Subtext in Game Writing

I’ve been thinking about subtext in fiction writing and script writing lately and it occurred to me if you stretch the concept a bit you get a quick little insight into a worthwhile game design principle.

But first, what is subtext? Essentially, it’s the dialog that a character doesn’t say. It’s the words a writer doesn’t write. Subtext can be conveyed by tone, description (mannerisms in terms of a character), or sometimes just context. If you ask me tomorrow if I’ve been busy and I say, “A bit,” and then ask Gandalf after the War of the Ring if he’s been busy and he says, “A bit,” the subtext with both of those identical answers is entirely different.

Subtext is used to make dialog more realistic, to make dialog scenes richer with meaning, and to avoid blatant exposition. Gandalf doesn’t say, “I’m tired after fighting against the minions of Sauron, and I never thought we could win but we managed to pull it off thanks to some hobbits,” even if that’s what he means. That would be unrealistic and expository.

This, of course, is a ham-fisted, reductivist way of considering subtext, which can mean many different things. For example, I’m not even getting into the kind of subtext that connotes a theme. Ask someone what the subtext of the Lord of the Rings tells us about the theme and you’ll get one of many different views, each with their own examples—it’s about war, it’s about industrialization, it’s about pastoralism, and so on. You can do that with games too, and doing an internet search suggests that such things are precisely what people think about in terms of subtext in RPGs. But that’s not where I’m going with this. Theme is a big topic we can (maybe) cover in the future.

For now, I want to focus on subtext on a more practical level. The words that are not said, and why. 

Subtext in Adventures

What does practical subtext have to do with game writing? In adventure design, we don’t want to avoid explaining things to the GM. Blatant “expository” writing is a good thing when it comes to telling them what’s really going on. However, sometimes designers go a little too far and say too much.

Consider this example. In a sci-fi adventure, the PCs are trying to steal back an alien idol from some pirates and return it to its rightful temple. The idol is enormous and inside a pirate starship hold. A storage chamber near the hold has some hover platforms that could support the weight of the idol, and there’s a path through the starship corridors that the PCs could use to take it from the hold to the airlock without being seen by too many cameras, with doorways wide enough to allow the idol to pass through. An adventure writer might be tempted to then explain: “The way to get the idol out is to get a hover platform and follow the path to the airlock.” This, I might argue, should be subtext. It’s better unsaid. 

Why? Because it makes it seem like there is only one way for the PCs to succeed. 

But maybe the PCs get their hands on a teleporter. Maybe they blow a hole in the side of the hold and toss the idol into space for retrieval later. Maybe they kill every pirate on board and fly the pirate starship to the alien temple. Maybe… you get the idea. 

In any good adventure, there are multiple ways to succeed, and some of them—maybe even most of them—are things the adventure writer hasn’t thought of. 

Prescribing player character actions is the game writing equivalent to too much exposition in fiction writing, and it leads to railroad GMing. Adventure design with only one path to success often leads to pretty boring gameplay.

So what should the adventure writer do instead? Make it clear that the hover platforms will hold the weight of the idol. Detail where all the security cameras are in the corridors of the ship. Don’t hide that information, and in fact, make it pretty clear from the context.

Subtext in Settings

I think you can be even freer with subtext when you’re creating setting material for an RPG. I’d say that a setting without subtext makes for dull reading, in fact. 

Don’t be coy about the important stuff. If the grand vizier is plotting against the monarch (they always are), I think the text needs to make that crystal clear. But if the vizier is possibly doing it because they’re having an affair with the monarch’s spouse? That could be subtext, so that when you’re talking about the vizier’s plot, you could mention that it involves keeping the spouse safe when things get serious, or—if you really want to get into it—you could even mention there’s a secret passage in the palace that only the two of them know about.

While subtext isn’t good for facts or for providing information about what’s going on, it might be useful for answering why things are the way they are, or even for just suggesting such explanations. The vizier’s plot still works and the implications it might have for the PCs is still clear, but the romance angle only comes up if the GM wants that to be a part of the game (arguably, the people who don’t want it probably won’t pick up on it).

Subtext makes the setting material seem richer and deeper.

Subtext at the Table

Designers of both adventures and setting material that involve politics and intrigue can and should provide insight on how to portray such things at the table, which becomes its own sort of subtext.

Let’s look at another example. Suppose that in a published adventure, there’s a secret, evil cult that’s infiltrated a peaceful society. Now, the designer could have some NPC just tell the PCs about this and ask for help, but that’s fairly pedestrian. Far better is if the PCs start to pick up on hints and clues (subtext!) and figure it out on their own. There are subtle encounters where the PCs see some odd goings on, or hear rumors about unexplained strange events. After that, an NPC ally of the PCs starts sharing the beliefs of a new religion with them, hoping that they might be interested. Of course, all these things lead back to the cult, while at no point has the adventure text encouraged the GM to say the words “evil cult” at the table. There’s subtext for the GM to use in the game. 

To be clear, the adventure material is presented to the GM in a straightforward manner, with no subtext, but the way the GM is encouraged to present the material to the players is another matter entirely. Like a novel reader or a movie watcher, the players (and the player characters) have to put things together to pick up on the real meaning of what’s going on in the game world. And again, the world will seem all the deeper and richer for it.

Subtext in Rules (Nope)

The only place you shouldn’t think about subtext is in straight-up rule writing. I think the readers need to understand the writer’s design intent, and that means spelling things out clearly. 

If subtext is the words that go unsaid (or in this case unwritten), then game design involves knowing how and when to use it. In the end, as always, it’s important for a designer to remember that they are not a storyteller—they’re creating materials for other people to be storytellers.

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