# 5 Lessons for DMs from the LOST Series Bible



## Kinak

I haven't seen any of Lost, but I think one lesson to learn from mystery shows (I'm thinking about Evangelion and Twin Peaks here) is that you don't need it all figured out from the start, but you need a good answer and to make sure everything reconciles with that answer. You should have a solid answer all the time, so no matter when you have  to make the final reveal, you have something cool to show for it.

Now, that doesn't preclude having multiple possible answers (all of which can be reconciled with the facts) or even changing answers in mid-stream. But, whatever happens, you don't want to get to the end of your run and have people realize the  mysteries were a sham, that you were just throwing noise up at them to  trick them into thinking there was a pattern.

Cheers!
Kinak


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## Fergurg

A couple more lessons.

*6. You don't have to answer every question about everything.*

We never did find out the name of the smoke monster, even though we got Jacob's name. It really never mattered, though it might be interesting.

*7. It's OK to let people fill in the gaps - especially when they are wrong.*

The final season with the flash-sideways glimpses going on, showing what would have happened if the island wasn't there, left the audience trying to reconcile what was going on and how these two concurrent realities were taking place; yet few, if any, speculated that it was the flash-sideways that wasn't the real world because we assumed that the plan to destroy the island worked and the timeline had been changed.

Another example was John Locke seeming to come back from the dead in the sixth season; everybody was trying to figure out _how_ it was possible and nobody thought to ask the question of _if_ it was possible. In other words, the most logical answer, Locke was still dead and someone else was pretending to be him, was not considered.


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## Radiating Gnome

I especially like #7 -- it's okay if they're wrong.


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## Derren

Nr 5 is completely and utterly wrong. This is exactly what killed LOST. That the writers themselves had no idea whats going on which made the series more absurd with every season to the point were the viewers stopped to care after they realized that there is no hidden truth to be discovered and instead just random events mashed together by the writers which can never be resolved in a plausible way. Thats why when you ask people about LOST, most will not remember the mystery filled first few seasons but how bad the last few seasons and the ending was.

I disagree with you in some other things, too, including the importance of Lost, but that is my biggest grief with that article.

The most important lesson from LOST is to not make the same mistakes as LOST did, namely have no idea what happens in your story.


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## tomBitonti

Kinak said:


> I haven't seen any of Lost, but I think one lesson to learn from mystery shows (I'm thinking about Evangelion and Twin Peaks here) is that you don't need it all figured out from the start, but you need a good answer and to make sure everything reconciles with that answer. You should have a solid answer all the time, so no matter when you have  to make the final reveal, you have something cool to show for it.
> 
> Now, that doesn't preclude having multiple possible answers (all of which can be reconciled with the facts) or even changing answers in mid-stream. But, whatever happens, you don't want to get to the end of your run and have people realize the  mysteries were a sham, that you were just throwing noise up at them to  trick them into thinking there was a pattern.
> 
> Cheers!
> Kinak




Ditto on this.  I've lost track of the number of shows which presented an idea, but didn't tie it up in the end.  The ultimate feeling was one of having been tricked.  Too often the hook used at a show's beginning turns into the noose that the writers cannot escape.

For example, if BSG was more about the drama of folks attempting to survive, with a bleak hope of a destination, with the destination being invented by the leaders, then let that gradually be learned by the presentation.  Don't make the destination the focus of the show, make the protagonists understanding of the meaning of the journey be the focus.  If Lost was about folks resolving incomplete issues of their past lives, then the mystery of the island ought to take a back seat.

Thx!

Tom


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## Crothian

I think if you wanted to learn from a truly groundbreaking TV show that was built around mysteries I'd have gone with Twin Peaks.  Lost is pretty forgettable.


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## Ed_Laprade

3 Mystery! After watching the first half of the two hour pilot, I turned it off. I felt that the mystery of the unseen monster was physically impossible, and Lost was billed as a science fiction show, not a fantasy. Know your audience!


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## Radiating Gnome

Crothian said:


> I think if you wanted to learn from a truly groundbreaking TV show that was built around mysteries I'd have gone with Twin Peaks.  Lost is pretty forgettable.




That would be a good one; this week's inspiration was the timely drop of the LOST bible when I was working on trying to see which of my terrible ideas for a column would get closes to done.  It could be very interesting to see a similar look at the Twin Peaks stuff, if it's available. 

I think -- no matter what you think of the show -- it's interesting to see what the creators were pitching and telling themselves this early in the process.  Seeing a document like this -- a behind the scenes artifact from early in the process -- is pretty cool.  To me, anyway. 

-rg


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## saskganesh

I really believe in number 5. You got to make allowance for the spontaneity of play and the wonders of ingame creation. I think that makes the medium rather different from a TV show that loses its way.


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## Janx

Derren said:


> Nr 5 is completely and utterly wrong. This is exactly what killed LOST. That the writers themselves had no idea whats going on which made the series more absurd with every season to the point were the viewers stopped to care after they realized that there is no hidden truth to be discovered and instead just random events mashed together by the writers which can never be resolved in a plausible way. Thats why when you ask people about LOST, most will not remember the mystery filled first few seasons but how bad the last few seasons and the ending was.
> 
> I disagree with you in some other things, too, including the importance of Lost, but that is my biggest grief with that article.
> 
> The most important lesson from LOST is to not make the same mistakes as LOST did, namely have no idea what happens in your story.




I think the concept of #5 isn't bad, but the execution of it leads to risking an convoluted or contradictory plot.

Battlestar Galactica suffered from this as well, where they admitted to making up what happens next and what it means as they went along.

For Lost (which I'm rewatching now after several years), it suffers from hyper-symbolism and Giant Onionism.  There's so much material put in there that it begins to feel like nothing means anything, they just grabbed every trick they learned in English Literature class.  Then wrapped it with too many layers of negating onion skin.  The island isn't weird because of the Dharma Initiative, it's because of the Others.  No, it's not them, it's Jacob and his brother Johnny Cash (that's symbolism).  No, they're not seeing an alternate reality, this is the afterlife, which really means the whole series was just Purgatory. No, that's not what Lindelhof meant, it was just a nice way to decompress the audience.

There were plenty of great characters and great ideas.  But some ideas needed to be decided on early, locked in, and balanced with plausibility and over complexity.

I think part of the problem is these shows are written as seasons, and often without an end in sight.  The writers finish the season cliff hanger, go on vacation, and then come back to figure what to do next.

JMS's Babylon 5 shows a better approach.


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## Ahnehnois

It's okay if characters die. Even if they die suddenly and for no good reason. The story goes on. There's a lesson.


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## Radiating Gnome

Ahnehnois said:


> It's okay if characters die. Even if they die suddenly and for no good reason. The story goes on. There's a lesson.




I like it.


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## Jhaelen

Kinak said:


> You should have a solid answer all the time, so no matter when you have  to make the final reveal, you have something cool to show for it.
> 
> Now, that doesn't preclude having multiple possible answers (all of which can be reconciled with the facts) or even changing answers in mid-stream. But, whatever happens, you don't want to get to the end of your run and have people realize the  mysteries were a sham, that you were just throwing noise up at them to  trick them into thinking there was a pattern.



Absolutely!
One of the things that made Castle Ravenloft such a great adventure module, imho, was the idea that there was no single true answer to the question what was actually going on. But instead of determining plot, motivation, and the location of important relics beforehand using a random method (as advocated by the module), you could just as easily leave it open until the pcs actually arrive at their own answers or at a location that might potentially hold something they're looking for. Depending on how the adventure progresses, their first idea doesn't have to be the correct one, but it might.

It's most important that the players' choices aren't meaningless: It should be their actions that dictate what happens next. So you cannot just leave everything open indefinitely. Just make the decision on the 'correct' version as late as possible.


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## delericho

Janx said:


> I think the concept of #5 isn't bad, but the execution of it leads to risking an convoluted or contradictory plot.
> 
> Battlestar Galactica suffered from this as well, where they admitted to making up what happens next and what it means as they went along.




While in theory I would agree, I'm not convinced I've seen any examples of it being done well. Lost, BSG, and the X-Files all fell into the same traps - because they hadn't mapped out the big reveals, but gave _the impression_ that they had, they were left trying to put together a resolution that made sense, without introducing inconsistencies with what was already seen... and inevitably either forgot something important or, more likely, just became absurd.



> JMS's Babylon 5 shows a better approach.




Absolutely... though not a flawless one. I've been rewatching the show over the past few months, and am now in the middle of the final season. And while much of the story is still solid, in retrospect it's quite obvious that certain changes in cast must have dramatically changed the story (mostly the replacement of Sinclair, but also Ivanova's departure). I would very much know how the _original_ story was supposed to play out.

(Incidentally, I did once run a Vampire campaign that was heavily influenced by B5, including some big reveals that were set up in the second session but didn't pay off until 5 years (real-time) later. I don't recommend it - that one required a _massive_ amount of work, and by the time we got there the campaign had lost so much steam that we were all just trying to see it through to the end.)


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## delericho

When it comes to mysteries, I'm a great believer in the utility of the Three Clue Rule. In order to place clues to the answer to a puzzle, though, you really need to know what the answer is.

My most recent campaign contained several mysteries, all leading up to a couple of big reveals, and with clues scattered liberally throughout. By the time the PCs were heading towards the climax of the campaign, they engaged in a fairly detailed discussion of "why are we doing this?" During the course of that discussion, the players laid out about 90% of the secrets of the campaign, and got them 90% accurate throughout - all of it leading to a good, solid reason for them to be on their way. (Or, conversely, a good reason for them to _not_ do so. But that would have been fine too; it just would have been a different campaign.)

That was one of the most satisfying moments in 25 years of gaming for me, because it was a plot that I'd made, and it was one that I'd presented well enough that the players were able to figure it out. Of course, it also helped enormously that I had a fantastic group of players for that campaign.


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## Ahnehnois

delericho said:


> While in theory I would agree, I'm not convinced I've seen any examples of it being done well. Lost, BSG, and the X-Files all fell into the same traps - because they hadn't mapped out the big reveals, but gave _the impression_ that they had, they were left trying to put together a resolution that made sense, without introducing inconsistencies with what was already seen... and inevitably either forgot something important or, more likely, just became absurd.



All of that makes sense in terms of pure storytelling, but I think in D&D (and to a lesser extent, TV), it's important to not know everything ahead of time, both so the experience of playing the game/telling the story can mean something, but also so that other people can be allowed to influence the outcome.

I find the balance between dictating in advance and not dictating story points and narrative flow is perhaps the most significant challenge in DMing.


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## Radiating Gnome

Ahnehnois said:


> All of that makes sense in terms of pure storytelling, but I think in D&D (and to a lesser extent, TV), it's important to not know everything ahead of time, both so the experience of playing the game/telling the story can mean something, but also so that other people can be allowed to influence the outcome.
> 
> I find the balance between dictating in advance and not dictating story points and narrative flow is perhaps the most significant challenge in DMing.




I'd agree with this -- it's the difference between taking the players on a great roller coaster ride and joining them on a road trip. Both can be fun, but the road trip is more collaborative -- but I think it can be more challenging. 

-j


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## saskganesh

Inconsistencies...

Yes, if you are in "the making it up as you go along" approach -- which I am -- you DO have to take into account what has been decided/revealed/generated over the course of play. Which does mean certain decisions DO have to be made along the way, it's just that you don't have to know everything in the beginning. 

In my current campaign, one of the major plot elements (a demonic conspiracy) started as a red herring. The players got into it, so I kept on picking at it, and two years later, now I know it's a real thing. That likely could not have happened without actually playing the game.


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## Janx

saskganesh said:


> Inconsistencies...
> 
> Yes, if you are in "the making it up as you go along" approach -- which I am -- you DO have to take into account what has been decided/revealed/generated over the course of play. Which does mean certain decisions DO have to be made along the way, it's just that you don't have to know everything in the beginning.
> 
> In my current campaign, one of the major plot elements (a demonic conspiracy) started as a red herring. The players got into it, so I kept on picking at it, and two years later, now I know it's a real thing. That likely could not have happened without actually playing the game.




That might be the key to where Lost went wrong.

In their effort to be sneaky, they would show enough info to form one view of what's going on, but then they'd pull the rug out and negate all that investment that the viewers built up.

What it sounds like you've done is after a bit of congealing process, you've decided to stick with a "truth" and leave it there.

I think that's a decent way to use "make it up as you go" without letting it spoil the final product.


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## Janx

delericho said:


> Absolutely... though not a flawless one. I've been rewatching the show over the past few months, and am now in the middle of the final season. And while much of the story is still solid, in retrospect it's quite obvious that certain changes in cast must have dramatically changed the story (mostly the replacement of Sinclair, but also Ivanova's departure). I would very much know how the _original_ story was supposed to play out.




What I got out of B5 when I ran a B5 as D&D campaign was to have an overall plan, but to be adaptive to player choices and PC departures.

Which is basically what happened when Sinclair and Ivanova left.  JMS had players leave the campaign, so he had to be flexible enough to fix it.

this is where making it up as you go has some value, in that you are theoretically making the next parts mesh with what has gone before and what the PCs actually want to do.

But I don't think that can be the entire foundation, as we saw with BSG, it yields a flimsy construction.


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## saskganesh

Janx said:


> That might be the key to where Lost went wrong.
> 
> In their effort to be sneaky, they would show enough info to form one view of what's going on, but then they'd pull the rug out and negate all that investment that the viewers built up.
> 
> What it sounds like you've done is after a bit of congealing process, you've decided to stick with a "truth" and leave it there.
> 
> I think that's a decent way to use "make it up as you go" without letting it spoil the final product.




Absolutely, a congealing process. 

I think it also helps with RL-based player churn, because if some players leave the game for whatever reason (or if there is ever a TPK),new players/characters are not required to follow the same narrative (in the gameworld reality the demon cult is still there, it's just no longer part of the new plotline, whatever that may turn out to be). Again, I really believe in playing the game > planning the game.


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## Derren

delericho said:


> Absolutely... though not a flawless one. I've been rewatching the show over the past few months, and am now in the middle of the final season. And while much of the story is still solid, in retrospect it's quite obvious that certain changes in cast must have dramatically changed the story (mostly the replacement of Sinclair, but also Ivanova's departure). I would very much know how the _original_ story was supposed to play out.




While that happened (the telepath lady who got her mind recorded in the first or second season left for example so that plot was left unfinished and instead of using that recording to de-program her she turned out to be a spy and killed) the final season was more a product of the channel ordering another season in the last minute when the story was already finished, so JMS had to cobble something together.


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## Ed_Laprade

Derren said:


> While that happened (the telepath lady who got her mind recorded in the first or second season left for example so that plot was left unfinished and instead of using that recording to de-program her she turned out to be a spy and killed) the final season was more a product of the channel ordering another season in the last minute when the story was already finished, so JMS had to cobble something together.



The show was supposed to go five seasons, but wasn't renewed for the fifth until after the fourth season was finished. So JMS had to end it a year early. But he said that he'd tied up 90% of the loose ends, leaving the other 10% unfinished in case something happened where he could do so. And it did. Oh, and the spy was originally supposed to be Laurel Takashima, but the actress only did the pilot movie.


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## Jhaelen

saskganesh said:


> In my current campaign, one of the major plot elements (a demonic conspiracy) started as a red herring. The players got into it, so I kept on picking at it, and two years later, now I know it's a real thing. That likely could not have happened without actually playing the game.



Yep! That's exactly the kind of thing that happened several times in my campaign, too. Basically, if you realize that the players seem to be more interested in following up something you only planned as a minor distraction from the 'real' goal, just switch gears and change things so that the 'minor distraction' becomes an important part of the 'main story' and put the formerly 'real goal' on the backburner or drop it entirely.


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## delericho

Derren said:


> While that happened...






Ed_Laprade said:


> The show was supposed to...




Indeed, I'm aware of some of the changes that were made, and some of the reasons why. B5 was the first show that I really followed on the internet as well as on TV, so I kept track of quite a bit of the behind-the-scenes stuff. Still, I would very much like to know exactly how it was all originally intended to go down - and, to the best of my knowledge, JMS has never revealed that in full.


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## delericho

Ahnehnois said:


> All of that makes sense in terms of pure storytelling, but I think in D&D (and to a lesser extent, TV), it's important to not know everything ahead of time, both so the experience of playing the game/telling the story can mean something, but also so that other people can be allowed to influence the outcome.




Note that having a fixed answer to some or all of the mysteries doesn't mean the outcome is fixed. There's no guarantee that the PCs will _learn_ the answer, or perhaps not all of it, or they might not learn it in time. Plus, of course, it says nothing whatsoever about how the PCs learn the answers, nor what they do with the information once they've got it.

One recent example from my just-ended campaign - having uncovered one of the more prominent members of the Cult of the Dragon Below, rather than expose said person, my PCs proceeded to blackmail that character, thus gaining themselves a mole within the enemy camp. I certainly didn't expect that!

A question for you: in a dungeon-crawl, would you place a secret door in the dungeon in response to the Rogue deciding to search for one? Why (not)?



Janx said:


> What I got out of B5 when I ran a B5 as D&D campaign was to have an overall plan, but to be adaptive to player choices and PC departures.
> 
> Which is basically what happened when Sinclair and Ivanova left.  JMS had players leave the campaign, so he had to be flexible enough to fix it.
> 
> this is where making it up as you go has some value, in that you are theoretically making the next parts mesh with what has gone before and what the PCs actually want to do.




Sure, I get that. And, as a result of the PCs changing their direction, some or all of the mysteries may never get resolved, some encounters may never come up, and entire chunks of material may never see play. Fortunately, I have excellent recycling facilities. 

But what I don't generally* do is change the answer to puzzles/mysteries in response to PC actions, largely because changing the outcome at one point would have knock-on effects further down the line.

* Of course, there was that one time when a player pointed out that the NPC in question _couldn't_ have done what I'd set up for him to do. I don't claim to be perfect.


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## Man in the Funny Hat

Derren said:


> Nr 5 is completely and utterly wrong. This is exactly what killed LOST. That the writers themselves had no idea whats going on which made the series more absurd with every season to the point were the viewers stopped to care after they realized that there is no hidden truth to be discovered and instead just random events mashed together by the writers which can never be resolved in a plausible way.



Worse.  As the show developed a large and very earnest following the show-runners began facing questions by the fans who were happily and rabidly engaged in actually TRYING to figure out what the meaning of it all was.  They obviously did NOT have answers to give them, much less to attempt to hide from them or misdirect them about.  So they LIED.  They were faced directly with the growing and fairly common conclusion by fans (myself among them) who said, "They're all dead."  To which they were told, "No.  That's not it."  The response was, "Well, they're obviously in some kind of Limbo then."  And they said, "No that's not it either."  And then when the show wraps up it turns out that's EXACTLY what the solution was.

The show meandered and lost focus (and lost a LOT of otherwise dedicated viewers) BECAUSE the show-runners had NO IDEA where they were actually going with anything.  And "Lost" did not break new ground here. "X-Files" had been doing it already for years, they just did it with a slightly different approach, trading back and forth between "mystery of the week" episodes and "story arc-related" episodes.  Long before "Lost" came along I ran just such a campaign.  It was not intentionally based on the X-Files model but that's certainly how it turned out and I referred to it that way; it was D&D-meets-the-X-Files.  Layer after layer of mystery and conundrum, and plot twists and reversals.  It was a great way to BUILD interest and get players hooked, but after a while players - and viewers - want to see that the show is GOING SOMEWHERE and not just _aimlessly _meandering.  When I finally decided that my campaign needed to wind down so I could start another one (and do it better) I found that nothing made sense.  I COULDN'T tie it all together because I'd simply created too many conflicting and contradictory elements.  There ultimately was nothing for it but to openly inform players outside the game that, "No, that element actually means nothing," or, "That element actually has to mean something completely different," in order for THEM to make sense if it at all.  And I was still leaving tons of questions unanswered and that became very unsatisfying for both them and myself.  And I knew I was in trouble when the players all stopped watching the X-Files and stated that they did so for reasons that would eventually have them stop wanting to play in my similarly constructed campaign - no answers to ANY of the myriad mysteries, just more questions, more mysteries, or yet another now-tired and trite twist or reversal.

No, indeed.  Not having an idea of where you're going to end up with your campaign (or with your TV show) is a BAD way to proceed.  There is nothing wrong as such with a mystery wrapped in a conundrum surrounded by enigmas - but only if you can eventually see it sensibly and satisfactorily solved.


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## Janx

I think some of the problem with making it up as you go, is running in that mode for too long.

Sometime by season 2 of Lost, the writers should have locked in what's really going on Dharma Initiative, now defunct, remaining renegade members of the Initiative are "protecting" the island.

And the remaining 1-2 seasons show that info being revealed, dealt with and series ended.

Instead of the continuous pile-on of "even more drama" or new characters with "new drama"


This would have let them organically brew their secret sauce, but putting a limit on it before it gets out of hand.

The show (or game) needs to shift gears from "we don't know what's going on" to "we've got some ideas" to "we've figured it all out"

to fail to change the mode of the setting, is to fail to grow the characters.  The whole point of serial television is that the past matters and the characters evolve.  But it is a failure to accept that when the writers don't shift out of the early stage to the next.


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## saskganesh

Now I also agree with that Janx. There is a time sensitivity involved: a game may end earlier than expected and it can be very frustrating to have mysteries never even getting close to being resolved, all because Henry is now working the nightshift, Susan is having a baby and Rick is moving out of town to go to school, pretty much ending the current gaming group.

A TV show's run may be shorter than expected as well.

All considered it's more preferable to have resolutions sooner than later. Which means that you do still have to make decisons, even if you don't know the answers in the beginning.


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## delericho

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> Worse.  As the show developed a large and very earnest following the show-runners began facing questions by the fans who were happily and rabidly engaged in actually TRYING to figure out what the meaning of it all was.  They obviously did NOT have answers to give them, much less to attempt to hide from them or misdirect them about.  So they LIED.  They were faced directly with the growing and fairly common conclusion by fans (myself among them) who said, "They're all dead."  To which they were told, "No.  That's not it."  The response was, "Well, they're obviously in some kind of Limbo then."  And they said, "No that's not it either."  And then when the show wraps up it turns out that's EXACTLY what the solution was.




Well... except, of course, that the characters _weren't_ all dead until they started doing the flash-sideways in the last season.


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## Jhaelen

delericho said:


> A question for you: in a dungeon-crawl, would you place a secret door in the dungeon in response to the Rogue deciding to search for one? Why (not)?



While the question wasn't addressed at me, I'd still like to answer it from my viewpoint:
I might do that in case the following two things are true:
- there is actually a secret door hidden somewhere in the complex which the party (so far) overlooked - or there is an item I'd like them to have which they've overlooked, and a secret room would be a good alternative place for it to be found.
- the rogue has arguably a good reason for suspecting the existence of a secret door in the place she's searching.

I'm not a friend of placing secret doors (or traps) in a random place. Their placement must make sense, because they normally represent a significant expenditure of resources for its builder. So, if the players come up with a better idea for a well-placed secret door (or trap), I might be inclined to move it.


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## delericho

Jhaelen said:


> While the question wasn't addressed at me, I'd still like to answer it from my viewpoint:




And I'm glad for it. It's an interesting topic, and I'd much rather discuss this than the minutae of optimised builds in 3e, or whatever the latest controversy is. 



> I might do that in case the following two things are true:
> - there is actually a secret door hidden somewhere in the complex which the party (so far) overlooked - or there is an item I'd like them to have which they've overlooked, and a secret room would be a good alternative place for it to be found.
> - the rogue has arguably a good reason for suspecting the existence of a secret door in the place she's searching.




Interesting. Actually, I like that approach.



> I'm not a friend of placing secret doors (or traps) in a random place.




No, I absolutely agree. It's actually something I gave quite a bit of thought to about a year ago, when I concluded that I'd been doing it wrong for 20 years. Basically, I had been in the habit of just placing these things more or less randomly, as one more hazard for the PCs to deal with.

After my rethink, though, I concluded that secret doors (and traps) were better treated as challenges for the _players_, essentially as mini-puzzles within the adventure. And, since they were puzzles, a better way forward would be to apply the Three Clue Rule, in order to give the players some scope with which to find those secret doors/traps/whatever.

(Of course, that was what I figured was best _for me_ - I'm not claiming at as a One True Way.  )

(A corollary to this came out of pondering the level design in the Lego Video Games, where I noted that my wife and I had quite different approaches to them - she likes to blaze through the story and then leaves the game, while I prefer to collect all the "True Jedi" marks, the hidden canisters, etc. Which suggested to me that the _best_ adventures should have multiple levels of 'puzzles' - a minimal set of necessary puzzles that must be overcome to complete the adventure, a second set of 'reward' puzzles that aren't required but which give extra treasure or other rewards, and then a third set of 'easter egg' puzzles for those players who are _really_ keen. Of course, actually implementing that is a lot more work than just slapping down a few traps and secret doors!)


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## Janx

delericho said:


> Well... except, of course, that the characters _weren't_ all dead until they started doing the flash-sideways in the last season.




Other than Lindelhof's say so AFTER the show, what evidence do you have to support that?

The show itself doesn't really give any.  The characters arrrive in a magical place by luckily surviving a serious plane crash.  They're tormented by their own inner demons and that of the denizens of the island.

Among these flawed people are candidates for the new caretaker of the island.  And while we see plenty of people die (or graduate from this level), we never actually see them leave (the oceanic six are just as likely to be continuing to suffer in this nether plane of torment).

the whole show COULD be a lot of things.  What it isn't is definitive.


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## delericho

Janx said:


> Other than Lindelhof's say so AFTER the show, what evidence do you have to support that?




The fact that several of them leave the island - the ones at the end of the show being the most obvious examples, but Sun and Locke also leave mid-way through. Indeed, one of the significant plots involves Sun trying to get _back_ to the island.



> the whole show COULD be a lot of things.  What it isn't is definitive.




If it's not definitive, then it's also not possible to say the writers lied about the characters not being dead. If they say that it wasn't that, then presumably one of the other interpretations must apply.


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## Janx

delericho said:


> The fact that several of them leave the island - the ones at the end of the show being the most obvious examples, but Sun and Locke also leave mid-way through. Indeed, one of the significant plots involves Sun trying to get _back_ to the island.
> 
> 
> 
> If it's not definitive, then it's also not possible to say the writers lied about the characters not being dead. If they say that it wasn't that, then presumably one of the other interpretations must apply.




If the island represents purgatory or limbo, and the protagonists are dead, then "leaving the island" doesn't necessarily mean you've actually escaped back to the real world.  Meaning that once in limbo, you experience what limbo wants you to experience.  If that's a "real world" that imposes enough pressure on you to make you choose to return to limbo, then that is part of the trial that limbo represents.

therefore, in the They're all Dead theory, the Oceanic Six may have left the island, but they never left purgatory.

At the end of the series, we don't see the escapees actually arrive home from the island.  the plane takes off.  then we're back to flash sideways which is really the rest-state for limbo before they enter the pearly gates.

So, outside of the writers claiming otherwise, within the medium of just the TV episodes, is there anything to contradict the "They're all dead" theory?

It's possible there's a detail that proves something one way or another (I am in the middle of re-watching the series, and I haven't seen it).

but the problem with Lost (or as some folks perceive a problem) is that the process they used of making it up as they go along left the viewer with very little concrete definition as to what the whole thing was about.

Now its possible the writers intended it to be vague, so the audience could decide for themselves.  I don't think as many people like that style of writing.  I'd rather a writer tell me what their idea is, and then I'll decide if I like the idea.  

Rather than witness a lot of uncertainty and argue with strangers on the internet about whether everybody was dead the whole time or not.  I'd rather be wrong because I missed a detail and have you point it out to me, than this  "it's what you make of it" wishy-washiness that we got.


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## delericho

Janx said:


> If the island represents purgatory or limbo, and the protagonists are dead, then "leaving the island" doesn't necessarily mean you've actually escaped back to the real world.  Meaning that once in limbo, you experience what limbo wants you to experience.  If that's a "real world" that imposes enough pressure on you to make you choose to return to limbo, then that is part of the trial that limbo represents.




You realise, of course, that under the same logic absolutely anything that doesn't fit the theory can likewise be discarded. After all, the theory hinges on us accepting that what we are seeing (the real world) is in fact not what we're seeing.

As such, it's not a falsifiable theory.

But there's also not enough evidence to definitively prove that it _is_ the case. And, as such, it's not really fair to conclude that the writers lied when they said it wasn't the case.


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## Janx

delericho said:


> You realise, of course, that under the same logic absolutely anything that doesn't fit the theory can likewise be discarded. After all, the theory hinges on us accepting that what we are seeing (the real world) is in fact not what we're seeing.
> 
> As such, it's not a falsifiable theory.
> 
> But there's also not enough evidence to definitively prove that it _is_ the case. And, as such, it's not really fair to conclude that the writers lied when they said it wasn't the case.




As others had posted earlier, there's indicators that the writers lied when they said they had a plan and weren't making it up as they went along.  I can't prove it, but there's reason to believe the writers are liars with regards to the show.

And if you watch the show and ending without external information (ex. the writers' blog posts), then you may very well come away with the "they're all dead" conclusion.  I know that's what I thought when I saw the ending with the plane on the beach.

As to disproving the "they're all dead" theory, once the island has been established as wierd and magical, all bets on what we see afterwards are potentially off.  Thus, if it really was purgatory, I can buy the Oceanic Six being show their life as escapees from the island.  And it would indeed be a test to see if they could be convinced to CHOOSE to come back.

However, along that line of logic, any "facts" that predate the crash that define the island as a real place would contradict the "they're all dead" theory. So Hurley learning about the numbers from a radio operator who heard them come from the island.  The Black Rock crashed up on the island and its asssociation to the Whidmore family through the years (Charles Whidmore knew about the island through multiple vectors, not just the Dharma Initiative).  Alpert recruiting the baby research doctor whose name I forget.  These things appear to have happened before the Flight 815 crash and don't appear death or purgatory related.

Now it's also possible that the Purgatory faked all this information or memory, but that gets further into the argument you're making.

Suffice it to say, I don't believe They're All Dead, but I do see how the show did not help make that obvious.


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## delericho

Janx said:


> As others had posted earlier, there's indicators that the writers lied when they said they had a plan and weren't making it up as they went along.  I can't prove it, but there's reason to believe the writers are liars with regards to the show.




Ah, now _that_ I can readily believe. The show is too much of a mess for me to believe it was all planned out from the outset. Indeed, I recall a colleague saying that he'd read somewhere one of the writers said they knew where they were going but had no idea how they were going to get there!

(Of course, as with all half-remembered conversations about half-remembered internet articles, and all of it from years ago... it may be utterly wrong.  )


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## Janx

delericho said:


> Ah, now _that_ I can readily believe. The show is too much of a mess for me to believe it was all planned out from the outset. Indeed, I recall a colleague saying that he'd read somewhere one of the writers said they knew where they were going but had no idea how they were going to get there!
> 
> (Of course, as with all half-remembered conversations about half-remembered internet articles, and all of it from years ago... it may be utterly wrong.  )




I wonder if RG imagined the rathole this thread would take when he wrote about using writing ideas from Lost for GMing. 

I liked Lost.  But I don't like the muddled mess parts where the writer part of my brain says they should have capped it off and made a cleaner story.

So rule #9 (or whatever we're at:

*Know when to wrap it up.*
Don't keep turning the current clues into red-herrings as new clues contradict the old ones.  Don't force players to keep investigating the same mystery, at some point, give them solid clues, let them figure it out, and be done with it.  Don't drag out a quest for too long.  We know a farm boy can buy some droids and eventually destroy a major Imperial base in 2 hours of screen time.  We don't need to drag out escaping an island over 6 seasons.*

*that's the flaw I see with any TV show with a singular task premise.  Escape from a prison, kill the dictator, find out who burned you.  these things should not take more than a season to resolve, in which case, your series is basically over.  Trying to extend its life past that is where sharks get jumped, plausibility is lost, and audiences get fed up.


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## delericho

Janx said:


> *Know when to wrap it up.*
> 
> Don't keep turning the current clues into red-herrings as new clues contradict the old ones.  Don't force players to keep investigating the same mystery, at some point, give them solid clues, let them figure it out, and be done with it.  Don't drag out a quest for too long.




Oh hell, yes.

Actually, I'm not a fan of DMs deliberately placing red herring 'clues' at all. In my experience, players are quite capable of generating plenty of red herrings of their own.


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## Radiating Gnome

Janx said:


> I wonder if RG imagined the rathole this thread would take when he wrote about using writing ideas from Lost for GMing. .




I had an inkling.  As a EN World columnist, I see it as my job to occasionally take on the role of "that guy who is wrong on the internet."   

At least people still come back and read each week.  So far. Maybe this one will be the one that kills my readership. 

As for me, I'm back in the dilemma of having to come up with a column idea for this saturday.  I'm thinking "Learn Roleplaying from Miley Cyrus" or even "Getting Away With It: Printing Character Sheets and PDFs at Work".  

_Please, gaming muse, bring me something better than that.  _


-rg


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## Janx

Radiating Gnome said:


> I had an inkling.  As a EN World columnist, I see it as my job to occasionally take on the role of "that guy who is wrong on the internet."
> 
> At least people still come back and read each week.  So far. Maybe this one will be the one that kills my readership.
> 
> As for me, I'm back in the dilemma of having to come up with a column idea for this saturday.  I'm thinking "Learn Roleplaying from Miley Cyrus" or even "Getting Away With It: Printing Character Sheets and PDFs at Work".
> 
> _Please, gaming muse, bring me something better than that.  _
> 
> 
> -rg




Here's a topic idea that I wrote an EN blog post about awhile back:

How to take a TV/movie/book setting idea and reskin it for your completely different game system.

In my blog, I talked about how I took Babylon 5 and adapted it to be naval battles, exploration and the D&D races and island nations.

Maybe you can take a better run at it than I did.


Or

"How to Roleplay your PC without being obstructionist"


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## Ahnehnois

delericho said:


> Actually, I'm not a fan of DMs deliberately placing red herring 'clues' at all. In my experience, players are quite capable of generating plenty of red herrings of their own.



I don't know. There are times when the ideas the players come up with are better than my ideas. In which case my ideas can kind of become red herrings unintentionally.


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## delericho

Ahnehnois said:


> I don't know. There are times when the ideas the players come up with are better than my ideas. In which case my ideas can kind of become red herrings unintentionally.




Fair enough. Generally, when my players come up with a better idea, I make a not of it and stick it into my recycling system for use later. As an added bonus, that means that I don't constantly get accused of stealing their ideas.


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## Janx

delericho said:


> Fair enough. Generally, when my players come up with a better idea, I make a not of it and stick it into my recycling system for use later. As an added bonus, that means that I don't constantly get accused of stealing their ideas.




I think there's missing context here.

I bet Ahnehnois doesn't mean when a player has a new idea about something that isn't happening now.  To which recording that and using it later makes sense.

I bet what he means is when Ahnehnois has his idea of what the smoke monster is in the current campaign, and his players have their own idea of what the smoke monster is.  Ahnehnois seems to be saying, that he will switch to the player's better idea for "whats going on" if it is truly better than his and avoids contradictions.

Because the player's "idea" is about the current situation, it would be useless to record their theory about the smoke monster so a future campaign can have a smoke monster like that instead of the current smoke monster.  You're not likely to use a smoke monster in a future campaign (under the assumption that the smoke monster is a special thing and not a critter from the monster manual to be killed for XP one day).


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## delericho

Janx said:


> I bet what he means is when Ahnehnois has his idea of what the smoke monster is in the current campaign, and his players have their own idea of what the smoke monster is.  Ahnehnois seems to be saying, that he will switch to the player's better idea for "whats going on" if it is truly better than his and avoids contradictions.
> 
> Because the player's "idea" is about the current situation, it would be useless to record their theory about the smoke monster so a future campaign can have a smoke monster like that instead of the current smoke monster.




Ah, I see.

In that case, I still wouldn't substitute my players' idea for my own. I may or may not find a way to use it later - and quite possibly in a heavily modified form. Basically, I don't do well with switching in mid-stream like that. 

(But, again, I'm not claiming this as any sort of One True Way - YMMV, of course.)


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## Ahnehnois

Janx said:


> I bet what he means is when Ahnehnois has his idea of what the smoke monster is in the current campaign, and his players have their own idea of what the smoke monster is.  Ahnehnois seems to be saying, that he will switch to the player's better idea for "whats going on" if it is truly better than his and avoids contradictions.



This is what I was getting at. Certainly, mining ideas for future use and such can happen, but I try to be flexible enough that I can sometimes change things as they're happening.



			
				delericho said:
			
		

> In that case, I still wouldn't substitute my players' idea for my own.



Fair enough. For me, I don't really care where ideas come from, just where they go.


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## Janx

delericho said:


> Ah, I see.
> 
> In that case, I still wouldn't substitute my players' idea for my own. I may or may not find a way to use it later - and quite possibly in a heavily modified form. Basically, I don't do well with switching in mid-stream like that.
> 
> (But, again, I'm not claiming this as any sort of One True Way - YMMV, of course.)




Glad that's cleared up.

The ironic thing being, when you had said "As an added bonus, that means that I don't constantly get accused of stealing their ideas." you would have been stealing their ideas if you had used them later.

By changing your idea to theirs mid-game (ex. what is the smoke monster), they won't see it as stealing, because to them, you invented the smoke monster, they just guessed what it was and are now "right".

I'm not usually keen on changing my answers based on what the players think it is either, but I do see how that can solve some problems.  Such as the players never figuring it out and not moving on, or their discussion of their idea reveals holes in my idea such that their idea truly is better, not just different.


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## delericho

Janx said:


> The ironic thing being, when you had said "As an added bonus, that means that I don't constantly get accused of stealing their ideas." you would have been stealing their ideas if you had used them later.




True. But then, I steal bits of stuff from everywhere, so why not them too?


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## jasper

Rule 0. It is a game not a story book. If a story happens between the dice rolling that is great.


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## Janx

jasper said:


> Rule 0. It is a game not a story book. If a story happens between the dice rolling that is great.




I disagree.

a) rule 0 should remain :deviate from the process when needed

b) the term game, per the great "what is a game" debate has been found to be virtually useless as a descriptor.  Kids playing with dolls with no rules fits in the dictionary definition of "game"

c) If a story doesn't happen as an outcome of all that dice rolling, then we have just dicked around for four hours lighting stuff on fire, which is pretty much a waste of my time.

d) I suspect we both don't want the GM narrating or dictating a story to us, I simply prefer different language to that effect.

e) I believe a good GM can take story telling concepts to make what my PC does be a good story rather than creating the rather bland wanderings of four PCs

f) I believe players also have an honus to contribute to the effort of making the output of the game play be a story, and in fact they should be the driving force of story where possible.


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## jasper

Totally Disagree with C bullet Janx. I can have fun roasting orcs, and selling the orphanage to Old Man Scrooge even if it does not advance a story.  I can spend 4 hour playing Uno with my friends and it not be a waste of time.
The big problem with "tell a STORY!" is how hard is pull off. Unless you have a consistent group; too many hiccups happen along the way.
Look at how many threads are created on this site about players disrupting the story. 

Your pts D and E are great if the group wants to play that way.  
I also disagree with f) Onus. Some gamers just want to show and kill things.


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## Nytmare

jasper said:


> The big problem with "tell a STORY!" is how hard is pull off. Unless you have a consistent group; too many hiccups happen along the way.
> Look at how many threads are created on this site about players disrupting the story.




According to my personal philosophy (and granted I tend to be very picky about who I play with) my initial ideas as to how the story will probably play out mutate continuously based off of the hiccups my players introduce along the way.  I can't count the number of times I've tossed my expected plot out the window because the story my players think they're on was better than the one I prepared.


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## Janx

Nytmare said:


> According to my personal philosophy (and granted I tend to be very picky about who I play with) my initial ideas as to how the story will probably play out mutate continuously based off of the hiccups my players introduce along the way.  I can't count the number of times I've tossed my expected plot out the window because the story my players think they're on was better than the one I prepared.




Exactly.  I don't think any of us want a story dictated to us by the GM.

But it sure would be nice if a little effort was spent by the GM to make the trek to kill orcs into a better story than "we went out to kill some orcs.  And we did."


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## Ahnehnois

Janx said:


> I don't think any of us want a story dictated to us by the GM.



I don't think that's true. Some people do want that. Some people don't.


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