I. Summary of Erroneous Approaches

In the article Narrator Mistakes, we highlighted some basic errors that Narrators can make, but we did not specifically show how to deal with them. Narrators do not make mistakes out of malice, but often precisely due to their good intentions—they establish something of an ideal and then try to cram their players into it. On the game level, they then blindly apply their ideal to the player characters—but beware—also to non-player characters. People tend to take NPCs (known as CP in Czech) lightly, but a Narrator who doesn’t cheat the game knows that NPCs are, in a certain sense, just as alive and real as anyone else. They can feel pain, have their own motives, and be driven by their own values and emotions. It might seem like madness, but it is so. Film and theater actors, for instance, have this skill highly developed—the character lives and can be played honestly to all its consequences. And just like living people, it can be abused, damaged, and twisted. But back to the straitjacket-ideal that can consume a game.

If that ideal is a novelistic, dramatic story, the Narrator tends to become a Manipulator; if that ideal is a realistic world without “Hollywood coincidences,” they become a Deus Otiosus (an “idle god”), and the world becomes a bleak place where players will soon be bored and frustrated. There can be as many such ideals as there are people, but the principle remains the same—a good intention grasped dogmatically becomes an evil.

Manipulators try to keep the story within their dreamed-up linear corridor; “idle gods,” on the other hand, simulate reality to the point of absurdity, along with all the plotlessness that it provides. But it is appropriate to ask: how should one actually run a game “correctly”? Is there another way besides a vague effort to avoid extremes? Is there a functional and practical guide that helps create a story without it being a linear corridor, while simultaneously creating a world full of possibilities yet realistic within the style being played?

My answer is yes, and I present my guide. I do not claim to have discovered America, and I am convinced that many experienced Narrators have been using this system for a long time, even if they call it something else or have never problematized the situation because it always worked for them this way. Rather as confirmation that the system I am bringing is not entirely dogmatizable, I divide it into two basic components. See below.

II. The Nodal Points System

The procedure that minimizes these unpleasant tendencies during game preparation and management is what I provisionally call the “system of nodal points.” The Narrator has neither a “dungeon” prepared, nor a linear story of successive events and necessities, nor a complex cosmos (village, city) of various notes on characters and locations. Instead, they have a prepared structure of nodal points. The characters’ story unfolds completely freely in the open space between the nodal points, and it matters absolutely not how the characters reach a nodal point. The nodal point is then a prerequisite for a fundamental progression in the story. Nodal points do not have to be positioned linearly by any means—they can be placed in any manner. They can form a structure of any number of dimensions; for a single progression, there can be several alternative nodal points.

But the fundamental process is nothing other than making the nodal points a part of the Narrator’s conception of the game board. Once they start using them as a mental aid, players are immediately liberated from linearity (with a manipulator) or, on the flip side, from a total loss of direction (with a simulator). Between individual points—which can be a location, an encounter with someone, a person, a book, an object, a theatrical play, etc.—one can (indeed must!) move with absolute freedom and latitude.

Example: The nodal point is a terrifying piece of information that the guildmaster of the white mages was infected years ago by a demon, forcing him to live a different life by night than by day. All we need from the nodal point is for it to deliver this information, and for it to be delivered in a serious, even critical tone—i.e., not with humor or as mere gossip. Everything else is variable: the place of delivery, the time of delivery. It can be found in a cellar in a journal soaked with tears and blood; it can be communicated by a restless spirit; it can be whispered between fits of catatonia by a madman in a local asylum; or a mysterious stranger might request a meeting with the characters and wrap the information up in personal dealings.

The only thing that must be preserved is the content and the form of the information. Part of the form is that it must be evident that the information possesses considerable value and gravity; for example, it should not be drowned out by negotiating trifles with the mysterious stranger. On the other hand, one must know the limit and not overemphasize the information—it must not look like it is 100% quest information. In an ideal case, certainty should hover around a two-thirds value—enough to leave no doubt that it is good for something essential, but not enough to make it obvious whether it is the nodal point itself, just supporting information, or even misinformation.

III. Two Components of the System

Earlier, however, I mentioned two components. No, we left nothing out and overlooked nothing. If you read the text above the example carefully, you will notice that the “nodal points system” implies basically two entirely different spaces: 

1. Nodal points
2. The space between them

In both of these spaces, everything functions in fundamentally opposite ways. While the nodal points are descendants of the linearist approach and are elements of a “script” (we will return to this—it is not a script in the manipulator’s sense of the word), meaning they contain prepared situations and thus carry a certain “violence” inherent to pre-prepared things, the space between the nodal points is, conversely, a descendant of the simulation approach of the Idle God—meaning everything is permitted within it, provided it does not violate the rules of the game and the internal rules of the world, including the culture and psychology of the characters. The trick and the art, of course, lie in the player not being able to tell these two things apart; otherwise, the magic dissolves. The Narrator therefore strives for the nodal points to be perfectly integrated and blended with the world, not sticking out in a way that allows them to be pointed at; i.e., they actively conceal the completely contradictory nature of the two components.

And now to that script. As I have already written, we introduced nodal points precisely because we did not want to write a script. On the other hand—if we want, for example, a well-fitting detective plot—we cannot completely discard something like a script and simulate a world from nothing, merely reacting without preparation to the players’ actions, because randomly played NPC actions usually do not fit together as neatly as a well-thought-out detective story. But nodal points are not pre-prepared “cutscenes” in an otherwise free world that automatically play when the characters first enter a location—as we know them from computer games. How is that possible? Doesn’t that contradict the example above, where someone threw pre-prepared information at the characters without them being able to do anything about it?

IV. The Magic of Free Choice

The answer lies basically in two types of nodal points. The first type—”one-way” nodes—consists of simply acquiring something (information, an item) or a similar action that is usually triggered if the characters somehow get to it, and has the effect of opening up a new space for action. New information allows for new invention; a new item (the proverbial key) literally opens a new space.

The second type of nodal points—”decision-making” nodes—is naturally the more fundamental and interesting one. It is precisely because of them that maps of nodal points are sometimes quite complex webs with many branchings. One of the most entertaining things in an RPG is, of course, the phenomenon of free choice. It is fun both for the players, who thus manifest their will, and for the Narrator, who faces the challenge of faithfully reflecting the players’ will in their world. Free choice takes place subliminally almost constantly—”shall we have beer or wine at the inn,” “shall I take this dagger from the treasure or sell it”—yet most of the time it has no real dramatic value. It is precisely the Narrator’s task to bring out, elevate, and dissect the option of free choice in its purity and offer it to the players so they can experience it to the fullest.

In short, to prepare dramatic situations where the choice is not entirely black and white, situations where characters can really clash with one another (of course, because the players are playing their natures faithfully; in reality, the players themselves might easily agree, but in the game, the characters won’t do it because they come from radically different cultures, for example), or where even a united party will have to make some form of a Sophie’s choice.

The same applies to these nodal points as to the one-way ones—meaning their place, time, and context do not have to be rigidly determined; only the fact of the choice and its fundamental atmosphere are given. What is crucial and foundational—the choice must be real, i.e., it is not a choice between “good and evil” where it is clear that the characters will choose good, but it is a choice between two (or more) positions, both of which can be accepted or rejected based on interesting arguments. One can, of course, present primitive choices where the selection is obvious beforehand, but their dramatic effect is zero. The magic of a true choice lies in the fact that it profiles characters—each character clarifies within the scope of each choice what they actually want, and what their motives and goals truly are—which defines them dynamically far better than pre-prepared backstories about a “childhood in the highlands.”

The Narrator must, of course, think ahead, and therefore prepares separate lines stemming from each choice offered at a nodal point. This gives rise to what are essentially parallel universes differing by the effect of the choice—they share some elements, and characters can encounter them in both (or multiple) universes, but some elements are eliminated by the choice and permanently leave the map of possible nodal points. 

Example: The characters are deciding between showing favor to a politician or to a knight. One or the other can secure them access to a royal tomb, where something the characters need is located. If they choose the politician, he will offer them, along with the visit to the monument, attendance at an evening gala for the elite. If they choose the knight, he will, out of gratitude, tell them vital details about their mission in addition to granting access to the tomb. In both parallel universes, access to the tomb is secured. Only in the universe with the politician, however, are the characters at the gala. Only in the universe with the knight do they have the extra information. By stepping into the knight’s universe, they completely lose the opportunity to attend the gala (it is a one-time event and will not be repeated); by stepping into the politician’s, they lose the mission information. If that information is a nodal point and can be known by someone other than the knight, it will likely migrate somewhere accessible within the characters’ new universe.

V. Unexpected Choices

The final note regarding “decision-making” nodal points concerns unexpected choices. It may not seem like it, but honestly constructed true choices sometimes have more solutions than the Narrator was capable of imagining. Of course, one can always create a plastic, scripted (even if real) choice, like the one Neo faced in Matrix Reloaded—he stood before two doors and could simply leave through either one or the other. Nothing else, nothing more. But in a game, you often cannot lock characters into an unbreakable corridor with two doors at the end that would definitively limit the choice only to pre-prepared molds.

Intelligent players playing intelligent characters often tend to find various compromise and amicable solutions to complex choices, or they are suddenly struck by a solution the Narrator did not see. The greatest mistake at such a moment would be to halt invention and violently drag the choice back into the pre-arranged tracks. The moment of an unexpected choice is precisely a great opportunity for the Narrator to showcase their abilities—not by thwarting the characters’ choice, but by ensuring that their world can reflect it vividly and authentically.

VI. Player Missteps in Decision-Making

It may seem exaggerated, but an argument can be found even against this approach: players/characters do not always choose honestly or empathetically with respect to the game style in these dramatic situations. The three basic errors are these:

1. The error of intelligence and education. In a tense situation full of danger and conflicting views, players simply forget to play their characters and prefer to use their own intelligence and education, their own literary or scientific proficiency, devising a solution for their characters that is original and great, but clearly indicates an error from the perspective of character psychology.
2. The error of the absence of excitement and emotion. Some players experience the game only intellectually and refuse to accept the fact that in a dramatic situation, characters can very often behave impulsively, hysterically, illogically, or rashly—naturally in accordance with their character. The player, on the other hand, analyzes with calm reason in the midst of emotional turmoil and arrives at unrealistically robotic decisions, thereby denying the living reality taking place in the game.
3. The error of disregarding the game style. The players play their characters more or less honestly, but miss the style of the adventure. If we are playing heroic fantasy, which is primarily about battles, skirmishes, heroic quests against overwhelming odds, and visits to comically eccentric wizards, then legal loopholes and complex compromise solutions that strip the plot of conflict and heroism are completely out of place in such an environment. And vice versa.

The Narrator must therefore not succumb to excessive self-criticism and allow players eccentricities just to prove their own nobility by granting them free choice even when, from the standpoint of character psychology or game style, they have no right to it.

VII. The Space Between

The last thing to discuss before the system is presented in full is how to move in the space between individual nodal points. There is not much to say here, or conversely, a great deal. All the wisdom belonging to any game mastering applies to movement through “open space”; this movement is the very foundation. It is necessary to react dynamically to the nature of the players—active players/characters can often manage on their own; you just need to let the world respond to their ventures. More passive players need a push now and then. Given that a nodal point is equally far from everywhere, a specifically directed push is often unnecessary; it is enough to slightly close the walls of the trash compactor (to use a simile from Star Wars), and the characters will immediately start acting on their own.

Generally, it must be recalled that without respect for the psychology of NPCs, the game loses much of its magic. It is similar to physical laws—if they work, players feel good that they have the freedom to act within the boundaries of the laws. The same applies to characters—if NPCs are consistent, i.e., the Narrator doesn’t manipulate them however it happens to suit him at the moment but keeps their psyche solid and true to them, a similarly good feeling of certainty arises.

How much more valuable it is for characters to win the favor of an NPC they know is real in a certain sense and behaves authentically, than a plot-enforced favor implanted into the NPC’s nature just to serve the story! Thanks to the real characters of NPCs, the game gains an entire new dimension in which to play, win, lose, and experience adventure. The basic dynamic in the “interspace” between nodal points is thus dictated by interaction with NPCs and the actions and adventures tied to it. In the interspace, NPCs behave completely realistically, and the Narrator has the time and space to slowly consider where and when it would be most natural for the game for the next nodal point to appear without sticking out and drawing undue attention to itself.

VIII. Red Herrings

Readers of Harry Potter surely could not have failed to notice that Rowling uses a fairly simple technique to construct her detective plots: she scatters a decent amount of hints across the plot (for example, that the traitor is X, Y, Z…) and in the end, chooses only some of them as real, and the traitor is only Mr. W (who is usually not among the suspects). The others are just coincidences or paranoid suspicions on the part of the heroes.

If we wanted to take inspiration as Narrators, it would mean incorporating a certain number of false “nodal points” into the game—that is, “information” or “decisions” that actually have no real connection to the main plot. I recommend testing this tactic, because the scale and impact of these red herrings must definitely be lower than in literature. If overdone, the characters might start solving a non-existent plot, and the moment they throw themselves into it with full force (the Narrator cannot talk them out of it, we are not manipulators), it is quite easy to end up finding out, after two months of complex investigation, that they were chasing their own shadow. Meanwhile, the opportunity to realistically continue the abandoned plot has collapsed—for example, because the dark mage has long since taken care of what the characters were supposed to thwart before they went astray.

Haltingly, maintaining a certain small amount of red herrings is important—simply because it is more realistic. Characters will have to deliberate more on whom and what to believe. It is more fun and more dramatic.

IX. Conclusion

In conclusion, I can only say, first, congratulations to those who have read this far, and second, that I would very much like to learn, via a comment or another article, how other Narrators handle game mastering and whether they have found a system similar or entirely dissimilar to mine.

© 2007 Jan Kozák Jr.