What You See Is What You Get

By Jonathan Hicks

Each time I sit down and watch the Star Wars movies I always try to catch on to the very thing that makes them unique. After all, if you could bottle that uniqueness and uncork it every time you sat down to write whatever material it is you’re working on then everything you design and create will have that Star Wars flavour and the people you are sharing the experience with will see that. No doubt there are many, many different reasons why people love the genre but there is something untenable that the films have, which no other media has been able to re-create.

There are many reasons why the material is wonderful, and I hope I have captured some of that in two other articles on this site, Interesting NPC’s and Settings With Depth. But even with these guidelines on creating a game world, there still seems to be something missing.

Watching Episode I - The Phantom Menace I realised what it was, and it seems so obvious to me now. Even though the characters were surrounded by starships, ‘droids, speeders, lasers, aliens and all things weird and science fiction they didn’t allow themselves to be distracted by it. In other words, they didn’t really care what was going on around them. Their reality was the norm; watching a speeder full of aliens shooting down the road was an everyday occurrence, the same way a normal human on this world would virtually ignore a car full of people driving past. In short, if the Star Wars galaxy were real to its inhabitants then it would seem real to the person interacting with it.

That is what suspends our disbelief with the Star Wars trilogy. As far as the actors are concerned, they’re there. That is what you have to communicate to the players - that the game world is real.

SO WHAT?

The first thing to do is make sure that you, yourself, are not overawed by what you are going to present to the players. Study a location or a setting carefully and become well versed in the ins and outs of it, or at least affect an air of disinterest when describing something during the game. You see, as far as the players are concerned you are the medium through which they are communicating with the Star Wars galaxy.

By all means, go into detail about where the characters are and what they see and smell in the initial stage of their contact with something new and elaborate by waving your hands and being creative, but there’s no need to continually do that or the players will think that the place they are in is special and they are not. When you go on holiday and, say, go to a city with new sights and smells you’re pretty overawed, right? But when you’ve been there a while, or if you stay there for a really long time, the view from the window and the things surrounding you seem like normal. That’s why the characters in Star Wars seem so real. You might see a dewback with a Stormtrooper on its back on the big screen and think ‘wow’ but the characters on the screen would look at it and think, ‘oh, a dewback. With a Stormtrooper on its back’.

GETTING ABOUT

Characters in Star Wars are about as overawed by starships as we are with aeroplanes or sea ships. They’re always flying or sailing about, can be caught and utilised quite easily and are a common element on the planet. Only those people who have never seen a ‘plane, like those beings in Star Wars who may never have seen a starship, would be mystified. You can go into lots of detail about the vessel, the internal workings and what it can do, but at the end of the day it’s a ship. It goes from A to B, making it simply a means to an end. There are plenty of ship designs out there which would make the average player go ‘wow’, but this is exactly the same reason why we go ‘wow’ over sleek sports cars. If you see enough of them about, they’ll soon become natural, even mundane.

WHAT DOES THIS BUTTON DO?

Items are in the Star Wars universe to be utilised. Again, you can go into lots of detail about how a hydrospanner works and what it looks like, but at the end of the day... who cares? It’s like being in a car workshop. You need a torque wrench to secure bolts onto a wheel. That’s what it does. You would simply say ‘pass me that wrench’, and in the Star Wars universe you would say ‘pass me that powerdriver’ or ‘hand me that plasmawelder’. It doesn’t matter why its there or what it actually does in the Star Wars universe, the fact is you need to fix something and you need a quick description as to what you need to do.

It would be very difficult to think of a reason to describe why a starship needs its drive repaired. You would have to think of a way to describe the internal workings, how it works, why certain parts do what they do. But it doesn’t exist! Once again, the details are just there to add atmosphere. The story needs a reason why the players are going to be stuck on a planet for a couple of days and will cost them four thousand credits. You could go into detail but all you need is something wildly descriptive to get your point across. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense just as long as it adds to the suspension of disbelief. Something like this;

‘Well, your primary power converter is ruptured and its leaking all over the external flow casings. I’m afraid the flow has to be diverted and I’ll have to shut it down. It’ll cost about four thousand.’

What does all that mean? Who cares? It was descriptive and it added to the atmosphere. When Ric Olie, the pilot of the Naboo Cruiser in Phantom Menace said ‘the hyperdrive is leaking’, and when Han Solo said ‘replace the negative power coupling’ in Empire Strikes Back, what did it mean? It didn’t mean anything! It was just trying to convey that there was a problem, and that they were going to be stuck until it got repaired. A means to an end. It helped the plot and what’s more, the characters took to it like someone had told a normal person they needed an oil change. Granted, the problems in the films were a little more serious than that, but the point is made.

Don’t simply say ‘your ship will not fly and it’ll cost you money’, or ‘the speeder won’t start but you manage to repair it’. Have a character explain what the problem is, and how much it’ll cost. And whilst you’re doing it, don’t try to make out its real or there could be a problem that could be explained with modern-day physics, just go with the flow. It’s there to enhance atmosphere, not explain it.

IN CONCLUSION

You’re probably thinking ‘what the hell is he going on about’, but it is a difficult concept to explain. What you have to do is tell a story and carry the characters through an adventure. All the detail, special effects and background noise are just window dressing. If the plot calls for them to be afraid of a huge war robot, then describe what it does, not just what it looks like. Appearances may tell the player what the thing may do, but at the end of the day it’s what it does do that counts. A starship that looks cool won’t carry the plot, but one that gets the players about the galaxy will. The Millennium Falcon didn’t need to be sleek and powerful. It was, after all, a piece of junk, and there were several times there was a good chance it would fail the characters. But it served the plot, and no amount of special engine design or amazing technology is going to make the story better.

Star Wars isn’t about how it looks in certain places but how all that detail meshes together. If you can make the galaxy as natural and alive as the real world, then you’re half way to creating a reality of your own.