In dramatic storytelling, it’s generally better to show something rather than just tell about it. For first-person roleplaying games, most exposition happens as a matter of the GM reading the boxed text, a few players being on their phones, and one person paying attention.
But there’s a better way! In a foreshadowing adventure, your Player Characters sit down to hear the exposition from the bard, or noble, or merchant hiring them... and then you throw a feathered hat on, and hand them new character sheets for the characters who took part in the story. They get to play through a historical flashback, with some fun inaccuracies, and they’ll certainly remember the events much better than several paragraphs with fantasy trope names liberally scattered through. These characters might have abilities like “Charming Grin +12”, “Simple Wisdom +6” or “Your Honeyed Words Have No Effect Upon Me +16”. Maybe even “Courage of a Halfling +20”. It keeps your players from getting too involved in the nitty-gritty, and means they’re viewing the one-shot adventure through a narrative gaze where they know this is inaccurate but can enjoy that trope as well. Play through the lens of the characters hearing and reacting to this story, and let them notice and call out obvious tropes (“OF COURSE the King’s advisor is evil, look, he has a goatee!”), but get them to invest in the story- they know that some of their characters will have died (heroically, of course!) and that Good Will Triumph, because That’s What Heroes Do. But it means they’ll care more about that +3 Defending longsword, knowing that this was Prince Herbert’s Duelling Sword, stolen from him by the wicked vizier and recovered at great peril, than just a random treasure roll. Let them succeed (or fail!) at some rolls according to dramatic rules, rather than D&D ones, and abstract the rules a little- “The duel went on for hours of furious fighting, and as the others watched in horror from the courtyard, they could spy Prince Herbert battling his father’s advisor in the battlements above!” “Wait, a round ago we were all in the feast hall, now John's up on the battlements and we're in the courtyard?” “Indeed, but this is how the story went.” Remember that if something goes wildly out of what you expected, the narrator of the story can correct things and recall that that’s not how things went at all- he definitely died heroically at the gates of the castle, not fighting the bear! (Unless your players go all out and decide to meet the narrative so well that they bring his body with them to the gates of the castle, because everyone remembered that he wanted to die heroically on a battlefield!) Try out something wacky and fun- you might like it, your players might love it, and it lets you change things up for a bit. Plus, they’ll recall those stairs with the treacherous step, the snakes in the moat, and those arrow-slits that the traitors fired crossbows out of for when they’re at the same castle, and can buy into using those things, whether to avoid them or turn them on enemies. Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 10 May 2019. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
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