Every week before our Saturday night Stargate SG-4 game, my group eats dinner while watching Battlestar Galactica. Lately we’ve mostly been making fun of it, although up until midway through the second season it was un-freaking-believably good.
Dwindling quality notwithstanding, there’s one element of the show that we always get a chuckle out of. In BSG, the corners of every square or rectangular 2-D object are cut off — sheets of paper, viewscreens, clipboards, you name it.
Older stuff (pre War on Corners, presumably) has corners, but apart from that this relatively minor detail is everywhere on BSG. And as funny as this can sometimes be, it’s a great device for subtly encouraging immersion.
As I see it, there are two upsides and one downside to using a device like this in your game. All of them stem from the fact that cut-off corners in BSG are small, unimportant and omnipresent.
The first upside is that every time you see something with the corners cut off, it reminds you that you’re watching BSG. That might sound funny, but it goes a surprisingly long way towards immersing you in the BSG universe — and for most RPGs, that’s an excellent goal.
The second positive is that because it’s small and irrelevant to the actual story, it does its job as a reinforcing/immersion device without being too distracting. If everyone were painted blue, for example — even if nothing else about the show were changed — that would be so jarring as to have the opposite effect.
The downside, at least for my group, is that there’s something about this device that we find kind of funny. Of the four of us, only one person is really bothered by it. The rest of us get a giggle out of it too, though — and in those moments we’re less immersed in the BSG world.
I’m not sure where the balance is, but this seems like a good lesson using small details in the game world to foster immersion. It’s a great trick, but even when you’re being careful not to take it too far, it can still backfire.
Little things make the world. The battlestar CCG cards are octagonal as well. I got a free card at origins, and that made me chuckle every time I thought about it.
Stuff like that does tend to stick out. In my old DND game the healing potions were always blue-green, everyone knew and scrambled to pick up every blue green liquid they could find. Maybe it’s the design of coins, maybe it’s the color of weapons grade metal, or the way that all houses are built. Things like that give a world depth which can be ignored or not. However, once a unique element like that is introduced a cemented into a mind, that person will never forget it and put that detail in every time.
Being a GM is kind of like playing with legos. You really aren’t building a story. You’re taking some building blocks and trying to put them into your players hands to get them to build the story. They build it together, they build it separately, they don’t build it in the way you thought they would, but it all revolves around how good you are at getting them to use the blocks you give them.
Making fun? Dwindling quality. Your whole group is on drugs.
dwindling… huh?
I like these kinds of techniques myslef. Like how there is always something red on the screen right before a ghost appears in the “The Sixth Sense”. Sure, it really isn’t used for the same purpose but my point is that repetition can cause people to fall deeper into the story. Sometimes it is part of the setting like the BSG corners, and sometimes it is a telegraphing event like the use of the color red in the 6th sense.
And as John said it can get the players to start developing habits. Now what would happen if one of those blue-green liquids was a poison, or maybe just soapy water? That would be one heck of a surprise to encounter int he middle of combat if a player didn’t check the potion out first somehow.
These sorts of techniques are much more entertaining in my opinion. I’d rather the world have more of these sorts of quirky details than a long back story any day of the week.
John and VV, thanks for the feedback — your examples are excellent. 🙂
I don’t usually veer too far into tangent territory in the comments, but I called out BSG and I think I need to account for why. Patrick, who comments here, emailed me to ask why I felt BSG was on the downslide. Rather than re-summarize, here’s my response verbatim (minus one typo I corrected) for the curious. 😉
“Good question. Stand back, you hit a vein. 😉
My group has talked a lot about this, and we’ve decided that what bothers us about the show since midway through season 2 is the fact that it now feels like everything else on TV.
Before that point (more on the specific point later), it was sublime: Fantastic premise, great characters, constant surprises and best of all, the never-ending set-the-pot-to-boil pressure in every episode.
It was relentless and brilliant, and the sci-fi aspect — while superb — was almost ancillary to all the drama (I mean that in a positive way).
Around the season 2 midpoint, though, it’s like they brought on a bunch of tired TV hacks and had them start writing the show. There were three clumsily executed flashback episodes in a row, with no real reason for the flashbacks. There was even one with a flashback within the flashback. And all the “drama” of the flashbacks led to what? Lee and Starbuck acting completely the opposite of how they’d acted up until that point, with no believable reason of transition.
It peaked with “Black Market,” which was just pure shit. It could have happened at any point in any season, it added nothing to the show, a major character died in a very stereotypical (and stupid way) — I could go on. 😉
For us, it’s made worse by the fact that our least favorite episodes have always been the ones on old Caprica. They were good, but paled in comparison to the ones that featured what, for me, the show should be about: the fleet, the pursuit, finding Earth, learning about the Cylons and — most importantly, high-pressure character drama with meaningful development.
So now we have New Caprica, which has been unremittingly terrible before — it combines the ho-hum factor of the old Caprica episodes (some of them, at least) with the trite standard-TV shlock of the latter half of season 2.”
Interesting perspective on BSG. Definitely don’t agree, but interesting.
I actually really appreciated the fact that they weren’t afraid to take the show in a different direction. You can’t expect the entire surviving human race to put up with staying on a ship forever. It made pretty good sense to me.
Dude.
Totally. On. Drugs.
The fact that they were willing to do the New Caprica thing is one of the reasons I am BSG’s bitch.
Anyway… sorry for the tangent.
What niggles at me is that New Caprica, at the most macro level, is very logical. Faced with a habitable world after months on cramped ships fleeing from Cylons, 90% of humanity would jump at that chance.
How they’re handling it (we call it “New Capricastan” — how many similarities to the war on terror can they throw in?), and how they led up to it, though — those really rankle.
I welcome different perspectives, and no worries on the tangent. I like chatting about sci-fi. 😉
I’d post a reply highlighting everything I like about BSG, particularly the last 5 episodes, but the show is on in an hour and I wouldn’t have the time. 😉
Post it when you get back — no spoilers, though. I’ll be watching tonight’s episode tomorrow. 😉
I think the hard part in bringing this over to RPGs is that you mention much less than a camera shows. While it’s easy to include extra little bits to enhance mood in a wide shot, what’s mentioned by a GM often takes on more meaning.
It’d be a little strange, playing the Battlestar Galactica RPG, to have the GM remind us that the corners are all missing. Yeah, we know– why does he keep mentioning it? I mean, his description of the cell door is less detailed than the paper description– it must be a clue! (Long chase of the red herring follows…)
That’s one reason why I think GMs should focus on describing plenty of stuff in detail. Mentioning the corners once or twice a session should do the trick, and if other things are covered in similar detail it wouldn’t stand out as being a clue/red herring.
exodus II? holy frack.
as an aside, the story behind the octaganal paper is SciFi told the BSG crew they were going over budget and they had to cut a few corners and of course they obliged
“Exodus II” merits a holy frack for sure. I felt like the series was back on track, and that one rocked from start to finish. 😀
somniturne: Cute! Where did you learn about that? (Great artwork, BTW.)
First off: I think sci-fi fans are far too cynical. Not just you, Martin, but pretty much every science fiction geek out there. They are far pickier about quality and continuity than any other genre’s fans, it seems. But I digress….
I think the trick to including these truly little details is to NOT be describing them all the time, or even part of the time. Once or twice mentioning that the paper has no corners is still too often, for my taste. You’d have to have some kind of contrived reason to mention it, and I can’t see it flowing with the story, dialogue, description, whatever.
Instead of describing them, make sure you include this things in visual aids. If all the paper in the verse have no corners, cut off the corners of all the character sheets, note paper, and any other item that might realistically have the corners chopped off.
If all your people’s buildings and rooms are circular, don’t mention that fact, outside of maybe the first game, just draw all the building and room maps circular. Plus, you can use a square building for “pay attention” type affect.
I think what makes the cornerless paper in BSG work effectively is that no one ever makes note of the fact that paper has no corners. If you want to use such details in a game, make sure you pick details that can be obvious without ever having to be commented on.
StingRay: On your tangent, I’m not sure I agree. For every cynical, nitpicky sci-fi fan (which I can certainly be), I’ve seen a fan who laps at the teat no matter what comes out (which I also can be 😉 — I own Waterworld…).
Your point about quiet reinforcement is excellent. Really, really excellent. That sounds like it would work beautifully — especially if the players mentioned it before you had to, because they’d absorbed it.