Well, we won’t be seeing Dollhouse on Finnish channels yet even if it airs now in the U.S., but it’s a great thing for the Nordics still. The Company P is producing/has been producing a game that runs alongside the series and allows another entry point to the world of the series. I’m personally interested in the production more from the TV side than the interactive game side – will be good to hear and see how Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku are able to pull it off again. Buffy ended over 5 years ago. And of course, the lottery of the situation will be if Fox pulls the plug after 6 episodes, deeming the series too expensive to produce compared to yet another reality show.

While Eliza is great with her physical side, I always liked the way she handled the more quiet scenes, the sincere ones. Mainly in Tru Calling, but I think she had a couple in Buffy as well. Beneath all that tough-girl bravado. And Joss hasn’t lost his touch. We all know this from Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, which just rocked. Will be really good to see how it works out.

I know I will be keeping a close eye on the show, so expect more posts about this once it’s clear how the actual pilot turned out.

In preparation for the upcoming Dollhouse, I watched Eliza Dushku’s previous series, Tru Calling from DVD and as usual, some thoughts arose.

For those who don’t know what Tru Calling is about or don’t have the muscle strength to click on the link about, the show’s sort-of-premise is “Cute girl relives days, to prevent nice people who died and asked her for help not to die.” Funnily, that’s fact only maybe in the pilot. What makes the show very watchable in comparison to other series with clear-cut formulas is the fact that the formula is there only to be broken. It is specifically indicated in a few episodes that when things happen the “Cute girl relives days, to prevent nice people who died and asked her for help not to die” way, they happen off-screen. The main character relives days and saves people, mostly on Mondays and Thursdays. But when we get to see it on screen, there is some variation to the pattern.

It might be something small like “the guy who needs saving isn’t a good guy” or “it’s not about saving just one person” or “It’s about saving not only the person, but your own life also”. The writers are very aware of the core concept and know how it can be explored. And what they were planning doing with it was quite awesome as well. Shame it never got explored better. But in a world where even the best shows tend to get stale because they don’t have the guts to explore the show’s concept more often, Tru Calling was really a nice exception.

And yes, not to disapoint the eager, I will go on to a gaming tangent on this one as well. Puzzle games are really great at this. You are given a set of tools from the start. You start by solving the simplest possible obstacle with the one tool you’ll end up using most. And level by level you are presented with new problems you can solve using those tools. Usually the end levels need you to wrap your head around every concept you’ve learned and possibly understand how certain basic rules you thought existed in the beginning are broken. It’s a shame that games outside the puzzle genre rarely use this to their advantage. Or it might be so that once you include that pattern to your game, the game gets classed as a Puzzle game. Portal being a good example of the latter.

Would be interesting to see this pattern expand to other games. In MMOs, this can be seen when people do things like “Let’s try to complete this instance with sub-optimal group setup” and in some games, people are giving themselves restrictions on what they can do so they have challenges. Typical way games seem to raise the bar these days is just increase number of enemies or make you smash things with bigger reaction times. But very rarely you end up with a situation where you find yourself constantly exploring the awesome things you actually can do with the resources you could have used from the beginning.

Oh boy. If there is one television show that proves the age-old truth of “no amount of superficial cool makes up for a lack of depth” true, it’s Heroes. It’s pretty easy to rate any Heroes episode by taking the number of important characters in the episode without powers (HRG doesn’t count, neither does “The Hunter”, who will turn out to be a) empowered or b) another HRG) and divide that by the number of important characters in the episode with powers. In the early episodes, for each of the main empowered character, there were at least one or two normal humans. These provided some way of exploring the powers. But then they started killing, empowering or just dismissing the non-”hero” characters, leaving us with SUPERPOWERED BEINGS DASHING OUT AT EACH OTHER WITH TEH ZOMG POWERS½!!!§!!11½! Or without powers. But still, boring. It’s gone from character drama to powers “drama”.

Sometimes  I wonder what is going with with the writers.

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.

(Warning, post contains spoilers of the movies Feast and Beerfest, not that you’ll ever watch them anyways)

So, there you are with your traditional RPG group, with great ideas about what the campaign will be about – you manage to get the players to do a perfect mix of characters and know how you’ll make the plots personal to the characters. Or the other way around – the players make a great group of characters made with great plot ideas you intermingle with the core thoughts of your campaign. In either case, the Dark Prince and his Troop of interesting NPCs will be essential because one of the characters used to work for him, and the birds are singing as the day is perfect.

And then the character dies. You have spent some 10 game sessions building up things and everything has gone by so well, and now a blank hole is staring at your face. The respectable way is to look at the character sheet, shed a tear and roll another character. If you’re lucky, some of the personalized plots you’ve created are such that they can be salvaged and reused by changing a couple of names and details.

But a lot of things are now lost for good. And if you as a GM had built the game heavily on very personal involvement of the characters, you might be screwed. If you had built the Dark Prince and his Troopers to be the character’s old company, full of his old friends, offing this character turns these NPCs more or less into faceless thugs with maybe some interesting characteristics, but thugs still. The personal attachment is gone.

But hear ye, hear ye. I have seen the light, and I shall preach of the light. In the movie Beerfest, the protagonist group is made of essential individuals, who are personally invested in the plot. In particular, there is a character in the ensemble called Landfill, who is a key part of the team. And he dies in the film.

After his death, there is the typical pause to remember how good man he was, and the characters are at his funeral, wondering what to do. Without Landfill’s unique skills, everything is doomed and a couple of plot points are left dangling.

Insert Gil, a new character to the film, who is the identical twin brother of Landfill. When I mean identical, I am talking how he manages to fill the spot of his now-dead brother. He is described as being the person who taught Landfill everything he knew about beer, and is implied to be as good as, or better than, Landfill in every possible aspect of life. And to top things off, Gil asks to be called Landfill, to honor his brother’s memory. And the movie goes on as if the death had never really happened.

Wait. What?

In Beerfest, the death of the character isn’t essential, which is pretty uncommon thing – normally characters only die, when it is required by the plot to happen. In Beerfest, death just happens. Thus it quite well fits a typical RPG death where the character dies because of the rules of the game, not because of the reasons of the plot. The Risk/Reward thing that’s written in the rules usually require that there is the risk of death for the characters, and it rarely follows the needs of the plot. So, what can we learn from the untimely death of Landfill and how can we abuse it for our own games?

I’m claiming that by taking a look at your plots, you can convert some of them into viral plots that can transcend a single character. Of course, doing it the full Beerfest way and just making a carbon copy of all the plots and abilities on the next characters, will be just silly (Beerfest was a comedy, and comedy is hard). But it doesn’t mean that some of the plots cannot continue living past the character’s lifespan in other people.

One thing this will need is some added transparency between the GM and the players during the game. Once the basics are there – characters are ready and you, as a GM, have an idea where you want to take them, you’ll need to be honest. This means saying to the players that “Ok, looking at your group and your characters. You are all unique snowflakes that are needed to complete the story that will unfold. Should one of you die, these here are the skills, traits and plots that I want to keep in the group. So take a look at them, and think who would work as a backup for them should things go bad.”

And the players should then form minor connections that can serve as full-fledged anchors for the plots should the push come to shove. And if you can’t make the current characters fill the shoes of a dead character, plotwise, make sure their replacement will fill them.

So, best case scenario, when a character dies, his plots will get distributed amongst the other characters, or there will be a pre-visioned Landfill’s brother out there to fill the parts of the position that won’t be distributed amongst the survivors.

This all was done much better in the horror/comedy/monster movie Feast, where the characters are very much nameless stereotypes filling a very specific role in the plot. A role that is exploited very much is that of “The Hero”. In the beginning of the film, The Hero rushes into the bar, explains the situation and how if people listen to him and do as he says, they’ll stay alive. He then immediately gets killed by a monster. After this, The Hero’s wife (now introduced as The Heroine) takes charge and keeps the hope alive amongst the diminishing group of survivors.

When she eventually dies, there is a short transition scene where one of the minor characters of the movie looks at the Heroine’s stuff and finds the conviction she needs to take up the mantle, turning the character into “The Heroine 2″. Bascially, the character had the potential to become the one who keeps the hope alive and takes charge, but doesn’t do it before the need for such a character presents itself. This transition isn’t unbelieveable, and you can imagine the GM telling the players that “Ok, to make this work, there needs to be one character at all times who is willing to take charge. Think in which order this role gets passed on should the current Hero die.”

So, to return to the Dark Prince and his Troop of Named Minions, where the main plot point you want to keep alive might be that character #1 has been a part of the Troop in his past – and thus sees the Troop as something else than just a group of faceless thugs, eventually leading to the question of “are minions evil and is it ok for us to kill them?”. This is such a personal plot that it would normally die along the character, but creating a backup, should things go bad, will be worth it.

A player wants his personal plots to be personal. This means that when you make backups for the plots of the player’s characters, you should make it clear that they are just that, backups. They do not activate until the original character is unable to interact with them. It means that a new character joining the group should have his own personal plots, but the potential to take over the plot of some of the older characters. If in Beerfest, Gil had been previously introduced, he shouldn’t have been a person that didn’t have anything to do with beer. The fact he’s a beer-expert would come to play only when he needs to take the position. Nothing is as annoying to a player to realize that the personal thing he had going for himself was in fact just a huge consipiracy everyone was involved in.

And with character #1 and his backup #2, and their relation with the Dark Prince, One example could be to keep a certain Dark Trooper and #2 apart as long as #1 is alive, because they actually know each other. Should the need to pull #2 as #1s backup arise, just have the Trooper and #2 meet and develope their relationship on a humane level. The players know beforehand that there is a backup to the plot in the meeting, and will keep the characters apart until it is needed.

In summary. When you do a traditional game where your characters’ personal plots are in fact huge parts of the main plot, you should talk with your players and make sure that the vital plots can survive the death of that character. But also to be firm on the fact that the personal plots of the players stay personal as long as the character is alive.

When I was young and the trailer of Ghost in the Shell had just leaked into the internet (and internet was still quite a new thing to me as well), I watched it, saved it onto a disc and took it home (didn’t have such high-powered internet at home back then, so did all this at a friend, who had a father who for some reason I can’t remember needed a faster connection). And I listened to the music of that trailer a lot. When they eventually released the soundtrack to the anime, I was a bit disappointed in the fact the trailer music wasn’t on the soundtrack. I was so disappointed in fact that I never did buy the soundtrack.

Now, some yegawds years later, they released the Ghost in the Shell 2.0 and along with it, they released a new version of the soundtrack. And on that soundtrack, they finally have the trailer track. I think I finally can get myself to buy that soundtrack.