1. The Player and the Pentacle - Foreword

By Jeff Gomez

I remember the exact moment I’d realized that storytelling had changed forever. I was in my friend Chuck Barouch’s living room in 1983. We were about to have a game of Dungeons & Dragons when I noticed an Apple IIe on a desk plugged into a nearby phone jack. I asked Chuck what he used it for, and he told me mostly for word processing, but he’d also started playing a simplified kind of D&D game with some guys across the country using what he called bulletin boards. “You’re talking to people through your computer? Like Star Trek? How does that work?”

And like the wonderful nerd he was, Chuck expounded. But he might has well have been a mile away. All I could think about was how this little typewriter-television-phone was going to run video, unfold entire story worlds in front of thousands—millions even—and we would somehow be able to explore them, play in them, and bend their narratives to our will. Between seat and screen, there would be genuine magic. Participative narrative not across a kitchen table, but across the planet.

As of this writing the world’s latest video game obsession is Elden Ring, an action role-playing playing game developed by FromSoftware with the creative participation of fantasy novelist George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones). The game is entirely immersive, some complaining it’s too much so. The world simply exists, shorn of the didactic trappings that would normally instruct and direct the player. You navigate Elden Ring by interacting with its myriad environments, engaging its characters, battling its monsters, and placing all of it into a greater narrative context right between your ears. We are not spoon fed its lore, we are swimming in it as if we have been transported to a realm that has always been there.

The upshot of this is that players are forced (and are mostly thrilled) to communicate with one another, coaching, exchanging tips, complaining, and exalting their discoveries. Cleverly, this can be done in-game by leaving notes at various sites. But the real action is happening across Twitch, Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok.

This is exactly what Nick Jones is describing as a new narrative modality in the book you’re holding, The Player and the Pentacle. Jones posits that recent generations have been raised on deeper, richer longform stories. From video game series like The Legend of Zelda and Halo to transmedia cosmologies like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we have come to accept, enjoy, and spend billions on infinitely detailed alternate realities. What’s more, technology has evolved to the point where we no longer must sit at a table playing D&D with pencils and paper (much as we might love that)—we can project ourselves into these story worlds and interact with them, not just hacking at dragons or shooting at non-player characters in them but laughing and even crying with them.

Ask any fan their favorite things about their best-loved story world and I’ll bet you the intensity or explicitness of its violence won’t even be in the top ten. The relationships, the mysteries, the depth of the lore, how aspects of the world interconnect with a film or streaming series that also depicts that world—those will come first. And those are forged by creators who have an intrinsic understanding of Narrative Design.

Storytelling has changed because storytellers must take three new things into account. The first is that our audience is now capable of talking back to us. If they don’t like something, the world will know about it within hours of its release. Such is the power of social media. The second is that our stories are subject to intense scrutiny and need to stand up to it. If we run our characters through a cardboard tube, our audience will poke holes in it, then tear it apart. If we want our story worlds to last we must fully realize them right out of the gate. And third, our audience must be made to feel like participants—they must want to speculate, to solve those mysteries, to feel that endorphin rush when they find those Easter eggs or fit elements of two pieces of content together and they snap like Lego bricks.

This is the purview of the Narrative Designer: the Lore Master, the Cosmologist, the person in charge of envisioning, creating, or maintaining the superstructure of the story world, whether it’s a video game or a blockbuster global franchise.

Finally, and perhaps most unique in my experience, Nick argues for us to be mindful and tap into the folkloric. He’s doing this for a vital reason, and here is where the tables turn and the master (that would be me) becomes the student. As these sprawling universes become ever more spectacular, they are in danger of becoming generic. Eye candy for our 8K televisions and IMAX movie screens, leaving us dazzled and empty.

Folklore is local. It’s warm and personal and beautiful and horrifying. It is about the things that happen to ordinary human beings in intimate situations. There is specificity there capable of smashing tropes and avatars. The Player and the Pentacle is a handbook on how to tap into the folkloric (the microcosmic) and weave it into your video game, your D&D campaign, your transmedia universe (the macrocosmic). Listen to Jones and you will be far better able to level up your interactive narratives, granting your players (or even your audience) a deeper sense of immersion through Narrative Design, and a far greater feeling of agency in your story world through the compelling power of the folkloric.

Storytelling has indeed changed forever. Good thing we have Nick Jones as a guide to maximizing our craft in the new modality.

Jeff Gomez

March 2022