Category: Shadowrun

Netflix’s Bright and the problems of world building

Netflix’s Bright is certainty getting a lot of attention, as is the division between critics and fans, genre fans and fans of the movie, and just the general disagreement over whether it is actually “the worst film of 2017” or something to be acknowledged for its originality.

I’ll say up front that I’m glad this movie exists, because it’s bringing new attention to genre fiction in film (or, in this case, genre mashup fiction), and that Netflix chose to make its first big budget movie production something of this nature is not insignificant.

As a long time fan of Shadowrun, I’m 100% behind the aesthetic of fantasy races and magic in a familiar urban setting. But from the perspective of world-building and setting development that are intended to inform a cohesive story, Bright offers many examples of the dangers of being lazy in your approach.

The setting of this movie is so incongruous and lacking in internal consistency that I was unable to suspend my disbelief long enough to be taken anywhere by the story. It seems the writer, director and producers just flat out ignored some simple premises of setting development – namely that when you add an element to a setting, it has a ripple effect over time that affects the world around it.

In Bright we see a lot of world-shaping elements added without any evidence of those elements having had an impact on the development of society over time.

In Shadowrun this works because the story is that the world as we know is developed, and then in the early 20th century magic returned to the world, transforming a section of the population into elves, dwarves, trolls and orcs. And as the magic rose, long slumbering dragons woke up.

But in Bright, we hear about the 2000 year long history of the races having lived together, and yet see little to no evidence of those significant changes to human history having shaped the contemporary world in which the story takes place. Somehow, after centuries of social development that includes humans, orcs, elves, centaurs, dragons, magic, fairies and even more magical creatures that are never seen on screen, they still ended up with modern day suburban L.A.

This blog post arose from a conversation on Twitter, and so this next section gathers together the many questions I have of the setting which I just couldn’t rationalise based on the information presented in the movie.

It started here:

We see no evidence of the many races having had even a superficial impact on the shape of society.

‘Elf-town’ is a part of the city, and elves are described as a race of people ‘running everything’. So either they’ve always been around and in a position of influence, or at some point there was a war or some other takeover when elves took charge. As there is no mention of any elf war, or elf take over, or even any great resentment shown towards elves as you might expect of a conquering people, we can only assume that elves have always been there, and yet have had no more meaningful impact on the shape of society than to fence of a section of a large city.

Humans do that without being magical super-beings.

Elves seem to primarily exist in this movie as analogies for the wealthy, and this movie gives them little more depth of representation as a people than to make them look like the high end of New York or Hollywood. Everyone drives a super car and looks like a movie star, but they live in mundane looking buildings on asphalt streets that are identical to contemporary America.

However, in a world with magic and non-human races, why does America exist at all in it’s current form?

Many of America’s early settlers emerged out of the religious turmoil following the reformation, so in this world of magic and elves and orcs, did the Catholic church still dominate Europe for centuries? And was the reformation a multi-species issue?

How did Catholicism, or any form of Christianity, dominate in a world where an actual war was fought against a ‘Dark Lord’ of unknown magical power? We hear mentions of the orc saviour who unified the races against the Dark Lord (and are then expected to ignore the fact that despite this, orcs were still the subjugated race for thousands of years) yet see no evidence of that having any real influence on religion or belief or societal structure.

And then there’s dragons. Are they apex predators or super evolved magical beings?

Either way, for a dragon to fly, unmolested across the city (as shown in an almost throw-away establishing shot) is to suggest it has some accepted place in society, but where is that reflected in any part of the setting we see?

We are shown a dragon flying over a city that, in the movie, shows no sign of accommodating, protecting against, or interacting with dragons. They don’t even talk about them; Will Smith’s character makes a Shrek reference, but no-one mentions dragons.

This same question applies to the design of cars. If giants and centaurs are millennia-long allies of humans and elves, living in an integrated society, why did they develop cars that neither giants nor centaurs could ride in?

While xenophobia might provide an answer (thanks Litza) the movie doesn’t really bear this out.

The races are millennia-long allies, supposedly living with a level of integration that makes the exclusion and oppression if the orcs a singular thing.

The first orc to become a cop is a big deal – it’s a major subplot of the movie – but when we see a centaur cop being part of an orc beating, no-one bats an eyelid. Centaur police are an accepted part of the police force, suggesting that, in contrast to orcs, they’re a more accepted part of society.

In that scene, not one car looks capable of comfortably accommodating a centaur. There isn’t even a contemporary horse float! (something I imagine centaurs might find a bit degrading). Nor do we ever see such a thing anywhere else in the movie.

We know there’s a centaur police officer who, in stature, stands quite some distance above his human colleagues, but every doorway we see in the police plaza is the same width/height as contemporary human buildings. Do centaurs never come inside? Even as part of their jobs?

Was the centaur, like the dragon, just set-dressing without thought given to the implications of what it means to have centaurs in this world?

We simply see no evidence of society accommodating centaurs.

Finally, there are the orcs. As well as being another fantasy race, they’re super-humanly strong. In onc scene we see an orc single-handedly lift a car to retrieve a kid’s ball.

This means that humans, elves and all the other races had enslaved, or at least oppressed, a race of super-strong warriors for thousands of years, and the world they built off the back of that labour force was identical to contemporary downtown L.A.

So what does all this mean…

For a setting to be engaging and immersive, elements that define the setting have to be evident in the details. Sure, there is a certain amount of handwaving that goes on, but when creating a setting in which you want a story to play out, it is worth considering the broader effects of each new element you add. This ads depth that helps bring the setting to life, and it is what is painfully missing from the world of Bright.

In many medieval fantasy settings, different races are often segregated and, while they may trade and interact with each other, it’s more reasonable to expect such a thing as ‘dwarven architecture’ to be different from ‘human architecture’ to meet their different physiological needs in their own, somewhat closed-off regions of the world. But in an integrated multi-racial society that has supposedly developed over centuries parallel to our own society, many of these gaps are simply too big to overlook.

Still, I reiterate that I’m glad this movie exists and that it’s apparently getting a sequel. If it is successful in kicking off a new trend of urban fantasy in big-budget film and TV production, I just hope that there’s a bit more thought given to the details of the setting in future. beyond “let’s throw a dragon in the background, that will look cool!”

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The GM & the Tarot: 4 – A sample session outline

<<<Previous: 3 – Devising a session

The purpose of this post is to provide a sample of a session outline developed using the processes outlined in Part 3 – Devising a session. This example will be for a Shadowrun game session and will build on the campaign frame and sample NPCs developed in Part 2 – framing a campaign. If you haven’t read the previous posts detailing the use of cards, this post may be a little hard to follow, though the scenario outline at the end should still be of use.

First, in order to kick off the story a begin building plots involving my major NPCs, I’ve opted to incorporate two of the Major Arcana/NPCs into my session draw. After a bit of shuffling, The Chariot was mixed into the 7 card draw, and The Hierophant is a secondary factor in the story.

Session outline draw

The initial 7 card draw comes out as follows:

Story Element Card Suggested meaning
Inciting Incident 9 of Swords Failure, death, delay
Story Goal The Chariot (Major NPC – Smuggler)- also, war, triumph, providence
Primary Obstacle 10 of Cups Contentment, perfection
Assistance 9 of Cups (inverted) Concord, victory, success
Opposition 6 of Swords (inverted) Journey, route, way
Consequences / Stakes Judgement (inverted) Accounting for past actions
Rewards 4 of Pentacles Resisting change

Interpreting the cards

Because The Chariot emerged as the Story Goal, the objective of the story is for the characters to help the Major NPC of the Smuggler achieve a significant goal. As another Major Arcana emerged under Consequences / Stakes, that aspect of the story will be related to the second NPC in this story, the corporate military R&D agent (The Hierophant). Because the Judgement card is inverted, the Hierophant’s involvement in the story will be indirect and possibly not something the player characters are aware of.

Now onto the rest of the cards:

While the common conceit to start a story in Shadowrun games is that the PCs are hired to do a job or ‘run’, and not wanting to over complicate things for the first session in a new campaign I will stick with that arrangement. The reasons for the job, however, can be coloured by the card that is drawn and influence the circumstances of the rest of the session.

So this story begins when the characters are hired to replace another team who have failed to do a job (‘failure’ as represented by the 9 of Swords). This immediately suggests that the job is particularly difficult. The reasons for their failure will be determined after more of the session outline is completed.

The goal of this story is to help the Smuggler deliver a package – they PCs are to meet the Smuggler somewhere just inside the national border and take possession of a package and then get it to its intended destination.

The primary obstacle of this session is defined by ‘contentment, or perfection’ – following on from the influence of the 9 of Swords as the Inciting Element, this card could be interpreted as a further absence of contentment, or even the opportunity for contentment, meaning that the pressure is really on for this task. The job has just become incredibly time-sensitive and so the PCs have far less than their usual time for preparation – effectively none – and will have to improvise more than usual to complete the task in time. To further expand on the idea of an absence of contentment, the primary setting for the story will be on unfamiliar and hostile territory. In the default Shadowrun setting of the Seattle city-state, there are plenty of hostile urban sprawls and slums in which such events can take place. In this case, the PCs have to meet the Smuggler in one of the abandoned regions of the city rendered uninhabitable by an erupting volcano, occupied now by urban predators, gangs and magical nasties that dwell in the dark places of the Shadowrun universe.

Whatever assistance is available to the characters at short notice is not immediately evident and would therefore require some exploration or creative thinking on behalf of the PCs to uncover. In the context of the story so far, and given a primary meaning of the 9 of Cups is ‘concord’, or agreement between groups of people, there will be a small community of homeless people living around the area who can help the PCs navigate through unfamiliar terrain. This help will not be offered freely, nor will their presence be immediately evident.

Opposition, defined by an inverted 6 of Swords, has to do with the route or journey the characters or their goal will take. A clear use for this card is not immediately evident, so I’ll wait to apply the remaining cards before deciding in this one.

The inverted Judgement card relates to the NPC of the Hierophant, or the military R&D agent, who themselves have a hidden motive. This character is behind some aspect of the story but their involvement is indirect, so I interpret that as meaning that the character will be acting through third party agents as well as further ciphers to protect their identity, should the PCs go looking. I also have to remember that this character is meant to be the primary antagonist of the campaign and so it can’t hurt for their relationship to the characters to get off on a bad foot.

Therefore, I choose to interpret this card and it’s position on the draw as referring to the ‘consequences of success’ in the style of ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. If the characters succeed in their task they will incur, at least, some ongoing bad favour from their hidden adversary.This means that the hidden NPC doesn’t want the characters to succeed. But why? The NPC has an investment in the characters failing in their task. This NPC wants to claim the item that the characters are helping to smuggle, which, given the secret motivation of the NPC suggests that the smuggled items have some value to the NPCs secret pursuit to ‘transcend humanity’ through cyber-technology.

The last card in the ‘rewards’ position  indicates that ‘resisting change’ will be a primary benefit of success in this story. Given the result of the card/story element above, this is going to mean that succeeding in this task will prevent something significantly worse from happening – it means a significant delay in the NPCs progress towards their goal, which, by extension, means that the NPCs goal is something worth stopping.

With these two final cards in place it helps to interpret the card in the ‘Opposition’ position. The characters will be opposed by others who want to get the smuggled package on a different route or journey than the direction the PCs will take it. The one element I will then add to the story that isn’t immediately suggested by the cards will be the agents that are trying to intercept the package and prevent the PCs from succeeding. Given that the major NPC has an allied NPC (or group) in the form of an elite squad of soldiers assisting in the research, some manifestation of that group will be the opposing agents in this session.

With all of those elements in place, it’s time to draft the final session outline…

Session outline

Backstory: The NPC R&D agent is involved in some less-than-ethical research into pushing the limits of cyberware and the human condition. While doing more mainstream research for their primary employer, a corp-run military outfit, they are also pushing their own agenda and subtly manipulating some experiments in order to test personal hypotheses alongside the corp-approved research goals.

One facility that operates in a location outside of the games setting was the subject of a successful run to capture a lot of research data, and then damage or destroy the facilities and any available data backups.

The perpetrators of this run did not know that the facility and research they were targeting were part of the NPC R&D agents personal agenda.

Upon learning of the heist, the NPC set a couple of members of their available allied soldiers to track down the perpetrators and reclaim the missing data. Because the true nature of the research was secretive and the NPC didn’t want to draw additional attention, they send only a small number of soldiers on this mission (perhaps the corporation that owned the facility considered it an acceptable loss, especially seeing as such espionage is a common part of doing business in the world of Shadowrun).

So the team of runners that were meant to receive the package were intercepted by the soldiers while the smuggler with the data was still in transit, leaving the person who initiated the job to arrange for a new crew to make the pickup with little preparation and deliver it to a third and final agent.

Gameplay outline: The PCs are hired by a generic agent to pick up a job after the previous team have dropped out of contact. They have to meet the smuggler in a remote and hostile part of town, collect a package, and get it to another destination back in the inhabited part of the city. They characters are offered an enticing bonus to their pay to make up for the lack of preparation time and the extra danger implied by the disappearance of the previous crew.

The location of the meeting is a particularly desolate and alien piece of terrain. Long-cold lava flows engulf the bottom stories of buildings, many of which are crumbling and unstable due to the damage to their lower floors – rubble and difficult terrain abounds. The Smuggler will be coming in an aerial vehicle to land on one of the few large, stable buildings in the area that has a still-serviceable landing pad on its roof, where the PCs will meet, collect the package and aim to get back out the way they came.

This will involve a bit of planning and improvising on the part of the GM to characterise the terrain and consider how it may present challenges to the characters. Being inaccessible to most conventional vehicles is a good starting point.

Once the PCs have the package, the soldiers tracking them will make their move and try to reclaim the data being smuggled. Because in the world of Shadowrun, data can be smuggled/transferred via the Matrix, this package will also include a physical element. A prototype device that is also being transported.

The major conflict of the session then will be the PCs trying to either fight or flee from a small group of elite soldiers who will be better equipped and trained to operate in this environment. If they succeed, they will be marked by the NPC as being part of an opposing conspiracy, and if they fail they will either be killed by the soldiers, or at least lose the package entrusted to them by the Smuggler.

This will be played out in roughly three main scenes,

One – the hire. The PCs meet with the hiring agent who will impress upon them the urgency and potential dangers of the job (set the stakes high!)

Two – the meeting. The PCs enter the area of the ground, where the GM develops the alien nature of the surroundings and the challenges it presents. The PCs may have a little bit of time to explore and in which to potentially uncover the possibility of assistance from the local community (which might come in the form of a secret passageway out or helping transport the package so the characters can lead the soldiers away – this would be high risk and possibly result in achieving the story goal while still suffering significant personal consequences or death).

Three – Ambush! The soldiers spring their trap which, depending on the PC’s actions, could results in a deadly stand-up fight or a pursuit through difficult territory to freedom.

And that’s it! There’s an example of using tarot cards to develop a session outline and related story elements.

If you have any questions or comments, please post them below.

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The GM & the tarot: 2 – Framing a campaign

<<<Previous: 1 – Why tarot?

Next: 3 – Devising a session>>>

“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random” – Ken Robinson.

As stated in part 1, the primary reasons to use a tarot deck to devise RPG stories is because of the elements of randomness and variety it brings, and the creative challenge that comes from trying to fit random elements into a story. As per the quote at the top of this post, the random draw of the cards provides a new idea, and then you give that idea value in the context of a story.

When starting a new campaign, a random draw of tarot cards can be used to quickly create a landscape of NPCs whose conflicts, goals and motivations will be played out over the course of your campaign.

The steps of this process are detailed below, along with an example from a Shadowrun game devised using this method.

Note: This approach is based on a couple of assumptions about the way people run and play RPGs; primarily, that people engage in ongoing ‘campaign’ style play with a continuous set of player characters, and that campaigns are made up of a series of sub-plots and stories (each usually representing 1-2 sessions of play) that fit within a larger, overarching narrative that develops throughout the course of many sessions. Later posts will detail a variation of this process for devising stand-alone or one-shot story ideas.

Game Concept

First, come up with an overall concept for the game/story you wish to run. This provides some indication of the kinds of characters and scenarios you’ll create and a lens through which to interpret cards drawn as part of the process.

Example: After a few years of running ‘specialised’ games in the Shadowrun universe (all PCs are gang members, elite military, a magical circle, etc), I decided to run a game that went back to the original setting of the game. The characters were to be runners navigating between the big players at the top, and the gangs and hard life of the streets.

For the sake of something different, instead of using one of the mega-corps to be the immediate representation of the ‘big players’, I wanted to focus on the corp-run security and military services of the 6th world.

Initial draw – creating primary NPCs

The first use of the tarot cards is to define the landscape of the campaign, the pattern of key NPCs who will feature in your stories and who will return as primary allies and antagonists for your player’s characters.

Extract the 22 major arcana, shuffle them and randomly draw around 8 cards (more or less depending on the scale and scope of the story you wish to tell). Keep in mind that you can always add to this at a later date if you wish to expand your story.

Each of these cards is used to inform the creation of a major NPC who will feature in the game/campaign. Take time to devise a concept for an NPC based on each of these cards, as appropriate to the overall game concept you’ve chosen.

Example: As I was only expecting to run this game for a handful of sessions, I limited myself to 6 cards.

The cards I drew to start the game were The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Chariot, The Hanged Man, Death,  and The Devil (presented here in their numbered order within the deck).

As NPCs, I interpreted these cards as follows:

Card Suggested Meaning NPC
 The Emperor Wisdom and power, top of the hierarchy, male ego A community leader/organiser with significant influence in one of the slums of Seattle.
 The Hierophant Knowledge & education, studying higher values, accepting discipline A senior researcher in a corp-military R&D division.
 The Chariot Adventure and risk, mental and physical journeys, desire for victory A smuggler who brings things into and out of Seattle.
 The Hanged Man  Transition, limbo, taking a step backwards in order to move forwards A crime boss whose efforts to grow influence have been stalled.
 Death Change, beginnings and endings, getting to the gritty details The ‘agents of change’ – an elite squad within the corp-military that works alongside The Hierophant.
 The Devil  Thirst for money or power, obsession, addictive patterns of behaviour, manipulation by others The crime-boss’ second-in-command, a heavily cybered warrior.

Determining NPC motivations

The next step of the defining the landscape is to determine the prime motivations of each NPC in the context of the story. To do this, once again take the 22 major arcana, including the ones you’ve already drawn. One card will be drawn per NPC, which will inform their objectives and/or motivations.

This time, when shuffling the cards, lay them face down on a table and swirl them around so that the direction of each card is randomised as well as its order. When a card is drawn upright, that indicates that the character’s goals are a part of their public persona, while if it is inverted (upside down) that means the characters goals are hidden or secretive.

For each inverted card, you may also choose to draw another card to identify what kind of public face the character puts forward to mask their hidden intentions.

Example: For the NPCs identified above, I drew the following cards to define their motivations:

Character Card/Motivation
Smuggler The High Priestess
Community Organiser The Hierophant
Crime Boss Temperance
Crime Boss’ Lieutenant The Fool
Elite Soldiers The Magician
R&D Agent The Tower (inverted) + The World

I interpreted this card draw as follows:

Character Motivation
Smuggler Seeks to uncover secrets – believes there is a secret plot connected to some of the jobs they carry out.
Community Organiser Seeks to build a traditional, somewhat nostalgic, community to support people in the slums.
Crime Boss Is seeking to achieve a sense of harmony, and heal themselves. At this point, the interaction between The Hanged Man and Temperance provided the idea of a Crime Boss inflicted with a mental illness. This is what was responsible for their stalled empire, and their current motivation was to overcome those problems in order to get business running again.
Crime Boss’ Lieutenant Seeks experience – is a hedonist. Seeks new challenges and to overcome them. In this case the combination of The Devil and The Fool provided the idea of a figure who revelled in confrontational approaches to building power, yet was unaware of the implications of their boss’ health issues. In the context of Shadowrun, I translated this idea into a fledgling AI that controlled various drones and humanoid forms in the physical world.
Elite Soldiers This unit seeks to elevate their skills and unit tactics. For reasons connected with their past experiences, they volunteered to work with R&D so they could test better equipment & tactics.
R&D Agent This character’s hidden motivation is to transcend humanity. Having worked on cybernetic development for his career, this character wants to move beyond cybernetic enhancement of individuals and create a genuine hybrid entity. The character’s public motivation is to improve military cybernetics in accordance with company policy.

Determining relationship to PCs

Once you have you list of NPCs, take the cards that represent them, shuffle, and lay them out in a row from left to right, which represents the relationship to the PCs that these characters will have in the game.

Those towards the left are the ones with whom the PCs will be most closely aligned, and those on the right are the antagonists whose machinations will be driving many of the plots and forcing the characters to react.

Example: In this instance the cards came out in the order of: The Chariot, The Emperor, The Hanged Man, The Devil, Death, The Hierophant.

So the primary antagonist of this game will be the military R&D agent, followed closely by the soldiers working with them. The crime boss and their 2IC are more neutral, though the lieutenant is slightly more antagonistic. Finally, the Smuggler will be their greatest ally, and the community organiser will be generally, though not universally, supportive of the characters.

With that process, the social landscape of the campaign is defined and some tensions between characters as well as potential story lines start to emerge. As you progress to develop individual plots and session outlines, these NPCs and their motivations will play a role in interpreting additional cards drawn as part of your story.

Note: As stated in the introduction to this blog, one of the primary elements of my approach to creating RPG scenarios is to create conflicts of values and motivations that the players need to navigate. For this reason, I leave it to last to determine the NPC’s relationship to the players, letting conflict arise out conflicting an overlapping motivations rather than any predetermined concept of being heroes, allies or villains. This way the interpretation of cards to define NPCs and their motivations are free from expectations base don the characters role in the story.

If you wish to run a game that is more closely defined by the genre conventions of the game’s setting, or in a style that requires a more definite sense of heroes and villains, you can complete this step as part of the initial draw to identify NPCs. That way you are interpreting cards knowing what role each characters will play in your story.

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