Vignettes

[SparqMan]

I was rereading DMG2 last night and came across their chapter on Vignettes. Inspired by the TV techniques employed by Chris Perkins, I was drawn to the idea of letting the players see "off camera scenes" to help communicate what's going on in Place A while they're adventuring in Place B, or what Villain 1 was doing while Villain 2 was being slain.

When I pictured how they would play out and put myself in the players' shoes, I had a hard time imagining non Storyteller players taking an interest to me reading some description and talking to myself.

I considered the idea of writing a script and giving the parts to the players to read, but that seems odd as well.

Anyone done this to any success?

 

[mneme]

You really think there are that many players with -no- storyteller to them?

If you do a good job with it and it gives players info on what's going on, they'll like it (as long as it's not too much time of you talking to yourself, and as long as the players aren't insisting on only knowing "what their characters know in character").

 

[SparqMan]

They all have some in them, but in my group I'd say (if I had to put them into one Psychographic) we have a Storyteller, an Instigator and a Slayer. The other two are probably interested but mostly in a recap manner ("What town are we in?" "What are we doing here?" "Oh yeah, the evil dragon lord, right...").

I guess the trick is finding a time and way to use it that feels useful and interesting to them, and not just stroking my need for them to be interested in a larger story than what's right in front of them. =)

 

[mneme]

Oh, yes, absolutely. It's a pacing issue (but then, NPC outtakes are a pacing device).

A good time to use it might be when you want to show time passing, but there's nothing that needs to be happening around the PCs. So while they're travelling for 3 days from the Village of Heroicville to the town of HighHeroicMountain, rather than throwing a random encounter or two (or before/after doing so), you can drop a "meanwhile" in instead of description of how white and high the mountains are, telling them what's going on somewhere that's either parallel to or going to be relevant to their current quest.

 

[Locutus Zero]

Recently I had the PCs come across the site of a battle. There was a cleric grasping to life, who granted them the ability to relive the battle, each playing a given character who fought in the cleric's party.

I don't really like the idea of giving each player something to read. It just seems like "let's all sit around and read this play I wrote", not D&D. It'd be like rolling out a TV for the audience to watch halfway through a Broadway play. It's the wrong medium.

The alternative is to let them play as another character, making their own choices as their new character. The problem there is that you usually need them to learn what has happened in the past or is happening somewhere else, not make decisions. Plus, using either model you are still giving the player information that the PC doesn't have, unless you can come up with a way for the PC to get that information. It seems like it'd be frustrating to know a key detail that you can't act on because your character doesn't know it.

So, I would love more ways to put my players in the shoes of another character, but I find it very hard to pull off in a satisfying way.

 

[waxtransient]

I have used a vignette once in my campaign, and it worked excellently.

The PC's were commissioned to clear out a band of trolls, that had ransacked a frontier town. So at the beginning of the session where they set out for the town, I had the players engage in a vignette of the town's destruction.

Half the players were given the role of guards, while the others were a family. When the PC's subsequently arrived in the town, you could hear the sympathy in their voices when they encountered a nearly insane survivor (a drunk who had wandered away before the attack only to return to a decimated town), as well as their elation as they discovered another survivor made prisoner in the troll lair (a character that one of the players actually RP'd during the attack) whose fate had been left in the air at the end of the vignette.

I think the vignette was a success because it gave depth to a couple NPC's and made the party's interaction with them more rich. It was also successful because the PC's didn't gain any knowledge that somehow ruined or spoiled the rest of the quest. They were just ready to slay some trolls!

 

[Zieche]

I did one with my players that went incredibly smooth. Similar to previous posters, I brought my players into a scene where a small village was being attacked by monsters one night. Told the players what to expect and brought them up to speed. Then handed them their character sheets to play in this mini stories.

They were the monsters. Some orcs, a goblin, a minotaur etc etc. They had a blast sacking the town and seeing who could collect the most kills.

Real golden moment when the cleric started converting the goblin rogue she had played the previous week.

 

[KidSnide]

I've been using vignettes for years. I don't think they work especially well if the PCs don't have a pre-existing reason to care about the outcome, but I've had many excellent sessions where the players pilot their NPC allies as the allies attempt to accomplish some goal in parallel with the PC's main characters. These sessions can be especially fun because the players can sacrifice their NPC characters (with a cost! these are their friends and allies!) without losing their main PC.

-KS

 

[Saracenus]

I have toyed with idea of using Dread for vignettes.

Since the poor saps that usually populate the opening teaser of a show like Supernatural are just lambs to the slaughter this works. Pretty much the conceit of Dread is how you RP you your character's exit from the scene, its almost perfect.

This gives folks a chance to fill in some of the NPC holes for you is just a bonus.

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using Tapatalk

 

[Kzach]

I really must one day read these things called "Dungeon Master's Guides". Apparently they're just chock-full of useful information.