Tag: Magic: The Gathering

Your Hero Doesn’t Have to be the Hero!

Quan

The vast majority of stories are told from the perspective of the altruistic (even if flawed) hero facing the odds to accomplish whatever goal he or she has n mind. They may stumble and fall, but it is clear that particular lead character is the one you as a reader should be rooting for to solve their problem and succeed. This is a tried and true method of storytelling, and it obviously works. Having a likable, relatable character makes it easier for readers to get invested in the story because they genuinely want to see if their protagonist can overcome the obstacles put in their way. Even tragic heroes that are doomed to fail have some redeeming qualities that readers can get behind.

But what if I told you there was another viable way to approach the story? What if you told the story with the villain as a protagonist? Or with a companion to the actual hero as the protagonist? These are storytelling approaches that have also been done, and done well. Ahab was the hero of Moby Dick, but the story was told through the eyes of his first mate Ishmael. The legendary exploits of Sherlock Holmes were told trough the eyes of his trusty sidekick Watson. And L. Ron Hubbard’s epic sci-fi saga Mission Earth was told almost entirely with the central villain of the story, Soltan Gris, as the point-of-view protagonist. It can be done.

Writing the story from a different perspective allows you to add new nuances to our story. Watching the story through only the hero’s eyes can be like watching with blinders, and you don’t really get to see what is going on beyond what the hero is paying attention to. But if you tell the story through someone else’s eyes, you can point out details about your hero, the situation and the world your characters populate that the hero will miss. A supporting character can see your hero’s more vulnerable moments, faults and foibles better than the hero, and may be in a position to comment on it. Telling the story through the antagonists eyes allows you to poke holes in the logic and idealism that drives you hero to try to complete their mission, and also might serve to humanize the villain and make him more relatable. Telling the story from the perspective of an everyman passer-by or a random person caught up in the crossfire of he story adds a different, more detached viewpoint, that can focus on the realtime consequences of the hero’s actions and how they affect everyone else that isn’t directly involved with the events transpiring. In a recent Magic: The Gathering story set on an ancient Egypt-themed world, a series of short stories were dedicated to chronicling the average people of that world caught up in the middle of an epic struggle between the heroes of the story (The Gatewatch, a collection of powerful mages dedicated to protecting the multiverse) and an army of undead warriors and evil gods led by the ancient elder dragon Nicol Bolas. By reading the events of the story through their eyes, you can get a very real and relatable sense of the stakes of this battle and how it really affects the world the battle is taking place on.

The first thing you want to do is take a look at the basic framework of or story and ask yourself who is involved in it. Obviously your typical protagonist will be there, but usually the protagonist isn’t alone in their journey. Who else is in the story, and how can they offer a different perspective on what is happening?

Or maybe the hero’s journey isn’t the most interesting aspect of the story. Have you taken a deep dive int your villain or antagonist, and followed their story? What if that was the more fascinating tale? The protagonist of The Talented Mr. Ripley series is charismatic, likable and relatable. He is also a liar, manipulator and cold-blooded murderer who will doublecross and destroy anybody in his way to get what he wants. And for many of his books, there is nobody else hat can match how despicable he is to make him come of as more sympathetic or heroic. He is no antihero. He is clearly the villain of his own story, but what he does and how he does is is an engaging read because readers are actively wondering if he is going to actually get away with everything he is doing, and who – if anyone – will be the one to finally stop him. That is a formula that can work for you, if handled properly. There is a reason why iconic villains like Darth Vader, The Joker, Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom often get to be the protagonists of comic books. Even the villain is a hero in his own mind.

I am currently working on a series of fantasy stories where the actual hero of the entire saga only makes brief cameo appearances, and the reader doesn’t realize that the protagonists I’ve been telling the story though aren’t the real heroes of the story until the very end. Unreliable narrators make for very engaging protagonists. You can really play with tat, and mess with reader expectations, by portraying a less-than-noble protagonist in a noble light. It can really add some depth to your story and keep the reader guessing.

So when you start writing your next story, take a look at all of the characters involved, and consider experimenting with who you tell the story through. You might get a more engaging story by telling it through someone else’s eyes and voice.

Putting Your Spin on an Established Story Type

Quan

How often have you read a book, watched a movie or played a video game and thought to yourself “You know, if I had written this, I’d have the story go another way”? I go through that a lot. Most stories follow well-established sets of tropes and conventions. But what makes a story idea “new” or “fresh” is the unique twists and changes they put on a story to make it different from what has come before. There are different ways you can do this, and each way creates fertile ground for new, groundbreaking story ideas that you can tap into.

Inverting Expectations

One of my favorite movies is the Drew Barrymore film “Ever After.” it follows a popular trend in movies where they take classic story and retell it with more modern sensibilities and attitudes. In this case it was a more assertive, independent and empowered Cinderella that didn’t need a fairy godmother or a magic pumpkin to get the attention of the prince.

It has been done countless times in comic books, like in DC Comics’ “Tales from the Dark Multiverse,” where things go horribly wrong during iconic events in the DC universe’s history, and those stories play out entirely differently from their original counterparts, with much darker outcomes.

To take this approach you can simply take a well-used story trope, study how that archetype usually progresses, and then ask yourself what would happen if you changed a few key details. There are lots of variations on the classic “hero’s journey” story type because of this. Imagine taking the story archetype used in “Dances with Wolves,” “Fern Gully” and “Avatar” and changing a key plot point so that the story goes in an entirely different direction.

Adding New Elements

The popular card game Magic: the Gathering has a history of taking popular stories and putting their spin on it. Whether it be Gothic horror with their Innistrad storyline, or Arthurian legends and Grimm Fairy tales with their Eldraine Storyline, or Japanese mythology with their Kamigawa storyline, they make a habit of taking well-known story tropes in pop culture and using them as the basis for creating something both new and familiar. You can do the same thing, by taking that story archetype, keeping the framework as-is, but adding some new elements to make the story unique. What would happen if you took that Dances with Wolves story type and added a live film crew that broadcast the whole saga like a reality show, with a live audience?

Making Fundamental Changes.

Quentin Tarantino’s film “Hateful 8” is, at its core, a chamber mystery. A bunch of unique characters are locked into a room with a mystery to solve, where possibly one of them is the culprit. It is a classic type of storytelling mastered by writers like Agatha Christie. Tarantino, however, puts two unique spins on the trope by first placing the story in the Wild West, and secondly by not having anything particularly mystery-worthy happen until more than halfway through the movie. The mystery until that point is figuring out why these disparate people were brought together in the first place.

For this approach, find a classic story archetype and try altering different aspects of it. Change the locale or the time period. Change the protagonist or the villain. And then see how those changes affect the story. We’ve seen that Dances With Wolves story in the wild west, in a Brazillian rainforest, and in outer space. What if you set the story in a circus? And had a drag queen as the protagonist instead of the typical male?

You don’t have to have a total blank slate when you are trying to come up with a new story to write. It is perfectly acceptable to take well-use story types and make changes to it to make the story your own. Give it a try and see what you come up with.

Metroid and Environmental Storytelling

Quan

While reading this excellent review of the hard to find fan-made AM2R videogame, I came across a term that intrigued me. It was a term I had seen before in Mark Rosewater’s articles about designing cards for Magic: The Gathering.  That term was “environmental storytelling” and it is what makes it possible for a game like Metroid 2: Samus Returns, that has no dialogue or cutscenes, to tell a complete narrative.  With this form of storytelling, you are using details within the setting itself to provide clues as to what is or has been happening. This is independent of any dialogue or interactions from your characters. 

For instance, in Magic: The Gathering’s “Scars of Mirrodin” storyline, the land cards  for each of the three acts in the storyarc are painted to show the once pristine environment gradually deteriorating over time as the world is infected by parasitic invaders. It is even deeper in Metroid 2, where each environment showcases how and why the ancient Chozo race created the deadly Metroid creatures before the monsters turned on their creators and destroyed them all. Everything is part of the tale, from the lack of creatures in rooms where a Metroid dwells, to the darkness and desolation of the abandoned factories, to the areas near the Metroid’s central breeding ground being completely devoid of life, to even little touches like the Chozo statue towards the end being broken with an icebeam upgrade lying at its feet to show that their advanced weapons weren’t strong enough to stop the Metroids from killing them. You can gain an understanding of what happened from paying attention to the details of the environment, without nary a word being said or any cutscene handholding you through the narrative.

I did something similar in Godmode. Elijah does a lot of exploring in that story, and each level of the building he is trapped in tells its own story as he discovers details about it. That includes exploring his old office, which was evacuated in a hurry for some reason, and coming across clues which show how hat occurred, and maybe even why. I tried to make it so Elijah and the reader are able to figure out the details, connect the dots and deduce what happened at the same time. I did cheat a bit with the triggered flashbacks, but the general gist is still there.

HOW TO INCORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL STORYTELLING INTO YOUR NARRATIVE.

So now the question becomes how can you use that in YOUR story. Here are some simple tips:

1. The Devil is in the details. The biggest need is to make sure you pay attention to the details of your environment. Everything that describes where the story is happening can offer a clue to the narrative, whether it be the sights, or sounds or even smells of the setting. A place that smells of rotting flesh will tell you something died there. A place smelling of rotting flesh and bleach will tell you that someone died there…and someone else tried to cover it up.

2. Place key artifacts in the environment. Much like setting up a mystery, you can plant clues directly into the setting that tell exactly what happened or what is going on. It could be a television, still on, showing a news reporter speaking on a related event (something movies do a lot), or a trinket from some event that happened related to that event (say your story had something to do with a circus. You can have some circus peanuts laying around in your environment to allude to that).

3. Show the environment changing over time. Perhaps every time your characters go to a certain place, the lace has subtle changes to show that something is going on. Maybe something is out of place that was in place before, or the lighting is different, or something new has been added or taken away. This can denote that something in the story itself has changed, and this can add to the impact of that change.

If you incorporate the environment into your story, you should be able to make for a fuller, more immersive experience for your reader. I advise you give it a try for your next story.

BTW, if you haven’t played Metroid 2 yet, give the game a try and pay attention to the backgrounds to see what I’m talking about…

Magic: The Gathering and the Art of World Building, Pt. 2

Quan

If you’ve read my previous post about how the card game Magic The Gathering uses its cards to build worlds, you know that I feel this could be a valuable tool to help a writer flesh out the setting of his or her story. I briefly explained how I did it, but now the question becomes “how can YOU do it?”

I have a few tips.

In MTG, the cards are elements of a world: flora and fauna, people, cultures, landmarks, important events, etc. Each card has its own mechanics that tie in not only to the game, but also to the element represented. For instance, if I were to make a card for one of my characters from my new manuscript Return of the Tyrant – an elf that is the last surviving elf in his world because he killed every other elf, it would be a creature card that destroyed every other elf in play and prohibited anyone from bringing any more elves out until that elf was destroyed. Now the card itself tells the elf’s story whenever you play it. To the makers of MTG, this is called “flavor.”
Each piece of flavor you add to a given element, whether it be a picture depicting the element, or some text explaining the element, or built into how the card works, deepens the story of the element and adds new dimension to your world.

Magic: The Gathering’s Color Pie

MTG’s foundation is a color-based system that defines every aspect of the game. there are five colors, each with its own personality and methodology, and that is the lens through which every aspect of the game is focused. (broadly: red=freedom and emotion, white=order and selflessness, black=selfishness and pragmatism, green=nature and balance, blue=intellect and invention) Each culture, creature, event and landmark is seen through the view of what color ethos it most closely represents. This actually makes defining the core aspects of worldbuilding elements easier because it gives you a base to develop around. If you have a culture of stoic warriors, you might want to lean them in the direction of a red-white combination, if you want some mad scientists, you make them red and blue or green and blue, and a mafia-like organization would be white and black. A cold, calculating manipulator could be blue-black, while a classic good guy could be monowhite.

Using a Game to Discover Your Story’s Theme

By using a game to develop your world, you can also detect broad thematic elements that can help you develop your story. Every world in Magic the Gathering has an overall theme, whether it be the adventure world aspect of Zendikar to the History-reverent world of Dominaria. once you discover the themes behind your world, you can use that as an aspect of your story. for Return of the Tyrant, the theme of extinction and lost civilization became prevalent as I was developing the cards in my game.

I’ve discovered two approaches to this method that work well. The first is what I call a Tourist mentality. You are a visitor to your world, and you are merely recording the stuff you observe as you travel through it. This is good for coming up with the people, animals, vegetation, landmarks, etc. that make up your world. The second is what I call the Historian’s mentality. Your job is to archive and describe in brief the histories and cultures that shape your world. This is how events, backstories and traditions get created…and often are good incubators for spinoff and follow-up stories.

Now, you don’t have to use MTG exclusively to do this. Any game can be used this way. even such classics as Monopoly and Chess. Or better yet, you can try your hand at inventing your own tie-in game. This would be a good idea because you now have a ready-made merchandise item once your book gets published.

Magic: The Gathering and the Art of World Building

Quan

If you’ve never played the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering, then this blog entry might sound like gibberish to you. Magic: The Gathering is a quasi-role playing card game where you and your opponent play as dueling wizards, with the cards representing the spells you fling at one another. But that’s just the broad explanation of the game.

The story behind it is that each player is a powerful mage with the ability to travel to different worlds, each with its own culture and identity, and the spells are things the player has learned or picked up from observing life on that world. There have been alien worlds made entirely of metal, Scandanavian/Norse themed worlds encased in ice and snow, Japanese-themed worlds full of Spirits, samurai and ninjas, Greek mythology-themed worlds, classic horror-themed worlds, and even a Mongolian-styled world where everyone is at war all of the time. Fascinating stuff.

Of course, now the question is “what the heck does all of this have to do with writing a story?”

The answer? “Everything.”

The thing that sets MTG apart from every other board/card game is the extensive amount of worldbuilding that goes into every set of cards. Through the cards, as well as the tie in e-books, website articles and videogames, you get immersed in a given world that has its own ecosystem, its own bestiary, its own heroes and legends, and its own struggle. And if you’re a story buff, it’s easy to get drawn in and really feel like you are a part of this world.

That is the feeling every writer of fiction should strive for in his or her stories. You want your settings to be living, breathing extensions of your story because it adds more weight and believability to your characters. In fact, some of the greatest stories in fantasy and science fiction were just about the central character exploring his or her world, with hijinks ensuing. (Pratchett’s The Color of Magic and Asimov’s Prelude To Foundation come to mind).  This is where the whole “City is a character” motif comes from, and BTW my buddy Anne Mallory does an excellent job of it in her steamy historical romances.

I thought I’d take a novel approach to said worldbuilding utilizing my passion for MTG. As an excersize for a competition to get a design internship at Wizards of the Coast (makers of Dungeons and Dragons, Duel Masters, and you guessed it, Magic The Gathering), I was given the task of creating an entire set of Magic The Gathering cards, along with the world those cards were set in. there were specific problems I had to solve to flesh out my world, which really stretched my creative muscles. So for this exercise, I decided to use a world I had been planning on telling a high fantasy epic on: a world so ravaged by constant wars, cataclysms and tragedy that it had collectively given up its will to live. (This is actually the world my book “Return of the Tyrant” Is based in). The themes were failure, despair and extinction, with a ragtag band of heroes and former villains fighting to give their world a reason to live, against a mammoth monstrosity poised to destroy them all…and the people actually welcoming the annihilation.

Through this exercise I was able to really flesh out my world and give it its identity, to add layers of myth and lore and create backstories I could explore endlessly if I so chose. I created unique creatures and events specific to my world, and new mysteries, like why the Goblins, Elves, and Merfolk that are fantasy staples are only found via ancient ruins in my world.

I didn’t win the contest (made it to the second round though). But I enjoyed the exercise so much I continued developing my set of Magic cards long after the contest ended, adding new wrinkles and twists. I used as a guide some of the articles written by MTG head of R&D Mark Rosewater which cover the process of designing a set of cards (fascinating stuff. You can read the articles here). As a result, I have a nice toybox to play in for follow-up books and spinoffs to “Return of the Tyrant”.

I also plan on using this technique for an old story idea I was working on in college with a few buddies of mine. We were looking at doing an epic high fantasy adventure set in a world similar to feudal China, and loosely based on the legends of Shaolin and Wu-Tang (and yes, inspired by the rap group). But if I’m going to effectively tell this story, I need to create a believable world.

See where I’m going with this?

Whether I actually start writing the story or not, I think it would be an interesting exercise to see if I can build this world the same way I build the other one. I wouldn’t involve any big creatures, but it would be nice to know if there are any in this world. Also, I’d have to do some more research into feudal China and Shaolin mythology to make sure stuff was reasonably accurate – it doesn’t have to be an exact match to the stuff you see in kung-fu movies, but it has to be close enough for you to recognize the source material. Also there’s the little issue of writing believable kung-fu action when kung-fu works best as a visual. I think that’s the biggest hurdle. But hey, I was able to effectively write video game action, so I think it’s a challenge worth undertaking.

In any case, if you are having any struggles with worldbuilding, I strongly recommend giving this a try. And while you’re at it, give the game itself a try. MTG has been my hobby for over 20 years, and I think you’ll like it too.