Story Telling Style: Do you like being confused?

As I'm playing The Radio's story arcs, I'm finding myself really enjoying the story telling in it for one noticeable reason: You never quite understand what is going on here!

This arc, like a couple others (Love you, Verandi!), revels in not giving you what you want: a full explanation.* Thinking about it, I find that I've an attraction to "incomplete" stories. Here are some examples:

• Ned and Chucks' parents' pasts in Pushing Daisies. While we are given insight into what they did, it never actually gets more thorough than "enough to cause trouble for their children".
  
• A Series of Unfortunate Events. The first 12 books are a murder mystery. The 13th book is an explanation of why the writer won't ever give the solution.
  
• The Path. If you've played it, you'll understand. Suffice to say, the game revels in how little of a story it tells. Even though you know it won't explain itself, it inexplicably keeps you willing to play just a little bit more, in the hopes that it might just change its mind an spill all.
  

The element of surprise has always appealed to me.

I like a good mystery more than practically anything else in a story. A story without a mystery to solve, without secrets to discover and interesting things to explore is simply not interesting to me. It's just work. That's why I get hideously bored in games where I'm doing things with no interesting mysteries behind them and just doing the equivalent of manual labour. War games are the worst when they take a break from the action so that you can fight a supposedly very important battle that, however, reveals nothing interesting. It's the equivalent of action games asking you to flip seven switches and find five keys, rather than just one of each.

That said, in my mind a mystery is USELESS if it is never explained, secrets are POINTLESS if they are never discovered interesting things are WORTHLESS if they are never explored. Why have any kind of unknown if it will never become known? The fun in the unexplained is actually explaining it without resorting to "Just because!" Merely knowing or suspecting there is an explanation is no fun if I don't actually HAVE the explanation. It's like looking at food, but being unable to eat it. Why? Just why?

Yes, obviously, there is merit to never really knowing and having to conjecture your own explanation. But to this I say bah humbug! If I'm going to be making up my own explanations, I may as well go ahead and make my own story from scratch. I may not be an accomplished writer, but I'm capable enough to create at least vaguely interesting mysteries. And that's all the unexplained is - vaguely interesting at best.

I don't enjoy being confused for no reason.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I like a story to have you thinking about what you missed, when you get to the end, and realize that it was all there and you just didn't realize it.

Fight Club - perfect example. The first time you "see" this alternate personality emerge you almost miss it. I had to actually rewind the tape (yes, I have it on TAPE) to make sure, no I didn't just imagine that. By the end of the movie, you DO know what's going on, but it's still marvelous that you should have known if only you think.

One or two of the Sin City collections (though it's been years since I've read em and can't recall which one I'm thinking of) the pacing of the detective work is flawless. Literally the page you realize what's happening is the one you're turning to see what you imagined right there on the next page.

But being dragged behind a tale, that's no fun. I've seen this happen more in pen and paper games where the GM either doesn't know what they're doing, or has some particular story to tell and whether you want to be there or not, you're going to witness it. I don't like those at all. Individually the sessions are fun - and if you're talking about COH/V missions, they can be too - but the end result is that I don't feel like I made *any* difference to that story.

"Who and/or what is Nemesis?"

Biggest mystery in-game ^^

I like suspense, but I do like a mystery to be solved, all the clues to add up, a conclusion of sorts. Even if a story then moves on into a new chapter of it, a story has to have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Even if the end is when time itself ends

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

This is an interesting question, actually.

I wouldn't call it a story being confusing, though, but intriguing, rather. It's a mystery, you don't get the full picture immediately. You get familiarised with the setting, yes, but all the finer plot details are progressively unveiled, and the fun is in crafting your own theories, being your own detective in uncovering the mysteries. It's simultaneously wanting to know what happens, as well as a race to beat the characters to the conclusion.

However, I also believe that a lack of details can be a valid literary tool as well. I haven't done the Radio yet, but froom looking over the arc at ParagonWiki, and also comparing it to the Television, I do get the impression the authors purposefully left out many details.

It's the idea behind propaganda, you know. You have no idea what exactly Radio is telling you, but it's RADIOOOOOOOOO, Free Opportunity!, so you feel compelled to just do it what it says, anyway.

Television is even more blatant about not being blatant about anything at all. Television just tells you what's good, what's not, and what to do, and you believe it because it is Television.

I guess you could call it social commentary, or something, how two major tools of spreading information in our world, Radio and Television, that help us stay up to date and continually shape our perception of the world at large, give you very limited information, if any at all, to purposefully manipulate your perception of the world in CoV. Since Radio and Television control information through the sheer scarcity of which you get from it, you also get a very limited picture of your greater surrounding on which you're forced to act.

This is also why not getting a proper conclusion is the best possible conclusion you can get. It leaves you wondering why you did what you did. Just who IS Television, and why does it do what it does, and most importantly, why did you help it in the first place? Even the souvenirs reflect you don't know why you did what you did, and that's the key part. The point isn't finding out about Television, but asking yourselves these questions.



tl;dr: The point of Radio and Television isn't who they are and why they do what they do, but that they are tools of information you usally trust, yet manipulate you through sheer scarcity of information. A 'proper' conclusion would undermine the point because then there's no rooms for questions to be asked. Also: Propaganda.


The authors of CoX are not exactly George Orwell and these contacts and story arcs are not exactly 1984 material, but I still love that they're around, because it's those kind of stories that realise that proper use of formal aspects of a story can enrich the experience so much more than merely using them as a foundation for the narrative aspects.

I agree that stories where the plot just happens, and the main characters could've been there or not, can be kinda frustrating. However, unlike Sam and like others, I do actually enjoy mysteries that are never actually explained, that leave you to piece together the clues for yourself (or not).

My favorite movie is The Usual Suspects, which I like because it had me fooled the entire time. No, it doesn't fool some people, my mom figured it all out 5 minutes in, but it gets most and I applaud it. I just love the idea, like Z_I said, that all the clues are given to you, and it's up to you to figure them out; so many movie-going experiences just have you sitting there having it all explained, that it's refreshing (to me) to be expected to respond. Notice that in that particular movie, nothing is really truly resolved, it hints strongly at some things, but how much of it is just more misdirection?

I'm afraid CHV, by the nature of its storytelling, doesn't do a very good job at impressing me. I mean no offense to the writers, honestly, they're hamstrung by having to write stories in such an open kind of way to fit every character running them. The stories do not suck, but resolving them is quite linear (with a couple of exceptions, and those are just swerves) and never to my knowledge involves mere subterfuge. This isn't an adventure game, where you have to piece together clues yourself, it's an action game, where clues are dispensed after you're allowed to beat up the right person. Nor are you allowed to solve anything without fighting. That's probably the game's greatest "failing", in that we're only allowed to fight like Batman, not detect like him. It's just not that kind of game.

I do enjoy The Radio, mainly because it's never made clear you're not just hearing things. I've not run Television.

Oh, thanks for pointing me to The Path. Will download it and check it out, I get in the mood for mindbending sometimes.

I love mysteries, especially when I can solve them (but not when I can solve them straight away, of course). I think a 'good' mystery story is one I'm solving right with the characters - like the previously mentioned example of Sin City.

Still, a 'great' mystery is one I can't solve. But it's more than the author leaving a bunch of clues towards one character and then turning around at the end and accusing a little-known side character as the murderer. That's just cheating. No, a great mystery keeps you on the edge of your seat, guessing and rethinking your guesses with every new clue. Then it ends with a logical, sensible conclusion that isn't the one you were expecting, but still satisfies you.

Then there's the stories like 'A Series of Unfortunate Events'. When done well, as ASUE was, I *love* these stories. We're never given a full explanation, but we're given plenty of clues so that we can form an image in our head that satisfies us, while filling the parameters left in the book. But we're also left with a feeling of unsureness, so that our mental image is a bit fuzzy around the edges and we're never really sure. That's the kind of book that really sticks with me, because it really did make me think about it.

Not really. In game, our characters spend enough time playing errand boy that I'm used to the lack of free will, and any "mystery" is just something the boss forgot to tell you. Anyway, as has been said, CoX is an action game, and I like it that way. Also, a story that appears mysterious or confusing may just be poorly written and vague.

I always thought it seemed pretty clear by the end of the TV's arcs that the Television and Radio Free Opportunity were two American Gods style new divinities of their respective concepts, general spirits or manifestations of TV and radio.

(Obviously they're both doomed when Internet gets in on the fight.)

Or maybe I'm just crazy.

I agree with you, Marcian Tobay!

I think that not knowing everything makes a story more interesting and I like that it gives you room to use your imagination. One of the most fun parts of a story, to me, is thinking about what you think is going on or what will happen and discussing it with others that are thinking about the same thing.

I have to go purchase The Path now ^__^

The modern fan's insistence on knowing every detail of a popular universe (and the downside of that, when you look at the really inane tropes invoked again and again and again in fan-written expansions) is accelerated by the web, and the wikification of knowledge, where every nitwit with a keyboard thinks that makes his opinions sacrosanct.

One of the foundations of literature for the last few millenia is dramatic overview, and its converse. If we are the audience of, say, Richard III, we know what Gloucester is up to because he tells us (Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous...to place my brother Clarence and the King in deadly hate, the one against the other) - and indeed, the genius of the piece is that by telling us, he involves the audience almost as his co-conspirators as he kills his way to the crown.

But if we are involved in the story - if we are, perhaps, poor old false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, or Hastings, so dedicated to his late master's sons' claim to the crown, or Anne, Buckingham, Rivers, Grey, or any of the other soon-to-be-corpses, then our whole role is based on not seeing the approaching doom, at least until it is too late.

In RP, we absolutely don't know everything that is going on. As an audience, we may or may not, depending on the author's intention (and skill, to be sure).

When I GM'd more regularly, I warned my players that I reserved the right to know more about their characters than they did (especially in supers campaigns, as regarded the source of powers, their visbility on the radar of Big Bads, etc.).

I just finished rereading The Tombs of Atuan, and Le Guin makes some play with the transient episode in Wizard of Earthsea, where the old women gives Sparrowhawk her piece of the Ring of Ereth-Akbe, and his realization years later (prompted by the amusement of a dragon) of just what he has, that sends him to Atuan for the other half.

We, as an audience, enjoy the dramatic overview of that story, the filled in history that Tenar provides of who the old couple were and why they had such a treasure in their possession - but neither Sparrowhawk nor Tenar could know how the piece fit together (as it were) until that moment of revelation.

I like surprises. I like mysteries. I like clues. I don't mind not all questions being answered.

I don't mind being kept in the dark as long as its intentional and well done.

Like most anything else, if the writer knows what they're doing they can get me on board.

I like a good mystery. Following a story and seeing if you can out guess the author can be fun. However if, like a certain TV cult hit involving a plane crash and an island, you write episode after episode of questions without ever providing answers, then you've just completely alienated me.


to sum up:
Agatha Christie=Good
Needlessly confusing TV island show = Bad.

In reference to the radio, I enjoy that whole arc with the exception of the "drop off the drugs" mission. I just dislike that map.