Immersive theatre can use i n media res when the audience is purely passive, but escape rooms cannot, as the players are far more than viewers. The witches’s prophecy in the Hotel Lobby (Sleep No More)īut inciting incidents are necessary for the characters, not you, the guests. The characters do experience an inciting incident…
You are not called to be heroic, nor is there anything you can do to help. Think of Sleep No More: there’s no inciting incident for you, the viewer. In media res works if you are using the players as viewers. Think Luke finding the droids on Tatooine in Star Wars-the story doesn’t begin with the Empire takeover.) (Note that usually in media res still has an inciting incident for the plot. It challenges the viewer to piece together what has happened before and gives the opening a strong sense of urgency.
In media res is a storytelling technique that plunges the reader/viewer into the middle of a story that has a long chain of events preceding it. I can’t tell you how many games I’ve played that ended in “Yay…we got the…thing…that somehow helps a problem I’ve forgotten about…?” Things that happen to us have a lasting power that things told to us do not. Telling the inciting incident results in a conclusion that has no weight. Showing the inciting incident makes escaping, obtaining the McGuffin-whatever the game goal is-meaningful. Without that moment, they could go about their lives, but with it, they must do something to right the world that will transform them into heroes.Īll of these moments are moments of surprise. The inciting incident is the moment where something changes in the world that spurs our heroes (the players) to action. Mistoffelees strikes again!Īre you having fun yet? I am, just imagining these games. You have no idea what she’s talking about! You didn’t do it! Nooooooo! An actor-or large projected video-of a judge sentences your team to life for murder. The game master takes you down a dark hallway where your team stands trial. It takes more work, but imagine how magical experiencing an inciting incident could be! That’s like skipping the foundation of a house. Most escape adventures start in Act 2 and skip Act 1. What if we follow the mantra of all writing-and show rather than tell? The right is a far more exciting thing to experience than the left. “You were wrongly imprisoned for a crime.” “You got lost in a cave.” “You awoke the tomb’s curse.” “The cat stole your keys and ran into the neighbor’s backyard!” Most escape rooms take the easy way out for beginnings: they tell you the opening part of the adventure, whether through a game master reading a script or through a polished video. I’d argue the beginning bookend is more crucial than the end, and could be the difference maker between just another escape room and an immersive adventure. The bookends of the experience are off-the-clock and where you can invest the majority of your story-telling, since there is no game to compete for player attention. In Bookends and Bottlenecks, I explored the structure Strange Bird Immersive uses to tell stories within the chaos of an escape room. The world was knotty, but the conclusion unties the knot, re-stabilizing the world. In literary studies, endings go by many names.įans of the linear Aristotle’s Poetics call it the denouement (French for “unknotting”). A resolution by any other name would smell as sweet Players will appreciate your commitment to the story. Maybe you can find a way to make losing fulfilling-often horror escape rooms are more interesting when you lose them than when you win! Yes, losing is no fun, you don’t get to feel like heroes, but a losing scene will bring the adventure to a close. Don’t cheap out and have the Game Master come in. But we do take the time inside the world to bring players out of the game, to come down from the high of “there’s one minute left on the clock!” In fact, one of our characters is made quite happy by the losing condition. We hate running it, because the world is not made right again. Readers of Immersology know by now that I have a very strong bias for designing escape rooms to be won by the vast majority, if not all teams.īut even The Man From Beyond has a losing scene. I promise, you can do it without adding 15 minutes between your game times. And I admit The Man From Beyond is too damn long for what we charge.īut concluding your narrative adventure should not be optional. I know this industry’s greatest pain point is throughput-we all have ceilings on how many games we can run on a Saturday. I think the end of The Man From Beyond from climax to player exit is 15 minutes long. It can take thirty seconds or much longer. You can take as long as you want to end the story. The players achieved their goal, and now they get to enjoy the fruits of their labor. The concluding bookend should be off the game clock. The blurb is the product you are selling.
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