[Dragon 301] Adventure Question/DM Help - Cut Scenes

[Bagpuss]

Most DM's use cut-scenes at some point.

For example the party split up but you deal with both groups in turn at the table. Since they are likely to share the information they gain once they are together again, it saves time and is generally helpful. For each group the other groups activity is effectively like a cut-scene.

If one group is attacked only some players might act on that Out of Character knowledge, this isn't a big problem. On occasion this metagaming in such a situation actually adds to the game. For example experienced players might realise when one group is in serious trouble and using that ooc knowledge decide IC it might be a good time to 'report in' with the other group. They happen to arrive in the 'just in the nick of time' to even the fight.

Now we know there decision to go back to the other group was influenced by ooc knowledge, but for the Character it could just have happened to be a luckly coincedence they arrived when they were needed. It happens all the time in movies, books and even in real life, how often have had a friend call you just when you were going to call them?

Metagaming is not always bad in my opinion. In the case above it saves the DM from killing half the party and makes for a fun and exciting game.

Generally in a cut-scene its totally safe to do if the only information you reveal is something the players are likely to discover eventually anyway, or something they already know about.

A good example is to have a cut scene of an advancing orc army coming through the mountain pass then, a little later in the game, have a look out come charging into the players village saying he's spotting a dust cloud approaching... this sort of foreshadowing adds to the pace and tension of the game without the worry of players acting on OOC knowledge.

Other safe cut-scenes are ones where the players can have no opportunity to act on the OOC knowledge they gain. Having your major village torch a town hundreds of miles north of the party as his army advances south lets them know how evil he is and what is in store for their home if they don't do something about it.

If you really need to justify it as IC knowledge refugees from the town could arrive before the advancing army with such knowledge. But you really don't need to have that scene with the refugees, since there a certain bits of knowledge the players are likely to hear about via the rumour mill.

I've used them on a few occasions and never really had any trouble with metagaming.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Other safe cut-scenes are ones where the players can have no opportunity to act on the OOC knowledge they gain. Having your major village torch a town hundreds of miles north of the party as his army advances south lets them know how evil he is and what is in store for their home if they don't do something about it.

I really like the above idea. Without the cutscene, in order to convey the information that the villain torched the town, you'd have to have the PCs come across a survivor, or hear about it from a witness. Either way the impact is diluted. Or, even worse, they might ignore the survivor or witness!

A nicely described cutscene of the villain and his thugs burning up a town and slaughtering innocent victims should incense the PCs and make them that much more eager to defeat the villain. You could verbally describe the carnage, send an e-mail to the players, or perhaps use a written handout.

 

[Agback]

On occasion this metagaming in such a situation actually adds to the game.

<snip>

Metagaming is not always bad in my opinion. In the case above it saves the DM from killing half the party and makes for a fun and exciting game.

Good point, which I'd like to reinforce with an example.

(This example is not from a D&D campaign, but from a campaign in a modern setting, which you could imagine might occur in a D20 Modern adventure.)

Our characters were the partners in a firm of private detectives. We had a McGuffin (a videotape containing evidence against a wicked politician), and unbeknownst to any other character my character had made a copy and hidden it in a bus-terminal locker. The bad guys kidnapped our client, and offered to swap her for the tape: we met in a large shopping mall to make the exchange. But during the exchange a third force intervened, a large gunfight ensued, the PCs were widely separated, and my character was captured by the third force, who took him to an hotel and questioned him. The character didn't answer, so the third force sent some of their people off to search his apartment. While they were away and his guard weakened my character tried to escape and to signal his colleagues and the police, but failed on all counts. But he did discover that he was being held in Room 666 of the Airport Hilton.

This was known to all the players but not to their characters. The other players were in a bit of a bind, because they needed the second tape to force a change of the situation, but their characters didn't even know it existed, let alone where my character had hidden the key to the locker.

Now, if the other characters had gone to the Hilton with shotguns and kicked in the door of room 666 that would have made for a bad story, because those characters had no reason to do that. That would have been a bad use of out-of-character knowledge. And if they had just looked on top of the ornamental cornice of the public library (where my character had stashed the locker key) it would have been almost as bad. Nevertheless, one player saved the situation entirely by an acceptable use of OOC knowledge.

Knowing that the bad guys were going to search my character's apartment he made an excuse for his character to go there. ("I'll go to Armstrong's place to make sure he's not actually there but unable to answer the 'phone.") That gave the GM an opportunity to have his character surprise the bad guys and give the rest of the party a re-entry into the adventure (which he could have refused had he wanted to). Use of OOC knowledge saved that adventure.

My rule for use of OOC knowledge is that I only let it guide me to actions that my character might reasonably undertake in the circumstances, and that I only use it to make story offers to the GM that the GM can turn down if he or she has other ideas for the adventure.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Pielorinho]

I had a cut scene in last week's adventure. It was sort of a weird one, so I got the player's permission to run it the way I wanted.

Background:
******************
Lum, a cleric, was undergoing a hallucinatory walk into the sacred lands of a primitive God in order to rescue an NPC she wanted to talk with.

Along the way, I knew that she was going to meet three guardians who would not let her pass unless she made a sacrifice: first, her clothes and equipment; second, her skin; and third, her flesh and bones. (If you've read the Descent of Inanna, you'll recognize this trope).

The second guardian was going to be a nasty trickster-demon, a Skinwalker -- basically an undead spirit that could escape the sacred land if it wore the skin of a living creature. Once it got out, it planned to cause lots of mayhem before it got killed again.

****************

So I had two sets of scenes. In the first one, Lum's player would be going alone through the sacred lands. In the second, Tahsin, the other PC (I currently only have two folks IMC) would be waiting for Lum's return back in normal space when a demon wearing Lum's skin would come out of the sacred land and attack him.

I wanted both players to have something to do in each set of scenes: I wanted Tahsin's player to take on the roles of the three guardians while Lum walked through the sacred lands, and I wanted Lum's player to take on the role of the skinwalker when it attacked Tahsin in normal space.

But there was a problem: if I ran Lum's journey first, then Tahsin's player would have an idea that he wasn't being attacked by the real Lum (since the player would've played the second, demonic guardian), and if I ran the skinwalker fight first, Lum wouldn't want to give up his skin to the second guardian (since the player would know it was a demon).

So I took Lum's player aside and told him that I could run the upcoming scenes in a fairly fun way if he'd be willing to make an upcoming decision in the way that I needed him to do (i.e., he'd need to give his skin to the second guardian when asked). He agreed to do so, and I ran scenes in the following order:

-Lum drinks the hallucinatory brew and walks into sacred lands.
-A few hours later, Lum returns from sacred lands naked and running, and unexpectedly attacks Tahsin (Lum's player played the skinwalker for this scene).
-As soon as the first blow landed, I cut to Lum's journey (Tahsin's player handled the three guardians).
-As soon as Lum's journey was finished, I cut back to the rest of the fight against the skinwalker.

I don't know if that makes sense (or if anyone bothered to read it), but I think the players had a good time with it. I know I did .

Daniel

 

[Angelsboi]

this is very interesting. ill have to ry this this weekend.

 

[MerricB]

The original WEG Star Wars game made great use of cut scenes in its modules.

Cheers!