John 11:45-53.

So I'm sitting here reading my Bible and this popped out at me:

⁴⁵Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. ⁴⁶But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. ⁴⁷Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.

"What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. ⁴⁸If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place^" and our nation."

⁴⁹Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all! ⁵⁰You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."

⁵¹He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, ⁵²and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. ⁵³So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

⁵⁴Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the Jews. Instead he withdrew to a region near the desert, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.

⁵⁵When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover. ⁵⁶They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple area they asked one another, "What do you think? Isn't he coming to the Feast at all?" ⁵⁷But the chief priests and Pharisees had given orders that if anyone found out where Jesus was, he should report it so that they might arrest him.

I think this is the only time (that I can think of, at least) in the New Testament when the villains are actually sympathetic.

Matthew mentions Caiaphas in 26:3-5: "Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. ^'But not during the Feast,' they said, 'or there may be a riot among the people.'" This Caiaphas is the leader of a scheming group of pharisees.

Luke's only real account of Caiaphas is in Acts, where he presides over the questioning of Peter and John after the healing of the cripple. Again, he is the leader of a bunch of schemers unable to reckon their own weakness.

But John's Caiaphas is more detailed. John's Caiahpas has seen a vision. This Caiaphas was told that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation. His own ignorance and closed-mindedness prevented him from understanding what that meant. Instead, he took Jesus to be a God-given political sacrifice: crucified so that the Jews may be saved from Rome.

This one detail changes the complexity of Caiahpas' part of the Passion, wouldn't you say? It gives nuance to his character and motives. It is not just about keeping himself in power or putting down a man with revolutionary thoughts and power.


This really echoes the things I am reading about opponents in The Anatomy of Story. Too often, writers make their opponents into mustache twirling villains, one-dimensional and without any logical reason for action other than "I'm the bad guy." Instead, villains should have their own logic, their own values-driven reason for acting counter to the hero.

If you had been given a vision about Jesus' death rescuing the Jewish nation, would you have done differently?

This question, in my mind, makes John's telling of the Passion story much more interesting. I'm surprised that none of the passion stories I've seen capitalize on this complexity in Caiaphas.

The Lost Pilot.

One of my goals for the summer is to keep a journal of sorts of things I watch and play. There is much to be learned from things that have already been made, right? Naturally, spoilers abound below.

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About six years too late, I finally watched the Pilot episode(s) of Lost. It was pretty fantastic. A couple of things I noticed:

• The characters were introduced gently. Usually in pairs. This allowed the audience to cling to remember Jack and Kate or Annoying Brat Girl and Brother. It was a lot easier to form associations among all these characters when they were interdependent.
• There were very few introductions. All of a sudden, characters were referring to each other by name. The most memorable of these was Hurley. All of a sudden, everyone is referring to the Big Guy as Hurley. No time was wasted with worthless "Hi, my name is...".
• Each character is hiding something. The audience may not know what it is yet, but we get the sense that everyone has a secret. Kate hides that she's a convict. The Black Dad is hiding his unfamiliarity with his son. Charlie is hiding his drug addiction. One of my big questions is about Creepy Bald Guy playing backgammon with the kid. He's certainly hiding something...
• The writers are controlling very tightly the flow of information. One of my favorite scenes was the discovery of the pilot in the cockpit. Finally, after 16 hours, there is a character who may actually know something. As a viewer, I was watching and waiting for him to start spewing secrets - to help me and the characters understand what happened to them. The whole scene, I was thinking, "Please don't kill the pilot," knowing full well that he was doomed.
  

Now, as a writer, I perfectly understand what's going on here. Give the characters hope. They expect to find a transceiver. They get a transceiver and a living pilot. But what do the writers do? They not only take away the pilot, but they put the characters into an even worse position - a giant who-knows-what is upon them. As a viewer, I was fully engaged emotionally into this scene, hoping against my instinct that the pilot would live to be a recurring character. Writers are allowed this god-like power. To give and to take away. This is what gives stories emotional pull.

Let's take this home into game writing/design, though. As game designers, we have the power to give and to take away. As a DM, I have the power to put a huge treasure horde at the end of a dungeon. And, to give them more, maybe this horde contains the Staff of Overpowered Players. But, to keep a good story according to traditional rules, I want to take away what I've just given them. So I send in a Giant Who-Knows-What, it paralyzes the players and takes the Staff.

Is this good storytelling? Is this good game design? From the mechanical brief that I just used as an example, certainly not. It's terrible game design. What if the players resist the paralysis? Story ruined. What if they teleport out of the dungeon just in time? Story ruined. Heck, what if they just use the staff? Story ruined, game design unbalanced.

So how do game designers and writers use this push and pull of desire, expectation, and consequence effectively?

In a pen and paper setting, this is a little easier. Maybe the staff turns out to be a fake. Maybe the Giant Who-Knows-What focuses all its attacks on the staff and shatters it. Pen and paper GMs can react to these situations much more nimbly and creatively than a video game.

Situations like these are why cutscenes happen. We don't want to give the player the chance to screw up the plot point, so we take control away. Or - and I've done this in D&D - we make the obstacles too great for the player to have a chance. The Giant Who-Knows-What is actually the final boss and there's no way the players can resist its paralysis... It monologues for a while about why it wants the staff even though it's not a player... Then it knocks them out and they wake up in the Old Man's Hut...

Anyway. Neither of these are that great of options. As of this moment, I don't have any great ideas on how to fix it, either. Can you think of any games where this was done especially well?

Verbs.

Sometimes, I like coming up with new ways of coming up with ideas. Check it out:

Games are ultimately built on verbs, right? In shooters, you shoot. In platformers, you jump. In Braid, you turn back time. I think interesting games often have interesting verbs.

So... maybe to come up with ideas, all you need to do is combine unlikely verbs. Next time you need a game idea, come up with 50 different verbs, then start mixing and matching and see what comes out.

Megaman: the Fan-Made Movie.

I was reading Kotaku the other day and found a link to a fan-made Mega Man movie. I was, naturally, dubious. Fan-made things, while filled with passion, are not well funded. (Grayson, a fan-made Batman movie trailer (yeah, just a trailer) is probably the highest quality fan-made product I've seen.) But still. Mega Man is a property ripe for the picking when it comes to film adaptations and I wanted to see how well the filmmakers did with its potential.

There were some things that this film did right. Some good cinematography, for example. Some darned decent CG stuff for a film with (probably) a shoe-string budget. And really, the production design was pretty impressive (again, with the caveat of the shoe-string budget). All of these things were good enough.

What wasn't good enough was the script.

Many things could have fixed this script.

1. The story needed to start in media res. As I recall, the original Mega Man story begins after Wily has already done damage to the city. Mega Man runs through levels that are populated with Wily's robots, eventually ending up at the work-sites of the robot masters. I think these writers confused the idea of a first act with exposition. The action - and, therefore, the story - doesn't begin until 30 minutes into the film. So for 30 minutes, the audience is treated to every boring detail and meaningless conversation that makes up character motives. Starting in media res would have been a much more conflict-driven way to see those motives played out, not have them explained in a monologue.

2. Dr. Light should have died at the end of Act 1. Or, at the very least, taken away from the Hero. This would propel his actions, leave him without a mentor, and would give a lot more credence to Wily's insanity and threat. As it was, Light stayed on and didn't do much besides equipping Mega Man to fight the Act 3 battles.

3. Wily, while goofy in the original games, should not have been so ridiculous... His faux accent, poorly dyed hair, and constantly sweating face did not leave any sense of threat or depth to his character. Now, a goofy looking guy actually being threatening - actually being cruel - that I can get behind. For example, his lines after kidnapping Roll are a small sample of how crazy, cruel, and evil he should have been. Mocking. Sneering. A little immature, but also willing and able to do evil, evil things. I think Kefka from Final Fantasy VI would have been a good model for this kind of villain.

4. The dialogue was painful. I didn't know people could even try to play some of these cliched lines as seriously as these actors did. Do I remember specific examples right now? No. But just imagine. Every "I'll get you next time!" and "Thank God you're alright. I didn't think you'd make it" played out over and over again in different contexts. The only way to fix this is to take a harder look at each character, their flaws, and to actually speak the lines before the actors getting in front of the camera...


Don't get me wrong. I am really impressed by the director, Eddie Lebron. He clearly has some chops in pulling together a technical team to pull a 96 minute fan adaptation of a popular video game franchise. They really did accomplish a lot. It just pains me to see the script in such shambles. Without a solid story, all of the resources go to waste.

My question is this: how do I find these filmmakers? I honestly think that Mr. Lebron's resources could have been much better used had he a better story and screenplay. I also honestly believe that I could have helped make that story and screenplay better. How can I get to these directors early enough to help them tell the story they want to tell?

Moral of the story: let Kemp read your screenplays! Please? I like doing it. I think it'll be better afterward....

The Death of Post-Modernism.

(This post is a long time coming.  Since the National Religious Broadcaster's convention, my brain has buzzed with thoughts of modernism and post-modernism, cyncism and localism, and many other great -isms.  Here are my armchair philosopher thoughts.  They might be scattered or difficult to understand.  A friendly comment saying so would be helpful as I refine both my writing style and my thoughts...)

Let's start with a definition of post-modernism.  The term itself is shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding (it's sort of ironic, really).  The Oxford English Dictionary calls it, "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."  One of Merriam-Webster's defintions is "of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culutre, identity, history, or language."  The definition that I have been working from since hearing it in my undergraduate philosophy class is attributed to a French philosopher called Jean-Francois Lyotard: "incredulity toward metanarratives."

I mean, think about it.  The 20th century wasn't that great in many ways.  We had recently(ish) come off the enlightenment, a time when all promise lay before man.  Indeed, I think most of the 20th century was spent pursuing the promises of the Enlightenment and Modernism.  Radio took off, closely followed by telephones, television, cable, computers, and, by the end, the internet.  People trusted the power structures of the world to deliver them out of their problems.  Technology will make me lose weight, keep the peace, do the chores, feed me, entertain me, connect me to others, anything.  Our lives would get easier and easier.  Or, at least, that was what the metanarrative of modernism offered.

But what did it deliver?  More war (perhaps) than ever before in history.  A fundamental rift between people and government as leaders fell to corruption and greed.  The disintegration of family life as central to human experience as divorce rates skyrocketted.  Corporations rising and falling, crushing the wallets and souls of people who no longer had the self-discipline to spend less than they earned.  Is it any wonder people began to be skeptical about grand visions of universal truth-claims?

I think at its heart, post-modernism is this fundamental distrust of anything.  You can't trust the government's claims that through big/small government, you will be helped/free to do whatever you want.  You can't trust the advertiser's claims that this product actually works.  You can't trust your parents to know what is good for you.  Twentieth century psychoanlytic theory even undermined the trust in self that people could fall back on.  When you are a teeming cauldron of subconscious, evolutionary urges conditioned by a lifetime of experiences, how can you know that you truly believe what you believe?

This has produced a very tolerant culture.  What works for me is great.  What works for you is great.  If those are completely opposite, that's fine.  Ultimately, I'm forced to trust myself and my experience.  And I expect the same of you.  So that's fine.  We can get along with our completely opposite worldviews because both of us accept that we can't tell anyone else that what I've experienced is more true that what you've experienced.

Deconstruction, the first tool the post-modern reaches for, can only go so far by itself.  We have taken apart everything from science to government to religion to social structures, but what has it left us with?  Nothing but a pile of broken pieces.  We finally figured out that modernism was a lie, but we never found the truth to replace it.

I think we're starting to figure something else out, too.  We're all into sustainablity, right?  (Those nasty moderns in their imperialistic, dogmatic, self-centered, earth-destorying ways made us a little bit... not those things.)  Post-modernism - this incredulity toward metanarrative - is unsustainable.  We can't do it much longer.  It's killing our spirits and we know it.  So we're reaching out.

At first, it's small.  It's our friends.  In my generation, there was a turn towards peer tribes among adolescents.  Instead of caring for and listening to our families, we allied ourselves with our friends - the people closest to our daily experience.  We trust our tribes.  We love our tribes.  To sin against the tribe (through breaking whatever internal rules it has) is worse than Judas' betrayal of Jesus or Brutus' betrayal of Caesar.  The millenials are growing up now and taking their tribes with them.  Most of them are going online.  Social networking, I think, is a direct result of our desire to connect with the only people in the world who we can trust.  We can't trust advertisers to tell us what products work (despite the inundation of custom-made advertisements... thanks Google...).  We can trust our friends.  If they say a product works, then we flock to it and buy it en masse (You're welcome, Steve Jobs.).

So where is all this going?  What am I rambling towards?

I think everything is going to keep going local.  There are apps that tell you who is tweeting near you.  Farmer's markets are rising in popularity and use.  There is a general distaste for all things mass-produced in the mouths (literal and metaphorical) of millenials.

With each step outside of the self, with each snarky comment held in, with each belief firmly and lovingly stated as true, we build trust.  And with that trust, I think comes hope.  I have little hope in the super-structures of society that have been so poisoned with greed and self-interest, but I do have hope that local communities will rise again and people will love their neighbors a little better than they used to.  Now that everything has been deconstructed, we can start constructing again.