Teen Titans Modern: The TV Show Format in Action

Hey, readers!

Piggybacking on my last post, I thought that it would be nice to explain in a little more detail the nitty gritty details of how you would implement the TV show model in preparing for a campaign. Rather than go through a long, step-by-step tutorial in which I go into too much detail, I'm actually going to show you my notes for the campaign set-up and explain them.

As with everything, this is just the way I did it. By no means is it the only way, or the right way, or a good way. It's just the way that worked for me. I'm typically a notes-light GM, usually foregoing notes altogether and just letting things pour out based off a loose framework in my noggin. So, that's your disclaimer.

Anyway, let's get to it, shall we?

The Basic Framework:

Teen Titans Modern

Tentative Season 1:

24 Episodes:

End Goal for Team: Grow together as a team. Become friends and one fighting unit. Make a decision whether or not to live the superhero lifestyle.

Main Arc: Deathstroke, under the order of Ra's al Ghul, begins a war against the Cult of Blood in Detroit.

Secondary Arc: The Joker and Harley Quinn try to profit from the ensuing chaos, starting a gang of misguided teenagers and playing both sides against each other.

Tertiary Arc: The government has declared war on the Superhero community, apprehending both heroes and villains in order to get them to register to be a government agent, or kill them.

Commentary: What I did first was set a groundwork number of episodes that I wanted to shoot for. This could change, of course, but I determined that you could either go half season (12 episodes or so) to a full season (22 episodes or so). Since Marvel Heroic broke things into acts, I went with a nice even 24 that I could split into three acts with eight episodes each.

The next thing I did was set some goals that I wanted the team to accomplish over the course of the season. If we get to the end and all of those things are true, I know I did my job. Each character has their own goals, but those are listed elsewhere.

Next, I set up the A-story, B-story, and C-story for the season, the basic arc that the campaign will travel through. While these elements are all set up, not all of them will come into play immediately, or even come into play every session, but every episode works to either build on these arcs or work on the goals.

Main Villains: Brother Blood, Deathstroke

Secondary Villains: The Joker, Harley Quinn, The Government

Tertiary Villains: Bane, Riddler, Lex Luthor, Murmur and Onomatopoeia, Suicide Squad, Professor Ivo and Amazo

Main Supporting Cast: Green Arrow (Oliver Queen), Black Canary (Dinah Lance), Firebird (Bette Kane)

Secondary Supporting Cast: , Starfire (“Tori Anders”), Beast Boy (Garfield Logan), Terry Sloane, Raven

Tertiary Supporting Cast: Batman (Bruce Wayne)

Setting:

Detroit, Michigan

Commentary: What I did here was lay out the basic set-up for NPCs that will be involved in the arcs and the story. This list is here so that I can stat them out, if need be, or so I have a good visual of villains I want to use or potential allies ordered by importance. By ordering them like this, I know which villains and allies I need to emphasize and really flesh out, and which ones don't really need all that much emphasis. I also put the basic setting down here, though that could obviously be expanded.

The Episode List:

Act 1:

Episode 1:

“Lockdown”

Main Villain: The Government, Suicide Squad

Main Plot: The first meeting of the Titan Initiative is disrupted by an attack by the government's new taskforce, “Vigilante Arrest and Termination Organized Response” 'VATOR'

Episode 2:

“Blood”

Main Villain: Blood Cult, Brother Blood, Deathstroke

Main Plot: The team begins investigating a budding gang-war that seems to be funded by powers unknown with the only clue being the blood scrawled message, "Where is Brother Blood?" Meanwhile, Juan has to work on a school project with a very unusual partner.

Episode 3:

“Laughter”

Main Villain: Joker, Harley Quinn

Main Plot: When the Joker publicly challenges the Dark Knight by causing chaos in the Detroit area, the Titans are the first response. Are the Joker's crimes carrying a deeper message? And how does Dullahan's past factor in with the laughing mad-man and his crew?

Episode 4:

“Stars”

Main Villain: Dr. Light

Main Plot: It's Christmas time in Detroit! The Titans deck the halls of the mansion for the upcoming holiday when Johnny realizes he hasn't gotten anything for his new girlfriend. A trip to the mall turns terrible as Dr. Light attacks, amplified by the festive lighting for the season. Johnny's blow to the head sends him on a rather detailed trip through a familiar Christmas favorite.

Episode 5:

“Conspiracy”

Main Villain: The Government

Main Plot: VATOR forces return to the streets of Detroit, taking a more subtle approach. Suspicions arise as their actions seem to follow Green Arrow's own plans for cleaning the streets. How exactly did Oliver Queen clear his own name and get the government out of his city in the first place?

Episode 6:

“Survival”

Main Villain: Professor Ivo, Solomon Grundy

Main Plot: A group of teen heroes are kidnapped by the mysterious Professor Ivo and set on an island. Infected with a disease that is working through their system, they must journey across the wild jungle in order to find the antidote, but they are not alone...

Episode 7:

“Override”

Main Villain: The Riddler

Main Plot: The entire Detroit underworld competes in the Riddler's insane games for a chance at getting on the fabled “Override” list that promises VATOR immunity. Will the Titans play along to apprehend criminals, or go for the illegal prize themselves?

Episode 8:

“Shutdown”

Main Villain: Bane

Main Plot: After an encounter with a group of fanatical Neo-Luddites testing an EMP, Ray Kord finds that he can no longer transform into the Blue Beetle.

Episode 9:

“Blackout”

Main Villain: Bane, Deathstroke, Brother Blood

Main Plot: ?

Commentary: Here we see the first act already listed out. What I obviously did here was give every episode its own name, determined which villains were involved, and did a basic plot summary. Some plot summaries have an A and B plot, some do not, depending on the needs of the story. I listed these out before the game even began using some of the information above. However, there were changes that I needed to make based on player desires, such as a Christmas episode, and an episode where the team was trapped on an island with Solomon Grundy which stretched the first act to nine episodes instead of eight.

What I try to do here is make some episodes spotlight characters. For example, Episode 4 is centered around Johnny while Episode 8 has to do more with Ray. This way, the players get their own episode to shine, define who they are, and grow.

Just for some particulars on how this relates to the framework, I have decided that the first act will mostly deal with the tertiary plot arc while laying seeds for the main and secondary arcs that will explode into fruition in the final episode of the act. We are currently on episode 7, having taken a long hiatus as Dullahon's player went to England for a semester and we had trouble coordinating times with her. Hopefully in June we will begin again and finish out the season by the end of the summer.

And that's all I gotta say about that! If you guys want more details on how these episodes went down, let me know! I also have milestones I can share and no shortage of datafiles. Hope you enjoyed this look into the TV Show format in action. If you didn't, here's a funny picture.

-Wes

A Game for a Season: Running a Campaign Like a TV Show

Hey, readers!

Today, I'm going to share a campaign layout that has changed the way I think about running games in general. To be honest, I'm not 100% if someone else has thought of this before or laid it out the way I have. Personally, this is from my own brain and not ripped off from someone else's ideas. (At least not intentionally.)

With that out of the way, let's address a common assumption.

Most people think of role-playing campaigns in one of these two mediums: books and movies. And why not? For a long time, books and word of mouth were the main ways that stories were communicated. Film is also a huge contender these days as a viable visual medium that tells about the lives of people, the terrible things that happen to them, and how they try to resolve it.

What do these two mediums have in common?

First of all, most books and movies follow the basic plot mountain scheme. Remember this from High School?

They both tell one story about a character or group of characters that follow this main arc. We meet the people involved, something happens that set larger things into motion and creates a problem, the characters try to solve the problem and get into more situations until it all explodes in one climatic scene, then the issue is either resolved or unresolved, someone or something has changed, and it ends. There can be sub-plots, but that's the basic stretch of the narrative.

You also get this story told to you over a reasonable amount of time. For movies, that ranges from an hour and a half to about three hours typically. For books, that really depends on the length of the book and how fast you can read, but unless you are an incredibly slow reader or the book is a tome, it won't take you more than a few weeks at most to finish.

However, if you try to place this model on an extended roleplaying campaign, it starts to break down in some rather distracting ways.

First, most roleplaying campaign plots don't fit neatly on plot mountain there. Sometimes the exposition is muddy or thrown out completely. 95% percent or more of the time spent in the game is dealing with the rising action while the climax, falling action, and resolution are usually resolved in one session. Not to mention the tendency of a lot of games, especially when D&D is involved, to just go from town to town or dungeon to dungeon with a loose narrative tying it together to make it somewhat cohesive, which makes the plot a series of hills rather than Mt. Everest.

Not to mention, there are sections on the 'Rising Action' slope that are boring and tedious which can consume entire sessions, making certain characters feel left out or abandoning an element someone enjoys completely. Dungeon crawls, anyone?

Secondly, roleplaying campaigns are not completed in a timely matter whatsoever. Most groups, if they're lucky, meet once a week, every two weeks, or once a month with a session that typically lasts anywhere from two to three hours or more. If you're going from start to finish, it could take a year or more to finish a campaign. Most games don't even survive that long! People move away, get new job schedules, can't make it on gaming day anymore, or the campaign just fizzles because you're stuck on the Rising Action slope. How many campaigns are actually finished, or even reach the climax, which is supposed to be the best part?

Not many.

So, maybe there needs to be a new model. What sort of entertainment offers a story about characters going through problems in reasonable time chunks where plots are more like a series of hills in a mountain range offered over an extended period of time?

TV shows.

If we model our campaigns and sessions after TV shows rather than movies or books, we open up a more satisfying and compatible system to work off. Just think about your favorite TV show for a second or two. What elements are in play here?

-A somewhat stable cast of protagonists and antagonists that appear every time.

-Episodes that have a beginning, middle, and end, usually with a climax included.

-Episodes that don't last more than 12 minutes to an hour.

-Sometimes they include an overarching story and meaningful changes based on events that happen (Continuity). Sometimes they don't.

-Groups of episodes are divided into seasons that typically have anywhere from 12 to 22 episodes.

Now, let's translate those episodes into role-playing campaign philosophies. 

-The cast consists of the player characters and any important recurring NPCs.

-Every session deals with a unique issue that is resolved by the time the session is over, with a climax included!

-Plot mountains can be completed within the span of a session with a smaller scope.

-Sessions have the opportunity to build off of one another and create an overarching plot that is advanced in some way by the smaller plot mountains that the season consists of. However, if you do not want to stick to continuity too much, depending on your style of game, you don't have to! 

-You can end the season whenever you want! You are not necessarily waiting for the huge payoff that the climax gives, so you can wrap up loose ends, shut the game down, and renew for another season if you want to return to those characters/stories again!

I'll go into more details in the nitty gritty by showing you how I've done this for my Teen Titans game in the future, but for now, these are just some things to wrap your mind around. I will say that this system and model will not work for every group template or group in general, but for some of them, it is so much easier on the GM and more satisfying for the players.

Hope you enjoyed my long post! If not, here's a funny picture.

-Wes