The Long-Running Series Part 2 – Other “Easy” Lessons from Role-Playing Games
Lesson Three: Room to Grow
Half the secrets of a long-running game or story (as I blogged last time) might be simply making it the best you can. The other half are more particular.
Anyone can write “save the world” as the summary of an adventure, and forget that may not leave anything to do next. –Except, most game systems won’t let you:
One of the built-in appeals of classic role-playing games is that the characters themselves grow in skill, and the game follows them. A swordsman starts his career by fending off one or two wolves (some say it’s a tradition), and gets stronger and more magic-laden until he’s facing down an archdevil.
Think about that a moment. Not just the characters’ changing strength, but the measuring system it implies. These games all but force the game world to provide small challenges and take its time bringing in the world-threats.
That’s a plan for keeping the fun from burning itself out.
Designing a campaign has to match that. Characters aren’t starting at 10th level, so the GM has to fill the landscape with simple orcs as well as the giants that heroes dream of fighting in the future.
—Because if the players are starting at Level 10, the orc dens become just sentries for the giants, and there have to be enough lich-kings further out to populate the years ahead, starting soon thereafter. And where can you go from there?
Games show that a story has more of a future if it starts on a small scale and does justice to that, so that each step from there is moving upward. And that can guide every part of the campaign, or the series.
Look at Lord of the Rings: the first half-book is a true Halloween-style suspense ride as Frodo creeps through evil trees and cowers from just a glimpse of a Black Rider, while by the end Aragorn’s leading armies of ghosts. Or a quirk from one version of Dungeons & Dragons, that only at high level does a wizard get real ability to burn through a demon’s magic resistance; imagine the slow gaming or writing buildups of a hero first being beneath demons’ notice, then becoming more and more afraid of attracting spell-proof enemies, but finally being able to take the fight to them.
Or take the basic ideas players bring for a given hero. One occasional hazard in gaming is a player walking in with the concept of playing “the lost son of a king,” or some other lottery-winner approach to character coolness, and probably to actual power. A good GM might talk him down (maybe with horror stories of the court-caliber assassins he’d draw) to being a simple baron’s bastard, then work to make that smaller scale of intrigue just as vivid as royalty. Better that the character struggles in the village, then the local castle, and works his way up to fighting for the king, instead of obsoleting years of plotlines from the start. The goal is to keep the story going, after all.
An author can take that “savor the small” approach too. Though I admit, many authors would rather make a character royalty and keep tight control on just what characters knew the secret, so that book after book teases readers with thicker intrigue and more threats of him finally being exposed. Both ways keep the story paced, though the second could be more of a stretch to keep believable.
And games encourage something besides scale: variety.
Managing a campaign has the extra challenge that it has more than one hero, and each main character has their own actual player at the table wanting their turn in the spotlight. That baron’s son (or king’s) might have a whole year of conspiracies to look forward to, but meanwhile the priestess has been waiting for two sessions to see if her home town has been overrun by zombies, and the wizard has just summoned—
More characters keeps more happening, whether it’s from a team of central characters or a well-established supporting cast of family, allies, rivals, and everyone else in their lives. Even a few thoughts on bringing a minor character to life and keeping them in our minds—or keeping more aspects of the major folks clear—can produce a whole new plotline. And each plot is a new chance to keep the story varied, both in where it leads and what happens along the way. (You might not dare to kill off the princess, but that leaves the pirate captain’s storyline free for a tragic ending.)
Best of all: with more plots, no one thread has to fear it’ll reach its end too fast. Instead it can run for a time, then attention shifts to another idea, then back to the first. Or else a tale can latch onto that thread and follow it straight through to a proper climax—without having to repeat itself—knowing there are many more plots in the wings. Suggestion: switch back and forth between storylines that are delayed and those that complete at once, to get both the thrill of resolution and the joy of anticipation.
A story arc might be only a chapter or two in its essence. But seen in more detail it could have dozens of steps, and if it’s mixed with more arcs the series can start creating possibilities faster than you can play it or write it.
Lesson Four: The Beginning of the End
With the right effort, a campaign or series can run forever. But is that what you want?
In games, the GM might not be making that decision. Since there are dozens of other game systems, infinite story ideas, and a tableful of people who’ve let you run the adventure for them every week, it may be only a matter of time before players start pushing for someone else to run a different game for a while.
(In fact: a GM who goes for three or five years without hearing that is receiving the greatest unspoken compliment there is in gaming. Those players are hooked.)
Writing doesn’t have quite the same outside pressure, but an author may find her series is losing popularity or a newer, hotter genre starts looking promising. Or editors might push for that change.
–Then again: in writing, finding forms of your own passion has proven time and again to work better than switching just because you think you can hit a new trend before it gets old (short answer: you can’t). And from a business standpoint, a series that’s “slowing down” may still have a momentum that a new one can take years to build up. (If you want hard numbers on that principle, look at this analysis for one of my favorite authors, Rachel Aaron.)
Or sometimes, we want a change. A campaign or story could start to:
- Seem less appealing than our own new brainchild.
- Move toward the grand conclusion it deserves.
- Feel like it’s going back over the same plot ideas.
- Or, we’re just tired of it.
In gaming, switching campaigns and GMs may be something forced on us, but it can also be the best thing for keeping the game itself fresh. The best cure for burnout—or heading off a revolt among the players—might be to plan for it before the pressure builds up.
(Plus, halting your own campaign means you finally get to hit something yourself again!)
It’s a good lesson for any writer too. It’s a rare author who’s blessed with a concept they want to write nonstop for the rest of their lives. Better to watch for the signs of Single Hero Fatigue, or bring out a side project or second series that’s clamoring to be done, than to think of your first writing plan as set in stone.
In a game, part of that “restart” will be starting new characters, who are usually just beginning the climb to power that the seasoned characters have. In fact, it might be that players only want to switch to simpler characters or fresh roles, without even leaving the campaign itself—why waste all that world-building when they can just see the same setting through new eyes?
That’s a powerful tool for writers as well. We can pick a favorite supporting character, a point back in someone’s backstory, or any other tangent that’s worth a story, and bring that to life. It could be an occasional short story for variety, a side novel, or a whole new but connected series that might become more important than the original. And because they tie in to the initial stories, they double as a chance to deepen readers’ appreciation for that “classic core” with their new perspectives. Plus, of course they come with the extra hook that fans of the first series are already nine-tenths sold.
Or… it might be time to walk away for real. If a grand storyline has come to an end or you simply don’t want any more of it, it may be time to archive those maps, or close the book on those books. A writer who puts her characters ahead of her own needs isn’t doing right be either of them.
(And hopefully the players or fans will understand. Though there are worse fates than having schoolchildren wearing black armbands in mourning for the Sherlock Holmes you created.)
In the end, it’s your world.
And the next one will be yours too.