Once upon a time, there was a man with too many opinions. He had so many opinions that he couldn’t fit them inside his own head, so he started a podcast. Then everyone listened to his opinions and he was able to make room in his head for really good burrito recipes.

Hero’s journey

• Developed by mythologist Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Facdes
• Refined by Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey

Three stages:- Departure- Initiation- Return

Dan Harmon’s story circle

1. A character is in a zone of comfort
2. But they want something
3. They enter an unfamiliar situation
4. Adapt to it
5. Get what they wanted
6. Pay a heavy price for it
7. Then return to their familiar situation
8. Having changed

> Start thinking of as many of your favorite movies as you can, and see if they apply to this pattern. Now think of your favorite party anecdotes, your most vivid dreams, fairy tales, and listen to a popular song (the music, not necessarily the lyrics). Get used to the idea that stories follow that pattern of descent and return, diving and emerging. Demystify it. See it everywhere. Realize that it’s hardwired into your nervous system, and trust that in a vacuum, raised by wolves, your stories would follow this pattern

–Dan Harmon

Zombies on a spaceship

1. Throwaway story of a spaceperson who has to board an alien ship, and escapes a zombie and some deadly gas, with a robot
2. The escape pod turns out to allow dimension-hopping, but our hero doesn’t yet know this
3. They dock back with what they think is their ship, only to find it’s in another dimension
4. The ship begins to get torn apart by zombies
5. The robot our hero picks up tries to poison the captain
6. The hero climbs through the ship to save the captain from zombies
7. They find a spider that turns one of the crew members into a zombie, in the captain’s quarters
8. Also in the captain’s quarters is a door that opens to the hero’s home world, where the original captain asks the hero to come back to their home dimension
9. The hero decides to return to the alternate world and try and fight the spiders
10. The robot returns and tries to kill the hero and the captain
11. The captain and our hero meet a technician and they fly to the ship the hero boarded at the beginnin
12. We find that the ship is powered by a device called the Narrativo which builds story and feeds on choice
13. A bug in the code meant it created a plot hole
14. The spiders (called Seamstresses) exist to eat living matter and turn them into zombies
15. Our hero fixes the corrupted story file thus fixing the story
16. They return to their home world and have a nice chat with the captain

The Adventure Zone

• Evolving story from a silly, throwaway premise
• Evolving story that has to change based on character choices
• Overall story reared its head by the fourth arc (the Crystal Kingdom)

Mission to Zyxx

• They had an overall story arc
• Mostly bottle episodes with little hints towards a bigger story
• Season 2 swung the balance of power from the Federated Alliance to the Rebellion
• Season 3 is a bit more of a challenge

D&D principles

By Guy Sclanders

• Custom-write stories based on what your players are expecting
• Use your imagination to push their expectations
• There’s only one story: someone wants something very badly and will do anything to get it
• That person isn’t the hero, it’s the villain
• Ask questions
• Who is the villain?
• What does he want?
• How is he going to get it?
• Where is the most interesting place it could be?
• When did the thing he wants go missing or become important?
• Why does he want it?
• Create consequences for the actions of your players
• Store choices a character makes, so you can bring them back later

Mark’s bedtime story principles

• Make them fun
• Make them interactive
• Add a dahs of transgression
• Introduce the threat of danger but pull it back
• Make it about bonds

Things Mark didn’t have time for

• Bring the main character home
• Make the main character different from your audience

Links

• The Hero's Journey - TV Tropes
• Story Structure 101: Super Basic Shit | Channel 101 Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia
• Great GM: Telling a good story for your tabletop roleplaying game - Game Master Tips - YouTube
• How to Be A Great Game Master is creating Tabletop Rpg Tutorials, Game Master and Player Character Tips | Patreon
• Production and Editing | Bitrate