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We’ll examine the field’s traditional approach to narrative and the historical reasons for it. Then we’ll explore the central thesis of the book, the role of narrative technique in continually modulating audience emotional responses between hope and fear. From there I’ll review the basic beat types, and then talk about ways to understand existing narratives using beat analysis, and how to use the HHP toolkit to sharpen your games, as GM or player. Once we’ve covered that, I’ll throw to questions and discussion. In the unlikely event that a roomful of gamers runs out of stuff to talk about, I have an interactive/improv exercise in my back pocket as a live illustration of beat analysis in action.

I understand that plans are afoot to record audio of the event. If the tech gremlins so will it, I hope that we’ll be able to make that available later for those unable to attend.

The seminar takes place in the Marriott seminar area (check on-site signage for room assignment) on Friday, from 10 am to 11 am.

The goals pursued by dramatic characters are emotional in nature and lack concrete end points.

In many cases, they’re also split. The character pursues one conscious goal, but the audience fears its accomplishment. Instead the audience hopes for a shift in understanding that will bring the protagonist true success or happiness—or at least stave off disaster. This pattern holds in stories featuring troubled, wounded, or self-destructive protagonists. They either spiral into a climactic, cathartic disaster, or undergo a final epiphany that changes their goal to the ones we in the audience have been rooting for all along. The cathartic disaster may bring anagnorisis, an epiphany that comes too late to change anything. In certain ironic endings, the hero succeeds at the goal we wanted him to fail at, and learns nothing. In the case of an anti-hero, we may ambivalently follow the action as we hope for the protagonist’s destruction, and the restoration of order it will bring.

Examples:

Spiral into disaster: Othello
Final epiphany: A Christmas Carol
Anagnorisis: Oedipus Rex
Ironic anti-anagnorisis: Taxi Driver

Because roleplayers experience plot events as simultaneously creators and audience, that sort of split between character intention and audience desire is hard to maintain. We may see it surface in a few odd cases. The PC may freak out and attack his fellow party members, because it seems emotionally logical to play it that way, even though the player wants the others to subdue him before he kills someone.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the film. On this viewing I was surprised by how quickly the Bogie and Hepburn characters get together. In my misremembered version they didn’t fully get together until they succeed at their task at the end.

In beat analysis terms, The African Queen includes a dramatic thread, the romance between the leads, but is largely procedural. The protagonist, Rose, single-mindedly pursues the goal of blowing up the German boat, falling in love with Charlie Allnut along the way.

The complications are those of an arduous journey: getting lost in reeds, going over rapids, dealing with leeches, getting shot at. Like most arduous journeys the adversities of the road (or in this case, river), underline the emotional bond between the journeyers and add definition to their relationship. See also: Lord of the Rings.

This raises the question of how arduous journeys in RPGs might carry the emotional resonance of their fictional counterparts.

For many years I’ve diagrammed out long fiction projects in what is essentially a computerized version of the index card method employed by screenwriters. In the no-tech version of the technique, you write each story beat on an index card, then arrange and rearrange them on a cork board. I’ve found it easier to make virtual index cards and move them around a large graphics file. Campaign Cartographer, with its ability to accommodate a constantly shifting shape and easy manipulation of separate elements, has always been my weapon of choice for this task.

I’m now working on a novel outline and for the first time am incorporating the beat analysis notation into my process from the get-go. Like the old method, this allows me to move story events around as I nail down the various set-ups and payoffs. Unlike the old method, its concentration on rhythms allows me to spot patches where the same emotional note is being hit too many times in a row. When going from outline to prose, I sometimes find myself faced with awkward transitions between scenes. In theory, diagramming in beat format should also help me eliminate these difficult jumps.

This is work in progress on an unannounced project. To obscure the actual content, I’ve saved the diagram in a small size. The image should nonetheless provide a glimpse of the process. The horizontal line near the top comprises the storyline as organized so far, with its up and down moments, just like any other beat analysis. Although I’ve used a few of the beat-based icons you’ve seen so far (particularly information beats, denoting pipe, questions and reveals), I’m mostly using icons of the various lead characters. These ensure that no one disappears from the story for too long, while also providing a handy visual identifier of the scene content.

The vertical columns in the diagram’s southeast corner are various plot threads, in ascending chronological order, which I’ve yet to integrate into the main storyline. As I continue the horizontal line, I’ll move these beats over into it.

An interesting question I haven’t looked at in great detail yet is the curve of the horror story.

My guess is that many of them still vary the up and down beats as the tension arising from the threat facing the protagonists is built up and then released. Alien certainly works this way, giving Ripley a series of small victories as the creature chews through the rest of the crew and finally comes to her.

The underrated recent horror flick The Ruins plays it another way. Once the first world hubris of its pretty young protagonists leads to their entrapment in a site of ancient menace, they never catch a break. There are momentary respites, but no victories. If you were to map out its beat structure, you’d see downward arrows mixed with lateral ones. I admired its commitment to the slow, grinding destruction of its main cast, but wonder if the refusal to provide contrasting upbeats has withheld from it the popularity it deserves.

Not having mapped The Ruins I reckon that any given section of it, once the characters get to the pyramid, looks something like this:

An anticipation beat might merely be an outcome that grants a huge bonus on an action to come. (In HeroQuest terms, a +W or +9 augment. You can fill in the blanks for your system of choice.) This is what we’re seeing, I submit, when the blast doors groan up to reveal Ripley in the power loader. She’s not guaranteed victory—in fact, she’ll undergo many up or down beats before finally defeating the alien queen—but she’s now scored a big advantage, one her enemy has reason to fear.

Or it might be the assured victory that the poor sap bad guy doesn’t see coming. This is your classic “don’t piss off Clint” scene, or Popeye eating his spinach. Here you tell the player right off that he can take whoever he’s thinking of opening the whup-ass canister upon. This is the smirk you see on Connery/Bond’s face as he anticipates what he’s going to do to the fake chauffeur. Depending on the game system, it might be more satisfying to use the rules, albeit with a ridiculous advantage for the player. Or it might be liberating, especially in a crunchy system where you have to make a bunch of rolls to dispatch the lowliest opponent, to skip the mechanics altogether. Instead you’d invite the player to narrate their success in colorful terms.

In either case, an anticipation beat truly shines when the player has an emotional reason to want to see the opponent crushed. It might be a nasty boss enemy you’ve learned to hate and fear, as in the alien queen case. Or it’s the unknowing punk you’ve made a point of depicting as annoying, arrogant, and in need of a lesson in Eastwooditude.

Given the anticipation’s strength as an upbeat, you might look for ways to slip in an anticipation beat and easy victory the next time your players are feeling frustrated or overwhelmed.

The anticipation beat heavily prefigures an eventual victory, giving us two jolts of satisfaction. We anticipate the payoff, and then get it—often with a series of other beats in between.

In the movie version of Dr. No, we get an anticipation beat when Bond detemines that the so-called chauffeur who approaches him at the airport is an assassin. In inimitable Connery style, a smirk of charming sadism flitters across his face. Bond knows that he’s going to get this guy, and revels in the fact. By association, we revel in it too.

Another classic anticipation moment occurs in Aliens when the heavy steel doors fly up to show Ripley in the loader, ready to do battle with the alien queen.

Series characters may enact their anticipation beats in a ritualistic way that gains power through repetition. The Thing yells “It’s Clobberin’ Time!” See also: not liking Bruce Banner when he gets mad.