Over in the Topic about Time Estimating, one of the strategies I mentioned was to simply plan for 45 minutes per scene, but I didn’t give a very good description of what a “scene” really is. While that seems like a straightforward notion, it’s also necessary to remind people that everything you know is something you were taught. That’s right, we were all instructed in how to relieve our bodily wastes and if something as fundamental as that needed training, well, nothing can be taken for granted. (Hint: nothing can be taken for granted)
Think of a single episode of a television show. Some sort of scripted fiction will serve best, but any show will do. Keep this show in mind while we step through the particulars of defining scenes.
So what is a Scene?
A “scene” is a single unit of presentation of a story, it is atomic, it is continuous, it is limited, and it is interesting.
Whew that’s kind of a lot and still pretty vague, so let’s unpack what all of that means.
- Single unit of story: the larger adventure is composed of multiple scenes, presented in an appropriate order.
- Atomic: a single scene exists wholly unto itself. It does not contain other scenes, and it cannot be part of another scene.
- Continuous: once begun, a scene continues until it is concluded. Scenes are not interrupted by other scenes.
- Limited: scenes have a definite beginning and ending.
- Interesting: the contents of the scene are relevant to the larger story. This can be fairly subjective.
Remember that TV show I asked to you think about? It has characters that interact with each other and their surroundings in one or more locations. The Big Brother cast (characters) all live in the same house (location), Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson investigate crimes in New York City, Matt Murdoch battles the criminal underworld and Wilson Fisk’s underlings in Hell’s Kitchen.
A whole season of one of these shows is like a game campaign. The core cast of characters is (mostly) stable (or “consistent” at least, don’t want to overstate it for one of these examples). An overarching plot may exist, or each episode may have unique circumstances with character arcs that develop over the course of the campaign.
Each episode of that show is a game session. Things happen! Story is developed and progressed, and the session/episode has events strung together into a narrative that shows the audience some degrees of change. Maybe the character’s circumstances at the end of the session/episode are the same as at the start, but there was plot and action and things happening in between. All of those things happening - those things happened in scenes throughout the session/episode.
Very Interesting…
Don’t finish that line.
One of the criteria for a scene is that it is “interesting” and relevant to the larger story. I’m using “relevant” pretty loosely here to mean a scene fits in with the story of the session, even if that’s not immediately apparent. For instance, we’d all be really thrown if, in the middle of an epic Expanse space battle the camera cuts to footage of Beavis and Butthead. Without something in the story to make sense of that cut, we realize sooner or later that something’s wrong with our stream and stop it.
The other part of that description, the “interesting” part, can be a lot more subjective. As appealing as some folks might find four hours of footage of Michael C. Hall sleeping, and as important as that may be to his well-being, it would make for a terrible mid-season arc on Dexter. Likewise, we don’t ever need to see Moe Szyslak swapping kegs at his bar to explain how he can draw a mug of frothy Duff beer. It may provide a comprehensive accounting of the causal events of the world, but not even Ben Wyatt can reconcile “fun” and “accounting.”
In other words, it’s actually a good practice not to include a scene for every activity. When you’re planning your next session, it is often tempting to try to pack it as full of detail and excitement as possible. This requires a balancing of interests, which is usually more art than science - or maybe it’s more appropriate to say that it’s a part of the craft and a skill that develops with experience.
An Example
Imagine the party is traveling through the wilderness for a day or longer. They’d like to reach a (relatively) safe location before dark. An attack by hungry, roving beasts is very likely, and it creates dramatic tension as the party’s progress toward a goal is hindered by the fight.
The “forest attack” scene is relevant, it’s interesting, and it serves some purpose. It’s a textbook example of a good scene.
So why did I cut it?
Well, I looked at my session plan and knew that, based on the two 45-minute scenes the party already had, that 90 minutes of our 210 minutes had already elapsed. I estimated that a fight here would take another 45 minutes (135/210), and there is a major plot reveal awaiting once they reach the river boundary of the kingdom they’re approaching (another 45 minutes, 180/210), and an Important Choice must be made upon learning of it.
I only get so many sessions for this campaign, because two of the players are moving soon and a third is expecting. We all agreed to a fixed end date, and I can see that we’re risking an overrun if I choose to include this fight.
Maybe they only actually need 20 minutes to make their Important Choice. Surely we can just push a little harder on the time and make it work? Maybe. But the other players don’t really like feeling rushed, or having their chances for RP curtailed. They like having a few minutes after the session to drop character and talk about what just happened. Just by including one good - but inessential - scene, I’ve compromised a major part of our game, possibly even throwing our ability to reach a satisfying end completely off-track.
That’s A Wrap
TTRPGs often have stories about choices and consequences, and that works its way up to the meta-story about our stories and games. We make trade-offs for reasons, but it’s important to know why we make those choices, and to make them with as much planning and foresight as we can muster. That is also why it is important that we understand the building blocks of our stories, so that we can fit them together to realize our shared vision of the campaign.