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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6882965" data-attributes="member: 4937">You say that like it was praise rather than damning.Engagement in the plot is great and worth striving for.  But I would have cited 'Lost' as an excellent example of just how lazy this sort of writing can be.  I can definitely see using a cut scene as a prelude that you can segue into the beginning of a campaign, especially if it represents backstory that literally everyone knows.  I have a campaign where that sort of prelude backstory might make sense, because it would illustrate a story everyone knows from recent history which would become central to the campaign.  Campaign beginnings are often tough, because PC's have history but you are starting in media res, with players not having the benefit of knowing everything that set the scene.But I'm more skeptical of cut scene as interlude.  Poorly done interludes are examples of some of the laziest worst most ham fisted writing ever to come out of TSR, and early 2e modules are just rife with them.   One of the places where the DL modules really dropped the ball was in asking players to play out cutscenes as non-participants, rather than giving them the tools to create their own take on those scenes.   Unlike preludes, I can't think of an example off the top of my head where I would advice a novice DM to use interlude cut scenes.  Obviously, for a very experienced DM, just as with most rules regarding writing, you can probably think of a rare case where breaking the normal rules are justified.  For example, I might use cutscenes to represent revelations to the player about their own character when its been established the character's own memory is unreliable, but even that I'd only do with explicit player permission to mess with their character and even then it represent things that their character knows and participated in, but just doesn't know they know and participated in.A less lazy example of how to do cut scenes can be found in the 'Harry Potter' books, where Rawlings ties into the story as a major plot point a reason why the protagonist can from time to time know what the antagonist is doing.  Since the story is being told from the protagonist's perspective, this allows the reader to see what they'd otherwise not get to know and deepens the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist in much the same way that Star Wars tells the story both from Luke's perspective and Vader's perspective, as well as being a story element that helps drives the plot.  This sort of technique could be employed to good effect in an RPG without needing to make a PC out of the villain or violating the structure of the game.Even that could get out of hand though, as RPGs are not novels and don't rely on the exact same techniques.  Any time you are reading more than a single typed page, you are doing it wrong, and even that should be a rather rare event setting the stage for or framing a major plot point.  Typically I only narrate that much text if their is an NPC telling a story within the story.   I will never narrate that much text regarding what the PC's are forced to sit back and watch while other people do meaningful stuff.And unlike you, I simply believe it is impossible for a player to not metagame, and it is somewhat unfair to ask a player to not do so.</blockquote>

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