. We knew by this stage that he's a fearful cannibalistic maniac, and that there's no limit to what he can do. When he gets captured, we want to know how he will escape, and when he does escape, it fulfills our anticipation. The second is when he says at the end "I'm having an old friend for dinner" we anticipate what will happen, and how he'll try to eat this fella.

Another example is by talking about the future. When we talk about the future, we create anticipation for a future event. It's the knowledge of what will happen during the cymbal crash that makes us look for the cymbal clash, not the clash itself. Take into account, though, that this future doesn't have to be a chronological future. It can also be a future of a flashback, like in the movie Sunset Boulevard, where we begin by being told the story of our dead protagonist, told by him after he died.

The third technique is by plans and daydreams. When Ugarte says to Rick that "after tonight, I’m through with the whole business" we anticipate to the night when he'll finally set himself free from the dreaded city of Casablanca. Secret plans are even more useful to creating anticipation. It creates a double anticipation, one for knowing what the plan is and another to know how it will turn out. But don't make every plan secret, or it will feel like a parody of spy movies...

Another way to create anticipation is by setting up goals. When we do that, the players anticipate the event of the goals fulfillment. If one of the characters has a goal of becoming the new prince of the vampire society, he looks for the event of his coronation. Goals make us look for a certain event, or the other way around of not looking forward to a certain event, feeling us with fear and worry for our beloved characters. If we know that the villain plans to kill Robert Geldof, we fear for Robert Geldof's life, thus making us anticipate this event to see him emerge victorious.

Always have the characters (PCs and/or NPCs) want something, and don't ever fulfill a goal before giving the players and their characters something else to look for.

As you've probably guessed, most of the techniques here are connected in one way or another by making the players want something for their characters (goals) or fearing for their lives from a bad thing that is gonna happen. This is no mistake, and it can be further developed to contain omens, warnings, appointments and so on. Also the MacGuffin fills this spot- the characters and/or the villains are trying to get something, and we look forward to the point of finding it.

A little trick with MacGuffins: The MacGuffin doesn't have to be an object all the time. It's much more interesting when it's a place or even a person (fictitious or real).

2 last techniques for today: The first one is to state the mood of the game from the very beginning. This way, we give the players a suggestion: Stay with me in the game, and you'll get more of those. If this thing is something that this particular player really likes, he will probably stay within the game and will look forward to these moments.

The last technique is by using dramatic irony. This is revealing info to the players that the characters don't know. An example of that can be seen in my Yale Hotel mini-campaign, where the last player knew that Bob Luchiano can be in a few places at once, and that he'll lie and tell her that the other characters released him. Another example of this can be seen in North by Northwest, when we the audience discover that Kaplan is a fictitious character, but Thornhill and Vandamm are unaware of this fact.

Another way to create this is in the opposite way: The characters know more than the players. Using this way makes us look forward to the point when we'll discover the truth behind it. Think about Chinatown for many examples of this in action.

Dramatic Irony can be created in 2 main ways, deception and misunderstanding. Both of this ways make us anticipate the moment of truth to come, when we'll discover what really happens, what was hidden from us, and what did we misunderstood.

And... That's it for today. How do you bump up the anticipation levels in your players?

Curiosity Killed the Cat, but Made It Famous...

And today is the time to the next installment in our series. Today we're gonna talk about curiosity. Curiosity is the need to know, to answer the questions, and it is one of those things that make us want to continue reading a story, watching a movie, or in our subject, participate in a game.

Like in our previous emotion, this one also contains relevant emotions, which are wonder and intrigue.

If used correctly, curiosity will make the players talk about the game after the games is finished, trying to understand, to predict, what will come next. If not used correctly, the players will probably be bored, or uncaring, but by all means they won't put energy to the game beyond the game time (if at all).

So, how can we raise the level of curiosity in the game? For that there are, again, a few techniques. They also raise the level of interest, but are used more to this emotion.

The main way to do that, and also the basic way from which we're building up, is by arousing questions. They can be simple questions like "will the thief run away" or as complicated like "will she shot her son, when she'll discover that he's the murderer of her husband?" What is important, though, is that there will be questions.

We can think about the questions in a few different levels:

The opening sequence questions are the first ones we'll have to consider. It is mandatory to catch the player's curiosity from the first moment, and raising interesting questions at this early stage will sure catch their attention and curiosity. Think about the pictures from the start of the movie Chinatown, or better yet, the questions that arouse in the first few segments of The Godfather: To whom is he talking? Why is he so important? What happened to the girl, and why? From that moment, we're hooked with curiosity, and by the time these questions are answered, we have new ones.

Always have a few questions running in the players' minds. It's not that difficult to arrange, but it is rewarding nonetheless. By the time an answer is given, 2 new questions should pop up.

Another level to think about is the one of scale. A question can arouse in the whole plot, or in a single beat. If most of the beats will raise questions, it's surely on the way to advance even farther. When the lunatic enters the room screaming, apart from the surprise and fear, the beat also contains questions such as who is he? Why is he here? Why he hasn't been stopped and so on.

But questions can also be in the scene level. Will Rick be persuaded into helping Ilsa? Will the investigator get the permission to read about Kane in the book?

Or even in sequence level. Will the criminal on the train succeed in running away from the investigator? Will Annie discover what event in the past made Alvy be this loony?

And of course it can also be in the act and story levels. What is important, though, is that there will be questions, many of them, most of them small (so there won't be an overflow of questions or info gained) and constantly bombarded at the players and their characters.

"There are trails from the dead body of the horse, the cape is full of blood, but there's nobody wearing it. They are leading to a certain point, near the bushes and trees, and then it stops, disappearing..." Not too complicated, but look what questions do we have: What happened to the rider of the horse? What happened to the trails? Has he gone through the bushes? Trees? Is he alive? Is he a she? Who is the rider, actually? And of course many many more.

There are 2 more techniques that I'll discuss today. The first one is withholding the information. If the players discover the answers too soon, there's no real excitement or drama, and the curiosity has died before it had even begun to flourish. The idea is to hold the info as much as we can before the game draws into a halt or frustration starts to fill the players. One possible way to solve it is to wait about 2-3 minutes of real time, or until 2-3 new questions have aroused before answering the earlier ones. Another way is that the answers themselves create new questions: "What happened to Lisa? -She left her house with a boy, and then disappeared. -Who was the boy? -I don't know, but he had 6 fingers on his right hand..."

The last technique for today is of emphasising secrets and schemes. It fills us with curiosity when a scheme is being made, or if someone is holding a secret. "How will it turn out? Will the scheme succeed? Will the secret be revealed? How?" I'll discuss secrets more thoroughly when I'll discuss surprise, but let's just say that holding the secrets creates a sense of intrigue and wonder, which bump up our curiosity level.

So that's it for today. What about you? How do you try to catch player's curiosity?

Are You Interested Enough?

Yesterday I made an announcement, and there's no point in announcing something if we're not making it come true...

Today we're gonna talk about one of the most important emotions we need to evoke as storytellers: Interest. Interest is the most important emotion to evoke, mainly because it includes the rest of the emotions, whether it by itself or by its related ones: fascination, insight, and awe.

In a story, we should catch the interest of the audience (players) in our storytelling. I don't mean that they are only the audience and nothing more, but they surely are, to a certain extent, the audience. If we'll catch their interest from the very beginning, they'll participate more, and both the story and the game will be much better.

We should catch the interest from the first scene, and we should keep the interest candle burning for long, making the light brighter and brighter till the climax and preferably beyond that. The interest should ideally continue till the resolution of the story.

So how can we do that? There are a few ways that we can use to plainly increase the level of interest. Take into account, though, that the next posts' techniques can raise the interest also, but they don't raise only the interest level.

The first technique is by using cause and effect. It may sound banal, but we strive for this cause and effect logic, it helps us to understand things, but it also makes things more satisfying and interesting for us. We look for these things, and giving the players just that will surely help them be more interested in the plot. Take for example the horse's head scene in The Godfather: If we would have taken the preceding scene, of the refusal, away, was the horse's head scene so powerful and interesting? Because we knew the reason for it, and we knew the importance of the horse, the effect of these 2 things made the outcome more interesting and satisfying.

The Second technique is by being original. IF we'll tell the same story again and again, it will stop to be interesting and will become dull and boring, and of course predictable. Avoiding these things, and trying something new every time (or almost, at the least) will surely bump up the interest. "What will our GM come with next?" That's also why the most interesting stories from our gaming experience are from when the players did the unexpected.

Another technique is by using a hidden layer in our storytelling. If everything is laid out for us, there's no discovery and no interest. Something must be hidden, like a hidden personal conflict or a sickness of a beloved NPC. Hitchcock was an expert in conveying dark secrets through normal everyday talking, so try to learn from the master.

Another way is through changes. Everything in the stories we strive to tell should be about changes. Every beat, scene or even the entire story should revolve around changes, whether it's a change to the characters or of another kind. The situations should change one to another, rising in conflict and in stakes, or changing completely (from one place to the other, for example). If the stakes didn't rose from minute 30 of Star wars to the 110th, what use and importance was to the 90 minutes in the middle? The 2 most important kinds of changes are discoveries (changes in knowledge, like discovering clues) and decisions (changes in and by actions, like deciding to commit a crime).

Another technique is by the exposition. Think for example about the exposition of American Beauty:

"LESTER (V.O.) My name is Lester Burnham. This is

my neighbourhood. This is my street.

This... is my life. I'm forty-two

years old. In less than a year, I'll

be dead.

Right from the start, we're fascinated by what is gonna happen, what does he mean, and many more questions arouse...

A fifth way is through the context of the story. Stories don't take place in a void, so use the context. The Silence of the Lambs starts after a few women have been murdered, and Jurassic Park starts after they successfully cloned dinosaurs. If the context is interesting, the story will surely get better.

The last technique is the most common one: Conflicts. Conflicts are by no means the only ways to interest the players, but they are ones of the best tools that have been created to do just that. Because most (at the very least) of us know what conflict is, let's move to a few tips about making them better.

1. You should always think about the outcome of the conflict. The most interesting resolution of a conflict is not by winning or losing and certainly not by compromising, but through aggravating it. If the conflict raises the stakes, it will glue the players to the stories. Yes, glue.
2. It's preferred to come with a new conflict each time. It doesn't mean that battle after battle is bad, but if there is no difference, it won't be interesting. More than that, battle after battle after battle does come tedious, so try something new once in a while, won't you?
3. Make the conflicts meaningful. Conflicts should never be too easy, comfortable and small. They should be big, grandiose, with many things at stakes. It creates a greater drama, which equals if done right to more interest in the stories.
4. Conflicts are between desires and obstacles and not between people, so forget this wondering monster as it creates only a shallow one. Instead, try for deeper things, deeper desires and deeper goals.

So, that's it for today. How about you? How do you catch the interest of your players?

GMing to Break the Fifth Wall- an Announcement

The greatest stories ever told contained great characters and plot, vivid descriptions and dialogues, but it contained more than that. These stories succeeded because of one simple thing: The succeeded in making us feel something, anything, any emotion good or bad, but we felt it, and that made all the difference. It wasn't just the punny lines, or the badass protagonist(s), but our happiness of their success. It wasn't just the magnificent plot that they used to get the money back, but the anticipation to see how it will unfold and unravel, the need to know and the tension in the air.

Today I'm announcing something, something that I've been waiting for far too long. Today I'm announcing that I'm starting my first series in the blog: GMing to Break the Fifth Wall, or in other words GMing to get the emotional impact we're so trying to achieve.

In the series, I'm gonna discuss 7 main emotions that I think are essential for the success of the story we're all trying to tell:

1. Interest
2. Curiosity
3. Anticipation
4. Suspense
5. Surprise
6. Thrill
7. Empathy

Each of these emotion posts will contain a few connected emotions also.

Before I close this post, there are a few things I want to touch. Some of them are probably known, like scenes and story arches, characters and descriptions, but there are 2 that are less known and it's important to discuss them for a moment before we continue:

• Beat: This is the most basic unit in the story, as a scene is made of a few beats. Beats start and end with the emotional shifts. When an emotional shift had happened, a new beat has started.
• Sequence: Just as beats make scenes, sequences make acts. An act is usually made from between 2 to three sequences. They are like mini-acts which tell a part of the act. The best way to explain what it is by an example: When Alvy, Annie and Rob travel to Alvy's childhood town, we see a collection of Alvy's memories from there. This is a sequence.
• Breaking the Fifth Wall: this is a term coined by John Wick, which means "making the audience be the event". This is the highest form of storytelling.