A reader of this site asked me the other day how I handle the flashback sequences in my sessions. Its a good question and I thought I’d share not only the “how” but the “why.”
Emergent “Script”
Sessions in this Campaign are part of a sandbox. While most places and locations in the “world” are detailed with descriptions of inhabitants, factions and their motivations, all encounters, unless player character motivated, are randomly determined and if NPCs are present their reactions, motivations and goals are randomly determined. This doesn’t mean they can’t be changed, nor does it mean that they can’t have a returning, recurring or otherwise persistent impact on the “world.” They do. But it isn’t predetermined. Player and character agency are paramount. THEY drive the plot(s). The random tools, which I shall share more of as I continue to share articles, aid my creativity. I never “cheat” for example and ignore an encounter or a reaction roll. For me, I find that using a constructive set of “rules” doesn’t constrain me, it actually spurs creativity by forcing me to think. Like Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, they do this for me by inspiring Lateral Thinking. As a GM, this is what draws me to this approach and is one of the pure enjoyments I get out of approaching a campaign this way, aside from the paramount goals of having fun (its part of my fun) and ensuring the players are immersed, enjoy themselves and have fun.
So that’s a key point before I get into the Flashbacks, which in-session, the players and I call “Vignettes.” What you read here in the Session Recaps are my rationalization of a complete sandbox into a coherent narrative script. The game isn’t a narrative. But these recaps have to be. Part of writing them is to show how a coherent collaborative story can emerge from a campaign style that prioritizes a world that “just is”; doesn’t have balanced encounters, doesn’t have predetermined story paths, doesn’t have mechanical abstract tools for “rewinds” and “scenes”, etc. It emerges because the style and setting is established from day one to completely enable player agency in a world that reacts as it “is” not to further a story or plot. This enhances the feeling of agency and adds to immersion because the players can change things while in-character. So now lets get to the “Why” on the Vignettes.
Immersion in the Moment
As I discussed in another post, the baseline time (the maximum amount of time that can be “fast-forwarded”) in this campaign and setting is 4 hours, maybe 12. As well, players must evolve various plans and strategies accounting for player character and companion capabilities and skills while paying attention to finite resources. All in a very deadly setting. As one of my players and my friend, Scott (aka Orkusdorkus, watch/listen to his stuff here and here) observed early, “in this campaign and setting you have to be in the moment. What is happening right now?”
He is absolutely correct. But how do we have “soldiers are people too” and three dimensional characters if the players may be so “in the moment” that despite having made these characters the baseline time and setting don’t allow for enough “breathing room” for the players to grab onto the characters and inhabit them in an immersive way, or for quite a long time. I have heard of and seen “vignettes” done before, but only considered it after Session 3 here where I had to introduce a new Player and Player Character, 1SG Keller.
At the start of the Campaign I had, as background, stated that the First Sergeant of the Intelligence section wasn’t present as he was under medical care for severe food poisoning. Bryce, a new Player at that time, wanted to make the First Sergeant as a Player Character and I had to do a character introduction in Session 3 (we had lost a player due to real life concerns). I decided to give him some “spotlight time” and improv our way through a hazy morphine-influenced dream sequence and start that session with his arrival after being released from medical. Bryce loved it. The players liked it. It took 20 minutes. And I realized that some concerns I had about player immersion in character due to being “in the moment” might have a solution.
Flashbacks
The television show Lost (2004-2010) had a lotta flaws as it went on, a completely different discussion for another blog. But its use of Flashbacks, though done for many reasons, not all creative, did serve a very basic function of providing support for its character-driven storytelling in a setting with a very “in the moment” considerations and twists and turns in direction. So the method of a simple story being “improv’ed” between another player and myself in front of the other players and serving as a flashback would accomplish the goals of providing time for all players to more fully get a handle on the characters they are inhabiting and would aid immersion. It would preclude those awkward situations we see in so many games where two player characters force open a door and the big burly guy gives a soliloquy about how he was captured in a barbarian raid as a young boy and the manual labor he was put to helped develop his strength, etc. Its cringey, but its a player who just isn’t having a chance in the campaign to do things or have interactions that reinforce to that player (not necessarily the rest of the group, as is often assumed) who their character is. They are grabbing at it, clumsily. So this vignette method, in the form of flashbacks, really hits all these buttons regarding; character driven play, facilitating player immersion in character, allowing players not to feel compressed by being “in the moment” all the time or being very concerned with problem solving.
Actually Doing the Vignettes
I run sessions that will last 4 hours, 4 1/2 hours maximum. I give a mandatory break for 10 minutes every hour. I prepare a simple story premise and develop a few NPCs conceptually that will fit into it. A very simple arc. Then the Player and I improv that arc to begin a session for a maximum of 30 minutes, hopefully more like 20. Minimal die rolling. If dice are rolled its simple stuff. “Make a Listen roll.” If the player character fails they don’t hear a whole conversation, just bits. There are no life or death stakes. We know the player character is going to survive. There may be consequences in the past, but they are still here doing what they are doing in the present. When we are done we take a 10 minute break as a “palate-cleanser.”
The sequencing is a bit more “railroady” than the rest of the session but the player character still gets to make decisions that resonate and may impact the present. In Session 4 Beck asked some questions of a man who may be an illegal drug grower and had a romantic liaison (implied) with an NPC, as well as killing a man. In Session 5 Kate cursed out her Mom and decided not to help out the horse when she knew it was being humanely put down. In Session 6 even little Paul decided to try and listen to his Grandpa’s meeting, decided not to tell his parents about it and decided to defend his Grandpa to his Father. Choices. Then when writing the recaps, I just cut them at appropriate moments and intersplice the flashback scenes into the main emergent narrative that the sandbox session revealed.
So I hope any readers enjoyed this discussion of the why “Flashbacks” are a thing in my sessions in this campaign and how they are implemented. I don’t thing they are appropriate for every campaign or every setting. But they might be of value to someone out there if you are running a campaign that is very “in the moment” and you are trying to aid players in the development of their characters that always gets more fleshed out after you have started playing the campaign.