Mediums of Storytelling, Part Two

    Okay, welcome back to my blog post duology about storytelling mediums! Let's jump right in, shall we?

    The first of the more uncommon mediums I've seen is video games.

    No, I'm not talking about the video game itself, though developers can and certainly do tell plenty of stories through this medium. (I'd put this in its own category, as with stage plays and performance art, but I don't play enough story-based video games to have a recommendation so I'll leave it to someone else to talk about the advantages video games have over other mediums.) Rather, I'm talking about people who tell stories through the gameplay.

    Take, for example, the Empires SMP. This is, actually, my favorite example of this medium, so here's the recommendation right now, but Empires is basically a TV series, created by 12-15 different YouTube creators at once, that uses Minecraft to tell its integral story. Each creator roleplays as a different character with a different arc, and they interact with one another and make shenanigans happen over the course of the season. Additionally, depending on which viewpoint(s) you follow, you may get an entirely different story experience from Empires than someone else invested into the series.

    Personally, I've watched the viewpoints from GeminiTay, LDShadowLady, FalseSymmetry, and Shubble for both seasons of Empires (except for False, because she only came in for Season 2). From my experience, you can watch a single viewpoint and get a decent sense of the story--but watching other viewpoints doesn't make things boring, because, in general, there's only a handful of clips that you've seen before.

    For example, if you start with LDShadowLady's perspective for Empires Season 1, you'll get a few interactions with GeminiTay's character and a bit of a sense of what's going on in the wider scope of things on the SMP. You won't entirely miss the fact that there's a demon running amok on the server, spreading Nether corruption all over the place, even though LDShadowLady generally ignores all of that.

    However, when you go and watch GeminiTay's perspective, you get a whole different story, even though they're both playing on the same SMP. GeminiTay is much more involved with the overall events of the server than LDShadowLady is, and as a result watching her viewpoint gives a much more in-depth understanding of what's going on. However, skip LDShadowLady's viewpoint and you may miss the prophecies of the SMP's doom.

    This is such a unique method of storytelling! It combines the virtues of tabletop roleplaying games (another relatively uncommon medium I'll talk about momentarily) and the virtues of visual media into one cohesive story--and because there are 12-15 creators all making episodes from their point of view, it takes a long time to run out of content!

    Another Minecraft SMP that I quite enjoy certain perspectives of is the Hermitcraft SMP. It has many of the same pros as Empires, except that it has close to double the participants, and any storytelling occurring on Hermitcraft is largely improvised. Each individual Hermit may have their own lore and storytelling for their base, but any serverwide storytelling has to be instigated by someone who likes messing with people--someone like Grian, who has been the source of 80% of Hermitcraft's shenanigans since he joined the server in Season 6.

    Next, tabletop role-playing games (TTRPG).

    If you've never played D&D, here's a quick and dirty explanation of what it is: A bunch of people sitting around a table with character stat sheets and dice, telling a story together. It stays (mostly) in control because D&D has Rules, and because a roll of the dice can throw off someone's plans quicker than a dog goes after a treat.

    In D&D, there are two groups of people: the DM, or Dungeon Master, who creates an intended plot and orchestrates the story, and the players, who take the role of PCs (Player Characters) and do whatever the heck they want in the DM's world, leaving the DM to try and keep them under control and on track within the story. At least, that's how it generally goes in my D&D group.

    D&D actually provides several campaigns with its rulebooks to help beginner DMs get started, but there are many people who come up with stories of their own for their players to explore. My DM falls into this latter category.

    Now, every D&D or TTRPG campaign is different, and I've never played one of the ones that D&D provides you with, so I can't recommend a favorite without pointing you to one of the many groups who record their sessions and post them on YouTube. However, my favorite representation of D&D in another form of media is the movie, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. For the uninitiated, it's simply a fun action movie with a good sense of humor. For those who play D&D, however, there are loads of little jokes within the film, ranging from the sorts of things any D&D player will understand (such as one player rolling a critical fail over and over while the others do all the fighting without them), to the sorts of things that only the most serious of D&D geeks will catch on to (such as the chubby dragon, who is apparently a canonical part of D&D lore).

    Next, YouTube shorts.

    I think I've already mentioned this on my blog, but the YouTube creator Jill Bearup has a fantastic series of shorts about a romance author trying to wrangle her fantasy heroine into proper romance tropes (It was once called One Crisis At A Time, but has now been rebranded to match the book Jill Bearup's audience begged her to write, called Just Stab Me Now).

    Jill Bearup isn't the only one to do this. I recently discovered a group of people on YouTube (Deerstalker Pictures) who are busy making D&D skits on YouTube, following the same set of characters through their adventures in a Monty Python sort of style--only, being D&D, I find those skits way funnier than the tiny bit of Monty Python my dad showed me when I was a kid.

    The cool thing about these sorts of series is that, as long as you stay up with them, you get a bite-sized "episode" every week or two, perfect for a busy person who wants to follow the story without sitting down for a twenty- to forty-five-minute episode every week. Just watch a 30-second to 1-minute short and you're all caught up for the week and can go back to Real Life. Just be wary of the medium, because YouTube is addictive, and once you're on there it can be really tough to get off again.

    Finally, art.

    Music, stained glass, painting... Pretty much any kind of art can be used to tell a story.

    For example, there is a music album called Calling All Dawns, by Christopher Tin. It contains 12 songs, each in a different language, and it tells the story of the day, of life, and of story structure itself through the mood and content of the songs. None of the songs are in English, so for a unilingual American like myself, the story mostly comes through in the tone and mood of the music and lyrics.

    Another album that also tells a story is The Fire Within, by Jennifer Thomas. This one is purely instrumental, with the piano telling most of the story with the backup of fantastic orchestrations and occasional, non-lyric vocals. Thomas's most recent album, Oceans, is similar, but with a different tone, and therefore a different story.

    In the library of Utah Valley University, there is a gigantic set of stained-glass windows, called Roots of Knowledge, from the Holdman Glass Art Studio right across the street from where I work. This artwork tells the story of our world, of scientific and artistic discoveries, and technological advancements, and much, much more. I've only been near it once, and didn't get a chance to really look at it, but as soon as I'm going to UVU full-time, I'm going to start finding time to go there and study it, because I think it's absolutely fascinating.

    I'm going to stop providing examples here, because, honestly, any artwork, or series thereof, can tell a story. I could write an essay, nay, a full research paper, about how important story is to us humans. We need story, to help us preserve our history, to help us understand new concepts, to create and sustain our cultures. But I'm not going to write that research paper, because I don't have the time or inclination to do so. Besides, story is the sort of thing that I believe every person needs to study and research for themselves. We all resonate with a different kind of story, told through a different medium, and what works for me may not work for you.

    Finally, every person has a story to tell. We all live, and we all have experiences, and there is something about all of us that the rest of the world doesn't know. We all have a responsibility to live our lives and tell our story, even if it's only to those closest to us. An oft-quoted writing adage in the circles I'm in says, "Every person is the main character in their own story." This is true, not just in fiction, but in life.

    So go, learn about story, and tell your story. Whether you do it through computer programming, woodcarving, historical fashion, or any of the mediums I've talked about here, go and tell your story. It's important, not just for you, but for all the rest of us as well.