Role Playing games and the Story Circle

The Cambellian Monomyth and a Dungeon walk into a bar...

Recently Ben Milton, also known as QuestingBeast wrote a tweet examining a few published books on the subject of "How to be a Good GM/DM". The Tweet in Question. I am guessing a few of these books strongly suggest the use of Joseph Campbells, "The heroes Journey", as an outline for designing a good adventure/game. Some even going as far as to say that the GM must adhere to the monomyth, railroading their players onto a single file path in order to create an engaging story. Gygax, himself, even felt that in order to create a good game you needed to trick the players into following along the path you set for them and to treat them like children when they don't see eye to eye with you. I can only guess he developed this opinion about players because he ran a lot of games with his own children and after time, just saw all players in the same light. I can only guess, though.

There are a lot of comments on this string of tweets that agree with Ben; that all of this advice is destined for the burning heap. I, personally don't see Gygax as a model to live up to or even to give a lot of praise to. I respect that he help create the hobby we all enjoy, but I also think he was wrong about a lot of things. I imagine he didn't do improve very well if he felt that he had to force his players down a path. This is also probably why he liked Dungeons. Dungeons are, overall, very linear. The most a player can do is take a right instead of a left, ignore doors, sneak past enemies, or even leave early and gain nothing for the trying. 

Over a decade ago, I found a copy of his book; Roleplaying Mastery. I was still pretty new at being a GM at the time and thought it might have a few helpful hints that I could use to improve my skills. I wouldn't go a far as to say that it was trash, but it is not great either. 

Maybe I should go back to reread it, I still own it, but I have too many other books I need to finish and not enough time to waste on a useless relic. But anyway, I'm getting off point.

I agree with Ben that the books he was citing were giving some bad advice. Honestly, the gaming community is full of bad advice going back to the creation of the game. I think we are all just trying to figure out the how and the why and use points of reference as best as we can. We as a community have gotten better at explaining this, but even now the process of being a GM ultimately comes down to - you can read all the books but you can really only learn by doing. Sink or swim, as it were. When the adventure transitioned from just being about weirdo's sneaking around in dungeons and turned into heroes galavanting around the countryside, fighting monsters in city streets, investigating mysteries in small villages, and making pacts in secret groves, I imagine many of the old school Gms continued to run their game like they did when it was just about Dungeon crawling. City streets or forest paths were just more dungeon hallways. Except there were no walls to keep the players hemmed in. Now the players could just do whatever, and these GMs experience the same stuff we all experience at one point or another. Frustration. They never learned to improve, to go with the flow, because that not how they learned to run a game. This is not a general All of them. Not all GMs are the same. Some transitioned out of the dungeon easily, for some, it was a struggle, and for others, they never made it out of this musty catacombs. 

There is a reason why we all Start out running RPG by sending characters into a dungeon. It's easy and simple; these first baby steps of becoming a good GM allow you to slowly ease into it. It very much like putting Ikea furniture together. Once you figure it out, you can do it and afterward, you say, "Well that wasn't as hard as I thought it would be." It allows you to make mistakes without any big stakes being involved. You can add a story or just run the dungeon as is. It's a great way to learn the early ropes. But at some point, you should leave the dungeon and expand your horizons. 

Getting back to the Cambellien Monomyth. It's a great analysis of how a story or myth is structured and why and how we respond to those stories. Personally, I use the boiled down version envisioned by Dan Harmon - of Community, Harmontown, and Harmonquest called The Story Circle. It's just a simplified version. I like to think about the Story Circle when I design adventures. I'm a professional Storyboard artist and animator and so the story is something I spend a lot of time thinking about and learning how to structure a good or great story is pretty important. So I try to bring it into everything I write.

So here is the core of this post. I agree with Ben but I also disagree with Ben. I believe you can use the Cambellian Monomyth or the Story Circle to build a great adventure. But only as a guide. The problem he was seeing, that I think should be highlighted, is that all those advice books were treating the monomyth not as a guide but as a stringent, unyielding structure. This structure is great for creating a novel, a comic, a movie. Something where one person is telling a story. RPGs are different in that they are games where a group is telling a story. In a good game the players have as much control over the story as the GM. Using the Monomyth as the end all be all, this is the only way to tell a story is how you get bad movies that are cookie-cutter and its how you get bad games because everything is forced and players have no authority. But as a guide, the monomyth has key points that can help you and particularly new GMs structure an adventure.

So if you use it as a guide it's pretty straightforward. So here is how I look at it and maybe this will be helpful for others.

1. The starting point - The Call to Aventure. This is your hook. The characters find a map, they are asked for help by a stranger, are given a quest by the king. This is the Before they go into the unknown and risk them own lives to overcome the hidden dangers that lay ahead.
2. Supernatural Aid. This comes in many forms. it could be a fortune teller that gives them insight before they journey into the unknown or it could be a merchant that sells them a few healing potions. Skies the limit, but its before they really begin. Its a pretty normal point in the adventure for many games. it's not unheard of for the PCs to seek out guidance or lore from someone they know. All of that fits within this area. This can be approached in two ways. 1) the players choose to seek help or items to assist them on their adventure, or 2) someone or thing will seek them out to give the party assistance and will have their own motives for doing so. 
3. The Threshold and Threshold Guardians. This is when the players set fully into the adventure and have left the normal day to day behind. They take their first steps down the path of adventure where ever it might lead them. How they take these steps is up to them. The threshold is simply the line between the safety of home or normalcy and the dangers on the road ahead. Its nothing fancy. The Threshold Guardians are supposed to be NPCs who travel with and help the characters, they are often mentors and people who have been at this for a time. This I can see adding to the adventure if you were running first level characters and it's their first time on an adventure. They can show them the ropes and give guidance. Seth Skorkowsky has a great video up about this that everyone should check out. But if the party has been on adventures before, then we can skip this part. I mean, the monomyth is a guide, so if it doesn't make sense to the adventure then don't include it.
4. Challenges and Temptations. This is the meat of the adventure. It is where the players discover clues, fight monsters, and discover treasure. This is also a great point in which to use the rule of three. Setup three challenges for the players to overcome using player skills and character abilities. Each one is more challenging than the last. A good way to approach challenges is to have One Physical Challenge, One Mental Challenge, and One Ethical Challenge (which is usually a mix of the other two).
5. Then the Characters Enter the Abyss. This is not a literal Abyss (all the time), it's where the adventures meet the villain. But it ultimately is where the adventure's conflict is resolved. its where the McGuffin is found or the princess is tied up, or the prince is about to be sacrificed at. Its where the Why of the adventure is found.
6. Then from there is going back to where you started. Pretty straightforward stuff.
7. The last step is the characters returning to the normal world and I don't think this is a step that's fully possible for adventurers. I never played a game where the player characters returned home and went back to something normal. Usually, they just move on to the next adventure. The Adventure for Adventurers is the norm. So this also does not apply to most fantasy games.

IF you view this as a guide it can hep a New GM design an adventure. But I think the problem arises when the Gm tried to run a very Co-operative experience like its a Novel like it was just their story alone. That's the issue.

I haven't read a lot of published sources on "How to GM". I tend to be a hands-on learner and a lot I know comes from experience and from sources found on youtube.

Anyway, food for thought.