Another part of it is that I’d rather a “blank canvas” type of setting, one where the characters are first (or rather foremost) on the scene. There isn’t already an established story-line with well known characters there already (anywhere in the setting). The setting is free to be re-interrupted by the GM and players. Established movie/novel settings provide too much canon that can’t be changed. Players are free to avoid the character/stereotypes of the novel or TV show. Another thing about TV show and novel based RPG settings is that they are “snapshots” of the story-line. A static picture of the setting set aside to turn into an RPG. If the series is popular enough, the setting will change later in the story-line and the RPG, technically, becomes out of date (unless of course you’re using a series that has finished). And a last issue that would worry me is that players may expect very similar story-lines and atmosphere as the original novels or TV shows, but that’s generally that’s not necessarily under the control of the GM or system (it can be a combination of everything). I think the thing is, I get more excited about original or innovative settings for RPGs than already established settings getting ported to RPG land.

There was one TV show I thought about adapting myself, for the fun of it: Relic Hunter. I liked the simple premise of each episode, entertaining archetypes, the completely human characters, and that there was this second layer to the world that got exposed occasionally (the relic hunter community). I thought it might make a fun RPG. But I never pursued it.

(Call of Cthulhu though, that’s sorta an exception. It’s based on a mythos, a setting, rather than an existing story-line like Lord of the Rings.)

Of course, if I don’t know much about the original material, I’d be more open to treating the RPG as a pure blank-canvas type of game and then of course if a game has something that intrigues me I’d probably ignore the original material concessions.

Out of curiosity, does anyone else think the same or am I the only freaky one?

“Features gratuitous country & western music.”

Oh the horror!

trawl through hours of quite-good just for the big reveal at the end

(I know it’s nearly month ago, but I’m only catching up on some posts now).

Of course, she’s talking about Harry Potter, a series I’ve yet to go near. I thought I was just being peculiar in my book-buying habits but there is part of me that, in general, distrusts certain types of series. I’m not just talking about novels, but roleplaying books, TV shows and movies.

I’ve always been more engaged by a short concise format for a series then a never-ending or over-long one: a definitive beginning and a definitive end with in a short enough time frame, such as the recent The Lost Room (TV).

I tried to grasp what it was that makes me distrusts such series by performing this thought exercise and formulating it into a sort of rule or law:

The longer a series continues, the probability of disappointment reaches zero.

This is true. The longer something goes on, the greater the chance that I’ll find something I don’t like about it. Nothing’s perfect. But this isn’t what I’m after. A series can dip and come back stronger. No there is something else. So I started thinking about the various series I’ve loved and hated: The Matrix movies, all six Star Wars movies, Lost (TV), X-Files (TV), World of Darkness (RPGs), Discworld (Novels), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV) etc. All these series I eventually turned my back on them or they left a bitter taste in my mouth. They all had a certain strong addictive quality, a fanboy-ism and hype that seemed to throw me eventually off them… many were based on “the big mystery”, like Lost and X-Files. Others had a evolving and alluring mythos, such as World of Darkness and Star Wars. It might have been the tired formula and decreasing impact of the “hit” that turned me. They are like a drug where each “hit” has less and less high which has the knock-on effect of increasing the demand/addiction for more, which further gives the appearance of the series getting worse.

As a series, with a high addictive quota, continues, the apparent quality of the series will decrease.

Where “addictive quota” is generally anything fanboy-inducing, be it a rich setting, a big unanswered mystery/conspiracy, a never-reaching but alluring climax, etc. essentially a element that keeps you coming back for more, whats going to happen next, kind of thing. But this isn’t necessarily correct either. A series can maintain “apparent quality” even with a big mystery. For example the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Star Trek Next Gen. I nearly considered Farscape in that list but that got canned so perhaps the quality didn’t decrease to a level that turned me off.

Of course, what I mean by ”apparent quality” is subjective viewer experience of the series. The quality of the series could be consistent through, but from a user experince of it and the decreasing power of the hit, the subjective quality decreases. However in my experience, the quality objectively seems to suffer a bit.

Anyway lets try to rewrite the rule:

As a series, with a high addictive quota, continues with no fundamental change in premise, the apparent quality of the series will decrease.

H.P. Lovecraft didn’t write a series with the same set of characters. Each short story stood on it’s own, yet each shared a similar formula. In a similar vein, Star Trek Next Gen comprised of lots of short stories (of course nostalgia could be playing it’s part here and making me look back with rose-tinted glasses). Stargate have regularly changed the major antagonist and so by fundamentally changed their premise. However, in the case of Stargate for me, I never got into it so I would have never noticed the quality dipping.

So, the trick, it would seem, is to have a big enough dramatic change or end of story before the “apparent quality” of the series decreases. In the case of Lost it might mean actually revealing something concrete. For World of Darkness… they simply waited too long, for me as a viewer of the series, before changing their formula and ending their big-mystery-story. There is a danger that it’s only the addictive quality that has you watching and if you stop watching, the addiction fades away and the subjective lack of quality is all that is left.

Sure some people have a greater tolerance before the quality decreases which means they are more willing to wait till that big change or the end arrives. Most normal people’s tolerance is not high. My wife got bored of Lost within the first episode of the second series. It took me at least 4 episodes or so. Even when I tuned in to the finale of series two, I found, nothing seemed to have changed! I’ve heard people saying the latest season or finale is brilliant and well worth it, but my subjective view of the quality of show is so low now I can barely work up the interest to switch it on. And of course, in the case of TV, people often start watching later in the series and so their tolerance takes them further than someone who started from the beginning. I think also, as a child and teenager, my tolerance was much much higher or perhaps the impact of each hit was greater so it took longer before I noticed the series going bad.

If I had the time I’d draw a graph, where you have a viewer’s subjective quality and their level of ‘hit’ and as the level of hit dips and goes below quality, quality decreases. Once that happens, if you stop the addiction, a viewer lose interest.

All these does explain why I have developed a general distrust of majorly hyped series such as Harry Potter and why I avoid them, I think. I could be simply spouting nonsense too!

So what does this mean for a ”good” series?

Well simply, a series must change. It can’t depend on the big mystery or that one bad guy to keep it going so long. It has to regularly dramatically change. Well you can, if you get the right audience I think, but you have to be careful then.  If you fail to provide a big enough hit later, some of the audience may find themselves wondering what they thought was great about the series in the first place.

So I wonder… would the Prisoner have been a cult hit if it hadn’t been canned?

(Small side note, I don’t think this affects actual roleplaying chronicles or games. When you play an RPG, I think, the hit is so different, self-generated if you will and so it can maintain the same level as long as the players don’t get too jaded.)

And the Dresden Files TV show sucks. I haven’t read the books or played the RPG (there is one by the way, done by the same folk who did Spirit of the Century). I’ve watched the first three episodes on Sky 1. Quite simply, unoriginal and boring.

Let me go a bit about the Dresden Files for a moment…

The whimpering gay subservient ghost that hangs around the “wizard’s” apartment annoys me no end. Apparently, I’ve read on someone’s blog, is that in the books he’s a talking skull… now that would have been cool. The thing is, I can see what the original books were trying for, a kind of discworld-meets-supernatural-detective. But that doesn’t carry across to the small screen. Instead it comes off as a bad Charmed without the super-cute witches. They writers trying to “shock” the viewer with revelations but the usual audience of this kind of stuff know what to expect and the shocks are uninspired and are, well, shit. Then there is the incessant monologues… FFS show us, don’t tell us. This is TV! A sweeping city shot and some hard-boiled talk is… time to check what’s on the other channels.

Such a pity, because previously Sky was showing the SCI-FI channel mini-series The Lost Room. It was great. Loved the world, the plot came to a conclusion and major parts of the mysteries were revealed. I’d love to see the writers create another mini-series based on the mythos and they certainly left it open.

But did anyone notice? Lost is in its third season. Unbelievable. Can’t believe it’s still on TV. That is a series that should have ended in the first season. The creators of the Lost Room had it right and by comparison, the creators of Lost have it completely utterly wrong. As a roleplayer and GM, the problems of long-running stories are pretty obvious. Do you go for a chronicle that starts and concludes or is “rolling-over” based and just keeps going on, never really concluding or coming to a decisive point (though often a lot of the characters and players change)? In our hobby, a rolling chronicle can work… but not on TV! I losted interest (pun intended) in the middle of the second season.

Back to vampires. I’m really getting into Blade the series. It’s really well written. Very World of Darkness inspired too. Pity it’s already been canned.

That pretty much leaves me with Battlestar Galaticia. The new series has started and it has, so far, been great. The last episode however was a bit boring. Nothing happened. Bit worried it’s going down the same route as the second half of the last season. We’ll wait and see.

Oh damn, nearly forgot: Heroes has started over here. Seen about three episodes (I think) so far. I’m not seeing why everyone is ranting and raving about it, I’m afraid. and then people keep drawing comparisons with Lost which is really really off-putting. If it’s going down the route of Lost, I don’t want to watch it! However, I’m still currently watching it. So maybe it’s something to it. Lets see how it turns out.

Note #1: If there is anything I’ve left out, it’s either because I’d never watched it or I don’t know about it.

Note #2: I’m not really a “torrent” person. I like my TV as… well TV. Okay, let me put it another way, I don’t have time to spend setting up torrents and setting aside time to watch four episodes in a row. If it’s on TV, I’ll watch it. Er. That makes me sound lazy…