Weekly Geeks #5 – Storytelling

It’s that time of the week…more weekly geeks. This weeks theme is to talk about other forms of storytelling that we’re interested in. There are a ton of different forms: TV shows, movies, music, narrative poetry, or fanfiction. However, I’m not sure how to approach this topic. I can think of three forms that I love, aside from reading…TV, Movies, & RPGs. The last one is probably the most unusual, but it’s probably one of the best ones in my opinion. Let me start with the first one.

With television, you basically get an ongoing novel. Instead of reading about a characters life and their society, you get to see it visually. I am a visual person and I also try to give my novels a 3D image in my head. Plus, you’re not given everything up front. You watch each hero/heroine grow and you’re not allowed to skip to the end of the story to see what happens. You can’t, it hasn’t been written/shown yet. Not that I would ever do that, of course, but it can add more suspense and empathy to a story when you’re not sure what is going to happen and you see what the characters are going through.

The same can be said for movies, but on a much shorter scale. Instead of watching ones life, you’re watching an event in that persons life. Look at the Indiana Jones series (since it’s on everyone’s mind), each movie shows the events it took Indy to find the lost artifact. We don’t really know what is going on in his life, but we still becoming invested in him because we want to see how he gets out of the hidden traps and other obstacles that are thrown in his path. By being able to see the character and their surroundings, we don’t have to concentrate as much on the descriptive so we can become entrenched in the story.

Another form of storytelling, RPGs, allow you to become entrenched in a story on a more intimate scale than any other form. There is a set story line you must follow, yet you are in control of how the character navigates it. For instance, if you take Final Fantasy X (since I know it so well), Tidus is lost in Spira and is trying to get back to Zanarkand. That’s his objective, that’s what his story is about, at the beginning. During his travels, he meets new characters and grows as a character and you’re with him through it all. While this can be said of novels as well, the difference is that you become more emotional involved in his failures and successes because he becomes your character.

Take Warcraft as another example, there you’re giving a character to do as you will. You’re set down in his native environment, but you have tasks that are a part of a story line to complete. You can chose to do the tasks or go off and do a completely different adventure. The story is there, but how it’s told becomes your responsibility. You’re not writing the story, but the way you proceed through the story can be different from someone else’s. How you react to the fights, how you fight, what you wear, it’s all yours and nobody is telling you that it’s wrong because there is no right or wrong. Your version is unique and completely yours. However, if you don’t want to take command of it, there is a set linear arc that you can follow. You’re given a choice and that’s something far different than what you get out of novels.

Another RPG that gives a reader even more choices is Dungeons and Dragons. I’m not a player myself, but my husband is and I would watch him prepare for each new campaign, imagining new monsters to fight and new circumstances so his friends would have fun adventuring. There are a ton of books out there that can help you set up a campaign, but they don’t create the story for you. You’re the author and you (and your friends) get to decide how the characters will interact with other NPCs, how they try to get past goblins and other obstacles. At the same time, you can also find books that set up an adventure for you. They give you the tasks that need to be completed, the monsters to face, the places you’ll need to go, but you’re still in charge of your character. The story is never finished because you could do something the book doesn’t take into consideration. You can’t anticipate another character move because you’re not controlling that character. My husband’s old DnD group had this problem a lot. They also loved to throw in something off the wall just to have the fun of fixing it. Sometimes it was intentional and sometimes it was a result of something they did. Either way, they ended up having fun while still going through a story.

To some, RPGs may not be considered a form of storytelling, but I think they can be. At the least, they are a loose form of storytelling. I’m interested though, what do you think? Can RPGs be considered a story or are they more fun and games than anything else?