Recently, we talked about black box theater, and built some black box terrain. That’s all very well and good for game elements that you want to disappear into the background - things you want to use and reuse, but not put too much focus or effort into. But some elements are important, and worth putting in a little (or a lot of) extra effort.
Before we launch another episode of “Wild and Crazy with Craft Glue,” let’s talk about the opposite of the black box: the spectacle. The spectacle is high production budgets, detailed set pieces, period-appropriate costumes, motorized lighting, trained animals. The spectacle is this madness:
That is indeed a floating, animatronic clown stage. Why? Well, it’s an opera (by nature, over the top) about the circus (by nature, way over the (big) top), and given the many insane stages built for the Bregenz Festival, I’m beginning to believe that “spectacle” is just their aesthetic.
Wow. Incredible. Highkey holds your attention hostage - oh shit, it has hands! Is that a hot air balloon? Does its mouth move too!? Lowkey took me several minutes to notice the people walking around onstage.
And that, there, is the downside of spectacle - too much of a good thing means you don’t even notice the play that’s happening, just the giant, terrifying eyeballs.
The Perils of (Over-)Production
Many TTRPG aficionados, when faced with the question “How do you increase immersion in your game?” would point to ready-made dungeon and town materials, or DIY tavern builds, intensely detailed town structures, even realistic water effects. “Yeah, Earthling, we got this covered already. Bada beep bada boop, blog finished!” And listen, I really dig that stuff! Those materials and instructional videos are what gave me the confidence to launch this project. But the major issue I have with this kind of spectacle is the same as the issue I alluded to with Floating, Fearsome Clown Friend up there - too much pageantry and your players can’t hear the Big Bad roaring towards them, because they’re too busy counting fish in the resin pond.
The dark side of this kind of production is even worse. Consider: You’ve spent the last six weeks building a five-building town set. The first time you put them out, the table oohs and ahs and you’re declared DM of the century. The next time you put them out, someone calls them cute but most of the table doesn’t comment. The fifth time you put them out, a character remarks “Wow, this looks just like the town we just left!” When people get used to things, they stop being noticeable - no matter how rad these things might be, eventually they become boring.
So now you’re in a pickle. You worked hard on this town, but it still became hum-drum. What do you do? Well, either you declare the whole fiasco a failure and throw away your hot glue gun, or you double down. You build a cavern, then a forest, then a river of lava. Each time, you go a little harder, you get a little more specific - and each time, the “wow!” factor is lessened, because your players now expect this from you. They’ve come to anticipate the spectacle. And that is dangerous, because it’s hard to live up to that anticipation, week after week. Somewhere along the line you’ll find yourself dreading the build, overspent on your hobby budget, and dangerously close to not having fun anymore.
There are three major downsides to over-producing your games:
Storage - If you’re building brand new terrain for every encounter, or different buildings for every climate and population, you’re quickly going to run into the problem of “where the hell am I going to put this?” Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones with your own basement, but even so, how many shelves are you going to buy to display (/aesthetically store and forget about) all this stuff?
Cost - Whether you’re talking DIY or supporting your favorite artist, acquiring a lot of high-value stuff - terrain, maps, magical items, etc - eventually becomes expensive, both in terms of time and money. Yes, it’s a hobby, yes, it’s a lot of fun, but yes, also, there is such thing as too expensive.
Specificity - A stone wall can only be a stone wall. A river of lava, although rad, can only be a river of lava. By getting fancy and acquiring these hyper-specific terrain pieces, you run the risk of limiting what you, the DM, add to the story (because why would you describe the terrain you can clearly see?) - and you are extremely likely to limit your players’ imaginations, because why would they imagine something was (or wasn’t) there when they can clearly see that it is (or isn’t)?
It’s that last piece that’s most dangerous. If you’re limiting your players’ imaginations, you’re limiting their engagement, their creativity - in short, the exact opposite of what we set out to do by introducing these Magical Components.
Well fuck this noise, you might be thinking. That’s a lot of effort and time and money just to be worse off than I was before! Chill, my dudeling, I wouldn’t have brought you to this precipice if I didn’t have a plan to get us safely down the other side.
The Selective Spectacle
Recall the whole point of Putting the Magic In is to enhance the shared DM/player experience by introducing intentional physical components to gameplay. The spectacle, as discussed, is a bit, well… extra. The black box is the exact opposite - cheap and bland as can be. The two used together, however, can really make a scene pop.
A friend of mine, heavily involved in theater, called this process “selective spectacle.” The difference between the spectacle above and the selective spectacle is its occasionality. In a selective spectacle, you’ll use mostly theater of the mind and black box terrain - and isolated, carefully chosen props. The magic is in the juxtaposition - the boring, blank-canvas walls vs. the gilt elephant-head mask and experience of a god.
As always, our goal is to increase engagement and immersion. By requiring your players to imagine the space their characters exist in (versus building a new set for every climate), you actually do a lot to keep them immersed. But the real world worms its way in - phones, especially, but also car horns, your roommate walking by, the eventual need to depart and go to your real home and your real bed instead of camping out in the wilderness with your adventuring friends keeping watch for wolves or worse. Engagement keeps your players coming back to the proverbial campfire after each incursion of reality.
So what criteria are we going to use to select the spectacle? Well, lots, probably, and I haven’t thought of them all yet, but here are some general ones:
Available skill set. Don’t try to rig up a programmable lighting strip if you know nothing about electricity or programming. There’s a reason my first project was literal garbage.
Available materials. Sure, Amazon makes it easy to have all kind of fancy bits and bobs, but there are lots of ways to a finished project and you might learn something new along the way. (I must admit, I have fallen deeply into the “oh I’m just going to get this one neat thing” trap, so this is a case of “do as I say, not as I do.”)
Available time. Have a game every week? Maybe don’t try to build something new for every session! I mean go for it if you want, if it feels good, but don’t pressure yourself to build if it isn’t fun. You have enough to do as DM.
Re-usable. If you’re going to put all this work in, you want it to see some use. I would encourage you not to make Components for each single-use magic item your players come across, unless it’s something like a Potion of Healing which they’ll likely get multiples of over the course of the game.
Re-contextualizable. You also want to be able to shuffle around the context for a Component, so that your good work can be put to use in different campaigns. A magic carpet in this campaign might be a Cloak of Many Things in another, or a princess’ banner, or a blanket given during some poignant moment.
Radness. Listen, sometimes you just want to make a rad little thing. Go forth and get weird, gremlin!
A few examples of selective-spectacle Magical Components I have employed in my games:
Rocks lol The Game: used when my players needed to rescue a child’s pet from a rock slide in order to advance the plot. Just a $11 Traffic knock-off with some gravel glued to the top and painted. Not going to see a lot of re-use within a one-shot, but I certainly expect to bring this out in future games.
“Quaal’s” Feather Token: a sneaky false-flag magical item used to kick off the main quest (DM tip: know the difference between an Arcana check and the Identify spell, and use it to your advantage!). A piece of copper foil I had, cut out and “etched” to resemble a feather. Not the most durable, which might effect its long-term re-usability, but if it survives it could represent any birdlike acquisition.
The ubiquitous Tavern: Opening scene to the ridiculous one-shot in my first post. Various popsicle sticks, coffee stirrers, and some 3d-printed components from back when mine was working. The tables are pretty reusable, in a ramshackle place. The barrels and crates are great scatter, but some of this is too specific to use very often.
Now, these were pieces I built before I came up with this newsletter, before I was thinking about the long-term durabitliy/reusability of a prop. Even so, they have at least as many points in their favor as they do against.
The selective spectacle is intentional - it uses the characteristics of the spectacle to pull your players in and pump them up. The selective spectacle is careful - inexpensive, within your skillset, and viable within the timeframe you have to build. And the selective spectacle is multi-purpose: it develops the story and gives your players literal touchstones to refer back to later - but it also gives you, the DM, some fun new tools to play with.
The Bright Shiny Payoff
These selectively-spectacular Magical Components can serve many functions in the game: they are obvious, physical reminders of the magical items or other materials they’ve gathered throughout gameplay. They can remind your players of important NPCs (fancy gilt calling card, anyone?) or available quests (hand-drawn maps, bulletin board posters, wanted signs, etc). And they are deeply satisfying rewards, as rated by the goblin-brain.
Remember that attention-grabbiness inherent to the spectacle? You can use your players’ newfound focus to give you room to perform some DM sleight of hand. Consider:
As your players pass around your new masterpiece (because of course they will), pay attention to what they remark on. If they make any particularly insightful observations, you can adjust the DC of the inevitable History or Arcana check.
One player hangs on to a particular magical component, and especially if they fiddle with it, announce that they’ve attuned to that magical item - or they’ve been cursed.
A collection of pages, seemingly disconnected, when taken together reveal a secret code or treasure map.
In order to solve an in-game puzzle, players have to solve a real life puzzle, and the magical component is the key.
If your players leave their magical components with the DM (as mine do), you can sneak items into their inventory for later discovery. Why would you do this? Why wouldn’t you do this, imagine the chaos!
You can also use the reveal of Magical Components the way that TV shows end their episodes - present them just before you call a bio-break, or right at the end of the session, but don’t allow your players to make any checks yet to figure out what they are. Make them come back on time, or next time, to see what happens!
Speaking of which… Tune in next week for Selective Spectacle Component no. 1 - the Tracking Spell.