Story Elements Part 1: Story from Character and A vs B Plot

When I was in film school, a friend of mine maintained a website dedicated to paper craft models he’d created for Star Wars Miniatures and posted online for free.  In a moment of hubris I wrote some guides for his site to explain some simple storytelling techniques in the context of creating engaging games within Star Wars RPG and Miniatures Battles.

Some years later, my friend’s website is no longer active.  In a moment of further hubris, I’ll repost these three guides here in the coming weeks.  If the context of Star Wars and/or Role Playing aren’t your thing, I hope you’ll still find the explanations of the techniques interesting.

 

Part 1:  Story and Plot Development

     When it comes to Star Wars Role Playing and Star Wars Miniatures Battles, nothing is as important as laying the smack down on some Imperial Pigs or kicking the fodder out of some Rebel Scum.  It’s important to keep that fun, action-packed element of the game in focus, but the movies were much more than just action scenes.  Likewise, your players will appreciate a little more story to go along with their epic space battles.  Over this series of articles, I’m going to explain some storytelling techniques you can use to make your players’ experience all the more engrossing.

     All storytelling examples will apply to the following generic-ish characters that are adventuring during the Galactic Civil War Era:

     Jak Nightwing – A force-sensitive male human smuggler.  A former rebel brash pilot, Jak is an ace at starfighter combat.  Because of his rebel affiliation, he also has a modest price on his head.  Jak is short and well built and he is logical and loyal.  He has amassed a small fortune and thinks he can upgrade his ship in the near future.

     Rajbacca – Jak’s NPC male Wookiee co-pilot.  He got the job answering an ad on the holo-net.  He’s short for a Wookiee, 1.8 meters, and was looking for a way to escape the embarrassment of life on Kashyyyk.  He may be short, but he has the renowned Wookiee strength and temper.  He’s good in a fight but quiet and keeps to himself.

     With that, let’s get on with the show.  In this first article, I’d like to discuss the concepts of creating story from character and then A Plot versus B Plot.

     I can’t remember which author talked about the distinction between creating character from story and creating story from character, but it doesn’t really matter, it’s the concept that’s important.  If one were to generate a plotline first, that plotline would dictate what kind of characters work within the story.  For example, if you were going to write a spy story, that would necessitate having a spy, an arch nemesis, and a love interest.  

     The more specific your plot points become, the more specific the personality traits and skills your characters must possess.  If you’re going to have your characters crack a safe in a story, that necessitates them having the skill of safe-cracking which requires you to give those characters a back-story that would give them that skill.  That’s creating character from story.

     Conversely, Star Wars role-playing game begins with the characters that your players create.  As such, you as game-master need to create stories around your player’s character’s traits and skills to make the stories most exciting for the players themselves. 

     If you have a character that is afraid of heights, you better come up with some stories that have him confront that fear, i.e., get out on a ledge or hang from an antenna under Cloud City.  If a character is a skilled Jedi, you better give him an opportunity to get into a light-saber fight.  Those are examples of a character’s traits directly effecting story elements. 

     Similarly, you can’t force your players into situations that make them act out of character.  As an example, let’s say one of your characters is an Imperial Garrison Commander.  It wouldn’t make much sense for him to storm his own fortress, no matter how cool you think it would be.  That is, of course, unless you give the character a reason to do so, maybe by having the fortress overrun by Rebel forces, or by giving him inspiration to switch sides.  These concepts may seem simple, but they’re important to keep in mind to create and run a truly exciting campaign.

     So let’s think of some stories we can use for Jak and Rajbacca that work well with the characters they’ve created.  We could have Jak reunite with his old Rebel squadron.  Or we could have him help Rajbacca get his family out of Imperial slavery.  For ease of this exercise though, we’ll have Jak do what he does best, smuggling.  Jak is a smuggler and brash pilot.  It will be natural to commission him for a job that ends in an epic space battle.  But that idea is a little stock, let’s think of a way to make it more exciting.

     I think we’ll start with Jak going alone to make a pickup from a customer.  Upon reaching the meeting place, he finds himself surrounded by a group of local Imperials.  They inform him they’re going to use him to locate and infiltrate his former Rebel squadron.  They’re loading his ship with explosives and if he tries to run or avoid the mission at all, they will eliminate him.  They also inform him that the way they found him is through his co-pilot Rajbacca, whom he’ll still have to fly with on this mission.  Once back on his ship, Jak confronts Rajbacca, who claims he has never had any contact with these Imperials.

     Now is our opportunity to talk about A Plot versus B Plot.  The A Plot is the over-arching goal that the characters in a story or film are trying to achieve.  The B Plot, or sub-plot, deals with the characters’ personal lives and are, in a way, the part of the story we really care about.  There can be several sub-plots in a story.  For example, in the Star Wars Trilogy, the A Plot is the battle between the Rebels and the Imperials.  Will they be able to defeat the galactic evil?  The B Plot is the story of the Skywalker family.  Will Luke be able to lure Darth Vader to the Light Side and redemption or will Luke succumb to the Dark Side?  Will Leia and Han get together?  Will Leia find out she is Luke’s sister before making out with him again?

     Stories always have sub-plots whether you’re conscious of them or not.  The best stories, though, are ones where the sub-plots become just as engaging, if not more engaging, than the A Plot.  Alfred Hitchcock was the absolute master of this technique and was the first theorist to point out its importance.

     Having a strong B Plot in your campaigns is a great way to keep your players engaged on a deeper level.  In the scenario laid out above, we’ve created an A Plot that will place Jak in the middle of the Imperials and his old Rebel Squad.  We’ve also set up a B Plot where Jak needs to discover if his co-pilot turned him into the authorities and whether he can be trusted.  Wookiees are renowned as an honorable race, but the pair is not honor-bound.  And just how well can you know someone you met over the holo-net?

     We could also set up a B Plot involving a former love interest in his Squadron or family members still in the Alliance.  Moreover, there will also be the sub-plot of his duty toward his former friends and possibly new ones he’ll meet along the way.  And these could all easily be happening concurrently.

     This campaign will be fleshed out further in the next few installments of this series, the next of which will cover the concepts of Inciting Incident and the mysterious McGuffin.  Join me again.