Edit: Angry here. I did something I rarely do. I closed comments on this post. That’s because there’s a LOT of people who have stuff about narrative structure WRONG in my comment section right now and I’m worried that new and inexperienced GMs may be confused by the discussion. So, I shut it down. I will be addressing the misunderstanding further in the second part of this series next week. Until then, all discussions is closed. I’m sorry. If you want to get s$&% wrong for yourself, great, but I can’t have you confusing the issue for people who are genuinely trying to learn from me. – The Angry GM

Let me start by addressing the rather unkind title of this article: Narrative Structure for Morons. There’s two reasons for this particular article. First, I wanted to invoke the popular series of “reference books for the rest of us,” known as the … for Dummies books. I have to admit, despite being mocked by the title every time I pick one up, I’m a fan of the series. They are excellent references that, while written for laypeople, don’t actually dumb down the topics they talk about too much. And they follow a very well-structured progression. That’s great. The problem is, they occasionally address topics that I’m not sure should be addressed in a store-bought book “for laypeople.”

For example, I once saw Forensic Science for Dummies. Yes, as in criminology. Evidence gathering and analysis for the purpose of solving crimes. This is something that, really, no one except a professional has any business doing. And a professional really needs more education than they can get for $25 at the local Barnes & Noble. I never want to see a police detective leafing frantically through a “… for Dummies” book at the scene of a grisly murder saying “okay, the book says we need to look around for something called a mo-tive. Whatever that is.”

The thing is, though, that the … for Dummies title is probably a trademark. And I don’t want to challenge a company who wrote the book on copyright law… for Dummies on a legal matter like this. So, I had to change the title.

The other reason for the unkind title is that I am, myself, unkind. And, honestly, I’m feeling particularly unkind about this topic. See, I’ve written a lot about narrative structure vis-à-vis adventure and campaign design. I use narrative structure as half the jumping-off point for adventures and campaigns. I talk about things like inciting incidents and climaxes and rising action and exposition and plot arcs and plot beats and all that other crap. But I never actually sat down and talked about narrative structure as its own thing. I sort of assumed we’d all paid attention in high school English class. I guess that’s my own stupid fault. You know what they say about assuming things.

So, here’s the deal: with that whole Let’s Build a F&%$ing Dungeon Adventure and my brief mention of a “three-part story,” I’ve gotten an upsurge in questions about story structure. Or adventure structure. And I brought it on myself. Because I think I even incorrectly used the term “three act structure” somewhere in discussing that adventure. And, as much as I want to jump in and finish that stupid thing – so I can actually FINISH one of these pain-in-the-a$& ongoing project things – I need to address this s$&%. I can’t have students or followers or proteges or whatever the f$&% you are confused about narrative structure. Because that leads to endless questions about three-act stories, five-room dungeons, and the mother$&%ing hero’s journey. F$&%ing Campbell.

So, we’re going to talk about narrative structure today. Specifically, we’re going to look at a couple of different models of narrative structure that are often accused of being good ways to write an adventure. And, as a follow-up, next week, we’re going to take the bits and pieces that are worth keeping from those structures and see if we can build a comprehensive guide to narrative structure for RPGs.

Being a Drama Queen

Narrative – or dramatic – structure just refers to the shape of the events in a story. That is to say, the shape of the plot. Remember, the plot is the sequence of events that happen in the story. It isn’t the story itself because the story is everything that is in the story. Events, characters, setting, themes, tone, all that crap.

As a GM, you plan a plot. At least, you outline a plot. And I hope we’re past the point where some moron is going to be screaming about railroading. To write an adventure, you have to know at least some of the plot points. Now, you might be really good at improvising a good story. And that means you can come up with plot points just when you need them. But that’s not the same as not knowing the plot points. Improvisation is “planning and executing at the same time,” it’s not “not planning.” Speaking of things I’m tired of saying.

Plots have a shape to them. At least, they should. Why? Because the human brain – as I have said a thousand f$&%ing times before – is wired to expect stories to have a certain shape. And that’s because stories are actually part of the way the human brain passes useful information to other human brains. When you figure out something about how the world works, and you want to convey it to other people, you tell a story. Even if you think you’re explaining, you’re still conforming to a story structure. And it’s so ingrained that most people cannot enjoy a story that deviates from the structure too strongly. At least, not in the traditional way. Which is why the people who can enjoy those “oh so random” improvisational dicking-around type campaigns are fewer than those who want a goddamned quest to undertake.

If you want your games to be satisfying, they have to fit the basic outline of a good story. Certain things have to happen. And they have to happen in the proper order. Fight that at your peril. And don’t bother telling me about it. I don’t care about your anecdotes. Especially the anecdotes about how you once ignored the story structure and the game went just fine. Because I once drove my car without putting on my seatbelt and I got safely where I was going. That doesn’t make what I did a good idea. Everyone has a f$&%ing anecdote. But if you want to give yourself the greatest chance to succeed, you’ll ignore anecdotes about “the one time things didn’t work I said they would.” I mean, technically, every lottery winner is an anecdote about “that one time,” but you’re still pissing your money away when YOU buy a ticket every f$&% week.

Why am I so worked up about story structure? Well, it’s not that people ignore it. It’s that people try to get it right and don’t get it at all. Every GM goes through the phase where they discover the “three-act structure” in high school literature class. And suddenly, that makes them see their game in a whole new light because that structure solves everything. And every GM also goes through an emo phase where they start hanging out online and discover Walt Whitman and free verse and deconstructionism and s$&%, and they end up discovering this idea called the “five room dungeon” that they realize can be applied to every adventure – not just dungeon adventures – and it changes everything. And then, every GM goes through the phase where, in college, they read Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces – or the Cliff’s Notes version, at least – and then, suddenly, the hero’s journey is clearly THE BEST way to run all games ever. And then, finally, the GM graduates college, starts a life, and doesn’t have enough time for this gaming crap anymore. And that’s when they distill everything down to its useful essence. And then they start this blog.

The problem is that GMs in each of those three phases – High School Lit/Comp, Emo Free Verse, and Humanities 101 – they all think they discovered something no other GM has every tumbled on. And so, they e-mail me. All of them. Every last f$&%ing one. For almost a f$&%ing decade I’ve been getting e-mails about the three-act structure, whatever passes for the current vogue version of the five-encounter adventure, and the hero’s f$&%ing journey.

So, consider the next three sections of this particular article to be an open letter to you if you’re in one of those phases and you’re wondering whether you should e-mail me about the amazing thing you just learned about narrative structure and how it can be applied to gaming. And then look at the last section, where I will boil down what you REALLY need to know.

A Tale of Three Acts

The three-act structure is basically the first thing everyone learns about putting a story together. And there’s a reason for that. It is the way all stories are told. Well, all the good stories. Mostly. The problem is, it’s often totally misunderstood as “the three-part story.”

That, by the way, is how I might have misused it when I was talking about my f$&%ing dungeon adventure. I don’t THINK I did. But I’m too lazy to go back and check. When I was referring to the three sections of the dungeon – the cultist’s camp, the exploratory bit, and the secret vault – as three acts, I was wrong. I meant “three parts.” Sorry if I f$&%ed that up.

Now, you know the three-act structure. It’s been around since ancient Greece, and it’s still around today in such cinematic crap as whatever the latest major motion picture you saw was. It divides the story into three parts, which are called “acts.” Now, that term is borrowed from stage drama. But it means something REALLY different in a play. In a play, an act is just a “part” or a “chapter.” And plays have varying numbers of acts. Most modern stage productions have two acts. Shakespearean plays had several acts. But those aren’t the same thing as what we’re talking about when we say “three-act structure.”

A “three-act” story is basically divided into three parts: the setup, the confrontation, and the resolution. The setup begins by establishing the world, introducing the characters, and inviting us into the setting. For example, the most classic, well-known setup is “once upon a time.” Yeah, that’s literally most of the first act of just about any fairytale. Whatever else follows in that paragraph, that’s act one. Act I almost always begins with “everything was perfectly fine and normal, and nothing was wrong. And then…”

Then, we get an inciting incident. An incitement. The incitement disrupts the hero’s life in some way and introduces a conflict. Conflict is a tricky word here. It doesn’t mean villain. It means anything that challenges the hero and keeps them from what they want. Sure, that could be a villain that threatens their life. But it could be some other obstacle. It could even be an internal struggle. The point is, the incitement drives the hero to take action.

And then the hero does something. The hero takes a decisive action or makes a change or accepts a quest or whatever. And thus the story is started. This is the first plot point, and it represents the end of Act I. See, that’s what a plot-point really is. At least, a major plot-point. It’s a turning point. It’s sort of the transition between the acts.

Now, Act I is boring. Which is why it’s usually short. It’s like a foyer for the story. Here are the characters, here’s the world, here’s s$&% to care about. Oh holy mother of f$&%, look what’s happening now! Someone better do something! Someone IS doing something! Great, follow them through that door.

Act II – the confrontation – is most of the story. That’s the part in which the hero is doing things, gaining allies, exploring, learning, dealing with other conflicts, all sorts of s&%&. It’s literally most of every movie or story you’ve ever heard. Meanwhile, the conflict is growing. It’s getting worse. Things are getting more serious. The stakes are rising. That’s why we call Act II “rising action.” And then, something happens.

This is the second major plot-point. All of the pressure that has been building boils over. And the story gets catapulted into Act III. This plot point is often – but not always – a reversal. That is, the hero suffers some catastrophic loss or gets defeated or whatever. Usually, the hero ends up at a very low point. Which means, the tension is at its highest. And that means it’s time for Act III.

Act III is the resolution. The hero faces the conflict of the story once and for all. Yeah, that seems like it should happen in Act II, right? Well, no. Act II creates the situation where the hero has to resolve the conflict or be destroyed – whatever destruction means in the story. Act III is where the conflict is finally resolved. That part – the resolution of the conflict – is called the climax. Because it’s the highest point of the story. And because the hero usually goes into the climax at their lowest point, it doesn’t feel like they can win. And then they do. Hooray!

Act III then hangs out for a while, shaking hands and wishing everyone a good night. Because after the climax, there’s the falling action. Also called the denouement or the resolution or sometimes the epilogue. It shows everything going back to normal. Sort of. Because the hero is usually different after the story ends. And, as a result, even if the world goes back to normal, the hero is in a better place than they started. Even if that better place is just appreciating the normalcy of their life. That, by the way, is called a character arc.

And that’s a three-act story. Act I begins with exposition, provides an inciting incident, and then a turning point occurs wherein the hero resolves to act. Act II begins with the hero taking actions and working to confront the conflict, and then a turning point occurs wherein the hero seems unlikely to win. Act III begins with the hero confronting the conflict head-on, a turning point occurs when the hero pulls victory out, and then we see how the story has changed the hero as the world returns to normal. More or less.

Admittedly, there are GREAT lessons for designing a D&D adventure in that structure. But it’s important to understand some stuff about RPGs to see where things are different. First of all, Act I is usually very short. And most of it is assumed. The players know the heroes and know the world. And, honestly, if they don’t – because it’s the first adventure of a new campaign – well, Act I includes creating the characters, reading the lore about the world, and introducing the characters. And that’s often done outside of the game. So, Act I usually skips to the incitement and turning point. The heroes are introduced to the conflict – which is usually presented as a goal – and they decide to do it. And that’s it for Act I.

Honestly, that’s okay. Act I can be assumed. In fact, there’s a term for stories that skip Act I. It’s called in medias res. It’s Latin for “in the middle of things.” It means the story starts in Act II. But that doesn’t mean it leaves out Act I completely. Usually, the exposition that comes along with Act I gets worked into the story. In RPGs, that exposition might take the form of the GM offering a quick bit of narration like “you were hired to protect the king’s tax collectors as they traveled the road through the forest of the violently libertarian bandits, and now you find yourselves in the middle of an ambush. What do you do?”

Where GMs who like the three-act structure screw up a lot is in thinking that any “three-part” story is a “three-act” story and try to break down their adventure or dungeon into three parts. Truth is, Act I and Act III are usually bookends for the adventure. Except for the climax. The climax happens in the adventure itself. But the incitement and the first turning point? Those happen in one quick scene at the beginning of the adventure. Unless your players are the sorts of players who love dicking around in town for an hour before the adventure starts. And the resolution usually gets ignored in favor of “good job, guys, now level up your characters and spend your treasure. See you next week.”

The truth is that the three-act structure doesn’t QUITE fit into table-top role-playing games. In broad strokes it does, but in broad strokes, it also doesn’t give you anything useful. All it says is: before you adventure, tell the heroes the quest and then, after the climax, tell the heroes how things worked out. Well, no f$%&ing s$&%! You can’t use a three-act structure to write an adventure because the most complicated part of the adventure – the only part that needs writing – is Act II. And, for larger, more complicated adventures, you may WANT to have the adventure part split up into several parts.

So, good lessons: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, resolution. Bad lessons: everything else. We’ll give the three-act structure a C+.

The Five-Room Dungeon

The five-room dungeon is, like I said, the “free verse” of narrative structure. It doesn’t have to be a dungeon, by the way. As many have figured out. But it works best as a dungeon. It was invented ten years ago by a guy named JohnnFour over at a blog called Strolen’s Citadel. You can read the original post here.

This thing enjoyed a whirlwind of popularity a few years ago. It became a popular counterpoint to Wizards of the Coast’s “delve format” for D&D 4E dungeon adventures. And a lot of other bloggers wrote about using the same structure for all sorts of different things. There were enough posts about it that people are still discovering it to this day. And thinking it’s a brilliant idea. And wondering if they can’t just use it to structure all adventure narratives.

And that’s the problem. The original post was a very clever idea. But it was developed by a guy who admitted that he found dungeon adventures dull and didn’t like to plan too much for his adventures. So, he developed a simple, plug-and-play format so he could quickly spit out a dungeon that would take one or two sessions of play and wouldn’t focus too heavily on combat. And, with those goals in mind, it works really well. The problem is, it’s not a narrative structure for adventures, and it was never meant to be.

Here are the basics though. Your adventure – your dungeon – has five distinct scenes – rooms – in it. The first one is the Guarded Entrance. JohnnFour says you use this room to establish the mood and theme of your dungeon. The guardian – be it a trap, a monster, a riddle, whatever – establishes why no one has plundered the dungeon before and also says something about the people who created the dungeon. Thus, it serves as a sort of hook.

The second room is the Puzzling or Role-playing Room. Basically, it’s a foil to the first room. Given most guardians are combat-oriented, originally, this room was meant to contain a riddle, puzzle, or social interaction. Basically, a change of pace. But if the guardian at the entrance was a puzzle or riddle or whatever, this room should provide a fight. Basically, the room is there to change it up, so your dungeon isn’t just combat. Or just not combat.

Room three builds tension by creating a setback or tricking the players. It’s supposed to burn off the players resources and put them in a difficult position in anticipation of the next room. A hostage might betray the party and attack them, the heroes might have to use a lot of spell resources to deal with a particular monster, the heroes might have to deal with a moral dilemma that involves sacrificing something of value, whatever.

The next room is the climax. It’s the boss fight, the big conflict, whatever. Ideally, it plays off of whatever happened in room three. So, if room three required a lot of magical resources to get through, room four should contain a monster whose primary weakness is spells. S$&% like that. I don’t have to explain the climax again. It’s a climax.

And room five is the final reward or revelation. Or it contains a plot-twist that will lead the heroes into further adventures.

Interestingly enough, you can see where JohnnFour is coming from. Room three, four, and five are all about the reversal, the climax, and the denouement. Using room one to establish the theme before and using the guardian to tell the story of the dungeon sort of resembles exposition. If you squint. So, you can see why people mistake this for a narrative structure. The thing is, it’s not. And you can see why if you use the three-act framework.

Act I is missing. There’s no incitement in this structure. And thus, the heroes don’t resolve to deal with the conflict. That’s fine, you say. It starts in medias res. Except it never gets back to Act I. The backstory of the dungeon is NOT a proper Act I. It doesn’t convey why the heroes have come here and what conflict they are trying to resolve. Now, again, JohnnFour never called this a narrative structure. He assumed you’d know you were just building an Act II out of this. Likewise, room five isn’t really a denouement. It’s falling action, sure. But the story has to end with the heroes returning to the world and seeing how their actions have changed it or restored it or changed themselves or whatever.

Beyond that, though, the whole thing is stilted. Three of the five scenes in the game are about setting up the final climax, resolving the climax, and then the falling action. 60% of the game is Act III. That just doesn’t work. Not for a narrative. But, for a dungeon adventure that is PART of a narrative, sure, it works fine.

Good lessons here are, well, change up the pace by switching up encounter types. And, if it’s possible, it’s always better to go into the climax with weak heroes than strong heroes. Bad lessons here are: this isn’t really a narrative structure. But that’s not JohnnFour’s fault. It’s a lot of other people misreading and misusing his work.

The Hero of a Thousand E-Mails

And now we get to the college level narrative structure. Joseph Campbell and his f$&% hero of a f$&%ing thousand f$&%ing faces. And if I seem perturbed, it’s because I’m sick to death of Campbell. I’ve been hearing about him for the ten years I’ve been running this website. It. Never. F$&%ing. Ends. I get an e-mail every f$&%ing week about Joseph Campbell, the Hero’s Journey, and how to use that as the structure for every RPG campaign and adventure and story and everything. Please stop. I’m begging you.

First, let’s do the expository bit. Once upon a time, there was this guy named Joseph Campbell who called himself a mythologist. Which is bulls$%&. But he was able to make good money with that fake job description, so good for him. And as he was analyzing ancient myths from all over the world and also ancient and contemporary literature and even pop culture like movies, he noticed that the most enduring stories followed a similar pattern. Which, of course, isn’t a surprise to you. Because I told you that’s how brains work. I have to concede, though, that he beat me to it. Because, in 1949, he published The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which explained the structure of the monomyth: THE ONE MYTH TO RULE THEM ALL. Yeah, I s$&% you not. That was his point.

He – and the foundation that kept writing on his behalf after his death – published several versions of the book, fitting more and more stories to the monomyth structure. Meanwhile, every college-level humanities professor made their students read the book so they could explain every f$&%ing story ever written under this singular framework, and I have not stopped getting e-mails about it ever since.

Basically, the monomyth follows the journey of the protagonist through a conflict or story. And that story invariably involves certain stages of action. Certain phases. Now, the structure has been analyzed and rewritten so many times that there are a thousand versions of this “hero’s journey,” so I’m just going to rush through one of the most common takes.

The story begins with the hero in the ordinary world. Something happens to call the hero to adventure. The hero refuses the call to adventure. But then something happens that causes the hero to accept the call after all. The hero sets out into the unknown. The hero meets allies, helpers, tricksters, and obstacles, and along the way receives supernatural aid. After many tests, the hero undergoes a supreme ordeal. After emerging victorious, the hero receives his reward and journeys home to the ordinary world. However, the hero has been changed by his adventure and its rewards and thus has become the master of his world.

That’s the hero’s journey in a very brief nutshell. And I don’t have to give examples because every story is an example. And man, do GMs ever go nuts for this. It’s like a f$&%ing revelation. The coming of the savior. But I look at it, and I say “what the hell is the matter with you people? Have you gone crazy? This is just the three-act structure all over again!”

The hero starts in the ordinary world. Something happens to call the hero to action. The reluctant hero is forced to accept the call. That’s exposition, excitement, and turning point. Act one done.

Entering the unknown? Allies and helpers and tricksters and obstacles? Supernatural aid? Yeah, that’s all called THE ACTUAL STORY PART OF THE STORY. AKA: Act II.

Supreme ordeal? Then rewards and returning home a changed person? Act III.

I am not at all discounting the work of Joseph Campbell. And his deep analysis of mythology and pop stories and why all of those things have endured and the parallels between the stories of Osiris and Jesus Christ and Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter – okay, not just HIS analysis because he died before Harry Potter died for our sins – his deep analysis of this stuff is fascinating and provides an important framework for understanding why some stories engage us and why others are garbage. Something that the folks at Disney and Lucasfilm should maybe look into.

Anyway…

The point is, though, that it’s isn’t revelatory these days. Campbell laid the groundwork for the literary analysis that you learned in high school. But, more importantly, he wasn’t talking about how to write a good story. He was talking about how lots of good stories that are written well end up looking the same. And, while I agree that a GM does need a sense of narrative structure to run a good game, trying to conform too hard to an exact structure is sort of missing the point. Campbell’s point was that a good storyteller has this structure ingrained in them and lets it out. Not that a good storyteller checks off the boxes. “Okay, guys, now having secured the help of the supernatural aid, you need to deal with a trickster. So, Loki shows up just as Gandalf wanders off to handle his own business.”

Most of what Campbell identified just doesn’t fly in a TTRPG anyway. I mean, seriously, do you really need a scene at the start of every adventure where a character refuses to take on the adventure? Because I played with that guy in high school. He was an a$&hole. We hated him. And we hated wasting time talking him into every adventure every f&$%ing week.

So, good lessons from Campbell? Well, the three-act structure is a good start, but the devil is in the details. The bad lessons? Every story must have things like refusing the call and supernatural aid in the proper order like a checklist. But that’s not his fault. He never said that. GMs just read that.

A Good Narrative Structure for Every RPG Ever?

Okay, so these three structures all provide some pieces of a good narrative structure for an RPG adventure. Or plot arc. Or adventure path. Or campaign. But they also have some funny, fuzzy bits that just don’t fit anywhere. Are we stuck, then, just chopping pieces off and trying to cram the rest of the square pieces of the structure into the round holes of RPGs? Is there a single, good formula for a narrative structure for RPG adventures and campaigns? One with some general narrative elements that should always be included? Is there, in short, a simple checklist that will allow us to build good RPG stories without having to read f$&%ing Campbell?

Well, I think there is a happy ending to this story. I think there is a way to pull a guide to structuring RPG narratives out of everything we’ve discussed. But, like so many RPG stories, the happy ending is going to be on the other side of a cliffhanger. Because we’ve run out of time for this session.