Saturday 20 August 2022

A Diabolical Plot

It has been said, although the veracity of it is disputed, that there are seven basic plots in fiction. It seems, to a non-literary critic who only occasionally reads novels, that there might be some truth in the claim, although not all plots will fit neatly into one of the seven categories. For reasons which might become clear eventually, if I ever get around to it, I have been considering the plots of wargames, and, more specifically, plots of wargame campaigns.

As my attentive reader might be able to deduce, this has arisen through my recent pondering that a wargame is a narrative, a story we like to tell because we are humans and humans like to tell stories. This impression of mine was reinforced by a comment in Henry Hyde’s Wargaming Campaigns, to the effect that campaigns are bigger narratives within which each battle is embedded. I am not going to argue with that.

Given that a wargame campaign is a larger narrative (I am not going to say ‘meta-narrative’ here because of its postmodernist connotations) it must, if logic serves me, have some sort of plot. Turning that around, it occurred to me that the seven basic plots in fiction may well enable the wargamer to think of a variety of plots or themes for wargame campaigns. My idea is that to keep interested in the campaign (which is a difficult thing sometimes) an overarching plot might well help.

There might be some logic in this sudden onrush of literary-ness on the blog. After all, something must propel readers, often easily bored teenagers, through Nicholas Nickleby or Far From the Madding Crowd, although one of my schoolfriends described the latter as ‘Far From the Maddening Crowd’ and when corrected, replied ‘I know what I mean’. So an overarching narrative might help us as wargamers drive our campaigns onwards.

The first plot is ‘overcoming the monster’, where the aim is for the hero to defeat their antagonist, who may well be evil. The hero might well be small and relatively powerless while their foe is wealthy, or powerful, or influential. Rendering that into wargame terms is fairly straightforward: we could have a minor principality menaced by a larger neighbour, for example. The neighbour attacks, there is a heroic defence, perhaps defeat and rebellion or other powers, small or large join in.

The second plot is ‘rags to riches’, where the protagonist goes from being poor and ill-treated to obtaining power, wealth, a mate, and so on. Think Cinderella. This is the plot for an awful lot of role-playing game campaigns (as opposed to scenarios). Perhaps, at risk of engaging in modern UK politics, a campaign whereby the Scots rebel against English rule would be the nearest wargame here. Or perhaps I have been reading too much about the Bishop’s Wars.

Next up is ‘the quest’. This is a fairly obvious one, used in many films where the characters, good and evil, are after some object or attempt to get to some objective. The Maltese Falcon is an example. Again, this is a fairly obvious role-playing game device for both campaigns and scenarios (who has never attempted to rescue the Duke’s loot or daughter, for example?). Historically the campaigns of Alexander III of Macedon would qualify I should think, although quite what he was looking for is anyone’s guess.

Fourthly, we have the ‘voyage and return’, where the hero goes to a strange land and comes back changed in some way. The possibilities here are manifold, I think. Colonial wargaming would yield a fair bit of this, as would fantasy and science-fiction. Even campaigns where the strange lands are not so strange and the armies are bigger than skirmish size would still fit the bill; the American Revolutionary Wars probably changed the British Army, after all.

Then there is comedy. I am trying to get my head around a wargame as a comedy without much success, although role-playing games can fit the bill. There is in comedy a plot based around increasing confusion and errors which are finally resolved happily. There might be comedy in wargames, but I am finding it hard to conceive of it as part of the game. Perhaps you can help me out here.

Penultimately there is tragedy. The hero is flawed or has made a mistake, and pays for it, perhaps with his honour, or his life, or that of his loved ones, or possibly all of them – think Macbeth, who probably had most of those things happen. I can certainly think of a campaign along those lines where a nation has made an error and has to back it up with force. The Romans did a lot of it in their provinces, extracting taxes corruptly and then having to deal with the rebellion.

Finally, there is ‘rebirth’. Here events turn the hero into a better person, such as in A Christmas Carol. That would certainly be possible in a role-playing game, I think, but how about an overall wargame campaign? Well, we could consider the political implications of, say, the First World War where women got the vote in the UK as a result of their war service. Is that stretching the point a bit far? Or maybe we could consider the encounter of the Roman Empire with Eastern cavalry which led to the cataphract? That might be considered to be a bit more to do with wargaming.

The point here is not to show that all wargames fit neatly into seven categories. They do not, and I am aware of it. But before launching a major (or even a minor one) wargame campaign it might just be worth thinking about it for a bit and using the basic plot schema for trying to decide what, at least initially, is going to be the narrative driver for the action. Mostly, I should think, this will be fairly simple and straightforward, but the bigger the campaign, or the more detailed, then, I suspect, the bigger narrative drive it will need to sustain interest.

13 comments:

  1. What about Boy Meets Girl? Frederick wins Silesia (from the rich boy, erm, Maria-Theresa) Frederick loses Silesia (1757) to the rich boy, Frederick wins Silesia back again. Rinse and repeat later in the war.
    Chris/Nundanket

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    1. Hm. Might be something of a monster / quest hybrid. Depends on how well the principals might have got on, of course...

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  2. A few thoughts occur for comedy. One are games based on comedies: Dad's Army and 'Allo 'Allo-based games I think I have seen. Another category would be games with a slight ironic twist, often based on films: so Pony Wars certainly has a comedy element, and I am aware of games based on The Guns of Navarone and Zulu/Zulu Dawn which have had something of the same spirit about them. I think that this way of thinking infects some, but not all, of the Too Fat Lardies' games. Third are games of wargames (how very meta!): Arthur Harman has done games based on Sealed Knot re-enactors and the Brienne snowball fight, and a game based on The Nutcracker(!) inter alia - Henry Hyde has done C18 'wax-balling'. Lastly, I think that any game which foregrounds the models as toy soldiers can have something of a comedic spirit: like in your Ferdinand and Isabella games, you might have actually have a model each of Ferdinand and Isabella who you referred to, rather than the model being an imaginative representation, if you see what I mean? The 'plastic army men' in Toy Story are a good example here: they are 'aware' of their toy-ness and we could play games explicitly acknowledging this. I think I have read of a couple of instances of this a long time ago.

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    1. Thank you for that; plenty to ponder in terms of comedy and its various applications. The escapades in Flashing Blades can certainly reduce the players to giggles, and Paranoia and Toon are also comedy based, at least in part. Interesting ideas abut comedy based games as well as well as light-hearted games generally.

      The Ferdinand and Isabella games are supposed to be light-hearted interludes between wargames. I suppose I could have Isabella captured and rescued for the next game though, which starts to mix quests and rom-coms!

      I do sometimes hear my toy soldiers bemoaning their ate of being enclosed in boxes and never seeing the light of day. And sometimes choose the battles depending on which box is at the bottom of the pile. In Toy Story terms they will probably start to move their own boxes around, of course...

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  3. Hmmmmm....lots of food for thought here, thanks! I have always liked games with a few sub plots going on, you know, the British must drive the French garrison out of such and such town, but the commander of the second British brigade is also trying to rescue his sister from the evil clutches of a lecherous French officer etc! At the moment, I have a little solo Pulp campaign going intermittently, which is definitely of the Quest variety ....but I do tend to have big gaps between games, as I try and figure out how to advance the plot/narrative!

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    1. Thank you. I think that the 7 plots only give really general guidance, and it is good to have two or more going in the same games at the same time. You can always emphasise one for the next game, and then focus on the other next. But sometimes just thinking about the situations you've got your characters into and figuring ways out can be a slow process. I think novelists refer to it as writer's block. Is there such a thing as wargamer's block?

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  4. Great thought provoking post! I think this is a great way to design a campaign. It means I can create a focus for each campaign and it wont wander all over the place.
    Thank you!

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    1. Thank you. I think it means you can have a focus to keep returning to, like a Dicken novel; there is lots of other stuff going on, but every once in a while you return to the war of liberation or whatever. A focus for a campaign of whatever size, as a focus for a novel, is a useful thing, I think.

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  5. The seven basic plots is very interesting - then you can create more variations by mixing them up or adding the other plot / script maxim that simply “Impediment creates narrative”. Boy meets and gets Girl. Simple. Happy ending. Dull. Boy meets Girl (etc) - some Impediment to happiness in the way added - more interesting narrative or story?

    In gaming terms, no pinch points, no flash points, no game: patrol goes out and returns unopposed, regiment crosses bridge river unopposed, no impediment, no ambush, no narrative ...

    The Quest plot is interesting if you add the Maltese Falcon Macguffin - As pointless object for Quest - such as my character Kate MacGuffin, daughter of the regiment, https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/24/close-little-wars-wheel-meet-again-forest-ambush-part-two/

    A MacGuffin who assumes a gaming life of her own as a pistol packing plot focus ...will she need rescuing? a little like Princess Leia in the first Star Wars Movie.




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    1. Thank you. You can, of course, pile as many sub-plots in as you choose, and then they can interact, and you land up with something rich, complicated and feeling like real life. But the plots need twists - if the patrol finds nothing, that that is dull, so if nothing is the case, they need to be sent out to do something else, like collect the colonel's brandy from the camp, where something does happen (like the adjutant is drunk on it, or they really do get ambushed this time). Plots without twists are, indeed, dull.

      I did ponder writing about MacGuffins, but you have saved me the trouble, and a MacGuffin that takes on a life of its own is a whizz from a plot point of view. Its like the Maltese Falcon taking off and flying away....

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  6. I do like these points. I'm actually doing a lot of research at present re. 'the Jacobite Narrative' and all of a sudden the '7 basic plots' seem to address the issue with Scottish Jacobitsm, where it falls to romanticism, while Irish Jacobitism just becomes a mess. Interesting post, and certainly aids the foundation of wargaming campaigns. I

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    1. Thank you. Yes, history forgot for a long time that really it was about narratives and what people thought and believed was going on. Often that is more important to folk than real 'facts', (such as who won an election or a battle). Jacobitism might be an interesting case in point, I don't know enough to comment, but a lot usually depends on the stories we tell ourselves, and our children.

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  7. I always thought of a wargame as a play. The gamemaster is the author and director, the gamers are the players and the audience - everyone has a direct interest in playing their part to the entertainment of all concerned.

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