RPG All (NBA) - Plot Blocks & Pacing

 

Deutschland 89 Trailer via Sundance

I just finished the final episode, End of History.

My God.

OK, I've mentioned Deutschland 83 before, and recommended it. I waited till I could get hold of the blu-ray sets before seeing the rest of the series. Now I'm recommending the entire series, without caveat or cavil. It is by far the best espionage story I have ever seen, from the very first moment to the last.

But! It made me realize something very important about pacing.

See, this is a remarkably fast-paced series. It runs entirely on plot from start to finish and never wastes a shot, or a scene. This is all meat, all the time. There's never a moment when you feel bored, or think that things are going too long, or wish that the characters would just shut up and get on with business. 

Yet there's plenty of character development. You never feel as if you don't know these people, don't know what makes them tick. There's no exposition, no 'you remember that time in season one when we did the thing?' Nothing wasted. 

[There are some brilliant characters, by the way. Gary Banks? A villain's villain. Annett Schneider? Ice Queen. Nina Rudow? Stone Cold Killer. Steal these for your game. You will not regret it.]

So, what was the important thing about pacing?

Combat. Combat kills pacing.

Probably also Chases. 

See, there's combat and chases in Deutschland, but they're used sparingly. If this were, say, Justified, there'd be at least one gunfight and one chase scene per episode, probably more than one. There would be showdowns prior to those gunfights and chase scenes, moments where Our Hero is allowed to quip a bit, hogging the spotlight before the big finish.

In Deutschland, whichever series, while there are gunfights and fistfights they don't crop up once an episode, necessarily. Chase scenes too, but not every episode.

This means two things.

First: when those scenes do show up, they have impact. It's never certain who will win or who will lose. Nobody quips (praise be!). This means that, whenever they happen, you, the viewer, are on the edge of your seat.

Second, it means you, the viewer, don't waste time with unnecessary moments when Plot could be happening.

Think about it. You've probably seen any number of YouTube wafflers bibble on about Combat In D&D Sucks! This is How To Run Combat! Improve The Size Of Your Quarterstaff With These Combat Tricks! So on, and on, and on.

None of them ever ask the question, Do You Need This Combat Scene?

They all assume you need it.

Do you, though? Really? Because every combat and chase scene, however Thrilling it may seem at the time, is perhaps half an hour or more of game time that you will not get back. Combat diverts attention from plot. The crunchier the setting, the more time the combat scene will take up, which means less plot. 

This is even more the case if we're talking about a TV episode, like Deutschland, where the runtime is maybe 50 minutes. If you kill 5 or 10 minutes in combat and chases, that leaves you only 40 minutes for the rest of it. Probably less than that, when you realize that every one of those fast-paced action scenes will want a downbeat moment directly after, when the characters lick their wounds and the audience recovers from the events on screen. Do that kind of thing too often and you'll only have 30 minutes for the actual episode.

Or in your gaming session, when you have perhaps 2 hours at best, accounting for late arrivals and pizza interludes. Can you really afford to kill off even 20 minutes of that 2 hours dealing with an orc in a 10x10 room, guarding a chest?

Put it this way. Everyone remembers that moment when they faced down Dracula, or some other Big Bad that they've been chasing for however many episodes. Nobody remembers Mook #3 in that place with the thing. But Mook #3 in the place with the thing took up the same 20-40 minutes game time that the Dracula moment did. Possibly longer, depending on circumstances. 

Does that seem reasonable to you?

With that in mind, consider this Dicta:

1. Never have a meaningless combat moment if you can avoid it. All combats should be, or aspire to be, Thrilling.

2. In situations where a combat with minor foes, ie. mooks, is an option, make that combat Thrilling by introducing elements that raise the stakes. Is there a bomb that will go off if the combat doesn't end quickly? An abduction that will take place if the agents don't intervene quickly?

3. Reduce combat scenes to one per episode, or even one every other episode. 

4. Always remember, combat raises stakes. Make sure everyone understands the stakes, and that there will be real loss should the agents lose. 

5. Never let the agents feel that success is guaranteed. Loss is always possible, and there should be consequences for that loss.

6. Where there is combat, make it cinematic as possible, and as quick as possible. 

Deutschland 86

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

PS! I've been working on some DriveThru scenarios, expanding on the Many Mansions concept. I've written one so far, Your Number, Please, and am on the verge of completing a second, When Tides Are Right. Once that's done, I'll start on the third. 

Once all three are written I'll move to art & layout and then publish all three at the same time.

I'll keep you posted!

Eyes and Ears: Stasi (Night's Black Agents)

There's a new coffee-table book out for lovers of spy lore: Der Blick der Staatssicherheit (The Gaze of State Security). It's German, but as it's mainly photographs those who can't read German will still get something out of it.

The Stasi were East Germany's version of the secret police. Whether or not you think it was effective probably depends on whether you were born in East Germany and had to live under its regime. Certainly there were a lot of them. Their job was to root out the class enemy, the traitors who betrayed the People's Republic. One of their tools was the humble camera.

As the book points out, camera technology was still relatively new in the 1950s. It took a certain specialist knowledge to use one. However, as time went by and the technology went mainstream the Stasi's cache of surveillance photos increased exponentially. Photos were great. They documented everything. You could prove you were doing a good job if you had a picture of it, whatever it was. It might be a picture of a lightbulb, the same type and manufacture as one which had been thrown onto the roof of a passing car. It might be the faces of three children who kicked their football over the Berlin Wall into East Germany.

It might be absolutely anything.

I would have sworn I'd written about Deutschland 83 before, but apparently not - which is criminal of me. There's meant to be a sequel, Deutschland 86, but I haven't seen it yet. There is a trailer on YouTube but without subtitles it'd only be interesting to the German speakers out there.

I highly and without reservation recommend Deutschland 83 to Night's Black Agents players and Directors, particularly those who enjoy Dust games and who aren't afraid of a little Burn. Just don't get too attached to any of the characters.

When the East German government fell the Stasi did its level best to shred all the records, but the obvious problem was obvious: they had just too many things to shred and not enough shredders. All that paperwork, all those photographs; there was never any chance it'd get done before protestors stormed the gates and took control. It's said that some of the protestors were actually ex-Stasi determined to get hold of their own records and destroy them before anyone could find out about their many crimes. Regardless, in the decades since much of the Stasi's records have been saved, catalogued and made available for research, which is how we end up with books like The Gaze of State Security.

Which brings me to a scenario in two parts:

The State's Last Gasp

The scenario takes place in two different time periods. The first, an extended Thrilling Scene, takes place outside the Stasi Headquarters on 15th January, 1990. This will most likely involve pre-generated characters, possibly based on existing NPCs within your campaign. Any agents' Network Contact, mentor, or nemesis could be involved. An agent can also be involved, provided they're of an age to be a spy in 1990. Their task is to get inside the building and recover the McGuffin - the files.

Precisely what these files are is up to the Director. Perhaps the Stasi had their own version of the Dracula Dossier; not nearly as complete or all-encompassing as Edom's files, but useful nonetheless. Perhaps it's information about Stasi cooperation with agents of the Conspiracy. Blackmail material, photographs of sites which may or may not have been Dracula's castle, personal files of former Stasi who now occupy trusted positions in unified Germany, or whose children are politically or economically significant. It's a McGuffin. It can be whatever you like.

The modern day scenario involves retrieving those files from whoever took them from Stasi Headquarters - assuming they were taken, of course. The files may have been digitized and put on a hard drive, or they may still be in crumbling paper form.

The intent is to play out the Thrilling Scene alongside the main game, so that at the start of the main game none of the players know whether the McGuffin they're chasing was actually taken from Stasi HQ. It might be completely worthless, but there's no way to be sure until after the conclusion of the Thrilling scene.

In a Thrilling chase the stakes are usually life & death, or at least capture or freedom. This time it's different. This time the victory condition is whether or not the players get to decide what happens to the McGuffin. If the 1990s characters succeed in their Thrilling section, then the players do get to decide. If not, then the Director does.

So the start moment would be outside Stasi HQ on 15th January. The protestors are getting out of control, and the guards outside HQ are beginning to panic. Appeals for calm aren't working. Historically the protestors first infiltrated the building at 5pm with tens of thousands getting in through police security. Success in this scene means the players get into the building without anyone getting hurt; failure means they still get in, but there's a scuffle with security and all the characters take -1 damage from the melee.

The target is still 10 - if the characters can build up their Lead to that point, they get the McGuffin. The start point is 3, and the Ability being tested is Infiltration. Unlike the usual Infiltration test this isn't about getting in quietly, unseen - it's more about blending into the crowd, and maneuvering so you can get to where you want to be without being stopped. Potential maneuvers include Intimidation (Death to the Stasi!) Negotiation (appeals for calm and non-violence), even Cop Talk (for dealing with the cops and soldiers).

Then, after the initial Thrilling scene, action moves to the present day. The agents are briefed: their sponsor wants to retrieve the McGuffin from its current hiding place in Germany. A historian claims to have found important files within the Stasi archives, including never-before-seen information about [whatever the McGuffin is about]. Unfortunately, the historian's apartment was burgled and the historian battered into a coma. The agents are to find out who did it, and what happened to the McGuffin.

In order to do it the agents will need to find and talk to X, who is/are, of course, the character(s) in the Thrilling scene. They may also be established NPCs within the campaign; they may even be Network Contacts or mentors. Even if they're usually friendly, this time they aren't. They don't like being reminded of what happened in the bad old days, and especially of what happened back in January 1990.

Action moves back to the Thrilling scene. The characters are in the building now. They need to get past the crowds of rubbernecking protestors, dodging actual spies (did you think the CIA would pass up a chance like this? The Russians? Former Stasi?) and get to the records room. Failure in a test here leads either to a mook Hand-to-Hand combat, (where mooks = P+2, and have Thug stats) or a straight +1 damage to all characters in the scene, players choice as to which. Of course, if the players choose the mook combat they might actually lose the fight, which would terminate the Thrilling scene - which is why they have the option of taking straight damage. The Director is free to rule that losing the mook combat = a capture moment, which has the advantage of keeping the Thrilling action going.

Action moves back to the present day. The agents know a little more than they did before, and they have leads that indicate where the McGuffin is, or alternately, who the opposition are. X, it turns out, is just as interested in the McGuffin as the agents are, and is actively looking for it. Is this is double-bluff? Is X looking for the McGuffin because it's actually lost, or because X is pretending to look for it to confuse the issue? This would be a good time for an Antagonist Reaction, or possibly a straight-up vampire moment, as in 'someone got eaten by vampires! They must be closing in!'

Action moves back to the Thrilling scene. The characters, if they're still free, are on their way to the records room. If caught, they're being dragged to the records room by their captors, who don't dare let them out of sight. The final test is to get in there, get the stuff, and out again.

However, a lot now depends on where they are in the Thrilling moment. If the agents are close to 10, which means they're close to winning, then they're one step ahead of the opposition and have unfettered access to the records. So the only people between them and the McGuffin are a few frightened soon-to-be-ex Stasi spies in the records who are frantically shredding everything they can get their hands on. Treat these as mooks (Thugs) as above, except that any show of force (Intimidation) cows them. They'll beat feet if challenged.

If, on the other hand, the agents have been losing badly and have no hope of getting to 10 or pulling off some game-changing Maneuver, then the opposition in the records room is much tougher. Whoever's their main competition (the CIA? the Russians? Vampires?) got there first. Now the agents have to either brace themselves for a fight, or make a really difficult Infiltration check. If, in previous scenes, they took a lot of damage then fighting isn't going to appeal. Let's hope their Infiltration pools are up to it.

This is the capstone moment of the Thrilling scene, so play it for all its worth. If the Director's really feeling cruel, characters in the Thrilling scene could even be mesmerized or vampirized, which retrospectively means that Network contact or important NPC was always working with the enemy, either as a Renfield, or …

Cue the final scene in the present day. The agents close in on the McGuffin. Maybe they retrieve it or maybe they don't, but this is where everyone decides whether the McGuffin is real or not. If the Thrilling scene was a success, then the 1990 characters retained control of the McGuffin so the players can decide whether it's real or not. Their decision may depend on who has it now; if the agents have it they might prefer it to be real, but if the opposition carried it off then the players may rather it was fake. If the Director decides whether it's real, presumably because the Thrilling scene did not go well for the players, then pick whichever option hoses them the most.

Enjoy!