A question of style

[sniffles]

I've noticed in reading various Story Hour threads that most writers choose to use a third-person omniscient viewpoint. I'm curious how this comes about, aside from making all of the stories resemble fantasy novels. It appears that most of the authors are GMs. How do you know all this information about the characters' thoughts and motivations? And how do you remember so much detail? Do most of you audio (or video) record your game sessions? Or do you require your players to keep character journals?

I've started posting my character journals for one campaign I'm involved in, but I'm not the GM, and thus my info is only from the viewpoint of my PC. I wouldn't feel comfortable assigning thoughts or feelings to my fellow players' characters, and I don't keep notes of dialog except when someone says something really memorable.

 

[dshai527]

For myself, I co-author with one of the players and we are both very good about asking the other players what they remember from the gaming sessions. We don't try to retell the whole thing, just the high points or low points as they may be. For the most part what we don't remember we make up, but to be truthful we are more interested in telling a tale based on a gaming campaign rather than retelling a gaming campaign. We freely use creative license to add or change the story to a more satisfying storytelling result. We try to stay with the intentions of the character and not the actual table speak. The best parts are often very close to what happened though. We have a table of good roleplayers, but occasionally they will say 'ooohhh I wish I would have said XXXX' and we go 'okay we'll change it in the story hour, it sounds better.' It still came from the character just not during actual gameplay.

 

[TheYeti1775]

Brain Power

Lots of Brain Power in my thought process,
that and lots of free time commuting to work.

 

[el-remmen]

I try to avoid the omniscient point of view in my own story hour (click on image in the sig), but rather present everything from what the characters know - and I do not express their inner thoughts unless they actually say them, or act in some way that makes it obvious.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Hi Sniffles,

I suppose like most, I write in a similar style to what I enjoy reading. I prefer the "fiction" of Sepulchrave, Destan, Mortepierre etc to the "this happened then that happened then this happened" type of story hour. In essence, I prefer stories to logs. You get closer to the characters and the real conflict in a story rather than a log. Thus for my own writing, I prefer this style.

However, I suppose I'm a little different to most as my SH is from a game where I am only a single PC and not the DM. In terms of other characters thoughts and motivations, this become an interesting process. Because my writing is about 130 hours behind where the game is at, It becomes easy to see with that level of hindsight why the other PCs do what they do. Additionally, out of campaign information is easy to put into a story hour even though in campaign my character cannot act upon it - we try to be very fastidious with metagame and out of campaign knowledge.

I cannot imagine using audio or video to log a game. Having played with most of the characters since 3rd editions inception, it is very easy to get the character's "voices" in my head. While I wouldn't try to get things word for word, it is easy to paraphrase what I think they said - and in some cases what they wish they could have said. I have been known to embellish the truth upon occasion you see. However, once you start a conversation, it's pretty easy to follow the flow of how it went. The other players in my group are pretty lenient with me and are not going to go apoplectic if I slightly misrepresent their characters. I suppose playing such an "out there" character like Lucifus Cray gives me a little scope in this regard.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

PS: Have a look at the Happenings of Lucifus Cray and you'll quickly see what I mean (and I think you might actually enjoy it too). I have a massive update almost finished in the wings so sorry for those of you who have been patiently waiting.

 

[sniffles]

Hi Sniffles,

The other players in my group are pretty lenient with me and are not going to go apoplectic if I slightly misrepresent their characters. I suppose playing such an "out there" character like Lucifus Cray gives me a little scope in this regard.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

I actually do many of the same things you mention in my character's journal entries. I decided when I started offering summaries for my fellow players to read that sticking to a first-person viewpoint would just make it easier on me because then I wouldn't have to worry so much about what the other characters were doing.

But I've found that my fellow players all want their moment in the spotlight, and they tend to send me corrections every time I submit my entries for them to read. Originally I just ignored most of these, since I figured my PC wrote his journal the way he remembered things and didn't show it to the rest of the party. Now that I'm putting them up for Story Hour I may start incoroporating these additions/alterations into the narrative more. I'm also trying to work on making the entries more exciting to read now that I'm offering them to an audience of people who weren't there for the game session.

@dshai - I have read some of "Small Beginnings" and enjoyed it.

 

[carpedavid]

I write my story hour in third person limited omnicient, and I tend toward more of a "story" style than a "log" style. Because I'm the DM, I can get into the NPCs heads, though it's mostly written from the perspective of the PCs. With regard to record keeping, I started the story hour by referencing my written notes of the gaming sessions. These notes consist of major actions, good one-liners, and detailed combat. Therefore, I have to extrapolate somewhat when writing the actual dialogue from that period.

My players seem to enjoy the story hour, and have no complaints, thus far, about how I've represented their characters. More recently, I've started audio recordings of the sessions, so that I can be more accurate with dialogue. Even when I get to the point where I'm writing from the audio recordings, I don't envision my style changing much. I still intend to summarize the boring points, elaborate on the interesting points, and give some insight into how the world works from an omnicient perspective.