I started roleplaying in the 1980s, went into a deep freeze in the late 1990s and didn’t come out until about a decade ago. “Scenes” were one of the new things indie games brought to TTRPGs, and I still find them tricky.
It doesn’t help that many RPGs don’t explain scenes properly. It seems like “scene” has become a specific piece of TTRPG terminology that is subtly different from its usual meaning. And everyone assumes that everyone knows what is meant when they talk about “scenes”.
As a result, it can be a bit of a muddle. This is my attempt to unravel that puzzle.
Dictionary definition
According to Google, there are two meanings to scene:
- The place where an incident in real life or fiction occurs or occurred.
- A sequence of continuous action in a play, film, opera, or book.
The first definition is straightforward, but when you start thinking about the play/film/opera/book definition, it gets a bit trickier.
Back when I helped out with the local pantomime, everyone knew what scenes were. Scene one was the big opening scene. Scene two took place in front of the “greys”, the grey curtains pulled across the stage that hid the backstage crew changing the scenery. When scene two ended, the greys opened to reveal scene three. And so on. A two-hour pantomime might have no more than nine or ten scenes.
In movies, scenes are often shorter. So rescuing Princess Leia in Star Wars becomes many scenes: the room where Luke persuades Han to rescue her, the turbolift, the detention centre, Princess Leia’s cell, and so on. Again, these are all location-based as they are different sets.
But in a roleplaying game?
Well, they vary. Some use scenes, some don’t. Some use scenes in a specific way, some use the term but don’t really define them.
Trad and other games
Broadly, in RPGs, trad games don’t use scenes. They might mention them, but they’re using them in the sense of the first dictionary definition: they’re a place or location.
So in Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Liminal, D&D, Runequest, ALIEN, and the like, scene doesn’t have a particular meaning.
Scene-based games
Some games build scenes into their mechanics. Many of these are GM-less, and the term ‘scene’ is used when a player controls what’s happening.
(I’m sure many other games use scenes. These are the ones I am familiar with.)
GMless games
Games without a GM often use scenes as a way for each player’s character to have spotlight time. Other PCs may be in those scenes, but everyone at the table knows who the spotlight is on during the scene.
Fiasco: Each character gets four scenes where they are in the spotlight. Fiasco confuses things because players can decide whether to “establish” their scene (set it up – who is there, what’s going on) or “resolve” the scene (decide on its outcome – the other players establish the scene). Much as I enjoy Fiasco, I find this fairly counterintuitive in play – particularly when a player chooses to resolve.
Follow and Kingdom: Ben Robbins uses scenes in his games to “… shine a spotlight on your character to see what they think and do…” In both games, the player decides who is in the scene, where it takes place, and what’s going on. Then, you play to find out what happens.
Unfortunately, these games don’t clearly state the one piece of advice that I find makes a scene really sing: to know what your character wants from the scene. (They may not get it, of course.)
GM-ed games
Hillfolk and Good Society both use scenes.
Hillfolk has a strict player turn order. When it’s your turn, you create a scene involving your character. You establish it as with other games (where, when, who and so on) – and if it’s a dramatic scene, you decide on the emotional reward you want from another character.
(Hillfolk also has other types of scenes, but dramatic scenes are the main ones.)
Good Society uses scenes for roleplaying, but fails to explain clearly what they are or how to manage them. As a result, scenes felt directionless and saggy and dragged on too long. I talked about this when I played Good Society.
Most Trusted Advisors uses “scene” liberally throughout the text, but it doesn’t explain what they are. However, from my experience of running Most Trusted Advisors, I think it would benefit from more rigorous scene discipline.
Tips for scenes
So for these types of games, these are the questions that whoever is establishing the scene needs to consider:
- Where is it?
- When is it?
- Who is present?
- What is going on?
- What do I want?
And for me, the last point is the most important in helping to keep scenes punchy. If you know what you want going into a scene, it’s much clearer when the scene is over. (And I find it helps to tell the other players what you have in mind, so they can react accordingly.)
Games that get muddled
Some games use scenes liberally in their text (e.g. Blades in the Dark and Monster of the Week), but they don’t have much of a mechanical effect, so the fact that they’ve not defined what a scene is doesn’t matter too much.
Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for other games.
Fate Core defines a scene as “A scene is a unit of game time lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour or more, during which the players try to achieve a goal or otherwise accomplish something significant in a scenario.”
Scenes are important in Fate mainly because a character’s stress boxes clear after each scene. But what is a scene? That’s left to the GM, and isn’t always clear, despite the advice above. I don’t know if rescuing Princess Leia from the Death Star is one or many scenes in Fate. Is rescuing the princess enough of a goal? Or can you break it down into smaller scenes? (Such as blagging our way into the detention centre, escaping from the detention centre, and getting back to the Falcon) As far as recovering stress goes, this difference could be critical. (I might do it either way, depending on the tone of the game.)
Lady Blackbird allows characters to refresh their dice pools by having a “refreshment scene” with another character. Lady Blackbird doesn’t explicitly say what these are but suggests that they’re quiet moments with other PCs. (I really like these as a way to encourage roleplaying between characters – it’s such a lovely design.)
Going back to Star Wars, Leia’s moment with Luke aboard the Millennium Falcon just after Ben Kenobi’s death is the sort of thing I imagine when I think of a refreshment scene. (And Luke has clearly refreshed his dice pool as he mans the Falcon’s gun turret and blasts away at the incoming TIE fighters.)
And it’s not just me
And it’s not just me! This recent post on substack and this thread on RPGnet suggests others are thinking about this as well. I had already earmarked this as something I wanted to reflect on after playing and running Good Society and Most Trusted Advisors earlier in the year. These posts have, however, prompted me to finish this post.
