An interesting breakdown of RPG story elements into seven basic types — and with advice as to how this may be of use (hint: if you’re in a rut, try a different type).
(via 20×20 Room)
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Adventure axioms
An interesting breakdown of RPG story elements into seven basic types — and with advice as to how this may be of use (hint: if you’re in a rut, try…
Having a theoretical day today.
Let’s say it’s not RPG campaign types, but story types.
An adventure is a story in which you do something or prevent something being done to someone or something, or you observe, explain, or survive a person, thing, or event.
At first I started thinking that the types listed covered everything, but they don’t. Some of the moderns and postmoderns went out of their way to make stories that weren’t adventures. Kafka. Joyce. Faulkner. Brecht. It seems like those kinds of stories take the main charactership away from the caracters and try to force the reader to be the main character: the one that does, observes, explains, or survives something or someone.
So: if you apply the same types to the stories you write, do you find you write the same types of stories? I thought over the ones I’ve finished, and the only somewhat common theme is surviving events.
I think there may be a missing adventure type: manipulate something, someone, or a series of events. The Cardinal Richelieu character in Trhee Musketeers doesn’t want to locate, obtain, kill, observe, protect, or move a person or object except as it benefits his political ambitions.
Let’s say it’s not RPG campaign types, but story types.
Well, it’s RPG story types, so that’s a good compromise.
Some of the moderns and postmoderns went out of their way to make stories that weren’t adventures. Kafka. Joyce. Faulkner. Brecht. It seems like those kinds of stories take the main charactership away from the caracters and try to force the reader to be the main character: the one that does, observes, explains, or survives something or someone.
But I don’t see that being something you could do in an RPG (at least not enjoyably).
I would comment on whether there are common themes in the stories I write (vs the games I run), if I could get the page to open again.
I think there may be a missing adventure type: manipulate something, someone, or a series of events. The Cardinal Richelieu character in Trhee Musketeers doesn’t want to locate, obtain, kill, observe, protect, or move a person or object except as it benefits his political ambitions.
I don’t think there’s anything missing there. It becomes a matter of (a) motivation, and (b) instrumentality, which are matrixed into any of the existing message types.
That does raise th issue of the other “classic three story lines” — man against man/self/nature. Those seem to fit in as well; any of those could be the underlying motivation/antagonism to the Adventure Axioms.