How to handle aspects of multiple POV characters
Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 4:28 am
So while picking away at my current projects, I've been thinking about another one I want to potentially do in the future. A story in particular I'd love to bring to life in a new format is bringing a tabletop campaign I played with my friends to life as a kinetic novel. Pros, it's already finished and has unique differentiated characters already for the most part, considering there was five seperate PCs played by five different people (six in "season two.") There's no central protagonist, as every player had their moment in the spotlight and character arcs and near death experiences.
However, there are some challenges.
1) Every character had an intro session that was a shorter session that was just their character and how they got dragged into the campaign. They were really good character introductions, but I can't imagine having 5 seperate prologues play out before the meat of the campaign starts.
2) This was a horror/intrigue campaign, that meant a lot of characters ended up keeping secrets from each other. Trying to maintain the mystery would be fun, but if all characters are POV characters, then the reader would be in on all the secrets if it played linerally through all of them at once or in third person omniscient. There is also one or two characters that never really had HUGE secrets like the others, and I wouldn't want their "route" to seem less fulfilling/revealing because less unique information would be given out.
I haven't quite figured out how it would be handled yet. My best solution so far would be to have a character select at the start menu for what character's POV you want to follow and only reveal what that character directly experiences. To try to give enough replayability for five characters, each one would have their secrets but also (character good at empathy would read more emotions off the npcs, the fastidious character would have a notebook with detailed notes to reference, things like that.) I still worry about having five separate prologues, and finding a balance between the routes being similar enough that on replays people don't have to re-read every single interaction, but also unique enough to reward the players for choosing to replay all the routes.
It seems like a lot of characters to make fulfilling (though I'd be up for the challenge) and I think it'd be a bit long of a novel to hinge on players replaying it five times. I'd be cool with having them exchange tidbits in forums and stuff, but I don't think that should be my first solution. I could lean into it hard though and there might be some novelty to taking that to the extreme and only letting players play a single route so they'd have to talk to other people to get the other details haha.
Thoughts? Advice? Black magic rituals I should attempt to divine a solution?
However, there are some challenges.
1) Every character had an intro session that was a shorter session that was just their character and how they got dragged into the campaign. They were really good character introductions, but I can't imagine having 5 seperate prologues play out before the meat of the campaign starts.
2) This was a horror/intrigue campaign, that meant a lot of characters ended up keeping secrets from each other. Trying to maintain the mystery would be fun, but if all characters are POV characters, then the reader would be in on all the secrets if it played linerally through all of them at once or in third person omniscient. There is also one or two characters that never really had HUGE secrets like the others, and I wouldn't want their "route" to seem less fulfilling/revealing because less unique information would be given out.
I haven't quite figured out how it would be handled yet. My best solution so far would be to have a character select at the start menu for what character's POV you want to follow and only reveal what that character directly experiences. To try to give enough replayability for five characters, each one would have their secrets but also (character good at empathy would read more emotions off the npcs, the fastidious character would have a notebook with detailed notes to reference, things like that.) I still worry about having five separate prologues, and finding a balance between the routes being similar enough that on replays people don't have to re-read every single interaction, but also unique enough to reward the players for choosing to replay all the routes.
It seems like a lot of characters to make fulfilling (though I'd be up for the challenge) and I think it'd be a bit long of a novel to hinge on players replaying it five times. I'd be cool with having them exchange tidbits in forums and stuff, but I don't think that should be my first solution. I could lean into it hard though and there might be some novelty to taking that to the extreme and only letting players play a single route so they'd have to talk to other people to get the other details haha.
Thoughts? Advice? Black magic rituals I should attempt to divine a solution?