Ideas are the chief currency of storytelling. They’re the building blocks of any story, whether it be a roleplaying game, a novel, a film, or what have you. Without an idea, you’re sunk.
New ideas—or at least the creative modulation of existing ideas—drive new projects. Execution is certainly critical, but the core of an idea, properly understood, will expand in the process of development to touch on every aspect of the work. The value of a good idea cannot be understated.
A question commonly asked of storytellers is, “Where do you get your ideas from?” There’s no simple answer. Life experiences, other stories, quirks of personality, all come together in the forge to meld into something that is hopefully new and interesting to the audience.
A question that should be more-often asked is, can an idea be used up?
I submit that it can, and that in fact this is not a rare event. A storyteller can come along who so masterfully and thoroughly investigates an idea that when the story is told, it leaves the idea hollowed-out and of little use to others. A spent idea is a barren field, and nothing new can be grown there; the best anyone can hope for is to simply plow away ceaselessly, cutting the same dry furrows into the dessicated soil. This does nothing to advance the cause of storytelling and leaves precious little entertainment value for those who have consumed the previous storyteller’s investigation of the idea. When a crop has been that thoroughly harvested, it’s time to move on to better land and other ideas.
This situation, this peril, is of tremendous importance to genre storytelling, the area in which roleplaying games function. RPGs need simple, easily grokable ideas to help new players understand what to expect, and to differentiate themselves from other RPGs in similar genres; few new rules systems are so compelling that they can push aside an entrenched game in the same genre, as demonstrated by the ceaseless hordes of wannabe AD&D replacements. It’s the idea that makes the difference. But when an idea has been used up, designers should look further afield for something new and different, rather than tilling the same sterile rows.
I’ll cite two recent examples. In 1986-87, DC Comics published the twelve-issue comic book series Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Watchmen took the idea of the super-hero and projected it into our world, then extrapolated, in a realistically speculative way, the effects of super-powered beings and costumed crimefighters on the twentieth century. The historical changes conceived by Moore and Gibbons were phenomenal; no less so, however, than the changes that occurred in the idea of the super-hero itself. The storytellers turned this diffracted history back onto the main characters, the super-heroes, and the force of history’s weight all but destroyed them. In the course of Watchmen’s twelve issues, readers saw the idea of the super-hero brought to the pinnacle of achievement—and then hurtled down to be dashed on the rocks below. Moore and Gibbons destroyed the idea of the super-hero. There’s simply nothing left there.
Other creators can scrabble in the dirt and one-handedly spill their seed, but that’s the extent of their accomplishments. The best they can hope for is to tell a decent story and tell it well; any chance of truly finding something new and revelatory in the super-hero genre has been lost, and any creator with his or her sights set higher than self-stimulation would do well to move on. The genre is spent.
Another, wildly different, genre has received similar treatment, this being the genre of classical occult conspiracy. Long a favorite of subculture addicts and free-thinking scholars, the tangled skein of the Masons, the Holy Grail, the mystical architecture of London, the descendants of Jesus Christ, and the rest, was a genre that stole quietly into popular consciousness. Wilson and Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy did a lot to bring topics such as these to the fore, but they simply popularized a much older idea and wedded it to another one, that of contemporary conspiracies. No, the work that put paid to the genre of classical occult conspiracy was Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. Eco’s book ran the genre in circles. First it presents the whole body of the genre as a joke, something not to be taken seriously. Then it becomes an exploitable commodity, and an enlightened, academic pastime. Finally it asserts itself as a very large and very terrible reality, a reality that keeps itself purposefully obscure. Along the way, Eco touches on countless elements of the genre, weaving them all together into a grand tapestry. Anyone with even a passing interest in the genre who read the book doubtlessly found their favorite sub-genres represented, whether it be the fate of the Templars or the secrets of Rennes le Chateau. Eco’s assembly is so adroit and his scrutiny so pernicious that, by the end of the book, it becomes evident that there is really nothing else to say. What could you say? Like Moore and Gibbons, Eco nurtured a genre into its fullest, most vibrant flowering, and then cut it at the roots.
Works such as Watchmen and Foucault’s Pendulum are storytelling manifestations of Orobourus, the worm that eats itself. They feast so brilliantly upon the bounty of their topics that they leave nothing but scraps, to be picked at by vultures who insist that yes, there is still some meat here amidst the wreckage. But there is no such succor—unless one is satisfied with being a vulture.
GMs and players looking for fresh challenges and stimulating experiences should open their eyes. Why would you toil in the rotting vineyards of a household whose master has moved on? It’s a big world out there, and there are many fertile fields upon which a quite respectable homestead could be staked out. Don’t be satisfied with table scraps fit for vultures; demand something different, something with life and passion behind it. If RPG companies can’t give it to you then for god’s sake, strike out on your own! What idea fascinates you? What is it that occupies your mind in the time before you sleep? Look at the things that compel you, that challenge you, and see if you can find your next game among them. Keep clear of the ideas that you merely consume passively, as if by rote; look ever to the ones that nag and prod.
Eventually, of course, even the driest field may yet again bear fruit. Given time, and a new iteration of culture in which to operate, spent genres such as super-heroes and classical occult conspiracy may find new forms, new champions, and rise reborn. But this is a lengthy process, even a generational one. In the meantime, open your eyes. Go west, to the frontier. Shake the dust from your shoes and say goodbye to the vultures—better nourishment lies over the horizon.
John Tynes is the co-author of Unknown Armies, a roleplaying game of transcendental horror and furious action.
