No one can be sure if it is because of addiction, nostalgia, or the fact that TGTSNBN is really the greatest case study of all time, that enables it to present parallels to everything I encounter. Probably a little bit of everything. Having recently played through the latest Guild Wars 2 Living Story episode, I wanted to touch up on one of the most famous elements of TGTSNBN: Cinematics. This post obviously contains spoilers for both games (and any other example I come up with while exploring and typing).
Anyone familiar with Mr. A. should also be familiar with some if his most famous go-to phrases: “The math checks out”, “Play something awesome”, “It’s not the game at fault but the players”, “Do it in a cinematic way”. It is the last phrase I want to explore. Interestingly enough this was a phrase that Mr. A. adopted later on during the course of the game and did not use at all until the mid-ending of the first book. By “cinematic” he actually meant trying to make an in-game situation, more epic, more memorable, by either exceeding what the game system supported, or even ignoring major game rules. Following are some of the many instances of this happening.
-New player session. GM was told to make it very special for the new player. Out of the 6 players there, two were of the therian class running the constitution ability. This would normally allow them to resist extreme heat or cold, keep fighting despite being tired, have enhanced body functions, immunity to most diseases etc. And yet in order for the story to play exactly as planned and be “epic” for the new player, those therians fell victims to wine and beer drunkenness (which was forced on them, despite them using their abilities and having good die rolls), their abilities were “cinematically” rendered useless.
-Supposedly epic fights happening on tonight’s session, everyone recently got new abilities, and the session was heavily advertised as combat-heavy, so naturally everyone wants in. Story-wise: out of the blue something happens and over 15 people head to Mount Kailash, from Greece. After traveling there in 2 minutes and wasting another 10 minutes to decide on a “take the left or right path” towards the final destination – which in the end did not matter at all – they end up in a cave where they fight waves of monsters. After dealing with the first waves quite easily the GMs repeatedly come up with new enemies and combat types until they wipe all players. When all players are down to their knees at best deus ex machina helicopters come and save them.
As always, I could go on and on forever with examples, the way we could suddenly use our stats and abilities to operate ship cannons, the new attack options people with artifacts received during the final month of the first book, and while restricting myself on example usage is getting harder and harder, I think the presented material is sufficient to build on for now. I will also be recalling stories of the exact opposite practices further down. But for the time being let me briefly present how the recent Guild Wars 2 story was handled, before comparing.
For those not familiar, GW2 presents the player with a nice developing personal story along the course of the game and it’s releases. Each character progresses through it, participating as one of the main heroes being involved in the unfolding world events. It has some flavorful branching options and while it can be silly at times, it eventually forms a nice progressing arc. One of the major plot lines of the past 2 years, was the appearance of a dragon egg. The player initially did not know what it even was, then came to know it was something important, was then trusted with it, then had it stolen from him/her, then recovered it, then learned he was chosen by the egg and eventually left it in a place for it to be protected while being hatched.
From the moment the egg was left alone to hatch the player recovered lost comrades, killed an elder dragon, made a big sacrifice to seal the deal, learned of the existence of two other dragons, tried to follow their activity, saved an island, tried to recover from losses, tried to organize a new fighting group since the previous one was almost wiped out and many other things over the course of about 10-11 out of game months. And while doing all these different things he suddenly gets a vision of the egg being in danger. So they abandon everything else and head towards the egg’s safe location. After arriving and witnessing the birth of one of the cutest beings of all time, they become the target of enemy attacks and have to protect the newborn. The waves of enemies are not that hard to deal with, and the situation feels under control. At one point though instead of 1 enemy wave spawning 3-4 come at the same time. And while somethings may be done at first this increased spawn rate eventually overwhelms any player, at which point an NPC spawns and wipes out the excess enemies.
Just by reading the above examples one cannot but note very striking differences. Not only that but he or she can also get a good grasp of what is required to properly create a truly epic or “cinematic” experience. The first thing is the setup, and by that I do not mean the specific fight buildup mentioned in the enemy wave increase above. I am referring to the emotional involvement of the player. The huge difference between the mount Kailash fight (in which I was also a player) and the GW2 story, was the feeling of urgency I felt towards a goal. The thing that mostly motivated me for the former was fighting and protecting my allies, the rest of the story was rushed, not presented or developed so I was not attached to almost anything else happening. It was basically a filler excuse to have some fun fighting stuff with our new abilities.
The egg on the other hand is something that I grew attached to over time. I played the story once, which was a lot of hours split across episodes to begin with, I played it again on other characters, then time passed, I speculated what the story would lead to and I also waited for the update that had the egg story in it. It wasn’t only the fact that it was a much more important plot element, but also something that was not rushed but developed in a timely manner. I vividly remember when I first played the latest egg story, after getting the vision of the egg being attacked I tried to immediately move to the area where the egg was held, but I could not join the instance because an event was happening. I was so hyped that I actively participated in the event in the hopes of it being finished sooner so I could get on to what I considered at the time the most important thing I could do in the game: protect the egg from any imminent danger.
The other important thing is using the game’s available tools properly in order to achieve that effect. While TGTSNBN had so many things to build upon lore-wise or story-telling-wise, it usually did not utilize them to a great extent (either because the GMs did not care, or Mr. A. did not care, or limitations such as last-minute briefings, or consistency issues made it impossible). Not only that but on the other hand it tried to patch its clearly lackluster system with temporary additions and poorly executed fixes. GW2 on the other hand managed to expertly utilized all available options. The vision of the egg being attacked was presented as a cutscene that interrupted the gameplay; it was something different, important and well-presented in an artistic way. Same with the hatching of the egg. But the major point of despair with the increased enemy spawning happened during the game, not a cutscene! The player lived it, had to survive through it, tried to figure a solution to the problem of being outnumbered under heavy pressure. Even if a deus-ex-machina mechanic saved the day in both cases, it was the guild wars experience that is more memorable. Because events were better executed and the player was more immersed, even if it was easier to survive the GW2 checkpoints compared to the TGTSNBN which actually demanded a lot more luck and strategy.
So the question arises: how does one create similar amazing experiences? Is it just a slow, planned and not rushed build-up towards a predetermined event? I believe there is much more than that. Throughout all of my experiences I can say that the most epic moments players lived in the game were not pre-planned scenarios. I specifically remember a (kind of a filler) session I was asked to play once near the end of book I. Just needed to convey a simple “scenario piece” in any way I saw fit. Even if I wanted to prepare something I would only have around 8 minutes from the time I was finally able to talk with Mr. A., until the time the players joined me. So we start playing a very slow session, with little stuff happening and the players decide to follow a very loose trail and travel to southern America. They spent some time talking and drinking at a bar (and completely missing another personal subplot I had planted over several sessions and different groups) before finding a hotter clue and exploring a cave. Let me reinstate here that I was just making all that stuff along the way. So they explore the cave and find a small man-made pier deep within it, which is just described as destroyed, some sunken logs discovered upon further exploration and a very old coin among them. It is then that I learned that one of the players wanted to ideally have a skill change (yes it was allowed, and of course it was done manually by Mr. A.) so I see my opportunity and start building on it. I introduce an in-game reasoning for the player to be able to change her skills and while discovering her new powers she sends the party back in time (she wanted to go full time-travel anyways). So the party is now able to explore everything in the past, and they blend in with the people and start interacting with the world instead of being fed randomly planted clues with silly game reasoning. Eventually they get discovered as spies and are hunted down by an enemy clearly strongest than anything they had encountered so far. And instead of acting like idiotic pretentious heroes they actually immediately put a lot of effort into fleeing. After a very tense chase, epic reactions and sharp inspirational ideas (it’s ok if you don’t get this, just added it for nostalgia and awesomeness levels) they happen to barely reach the same place where the pier was, crash into it effectively destroying it along their boat, and watch as the broken boat logs start sinking alongside a single coin that escaped their loot bag during the chase as time starts warping around them and they barely escape back to the future.
It was unplanned, it was made possible by everyone’s input and contributions, it was improvised, it was perfect and IT WAS EPIC! I really am NOT doing the story justice, but if I tried to, then this post would never end. I initially intended to also share my most epic gaming experience of all time but have decided to save that story for another day. The point I really want to make is the fact that there can be unplanned epic moments. Not only that, but them being unplanned is to a great extent what actually makes them epic. This is what tabletop RPGs are famous for, that is the ultimate goal, the dream achievement. Of course some preparation can lead to pretty epic results as well, such as this or this or even this. But even though I love my game tales none of these can compare to the epic of the Ballad of Edgardo (maybe because the multidimensional inn with dark and mysterious characters is exactly what was happening for the whole book II of TGTSNBN).
The final and yet greatest realization for succeeding in making epic moments is another important aspect that Mr. A. usually overlooked. Beyond utilizing available assets and tools, beyond planning for some goal and properly building up to it, one must understand the following. If every action, or session, or story is epic, then by default they all are not epic at all. Unless there is an established baseline for non-epic events, something to surpass, even if everything is characterized as epic, it does not differ from the rest of the crowd. There have to be magnitudes, calm, silly, everyday,common, normal moments, stories, characters and happenings in between.
The fact that a tsunami large enough to cross over Greece and crash to Italy from the Aegean is not an epic moment when there is an equally silly power to counter it at any given time, or if the build up was not planned to have players involved in that and they end up disregarding the whole event. And to be fair this real event from TGTSNBN clearly shows how much harder it is to plan for everything in such an open-world game. Of course this does not mean that one should not include that event in his or her game, but before doing so one has to be sure that his game can support this content, not just to the extent of including it as a scene or supporting it through mechanics, but going beyond properly presenting it, getting players invested, building towards that moment and making it stand out from what is usually expected or experienced.
To quote Mr. A. again – who really has come to great realizations regarding his game – for tabletop-style games there is a point where this issue really leaves any developer or GM plans and goes back to the players. This is the reason why from all of his catchphrases I love “It’s not the game at fault but the players” the most, especially after having a very related mention about this two hours before this entry being posted on the blog. No matter how much planning is done or not, it is often the player’s willingness to hunt or build those moments up in his mind that make them possible. It is his or her choice for example to get involved in an important scene happening in game, instead of trying to see if the vines on the opposite side are climbable. Cause in games – same as in life – the epic moments will not be prepared for us, but we have to build them ourselves.
Leave a Reply