How Do You Create Story?

[reveal]

I can't help but create stories. They crop up in my brain, like kudzo, overgrowing vast sections, wiping out forests and providing homes and cover to rabbits, in addition to reducing the property value.

I wonder if anyone outside of the South even knows what kudzu is?

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

I wonder if anyone outside of the South even knows what kudzu is?

The Japanese probably do, becuase my understadning is kudzu was imported from Japan. BIMBW.

I wonder what kind of game-uses you could get out of kudzu...

 

[reveal]

The Japanese probably do, becuase my understadning is kudzu was imported from Japan. BIMBW.

I wonder what kind of game-uses you could get out of kudzu...

It was Japan. Not sure what kind of uses you could get. Creeping vine. Maybe chew on it to have a vision.

 

[Desdichado]

And who is the hero? Paris? No. In an Iliad game, people play Achiles. Characters motivated by desire are typically the antagonists in pre-modern stories whom pre-modern heroes fight. Either that or the desire-based character renounces his covetous ways during the narrative and seeks to attone (e.g. Lancelot). Characters motivated by desire appear in the literature of every civilization but I think that there is something special about our civilization in that we valourize desire rather than making it the hero's foil either in himself or in the antagonist.

I don't know if that's true, at least for the Iliad. Paris wasn't really the antagonist, and in many ways, he's painted as the most sympathetic character in the Iliad. I think the Iliad is a lot more complex and a lot more humanistic than many people give it credit for; it can't be reduced to "who's the hero; who's the villain, what's their heroic flaw, etc."

In other words, it's fairly "modern."

Not only that, I imagine most actual people in pre-modern times had more "modern" thought, particularly in this regard, than their stories do. People have always been proactive about their destiny--or at least, some people have been. The people who are remembered, anyway. Otherwise, people like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, etc. would never have existed.

There's two ways of doing pre-modern adventuring; modelling after their stories, myths and legends, or modelling it more off of their actual history.

 

[Rel]

And, in general, I tend to find that proactive campaigns feel more modern.

You may well be right. But the vast majority of stories that form my foundations as a GM and storyteller are ones written in the modern era (as opposed to ancient myth). And I think this is true of my players too. So they tend to be the ones that resonate with our group.

I think that I do disagree with your assertion (if I correctly understand what you are asserting) that nearly all fantasy stories created in modern times are similar to ancient myths in being more Reactive than Proactive. But that may not even be a very important point for a couple of reasons.

First, as I mentioned, it is very easy to switch back and forth between modes. To use an example from fiction, take the Conan the Barbarian movie. It starts as very Reactive when Conan's village is slaughtered and he's put in slavery. But later he escapes and guides his own destiny, opting to become a thief. But then he turns to revenge against the murderer of his parents. I'd say that the latter half of the story is very Proactive but how would you categorize the whole? I don't know and don't really care. It's still a fun movie.

Also I think that the very foundation of D&D is a more Proactive model than Reactive. The classic example of the way that D&D (and a great many other games as well) is run is that there is a Big Dungeon over there. The PC's seek wealth and power so they leave the safety of the Village and go into the Big Dungeon to Kill Things and Take Their Stuff. That's as proactive and acquisitive as it gets right there.

My point is that whether or not Proactive stories are a more modern invention or not, they do make up the origins of D&D and are still widely used in many published adventures. As a result they are likely to make up some of the expectations of the average player.

 

[fusangite]

Not only that, I imagine most actual people in pre-modern times had more "modern" thought, particularly in this regard, than their stories do. People have always been proactive about their destiny--or at least, some people have been. The people who are remembered, anyway. Otherwise, people like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, etc. would never have existed.

I'm not suggesting that there was less ambition in the past, merely that it was seen as more perilous and sinful than it is today.

 

[Rel]

I'm not suggesting that there was less ambition in the past, merely that it was seen as more perilous and sinful than it is today.

Heh. Well "perilous and sinful" EXACTLY describes my current batch of PC's.

 

[fusangite]

I think that I do disagree with your assertion (if I correctly understand what you are asserting) that nearly all fantasy stories created in modern times are similar to ancient myths in being more Reactive than Proactive.

Well, I dislike modern fantasy novels pretty intensely and read very few because I hate the moderns in medieval drag flavour most have. I was speaking more the the stories that we see in popular culture. I was thinking not so much of modern fantasy stories as I was thinking of popular stories of modern heroism.

Although they reflect modernity in another upsetting way in that they express the hideous synthesis of tort law and feminist principles that posits modern theories of entitlement as deriving from victimhood, most heroic action movies begin with the main character witnessing or suffering some terrible calamity that forces him into taking violent action for the greater good. The ones with broad cultural appeal tend to be like the Diehard series in which Bruce Willis is placed in a situation where he is heroic out of necessity. Ones with a narrower cultural appeal and an overwhelmingly male audience tend to do the same thing but spend the last 90 minutes with the wronged/attacked character exacting revenge rahter than seeking to prevent a greater evil. Stories about political heroism like Gandhi de-emphasize the intrinsic ambition to leadership of their protagonist and, to make him seem more heroic, instead emphasize his oppression and that of those around him as his primary if not exclusive motivation.

My point is that whether or not Proactive stories are a more modern invention or not, they do make up the origins of D&D and are still widely used in many published adventures. As a result they are likely to make up some of the expectations of the average player.

Thanks Rel, this helps me to understand why I tend to prefer gaming with people who have no special love of most fantasy literature but have that love of Tolkien that I identify with.

 

[MonsterMash]

a story is something that we accidently stumble into on the way to having fun.

With the comment in the other thread about the play excreting story that made me think:
"Damn now we have to scrape this story off our shoes!"

When I GM my campaign always has lots of plot threads going on, which the players can interact with some of (probably not all as there are a lot), but there is never one overarching story above all else.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm not suggesting that there was less ambition in the past, merely that it was seen as more perilous and sinful than it is today.

That's largely true, but how perilous and sinful it seemed depended greatly on the culture as well. Assuming the culture in question even had a notion of sin that's similar to ours.