D&D 5E The importance to "story" of contrivance

[Morrus]

But probably not quite as unlikely as in fiction, I feel.

Your birth was *astonishingly* unlikely! If your parents hadn't mated at the *exact* right time, having met according to goodness knows what fortuitous circumstances happened (what if your dad had missed that bus?), and your grandparents hadn't done similar, and your great-grandparents hadn't done the same, going all the way back to the right combination of molecules forming the right type of life four billion years ago. That's not counting the thousands of factors which coincided to make those things happen. Your existence is so astonishingly unlikely, you may as well call it miraculous! The odds of you being born were far, far less than the odds of your winning the lottery.

In fiction, it's inevitable. Not unlikely at all. Reality is far more unlikely than fiction.

 

[TwoSix]

Everything needs contrivance in retrospect, because every event is the end point of numerous coinciding strings of events. Heck, any given person's very existence is the result of an exceedingly unlikely combination of events.

Fiction requires the creation of authored contrivance. Nonfiction is merely the reporting of the 0.01% of occurrences of happenstance that are interesting enough to appear contrived if they were actually presented as fiction.

I would say that the best fiction knows what contrivances it wants to use in its endgame, and spends a lot of time setting the table for those events to not appear contrived. Patching the plotholes, as it were.

 

[Morrus]

Fiction requires the creation of authored contrivance.

Fiction requires the creation of authored everything. That's why it's called fiction.

Nonfiction is merely the reporting of the 0.01% of occurrences of happenstance that are interesting enough to appear contrived if they were actually presented as fiction

Nonfiction is when it really happens.

What an odd post! Did you really mean to mansplain what fiction and nonfiction were?

 

[robus]

Nonfiction is when it really happens.

What an odd post! Did you really mean to mansplain what fiction and nonfiction were?

I don't think so. How many times do people thank god for a certain outcome? They're basically saying thanks god for contriving to produce the outcome I wanted. When it was luck, skill or some other reason.

As another example most people thought Trump's election would be a work of fiction until it actually happened. And it was the story of the year/decade...

(ooh and I see edited out your rather ungenerous attack! )

 

[Morrus]

I don't think so. How many times do people thank god for a certain outcome? They're basically saying thanks god for contriving to produce the outcome I wanted. When it was luck, skill or some other reason.

I don't know what that means.

As another example most people thought Trump's election would be a work of fiction until it actually happened. And it was the story of the year/decade...

No politics, please. You know the rules.

(ooh and I see edited out your rather ungenerous attack! )

I don't know what that means, either. My post was not edited.



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[TwoSix]

Fiction requires the creation of authored everything. That's why it's called fiction.



Nonfiction is when it really happens.

What an odd post! Did you really mean to mansplain what fiction and nonfiction were?

No, I thought that would be obvious, but I gather not. I'm just saying that most of what happens in the real world is boring, and ultimately most of what happens isn't worth retelling. It's the incidents in real life that are so odd and coincidental that they would appear contrived in a work of fiction that make for compelling nonfiction, specifically history. (Obviously there is a lot of interesting nonfiction that has nothing to do with the telling of specific events.)

Authored fiction doesn't have the luxury of being generated by the near-infinite churn of historical events, so its contrivances have to be created. It creates a weird dynamic because we tend to look negatively at contrivances in fiction that would appear simply coincidental in historical nonfiction.

Oh, and re: editing, my email notification with the quote doesn't contain the mansplaining line either...maybe there was a weird posting thing happening.

 

[Mercule]

But probably not quite as unlikely as in fiction, I feel.

I met my wife in college. We were mutually tied in to 3 or 4 distinct groups of friends who would have eventually introduced us. After we met through the first group of friends, we'd periodically say something like, "Hey, mind if I include X for this outing?" and it would turn out that X was a girlfriend of one of the guys on my dorm floor or was my wife's lab partner from a couple of her classes, etc.

It's not like we went to a small school, either. It had something like 35,000 undergraduate students. I studied engineering and political science, while she was animal science.

 

[robus]

I don't know what that means.

I dunno I thought it was pretty clear.? Some people find contrivance in fortunate outcomes.

No politics, please. You know the rules.

Sorry, didn't know talking about recent history was against the rules. I was certainly not advocating one side or the other.

I don't know what that means, either. My post was not edited.

Hey it's your server, we just comment here.

Anyway, you seem in a contrary mood this evening, so I'll leave it there. Have a good night

 

[Manbearcat]

Deftly framing conflicts, following players subtle (or not subtle) cues, and escalating the action in the direction players have signaled they care about (this is all "contrivance-ing") is one of the more hard-earned GM skills. It is absolutely fundamental at both the framing and fallout stages of play.

One of the more seminal moments in a Dogs in the Vineyard game I GMed involved (1) a PC's relationship to a pair of sins according to The Faith (marital infidelity and prostitution) and (2) his relationship to his brother (who was his hero).

Obviously when they PCs got word of a secret brothel in one of the towns, there was justice to be meted out and sins to be cleansed. When the PCs find a familiar hat on the brothel's foyer table, the questions become (a) "what does this mean" and (b) "what next"? (A) could have been any number of things. I took the cue of the player and off we went.

The hat not belonging to the brother (perhaps to some innocuous rustler) would have made for a less dramatic conflict (and worse game for it). Not taking the player's cue on "what does this mean (about my brother)" would have left the emotionally invested player less invested.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

It's hard to tell a rollicking good yarn without contrivances. DMs should be shameless in arranging matters for the most dramatic impact.

I like to give my players free reign to go and do what they want. They can pick their quests and goals based on what they feel is most important or most interesting to them. However, once they settle on something all sorts of craziness begins to happen.

If they decide to go after the Sword of Ultimate Toenail Clipping it just so happens that the Evil Dark Evildoers are simultaneously sending their own agents after it as well. Would the Evil Dark Evildoers be going after the sword if the PCs didn't start that plotline? Nope. They're only around to serve as antagonists for this adventure. If the PCs aren't on this adventure they're not needed.

Then they get to the Great Toe Vault and find that its slowly sinking beneath the muck of Fungus Swamp and they only have 48 hours to get the sword and get out. Would the vault be sinking if the PCs didn't start the plotline. Nope. It's been waiting around to start sinking when the PCs show up.

If the PCs go on a voyage will they run into the worst storm in a century? Of course. Will the only treasure map to the fabled riches of ancient Fimdandoon fall into the PCs hands? Yep. Will the PCs happen to stumble open the death of their kindly old mentor just to see the assassin escape through a window? You got it.

If I think it'll be cool to send the PCs on a two-month trek through the desert, I'll start them off already on route with reasons why alternate travels methods aren't working. Or perhaps say a soothsayer or divine vision warned them off the other routes. Then I'll get on with the really cool desert travel stuff I prepped.

Players, being players, will occasionally still not bite on really dramatic in-your-face hooks and pull out some trick or stunt I hadn't thought of to upend the path. At that point I just roll with it. Contrivances are basically excuses. This thing (that I want to happen) happens because (contrivance) even though it's unlikely to happen. If the players aren't biting and do their own thing you just put more adventure in their path. Grab the MM, open to a random page and grab some dice.

So you decide to wait out the storm in port rather. As you're in the bar downing a few pints a...uh...tarrasque shows up...

The life of an adventurer should be absurdly exciting: filled with freakish occurrences, bizarre coincidences and outlandish improbabilities. When you tell your tales at Ye Olde Retirement Home no one should believe them. But they're true. Every last one of them.