What have we learned from TV?

[Andor]

One time in an Ars Magica game my players encountered a powerful... something in a fey woods. To help portray it before the PC spoke to it I told them to visualize every shift in speakers as a shift in camera. That when a pc spoke you had a shot of him and then when the Fey spoke the camera cut back to him. Then everytime the fey spoke I described the scene differently. They were suitibly unnerved that it looked different everytime yet they never saw it change, and drew valuable clues about it's reactions from the forms it was wearing.

It was a 'special effect', or perhaps just a camera technique, I stole from TV.

So what have you stolen from TV or movies?

 

[Mark CMG]

That's a good one. I had one group, back in the day, that were all Hercules: The Legendary Journeys fans, so I would often lift NPCs from the most recent episode to use as background characters for their games. Though this wouldn't necessarily help with all groups, I think it helped them to dive more deeply into the game.

 

[Wombat]

As I haven't owned a tv for years, I don't even think in tv-visuals. This, however, has clashed at times with my players who compare scenes to shots, styles of shows, and characters/actors who I don't even know about.

I some ways, I feel culturally illiterate... :\

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Well, that's probably because you are - at least, pop-culturally illiterate. Television makes up the majority of contemporary culture.

I know of multiple groups which structure their gaming sessions as "episodes" of an ongoing television serial - and once I played in a four-colour Sixties superheroes campaign which was run like a Saturday morning cartoon, complete with (bad) theme music.

We used Aberrant for that game, of all things. Taint was converted into a measure of "comic-book time"; the more Taint which accumulated in the party, the further along historical comics timelines the tone and style of the game advanced. The last game ended with a preview of the Seventies era of the game - which we sadly never played - involving the super-genius' punch-card computer brain being implanted in a streetwise black guy with an Afro. Had we reached the Eighties, there would have been deaths and whatnot and probably a Crisis On Infinite Earths-style cosmic reset.

 

[sniffles]

I wasn't involved in the game myself, but just recently some good friends of mine were in a Star Wars campaign in which the GM used the tv technique of "cut scenes" to keep the players excited about how their actions integrated with the rest of the Star Wars universe. They were playing in the same time frame as the original three movies, and the GM would periodically let them "view" cut scenes of Darth Vader talking to an NPC, for example.

This of course would only work with players who are good at keeping OOC knowledge out of the game.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I wasn't involved in the game myself, but just recently some good friends of mine were in a Star Wars campaign in which the GM used the tv technique of "cut scenes" to keep the players excited about how their actions integrated with the rest of the Star Wars universe. They were playing in the same time frame as the original three movies, and the GM would periodically let them "view" cut scenes of Darth Vader talking to an NPC, for example.

This of course would only work with players who are good at keeping OOC knowledge out of the game.

I do this sometimes. I usually use it for the same kind of "something is up in badguyland" scene that you often see at the beginning of a show. The bad guy stays off-camera while one of his underlings gets all the camera time. Or the bad guy is on-camera, but his secret diabolical project is off-camera or under a cloth. It provides foreshadowing, but the same kind of foreshadowing you get in TV shows, which is to say, it gets you interested by not telling you anything important.

Sometimes I do cut scenes of what happens to NPCs that die off-camera, because it's much more cinematic than having someone tell you "oh, by the way, Redshirt #3 died planetside." If you get to see Redshirt #3 stumble around in the cave, find his flashlight mysteriously go out, grope around in the dark for a while, and then hear heavy breathing behind him, finally turning around to scream in terror at some unknown horror, it's more fun, and it makes you wonder if whatever got him is going to be trouble for you when you inevitably run into it.

 

[Conaill]

In one of the most memorable Feng Shui sessions I had the privilege to attend - run by our esteemed PirateCat - the game *started* with a shot of the PC's in freefall without parachutes. No actual roleplaying, just a bit of background narration while "the opening credits rolled".

Then we cut to a shot of all of us sitting in our seats, while the flight attendants served beverages. That's where the actual game started...

How's that for foreshadowing!


Edit: Hmm... coulda sworn there was a writeup of that session somewhere. I did find this old thread about the use of "In Media Res". Here's another cool example from Piratecat:

I started the game by saying, "Here in Florida it's a warm, beautiful night. Somewhere above you the stars burn brightly in the sky, and the sound of sea birds and chittering cicadas fills the humid air. You wouldn't notice, though; you're screaming across Alligator Alley in the Everglades at 90 miles per hours, pursued by three black vehicles and a lot of men with guns. Roll for initiative."

It got their attention.

After two or three rounds of combat, just when things were getting tense, I said, "The limo pulls along side of you and a man leans out with a shotgun. And you can't help but wonder what took you to this stage. Why, it was just this morning that you were sitting in a briefing room...." And then I went into a flashback mode and played it like a normal game. I knew that the chase would have to come at some point, so when it did the flashback ended and we snapped back to the middle of the fight! Voila; two chases for the price of one, and lots of fun. The cool part is that the players will subconsciously steer you towards the chase scene, because they want to finish it as much as you do!

 

[Raloc]

My style is much more reminiscent of a novel from the point of view of the characters than television. I have to be careful about giving OOC information, as a couple of my players metagame unconsciously. I think it's a fun style, and it seems like a novel to me (since I'm the narrative), but sometimes the players are in the dark as to what's going on (since they get only the character perspective) and have to figure it out for themselves.

 

[Andor]

I wasn't involved in the game myself, but just recently some good friends of mine were in a Star Wars campaign in which the GM used the tv technique of "cut scenes" to keep the players excited about how their actions integrated with the rest of the Star Wars universe. They were playing in the same time frame as the original three movies, and the GM would periodically let them "view" cut scenes of Darth Vader talking to an NPC, for example.

Interesting, we used cut scenes in a Star Wars game I used to be in too. In fact we started every new adventure with someone reading the words that were scrolling up the screen and into the distance in calssic Star Wars font. It was a great background and mood setter.

 

[jdrakeh]

Less 'thought-oriented' entertainment (i.e., shows that spell it out for the viewer) seem to draw in a larger number of viewers than 'provocative' entertainment (i.e., shows that prompt the viewing audience to draw their own conclusions). There are exceptions, of course (Lost and... erm... well, only Lost, really), but by and large I think that this holds true of entertainment television.

Formulaic (i.e., episodic) television seems to draw in a larger number of viewers than truly dynamic television does (witness the success of shows like CSI, Law & Order, E.R., Days of Our Lives, etc). Again, there are exceptions (Lost, Surface, at al.), but the public has spoken and most of the folks with the Nielsen boxes dig on familiar, episodic, television moreso than dynamic stories that gradually unfold over a few seasons.