Moffating

"Okay, let me get my head 'round this. You're reading aloud from a transcript of a conversation you're still having?"

"Eeuh, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey."


Steven William Moffat is a Scottish television writer and producer, known for his work as showrunner, writer, and executive producer of the British television series Doctor Who and Sherlock. I stole that whole-cloth from Wikipedia so we'd be on the same page. Moffat is quite a complicated subject for a lot of people, being an astonishingly good writer and an amazingly bad show-runner, all in one. He single handedly both wrote the episodes of Doctor Who that made me love the series and caused the changes to the series that made me hate it. Today is another discussion of bad habits and pitfalls(sorry) through the iris of the man's strengths and weaknesses.

I know he's a decent writer. He's put together some great episodes. Blink is a chilling suspenseful story that the Doctor is hardly even in, instead relying on other actors interpreting his influence from afar. It really hits home the time travel themes of the show in a way most episodes don't. The Empty Child is a two parter that sees the Doctor trying to stop a plague from ravaging WWII era London by turning people into gas-mask clad zombies. It sounds so stupid, but the two episodes just work so well. Moffat manages to make the phrase "Are You My Mummy?" creepy and ominous.

He also managed to blow the Doctor's character severely out of proportion after he moved up to Show Runner from being simply an episode writer. The show's tone as a fun, cheesy romp is entirely gone as more and more importance and significance is piled upon the Doctor and every event that happens. Every moment is filled with mystery, and every mystery's answer pays off into another mystery.

If you see an episode as a single adventure, and a show's overarching plot lines and tone as the overall plot of a pen and paper game, you can probably already see what I'm getting at.

First off, writing a decent adventure is important. An individual adventure should have some level of importance, and can sometimes tie into a larger story. In fact, tying them into a larger story is your primary way of moving the game's plot line along. Moffat is great at doing this, writing a single adventure. Most episodes he's done, taken individually, are pretty good. However, strung together and taken as a whole, the 'players' are never given a feeling of satisfaction. There's always a 'but'. What are the cracks in the walls? Well, they're from the TARDIS exploding. Immediately, you need to ask another question and satisfaction from "solving" the "adventure" is put off. Well, how did the TARDIS blow up? The Silence did it. Who are The Silence and WHY did they blow up the TARDIS? Because there's a prophecy. What the hell is the prophecy? More questions.

Obviously it's okay to do this sometimes. It can even create a lot of intrigue and a feeling of solving a mystery for your game. However, you need to temper your efforts. You need to throw the players an adventure or two that isn't related sometimes, or let them follow their on pursuits without tying it to your plot.

Here, please look at this animated gif for a few seconds. 

I hope that didn't make you as sick as it made me to watch it. That's a simple animation of a SINE wave, and you don't really need to know what that is other than the slow curvy shape of its timeline. Most people think a game simply gets more important in scope as it goes on...and that's mostly true. A great game gives the players 'hills' and 'valleys' like a SINE wave. Less important, less consequential or lower stakes adventures help out by giving your players a time to mentally relax. This does two major things: First, it refreshes them and gives them some time to 'goof off' and do whatever they want, within reason.

The second is that, like a palate cleanser in a meal, it makes the important bits feel that much more important. I promise you that, at some point, your players will get fatigued of constantly being battered with important events and decisions. To treat your "whammy" bits of story like the fillet mignon they are, you need to serve the players a bit of mint sherbet between courses. Or rather, in this case our "cleanser" courses are more like chocolate cake.

If you're about to tell me that too much chocolate cake ruins the impact and joy of dessert, you've nailed what I'm talking about. You can't make your game all one type of adventure. You need to mix and vary the tone of individual adventures most of the time for effective player feel. This is another thing Moffat doesn't seem to be very good at: Doctor Who's first season with him as show-runner consistently tries to give the show more and more gravitas with every episode and twist. The doctor goes from an incredibly clever and resourceful man(but just one man) to feeling like he's supposed to be the most important individual in the entire history of the universe. It's too much of one thing, to put it mildly.

He also seems to tie absolutely everything into something else. This is to keep the viewer continually coming back by keeping a question in their minds at all times as well as to create a feeling of a 'web' of story. As for keeping the viewers coming back? I sincerely hope you never have to fight to maintain your player's interest. If you find yourself in that situation, my only real advice is to quit while you're ahead. No, in a PNP game, you're better served making sure the players periodically feel satisfied. Try to limit the amount of times their victories have a "but" to them. You can even save that "but" for later a few times to save the feeling of victory in the moment. It's kind of a sad fact, but how the players feel at the end of an adventure is just as important as the game's plot. Sometimes even more.

As for creating a web of story where everything is tied to everything else? It helps a lot if the players understand what they're getting into when you do something like this. Expectations can mean a lot. You should also be sure to still hand the players some clear victories and 'unrelated' adventures. Of course you're going to end up with less of those, but it's important to throw them in every once in a while. Try to hand them a victory or two that goes unsullied: If the players save a woman from her murderous ex-husband, maybe don't have her show up dead in a later story, before the players can try and react. It'll sure add some tension and shock, but taking a success away is always going to feel shitty.

That's always the case with writers and directors, isn't it? It feels like everything's mixed. Every Moffat has his "Blink" or "The Girl in the Fireplace" as well as his "The Angels Take Manhattan". Michael Bay has "Transformers" as well as "Pain and Gain". Even Joss Whedon has his amazing "Cabin in the Woods" as well as his mediocre "Literally everything else he's ever done".

So mix it up.