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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.
Just a couple notes to help in the reading of these
articles: References to Star Wars RPG will be made concerning
West End Second Edition D6. I’m not super-familiar with Wizards
of the Coast version, so make necessary adjustments in your
brain, but this won’t affect the storytelling techniques.
Further, all movie references will be made to episodes IV
through VI (because we all know those are the only ones that
matter). 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. It may have been Dostoevsky, but it
doesn’t really matter, it’s the concept that matters. 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 height, 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. Here’s an 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.
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