The Babylon Project

What I learned about storytelling from an RPG sourcebook

One of the most useful books I read when I was learning to tell stories was the source book for the short-lived Babylon 5 role-playing game, The Babylon Project. It includes a wonderful section on how to structure a role-playing campaign in order to provide a satisfying story.

Back then, most RPGs were about going out, killing monsters, collecting treasure, and leveling up. Campaigns were usually just the same party going out again and again and finding new monsters to kill. There may occasionally have been a little more to the backstory, but it wasn't necessary. The Babylon Project took a completely different approach to both character design and plotting. Most importantly, the two were interrelated.

It was the first time that I really understood how a plot arc should work. It starts by explaining the five phases of the story.

First, the introduction, where you get to know the characters and the setting. Players need time to settle in and get familiar with everything. It’s basically the equivalent of those intro levels in a game where you’re getting to know the controls, the UI, and the basics of how the game works. Nothing much happens, but it’s just enough to keep you interested and get you up to speed.

Then the identification, where you find out what's going on and what the story is going to be about. It’s essential to distinguish this from the introduction, because until you know the characters and the setting, you don't really understand why this is so important to them.¹ At this stage you don't have much information, just some vague hints as to what's happening.

Then you move to the preparation phase, where you learn more about the threat facing you and get ready to deal with it. This is the bulk of the story, and should be structured as two steps forward, one step back. Every time you think you’ve solved the problem, you encounter another one.

Then you finally get to the challenge, where all hell breaks loose. This is often short, but very intense. Basically, the boss fight.

And finally the resolution, where you get to see the results of everything that happened in the story. It’s important for players to feel that they actually achieved something, and that their actions had an effect.

I'd never thought of structuring a role-playing game that way, but as soon as I read it, it made perfect sense. It wasn’t a game: it was a story. And that meant it needed to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It sounds obvious now, but this was revolutionary at the time. Most TV sci-fi shows were based on a monster-of-the-week format. The idea of developing a complex story across 110 episodes was unheard of. RPG modules back then were little more than hack’n’slash maps, monsters and treasure: there was no character development, no long-term arc, and no consequences.

Designing the story around the characters

Where it became really interesting was the way that this tied into the character design. Babylon Project characters have to take a number of flaws as well as skills. You then design elements of the plot so that characters have to come face to face with their flaws and figure out how to overcome them. For example, if a character is deeply loyal to his friends, you put him into a position where he has to betray or abandon someone for the greater good.²

In other words, what makes it an interesting story is not just that the characters aren’t just solving the big problem that they're all faced with, but each of them has to solve their own personal, individual problems.

The Babylon Project also introduced me to the idea of foreshadowing. By planning your story out in advance, you can drop little hints and clues throughout that don't make much sense at the time but have a huge impact later. That helps your players believe in your world as well as your story.

Along the same lines, as part of the story design, you introduce antagonists for the sole purpose of triggering characters’ flaws at a later part in the plot. And of course, you provide clues throughout the story to tell the players where they can find help when they realize they need it. Something which didn’t seem significant at the time suddenly becomes an a-ha or an oh shit moment.

None of these concepts is either new or revolutionary. They're just basic storytelling skills. But it’s laid out so clearly, in just twenty pages, and it all just made perfect sense to me at the time.

And most importantly, the principles don't just apply to role-playing games, but to books, movies, TV, and every other form of story. I've read many other books about writing since then, but none of them has had as much impact as an obscure role-playing source book.

I would also highly recommend JMS's Complete Book of Scriptwriting. I read it because I wanted to know more about Babylon 5: to my surprise, he talked just as much about Murder, She Wrote, and the challenge of writing for a high profile network TV show. My copy of that appears to have gone missing during my move across the Atlantic: I think I'm going to have to get another one.

1. Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse is a great example of why this matters. His original storyline dived straight into the twist. Audiences didn’t get it. So the studio made him write two introductory episodes. They’re not great, but without them, the rest of the show didn’t make sense. Effectively, you can’t start the story by saying, “but it’s not what you thought.”

2. Flaws aren’t necessarily negative. Part of the trick is to turn positive character traits into hindrances.