Fringe (mtv3.fi/fringe for us Finns) is pretty much the second-best American show airing these days. Before it started, J.J. Abrams, the creator, told that the show would be Jumping The Shark at every possible opportunity. And it’s pretty much delivering, but not in a bad way. Nearly every episode of the show changes things in a way that’s somehow relevant to what the show’s about and characters jump across the board all the time. All this without things getting all Lost-y and confusing.

The thing about this is that by changing the angles all the time and keeping the pressure on, the show has managed to stay fresh, episode after episode. It is clearly planning on being a long series, as more questions are being asked than answered. But also, they’re taking great care that in the grand scheme of things, there are no “filler episodes”. Even the ones that seem like they’ll turn out to be just a monster without a greater motif are suddenly turned around by tying it to one of the aspects the show is about. Like posing a personal threat against, for example, a relative of one of the main characters. And because you know the show can do with the crazy turns, you can’t be sure if things will be okay in the end.

And that’s the thing. Fringe keeps everything essential to the whole by keeping them connected to something that is explored actively in the show. While each week, there is a new monster or some other new strangeness, they’re not just loose incidents. Nor are they a part of some story arc that progresses step by step. They’re part of what I love to call a Story Thread – a form of thematic tie that binds things without them actually needing to follow a neat step by step story structure. There are a lot of these threads running in Fringe – You know the Observer is there. You know the Pattern is there, and it’s probably the main thread of the show. And you notice how that guy from that one episode is connected to this thing here. And now there’s that butterfly motif that is telling us what’s coming up. And now we find about how that odd thing that happened is actually related to Walter’s relationship with Peter. Or the relationship between Olivia and John. You know, the underlying feeling how things are connected. Without them needing a story arc that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Taking a leap from Fringe to RPG campaigns, it’s a neat structure to work on – there are not so much “Story Arcs” that get completed, or even “Mythos Arcs” where the big plot gets pushed forward in the sessions that are tied to those. There are these threads that get resolved during the game. And every game session is somehow connected to one or more of these threads.

In a long campaign, we would of course have the Big Thread, the one that’s about the player characters working towards something. That would tie into most of the games in some way, just like in a typical game. But just progressing Big Thread in every game will leave it empty of ideas quite quickly and the players feeling a bit let down – “Doesn’t anything happen without it having a major part in the big plot? I mean, those old bag ladies that were terrorizing the local store were actually Vampire Queens. And I was just planning on buying a soda from that store.” Thus we will have some other threads running beneath the surface that get touched when the need arises. There might be a relationship between two player characters that’s not on such secure ground, played by both of them “having” to seduce other people because of their job. There could be a social commentary thread about hospitals being corrupt, and the characters seeing sides of that every now and then. There could even be a symbolic thread about crows being the harbinger of doom – they’d show up eating the corpses of the dead and caw in the distance when things get ugly. And when you would normally run a “filler game” to keep the players from criticizing the fact that everything has to do with the big plot, you hit them hard with a session that’s all about one or more of the other threads.

There is a sudden flocking of crows at a small British town near where the player characters are based. It has nothing to do with the big plot, yet it will tell something about the crows. Maybe one of the lovers needs hospital care, and the only way to save him is to find his brother, who can act as a donor for a transplant. And as the hospitals are corrupt, things get a bit more complicated. A “filler game” becomes much more connected to things. Without being connected to the big plot. This should really mean that the hospitals have nothing to do with the Big Thread, but being a secondary thing you’re exploring.

Also, the threads serve as a way for the Game Master to jump the shark without a) it feeling totally disconnected from the rest of the game and b) being connected to the big picture. If you want to shake things up, have the hospitalized character die and the brother take his place in the team. It’s a relevant death because the hospital thread has been explored on the background before. And it’s not a “Okay, the aliens killed our friend, we need revenge” thing because they didn’t kill him, the accident that got him hospitalized was his own fault. And it’s a great thing for the relationship thread because frankly, that has been going nowhere for like 10 games. Now there’s this identical brother who looks and feels like him, but is not him.

How are these threads different from running subplots in the game? Have a big story arc about PCs fighting some aliens and a lot of smaller subplots going on, one about the crows, another about the hospitals and so on? The difference I’m trying to point out is that Story Arcs are arcs. They have a beginning, middle and an ending. Threads are more thematic and symbolic things without so much to do with story structure. They only become part of the game when you want to take a break from the main thing. Otherwise, you notice them running in the background and it’s more or less just color. They are more about exploring a subject than trying to resolve it by taking steps. A Big Thread about the player characters fighting an alien horde would have more to do with getting to know the aspects of what the horde is than about taking steps that will eventually lead to a big confrontation that will determine the outcome of the war. Of course, you might want to keep your Big Thread more like a story arc, but it doesn’t stop you from using the thematic style to make the “fillers” more relevant.

Related Posts:

• Century and Advancement
• Thoughts of the first Decade
• A Beginning
• 4 Things the 4th Edition Teaches You
• What do I get out of it?

Tags: fringe, rpgs, threads

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 7th, 2009 at 03:39 and is filed under movies/television, roleplaying games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.