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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9355616" data-attributes="member: 7035894">Because maybe it matters more to them? Maybe it'll have a bigger impact on their lives?This is a lesson that I drill into my creative writing students: for a story to work, the audience just needs to feel why the stakes matter so much to the character.As an example, we watch the "birthday pool party scene" from the film Eighth Grade. The beginning of that scene is a 13 year old girl alone in a bathroom, trying to screw up her courage to get into her swimsuit and walk out to the pool in front of her peers. By the end of the scene, when she opens the door and walks out, she feels like a goddamn superhero.In the greater scheme of things, whether or not one kid overcomes her crippling social anxiety for a moment makes basically zero difference. But in this kid's world, it is everything and director Bo Burnham makes the audience feel it. Those are stakes.I think the biggest mistake made by a lot of entertainment is the notion that making the stakes objectively bigger will make them feel more impactful to the audience. That doesn't work unless we are completely invested in the characters.That's why MCU movies have gone from "save the love interest" to "save the city" to "save the planet" to "save the universe" to "save the multiverse" and are getting diminishing returns. We don't care unless we care about the people.So in adapting this adventure, I have to figure out how to make the story matter to the character arcs of the PCs. It needs to matter emotionally for them to care. That's why I'm substantially altering the first episode to build on family drama that relates to the backstory of two characters. I need going after Vecna to feel personal.</blockquote>

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