I’ve talked about MtG today so I suppose I should talk about #RPGaDAY2019 and not just bury my head in the sand and avoid today’s theme.

So here is today’s theme…

When I see the word lost I instantly think about the tv show. About how hip and cool it was. How every one was discussing it, looking for clues about the island and it’s secrets. Almost every other person who watched it had their theories.

For at least 3 or 4 of the seasons it was must see tv. But then it started to lose its way. Until in season 6 we end up with probably one of the all time most disappointing ends to a series ever. A Game of Thrones did it’s best to try and match that honour. Both in the last couple of seasons and it’s final episode.

So what has this got to do with D&D and RPGs in general?

I think it serves as a warning. Something that should be studied and learnt from.

As a DM we want our campaigns to be like those first 3 or 4 seasons. Compelling, must watch, not to be missed. Have our players talking about the campaign and what they have just done in that session. Discussing theories and what they want to do next session. That water cooler moment.

But a campaign like any story has to end. We want our campaign to end more like Battlestar Galactica, M.A.S.H. or Twin Peaks: The Return. We want to try and avoid the last two seasons of Lost or that matter A Game Of Thrones.

In A Game Of Thrones they rushed things, didn’t take the time to set things up for particular plot pay offs. So when certain events happened the fans/audience felt cheated because often they felt they came out of nowhere for no reason. Basically things were truncated when they didn’t have to be.

With Lost they were doing the opposite trying to stretch things out, even when the story should have ended earlier. I read somewhere that you could watch the first couple of seasons and the last and get the whole story. The inbetween was just fluff.

So in our campaigns I think it’s important to avoid fluff. Try and keep things tight. Of the encounter doesn’t advance your story/plot, then cut it. You can always throw in a random encounter to break things up if need be. But we have to be on guard about being too ruthless and not having enough encounters to tell the story we want to tell.

Lost also never really established a main antagonist. It was fluid from season to season who the bad guys were. A good antagonist just makes memorable moments. It’s conflict. It’s good storytelling.

Lost also never ended story arcs. Viewers were just left hanging. Poor storytelling. I think when it comes to running a campaign, of the party get sidetracked from the current story arc or splinter off on another for some reason, it’s important that at a future point the story arc is concluded. So it could be they return to a inn and hear how the events of the abandoned story arc finished. That the bad guy they left massacred a village. You get the idea.

Lost also had lots and lots of unanswered questions. It’s good to have unanswered questions, they are future adventure hooks. But not the share number Lost had.

The hardest one to judge is the satisfying ending. You won’t know that until it happens and how the players react. But I think if you avoid the above the likely hood of the ending being a damp squib is greatly reduced.

The creators and writers of Lost were brave. They obviously knew the rules of storytelling. They had to to break them. Sadly the implementation was poorly executed. Which is lucky for us, as we can learn from what they did and their mistakes.

Hopefully my fading memory of the series, hasn’t faded too much. And I’ve remembered enough detail to make the points above correctly.

I think this might just be a very unique take on the theme for the day. Why do you think?