Toss a Coin to your Players. Utilizing Non-linear Storytelling.

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation and was able to catch up with their friends and family. One of the things I did over the break was to catch up on watching Netflix’s The Witcher. A very good show if you like dark fantasy but I will forewarn that it is very dark and for mature audiences due to its content. One of the things that I noticed in The Witcher and that I have been seeing a lot recently in the media is the use of non-linear storytelling. What I mean by that is that the story is told somewhat out of order using flashbacks, flashforwards, visions, and even time travel occasionally. We see this especially in the first season of The Witcher, but also in shows like The Book of Boba Fett, and Loki. I really enjoyed the non-linear storytelling in each of these shows and would love to translate them as a storytelling tool for roleplaying, but I feel it comes with some challenges which we will unpack later. So how can we make the best use of non-linear storytelling to have the greatest impact in our RPG sessions?

Those who do not learn from history. . . 

The first way is to tell part of your narrative via flashbacks. This allows you to use the past to set the stage for actions soon to come. We can also use flashbacks to establish relationships, reinforce important plot points, and engage in some good worldbuilding. An example of this may be just before the players meet the villain; you can have a flashback to establish a more personal relationship with them. One word of caution. Using a flashback to establish or retcon an event can cause the flashback to lose its effectiveness. A better way to use flashbacks is to use several of them over a series of sessions to help develop a cohesive narrative that you can deliver bit by bit to the players. This cohesiveness will ensure that the narrative will not feel forced when you reveal a major plot point to the players. 

The Future is Now! 

Flashforwards are another tool in the storyteller’s arsenal. Unlike flashbacks, a flashforward moves the narrative to a point in the future. This can be used to foreshadow events to come and to really ramp up the tension! You can foreshadow the death of a character, the arrival of a villain, a pending disaster, or something less negative. This narrative can be delivered in the form of a dream sequence, a vision quest, or even full on time travel.  One word of caution for this as well. Unlike flashbacks, flashforwards are a promise you are making to your players and it is important to make good on your promises, but you do not have to make good on the promise in the exact way your players expect. The future is always in motion and visions of events yet to come are often misinterpreted.

Back to the Future

It is up to you if you want to include any sort of time travel shenanigans, but you absolutely can if you want. Time travel can be a lot of fun, but it requires a lot of prep on the Game Master’s side of things, along with a fair amount of research. Can a player’s actions actually change the future? Would that prevent them from needing to travel into the past in the first place? This would create a temporal paradox of the player both needing to and not needing to travel back in time. But what about variant timelines such as those seen in Loki? Could multiple timelines exist and if so what is the “real” timeline anyway? These are the sorts of mind bending questions to be considered before firing up the Delorean or the Tardis and jumping into the past (or the future for that matter). Time and care must be taken to create a consistent narrative and there must be consequences for muddling in the past or returning from the future with insights to what the future will hold. Unless special care is taken during preparation, you may create inconsistencies in the timeline, requiring you to make retcons or for the narrative to become confusing and frustrating for your players.

My take

I think that scenes involving non-linear storytelling need to be treated with the utmost care. Special attention must be paid to the details to make the scenes feel believable and consistent. I find that making these scenes mostly exploration and roleplay focused work best. Also, characters should try to avoid using their character sheets as much as possible as they may not have obtained the items or the skills on the sheet at the time the scene takes place. I think that non-linear storytelling is a really cool device, but it must be approached with caution to avoid the scene feeling forced or hamfisted. But in the right place, at the right time, a flashback or a flashforward can do wonders. In one of my past Star Wars: Force & Destiny campaigns, I weaved a narrative within a narrative and told an entire story through flashbacks that eventually tied into the present day. The players seemed to really like it and I connected the distant past to the present using visions granted to the players by the will of the force.

Have you used non-linear storytelling in your game? Let me know how it turned out!

Take Heart!

Karington Hess 

Game Master and Founder of Open Heart Games