Everything
I Need To Know About GMing I Learned From “Babylon 5”
The
setting is exotic and alien, yet strangely similar to the home we know and
love. Old institutions are no longer
quite so reliable, while new ones (and possibly just as unreliable) ones rise
to take their place. Social and
political turmoil is everywhere you look, and darkness gathers all too close to
home. Mysterious figures drift in and
out of the action, offering cryptic warnings and dubious advice. In the distance, a clash between the forces
of good and evil is taking place, drawing unwitting mortals into the action
whether they want to participate or not.
A new order is about to emerge—and at the center of this storm is a
small, committed, and diverse group of heroes of all races, genders, and
species who fight to create peace, justice, and freedom in their time. Did I just describe the ideal background for
an RPG campaign? I didn't mean to. This is the setup for "Babylon 5,"
the ambitious, five-year-spanning, cult classic sci-fi TV series that captured
my imagination and commandeered my schedule for the whole time it was on the
air. It's my favorite TV show of all
time, and I make sure everyone knows it.
But
lest this article seem even more self-indulgent than usual, I think it's plain
to see that the story and structure of "Babylon 5" contains plenty of
the campaign-management lessons I've already pointed out can be learned from
truly great TV shows. If you read my last OOC article,
you already know that I credit “The X-Files” as a major influence on the way I
run games. But when I said it was my
biggest influence...well, I think I lied.
The truth is if it weren’t for my being a “Babylon 5” fanatic for
most of its run, I would not GM the way I do today. I don’t think I would know the first thing
about metaplot, or creating story arcs, or interconnecting the histories and goals
of characters, or building or sustaining tension over a long period of
time. “The X-Files” may have taught me
how to craft interesting characters, a workable formula, and entertaining
one-shots, but “Babylon 5” taught me everything about running a campaign as
a campaign—that is, connecting the progression of episodes into a whole greater
than the sum of its parts. Whether
or not you've seen this amazing show, I think the lessons it taught me can be
applied to just about any gaming situation.
So here we go:
·
Start in the middle of the action.
Don’t
ever let anyone tell you that the story of “Babylon 5” began with Sinclair’s
assignment to the station. It actually
began twenty years earlier than that, with the Earth-Minbari War. Throughout the course of the series, almost
every major character displayed connections to that event: the hole in
Sinclair’s mind, Sheridan’s role as captain of the Agamemnon, Delenn’s
role as a Minbari. Unraveling that
backstory, discovering its secrets, learning what the main characters had to do
with one another, and coming to understand exactly what had happened during the
Battle of the Line was a major key to the five seasons we did see. Lesson: It’s no coincidence that for
the NPCs in every single game I’ve ever run, the entrance of the PCs was the
middle of their story rather than the beginning. Throw your players into the middle of a story that has already
begun, and let them puzzle out the relationships between the NPCs and just what
went down between them before the PCs got involved. This has worked wonders for me in terms of creating mystery and
intrigue for my game, and I bet it’ll do the same for yours.
·
Give your characters room to grow. When
"Babylon 5" first came on the air, many critics and geeks alike
decried it as a cheap, cheesy "Star Trek" rip-off. I'll admit I saw it that way at first. But when I started watching the show
seriously, I discovered there was one simple characteristic that "Babylon
5" had that "Star Trek" did not: character development. Your average episode of "Star
Trek" had the characters experiencing horribly traumatic experiences on an
away mission or a holodeck excursion gone awry, then neatly resolving all the
issues their tragedies raised in the last five minutes and being reset to their
previous selves before next week's episode could begin. On "Babylon 5," however,
characters grew and changed, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
Delenn going into the chrysalis at the
end of the first season is the most obvious example of this, but there are
plenty of others (G'Kar's transformation from revolutionary to religious leader
following his torture on Centauri Prime and Garibaldi's struggle with
alcoholism spring immediately to mind).
This went the other way, too—look at Dr. Franklin, who began the series
as a workaholic drug addict on the edge of a mental breakdown and was clean,
sober, and mentally stable by the end of its run. Lesson: Characters should not be static, unchanging
entities who are the same from week to week—especially when you put them in the
stressful, life-and-death situations experienced by most adventurers. Encourage your players to think about how
their characters might be transformed as a result of their adventures, and do
the same for your NPCs. And don't be
afraid to make your players explore that scary "C" word that gets
ignored far too often: consequences. When
the PCs make a difficult decision, show the results and the repercussions. Ask them how their characters feel about the
choices they made and the way things are, and reward the ones who respond
honestly and realistically to their experiences in their roleplaying.
·
No one ever really dies. This goes
hand in hand with the previous point: In some cases, death is not the end, but
just another opportunity for growth.
Deaths can be faked, or they can end with a sort of rebirth. “The X-Files” also did this toward the end
of its run, but “Babylon 5” somehow gave it dramatic intensity instead of the
soap-operatic hokiness risked by this gimmick.
Anna Sheridan was thought to have died on Z’ha’dum, but survived as an
agent of the Shadows and came back to set a trap for her husband. Kosh was killed by Morden and his
“associates,” then returned the villainous Kosh II (I wish I was making that
name up, but I'm not). And let’s not
forget Sheridan’s suicidal leap into the crater on Z’ha’dum, which led to that
frickin’ weird encounter with Lorien and brought him back better and
stronger. Lesson: Don’t take
this one too literally—though it’s sometimes appropriate to bring characters
back from the dead, if it’s done too much it gets old fast. What you should really take from this is
that what the players think is the end of a story is never really the end. Don’t be afraid to dig up old plot hooks
they thought they were done with long ago and bring them back to bite the party
in the ass. It reminds the players that
the world is much bigger than the corner inhabited by their PCs—and gives you a
good excuse to tie up loose ends or let yourself play favorite NPCs "just
one last time."
·
Make a plan and follow it. Perhaps the
most revolutionary aspect of "Babylon 5" was the vaunted
"five-year plan" dreamed up by creator J. Michael Straczynski (it frightens
me that I can correctly spell that on the first try, without having to consult
any other source). Unlike other series
where the writers are just glad to get from week to week without forgetting any
of the characters' names, JMS knew how long "B5" was going to run and
how it was all going to end the instant he sat down to write the first episode. This enabled him to use devices like
foreshadowing that rarely appear in TV shows, develop characters with greater
ease, and create a feeling of continuity between each episode. (Of course, the downside to this is that if
you missed a few episodes, you were screwed for understanding what was
going on when you came back.) Now, as I
rewatch episodes of "B5," I'm amazed at how well it all fits together—no
extraneous characters, no plots that have no significance to the larger theme,
not a word wasted. It's a beautiful
thing. Lesson: Before your
campaign even begins (but after you've received character sheets from all your
players), sit down for a few hours with a sheet of paper and tentatively plan
out the shape of your story from beginning to end. Don't go so far as to plan every individual session or think
through every plot twist—that's going too far, and railroading your players at
the same time. But do come up with a
basic theme or "argument" you want your game to focus on (in the case
of "Babylon 5," it's "What happens when humans get sick of being
manipulated by outside forces and decide to make their own way in the universe?"),
and give some thought to how individual episodes and story arcs will contribute
to that theme.
·
Don’t be a slave to the plan, either. Every so often, "Babylon 5" would throw aside all
delusions of grandeur and have some fun with a stand-alone episode. Remember the war between the green and
purple clans of Drazi? Or the "Day
of the Dead" episode (written by Neil Gaiman) with the incredibly bizarre
comedy duo played by Penn and Teller that was one of the only bright spots in
the fifth season? They had nothing to
do with the five-year story arc, but they sure were memorable and fun. (In fact, one of my favorite episodes was a
stand-alone—"Confessions And Lamentations," with the amnesiac serial
killer turned priest and the absolutely killer theological debate
between Delenn and Lennier that ended with a line I quote to this day:
"Faith manages.") Also,
"Babylon 5" did not keep to the same plan from Season 1, Episode 1 to
Season 5, Episode 24. It was originally
supposed to be a story about Commander Jeffrey Sinclair—who left the show quite
unexpectedly after one season, resulting in a rather sudden reassessment of
what the series was going to be all about.
Lesson: If, in the course of your campaign, you come to a
juncture where your plan isn't offering you any guidance, don't despair. Step back for a week and do a one-shot (my
"X-Files" essay gives more guidelines on this) while you plot your
next move. In fact, you probably should
be sure to pepper your campaign with less connected sessions so you don't beat
anyone over the head with metaplot and give your players a mental break from
time to time. Similarly, don't make a
plan so constricting that it's totally dependent on certain characters acting a
certain way to bring future events to come to pass—I can guarantee you, either
those players will decide to play different characters or they will do the exact
opposite of what you're expecting.
Never build a plan that can't recover from an upheaval like that. Which brings me to my next point...
·
Foreshadowing is a three-edged sword.
Most
B5 junkies will tell you that in many ways, the first season was kind of
weak. Want to know why? They spent so much time foreshadowing future
events that never came to pass following Sinclair's departure that, taken with
the rest of the series, it seems disjointed and out of place. "Babylon 5" was a series so
wrapped up in future plans and prophecy that sometimes it couldn't see its own
nose in front of its face. The
foreshadowing worked best when it was meant for the short term: for example,
Delenn's vision in "War Without End" was fulfilled several episodes
later in "Shadow Dancing." Lesson:
When foreshadowing works out, it is truly cool, but when it fails, it breaks
the spell faster than just about anything.
And if you push too hard to fulfill "what has been foretold,"
that's when you start railroading and depriving players of their much-needed free
choice. If you use it, use it
sparingly, and only when you're positive it really will come to pass
(such as, when you're dealing only with the actions of NPCs or plot elements
taking place in the background).
·
There’s nothing like a cliffhanger.
My
“X-Files” essay discussed this as well, but honestly, compared to “Babylon 5”
every plot twist it threw out is small potatoes. “B5” was, and will always be, the only TV show that ever kept me
so interested from week to week that I all but scheduled the rest of my life
around it. Anybody remember the last
episode of the third season, “Z’ha’dum?”
Having mysteriously returned from Z'ha'dum at the end of the previous
episode, Sheridan's wife entices him to come back to the Shadow homeworld with
her (despite Kosh's earlier melodramatic pronouncement that "If you go to
Z'ha'dum, you will die"). He goes,
but it's a trap, and he crashes a nuke-laden White Star into the planet after
unloading on his hosts with a hidden PPG.
Running from the survivors, he comes to the edge of what appears to be a
bottomless pit. There's no other way
out. Kosh's voice says, "Jump! Jump now!"...and he jumps. Then everything blows up, and the episode is
over. Imagine watching that for the
first time in stunned horror. Now
imagine having to wait THREE WHOLE MONTHS to see the rest of it! Lesson: It is your right and your
duty as a GM to end at least a few sessions in really crappy places. Not the middle of a battle or anything, but
with just enough left unresolved to keep the players interested: take them
right up to the door of the villain’s fortress, wait for them to say “We’re
going in,” then break in with, “I think that’s where we’ll stop for the
week.” You’ll be amazed by the urgency
and energy it lends to your game.
·
Keep them guessing. The best thing about “Babylon
5” was that it could be a total bastard sometimes. Beloved characters died unfair deaths (who remembers Marcus
Cole? I do), unrequited love often
stayed that way (Lennier and Delenn, anyone?), good was not always rewarded,
and evil sometimes went unpunished.
That’s why the end of “Z’ha’dum” worked so well—I honestly believed that
JMS was fully capable of allowing his protagonist to become a grease spot at
the bottom of a crater, even with two years left in the vaunted five-year
plan. Compare that cliffhanger to “Star
Trek: The Next Generation”’s “The Best Of Both Worlds”: sure, Picard had been
Borgerized, and it sucked, but I never believed for one minute that the writers
would let him stay that way, because it would shake up the series too
much. “Babylon 5,” on the other hand,
had already had so many they’re-not-allowed-to-do-that-are-they? moments
that Sheridan’s untimely death seemed like a very real possibility, whereas we
never thought Picard was really in jeopardy.
Lesson: Don’t be afraid to be an Evil GM. Don’t lose any sleep over killing PCs when
they do something foolhardy enough to warrant it. Murder likable NPCs with reckless abandon. Don’t shirk from displaying the ugly
consequences to the PCs’ actions. Imply
that they need to weigh even the most minor decisions as though the weight of
the world depended upon them. Make them
believe you will stop at nothing to make their lives a living hell. It doesn’t matter if you actually stick all
your threats to them (in fact, you probably shouldn’t if you want to continue
having a group). Just keep them on
their toes enough to make them feel that they’ve really averted disaster when
they succeed.
·
Know when to stop. Too often, great TV shows go
significantly downhill toward the end of their runs. This was definitely the case with “Babylon 5.” When it became doubtful that the show would
be picked up for its fifth and final season, JMS effectively worked a miracle
by bringing the Shadow Wars and the battle between B5 and Earth to a viable (if admittedly rushed)
conclusion in the space of a dozen episodes.
The fourth season ended with an episode called “The Deconstruction Of
Falling Stars” that is, quite simply, the most miraculously perfect hour of TV
I have ever had the pleasure of watching.
It would have been the perfect conclusion to the series, but alas, it
wasn’t. “Babylon 5” returned for a
hurried, messy fifth season minus much of the original cast that focused on the
most boring group of telepaths ever put to film, then stumbled to a halt with
the terribly disappointing “Sleeping In Light.” To this day, I believe that “B5” really ended with its fourth
season. Everything else was just window
dressing. Lesson: Wrap up your
campaigns too soon, rather than too late.
A campaign should never go on so long that going to weekly sessions
becomes a chore rather than a vacation.
If your players groan in disappointment when you tell them only a few
sessions remain, you’ve done your job well, and I salute you.
Copyright (c) 2002 by Beth Kinderman. This is my original work, so please respect it.