Because a good RPG adventure has a lot in common with a TV show, or even a movie. And it is a story structure that your players and you, the GM, will be very familiar with.

You’ve seen hundreds of movies. Even if you never paid attention in high school English, you have seen enough movies with the basic three-act structure (set-up, problem, resolution) to know what to expect and when to go out for popcorn. In the back of your head, you know the usual flow – the protagonist’s life is interrupted with a problem, he or she decides to solve that problem, complications ensue, there’s often a false resolution where things seem to be going well for the hero before catastrophe ensues, then the build up from the pit of despair to the actual resolution and the credits roll. You can use this structure for RPG adventure design and it works well because your players have that same back-of-the-brain sense of how things are going to go and are likely to work with you in making for a great adventure.

Save the Cat! gets its title from the early scene in most movies where the hero is introduced and does some minor good deed that shows us that he (or she) is the hero. In Disney’s Aladdin, our hero is a thief – not typical Disney hero material. But in his introductory song, he goes through a grand adventure to steal a loaf of bread, but then gives it to a pair of starving children more in need than he. Thus, he’s the hero. Many movies do the same thing – within moments of a character’s introduction, the audience gets a chance to see who’s the hero, who’s the comic relief, who’s monster-bait, and who’s the monster. A GM may want to think about setting up “Save the Cat” opportunities for PCs – as players, we know our characters are the heros, but minor encounters with beggars, animals, or others in need give the characters a chance to prove it. And those NPCs may come back to help later.

Then Save the Cat tells us about have the “log line” – this is the bane of many an RPG adventure and even some published books and adventures. In Hollywood, the log line is a fancy term for “what’s the story about”. Can you, the GM or the would-be RPG writer, tell the players what the adventure is about in a sentence or so? If you can’t, your adventure may need more thought to keep it coherent or your manuscript may need a bit more work. The log line is different from the title – think of it more like the back blurb on a book or the TV Guide description of an episode.

The author talks about heros, and how they fit into the adventure, and about villains. It is a good reminder that a good villain makes a good hero, and about making the heros the driving force of the adventure. If the heros are along for a GM created ride, not actively making decisions, then something is wrong – you are likely wandering into railroading territory.

The author talks about his rules for good screenwriting – how to encourage a willing sense of disbelief by having clear rules for the fantastic elements of the setting, and not adding too much mumbo jumbo, about clearly establishing the rules of the magic and sticking with them, about how to make exposition interesting, about keeping things moving, and about character arcs. This is all good advice, particularly for the early adventures in a new system or new campaign. The players and characters can’t make good choices if they don’t understand the setting.

The meat of it for RPG (or movie) design is the beat structure.

We start with the opening scene and the set-up. This is the one place where a GM can feel pretty confident that the adventure will go as planned. Things can and will go in unexpected directions later — it is a cliche, for example, that many Paranoia sessions never made it out of the briefing room without a total party kill, or nearly so. Players are not actors. Some, perhaps many, have had bad experiences being “railroaded” by a GM around a pre-determined adventure; some will deliberately run in the opposite direction from wherever they sense the GM wants them to go. Others take pride in “breaking” the adventure by going way outside the box. But that’s what makes RPGs different from a computer game – you can make inspired leaps and still have lots of fun. But the set-up is different. Usually you can set that scene, introduce the problem, and create the tone for the adventure without too much resistance from the PCs, so long as you give them an interesting hook. Act One ends with the PCs making a decision – to proceed with the adventure rather than stay home or start a random bar fight. To take Star Wars as an example – Act One ends with Luke deciding to go with ObiWan to Mos Eisley.

Act Two is where things get interesting – this is usually where the PCs gather clues, fight minions, and do all the cool bits you see in the movie trailer. If there is a B plot, it comes in here. This part typically ends with the false climax – the PCs think they have the problem solved, but it is bigger than they thought, or things they didn’t do early come back to haunt them and lead to a pit of despair when all seems lost. – Again, going back to Star Wars, the end of Act Two is when ObiWan falls to Vader and Leia comforts Luke in the Falcon.

Act Three is the Finale – the characters have to rebuild from the ashes, form a new plan, and solve the problem. To some extent, the GM may have more control here in moving the PCs towards the set-piece finale – the assault on the Death Star could happen many ways in a Star Wars RPG, but somehow, the PCs need to blow it up or the Rebellion is lost.

Resolutions and avoiding anti-climax are one of my banes as GM. It is hard to get things to come together in an interesting way, but I am finding that having an idea for a big ending makes it easier, even if the PCs actions mean that the conclusion happens a bit (or even totally) differently. This is hard to do, but the players are likely to be happiest if they get to a big finale that they can brag about or revisit over pizza later. Blake has some good suggestions for would-be screenwriters that may work for you.

There are, of course, differences between an RPG and a game. PCs are not actors – they want to make the decisions that the character makes. And you often have an ensemble cast rather than one or two heros to focus on. The RPG format is also more akin to series television than a movie, as the character arcs tend to be longer than a single adventure. But Blake’s overall advice is a good reminder about challenging the character to change – the status quo is death by boredom. The characters need something from the adventure and that’s why they are going to participate.

All in all, Save the Cat! is a quick read and it may give you some new ideas for adventures, or help you diagnose why an adventure or even a campaign isn’t working. Try the exercises. Try setting up an adventure using Blake’s beat structure (PowerPoint is a great tool for this). See if it works for you.