The Story Circle

By: Ahobo

I read and listen to a lot of GM tips and methods from all over the internet. Some of these tips cover adventure writing and how to go about creating adventures.

While I generally don’t recommend approaching adventure writing like story writing, I do recognize that both types of writing have similarities. The youtube algorithm seems to agree. It introduced me to a new concept I had never heard of before: the Story Circle.

The Story Circle

The Story Circle is a simplified version of the Hero’s Journey developed by show writer Dan Harmon. This story structure organizes a story into 8 pieces.

  1. The character is shown in a zone of comfort.
  2. They desire something.
  3. In search of their desire, they enter an unfamiliar situation.
  4. They adapt to the situation.
  5. They get what they desire.
  6. They pay a heavy price for winning.
  7. They return to their familiar situation.
  8. They have changed overall.

The video goes into a little more detail of what makes this simple sequence such a good story structure. Briefly, the structure has symmetry and alternating up and down beats. The combination of these things makes the story catch people’s attention, easy to understand and pleasing to viewer.

Application in Adventure Writing

One problem of trying to apply ANY story structure to an adventure is that TTRPG adventures are (ideally) non linear.

The chaos of players and dice will make it impossible to go over all the steps of any structure in order. This is not a bad thing. These games thrive on player choice and luck being the main driving factors at the table. So, why even look to story structures in the first place?

These story structures can serve as an outline of possible encounters that players will have in any adventure.

The popular 5 Room Dungeon is an example of this. John Four took the hero’s journey story structure and used it as a template for writing adventures. We can look at the Story Circle and get some key encounters that will make our adventures have variety and some solid story telling.

Grouping the first 3 parts of the story circle we get the opening scene of an adventure.

We might describe the adventurers having a good time or going about their business. Then, remind them of their goal for this session and contrast the peace of their current safe position with the danger of the location they are going to explore.

“The day is bright and peaceful, the journey to the cave marked with the sounds of birds chirping and the feeling of a gentle breeze on your face. The cave entrance appears before you, it is a dark hole overgrown with moss and roots. This is the last known location of the mayor’s daughter and your group has been charged with her safe return. What do you do?”

Regardless, it reminds us that at the start of any session we want to:

  1. Describe where the players are.
  2. Remind them why they are here.
  3. Make it clear they are about to embark on an adventure.

Populate The Adventure

So the adventure has started. The players are exploring and making rolls. What will they find? Looking at the next parts of the Story Circle we have:

  1. Adapt to the situation.
  2. Get what they desire.
  3. Pay a heavy price for winning.

These beats make me think that we might want to have the possibility for the group to find some key information that might help them later. Or some magic item or tool that will is useful in the encounters to come.

We want to have the main goal of the adventure be somewhere the players can go. However, we want to have this goal be guarded or have some sort of twist that complicates achieving the goal.

Continuing the example from before, we might have some goblins living in the cave. Perhaps they have a magic sword that the party can loot to help in the coming fights.

The party might find the mayor’s daughter unconscious. Her soul taken from her and being used to empower the Goblin Chief’s Staff.

The party has to risk life and limb fighting this powerful foe to free the girl’s soul.

In summary, when we key an adventure location we might try to have the following encounters:

  1. Optional information / treasure that helps with the rest of the scenario.
  2. The main goal the party wants.
  3. A complication / twist in getting the goal.

Concluding the Adventure

Lastly, the Story Circle has these 2 steps:

  1. Return to their familiar situation.
  2. They have overall changed.

This makes me think about the main rewards of the adventure as well as how achieving this adventure affects the group on a narrative level.

In RPGs we are fortunate in that we dont usually have to think to hard about how the PCs get stronger. The game system will usually take care of this for us.

The main thing we as Game Masters need to consider is

  1. What rewards the players get.
  2. What are the narrative consequences of the adventure.

We might say the Mayor rewards the group with his finest set of armor and 200 gp.

We might also say that the mayor holds the party in high regard now. Perhaps entrusting them with more secretive quests or other sensitive matters.

Perhaps the goblins in that cave where just a small part of a larger horde. A horde that the players have angered.

For our purposes, this part of the circle is to remind us to think about rewarding our players and dropping hooks to possible future adventures.

Story Circle for Players

One of the nice things about the story circle is that it can go round and round. Developing the character over the course of many episodes of a TV series or many adventures in a TTRPG Campaign.

Players can also make use of the story circle to get closer to their characters.

They can do this by thinking about:

  1. Where their character is now.
  2. What does their character want.
  3. What has your character gone through to get what they want.
  4. How are they affected by getting what they want.

Reflecting on how a character changes after achieving a quest or goal is the definition of character development.

Conclusion

The story circle is a flexible and simple story structure that has been battle tested on TV for years. By using it as an outline for a session, we can quickly create a simple story for our tables to discover and play through.