Pass/Fail Or Hope/Fear?
I started the process of breaking down Hamlet by calling it a turning point analysis. Now that it's finished, I find myself revisiting my terminology. Many of the story units that clearly present themselves when you study the text for narrative movement aren't necessarily branch points in the storyline. Instead they're modulations of tension and release. Every time Claudius schemes against Hamlet, we mark it as an emotional down moment, because our fears for our protagonist have taken momentary precedence over our hopes for him. Claudius is not necessarily taking a new decision each time. He's not moving the plot in a new direction, but redirecting it back toward one of its established or implicit possible outcomes.
Most narratives present an opposed pair of possible outcomes: Hamlet succeeds in avenging his father, or fails. Benjamin Braddock finds a meaningful future for himself, or fails. The crew of the Enterprise comes together and defeats Nero, or the Federation is destroyed. The adventurers kill the monsters and take their stuff, or suffer a TPK. Simple narratives focus all of our attention on a single throughline: one hope, one fear. Complex or episodic structures frequently change up the focus of our hopes and fears from one scene or sequence to the next. An episode of Mad Men or a Robert Altman-style ensemble drama cycles unpredictably through a large set of hope/fear pairings.
The beats we've been looking at in Hamlet are oscillations between likely outcomes. True turning points that spin a story in a completely different direction are rare. What we've been looking at with Hamlet might then better be termed beat analysis. (For consistency’s sake, I'm going to keep using the turning points LJ tag to mark the posts in this series.)
Our primary hope and fear as we experience a narrative may be orthogonal. These allow for mixed endings. We hope that Hamlet will kill Claudius and fear that Claudius will kill him. In the end, both come to pass. Shakespeare gives us a tragedy with a happy ending or, as I now prefer to see it, a doomed hero story.
Popular adventure storytelling threatens us with a negative outcome, making us believe that the hero might fail, then ultimately delivers victory in a surprising or otherwise satisfying way. Each procedural up beat takes us closer to our desired ending. Each procedural down beat takes us closer to our feared ending.
The emotional direction of a procedural narrative is often called the pass/fail cycle, a term I've borrowed for games like HeroQuest 2. What this analysis suggests, however, is that it might be better termed a hope/fear cycle.
In a roleplaying context, this distinction shows us that not every down beat corresponds to a failed roll on the part of the PCs. Any revelation, piece of description or other narrative event that increases tension can also be considered an emotional down beat. Our fear for Hamlet when we see Claudius and Laertes scheme against him increases. However, his “player” hasn't failed a roll. (In a game, of course, you'd typically ratchet that sense of threat in a player-facing way, rather than than showing NPCs interacting without the PCs’ knowledge.)
When deciding difficulties or making other narrative choices based on our players' position on the hope/fear cycle, we might factor in emotional down beats that aren't failed rolls. If the players are feeling oppressed simply by your description of their circumstances, even though they've been succeeding at their rolls, you might still want to lighten up the opposition to increase the chances of an emotional up moment. And if they've been failing left and right but are still feeling invulnerable, it will likely prove emotionally satisfying to keep cranking up the difficulties until they finally raise a sweat.