The "Your Stories Should Have" series attempts to explore fundamental elements of storytelling, with a particular emphasis on how it fits into games (but not exclusively so).
Previous Entries: Nuanced Evil | Initiation
The fact that stories are driven by conflict is well known to the point that it can be taken for granted that an audience will know it. Merely having a conflict is not sufficient to create an engaging plot and narrative, but lacking one will almost always doom a story to failure. Only the most beautiful or sublime experiences can be meaningful without conflict, and even then they can typically benefit from the addition of one.
The problem is that not all conflicts are created equal. There are a variety of internal and external conflicts, but they all need to revolve around a particular goal.
The problem is to get the audience invested in that goal. In games this is considerably less common; the appeal to the audience is designed to come from gameplay rather than the plot itself, so the plot is left to stagnate. This is not a universal; I wrote about how What Remains of Edith Finch handles its story not too long ago, and that's a great example of a video game that tells its story beautifully.
However, because the play-time of games is often stretched with "padding" in the form of play that is exclusively focused on game mechanics to the abandonment of storytelling, it's important to consider one of the most important factors in good storytelling: the underdog (or, perhaps more importantly, the sort of abstracted archetypal Underdog, if we are to be inspired by Campbell and Jung).
This archetypal Underdog is the figure in a story who needs help, and around whom the universe comes into focus.
An Illustration
A great example of this is a little-known 70's movie; I'll link to the trailer below.
Star Wars: A New Hope trailer courtesy of the official Star Wars YouTube channel.
Star Wars uses a strong Underdog in the form of Princess Leia. Her commitment to opposing the Empire is such that she would gladly go to her death to protect the Rebellion, but this also places her in a position where she needs to be saved by Luke and company.
It's worth noting that Leia is still, at least to a certain extent, a strong character. She gets into trouble through being defiant against the Empire (i.e. she is not the damsel in distress of fairy tales, which has its own distinct archetypal purpose in storytelling).
Because her conflict is beyond her capabilities, we get the Hero, Luke Skywalker, who enters the story (in a dramatic sense) only once he discovers a message sent by Leia to Obi-Wan Kenobi to ask for assistance.
The influence of the Underdog is necessitated in any of the three following scenarios:
- The Hero does not have a personal stake in the cosmic conflict between good and evil at the start of the story.
- The Hero exists initially in a primordial state of psychological infancy that prevents them from entering into conflict.
- The Hero must face a journey which requires them to make sacrifices that they would not normally be willing to make, even for their own sake.
The first two of these scenarios are present in A New Hope. Luke actually wants to join the Empire at the beginning of the story, though not on account of any particular positive sentiment toward the Empire, as he is bored of the placid life he leads on his home-world. He also exists in a state of infancy; we see him whining and playing with toys much like a child, despite the fact that we are led to believe that he is, if not already an adult, then certainly fairly close to being an independent adult physically (Hamill, who played Luke, was in his 20's).
An Explanation
It is worth noting that the Underdog does not have to be a distinct character, but may be a position of any character to supplement another role that they play in the story. For instance, when the three conditions listed above are all absent, the hero of the story (traditionally also an archetypal Hero) may be the Underdog as well.
The reason why an Underdog works well is that they can provide a motive for the characters in a story. To steal from A New Hope again, Obi-Wan wants to help Leia because it's his responsibility in-universe (handily explained in prequels, though largely ignored in the original film), Luke wants to help Leia because he finds her beautiful, and Han wants to help Leia for the promise of a reward.
Having a distinct Underdog provides an opportunity for other characters to play into the story. While protagonists can bear this mantle as well, it provides an added degree of difficulty. Fiction aimed at adolescents, whose own experiences often play out a transition from dependency to independence that presents a psychological threat, can provide good examples of heroic underdogs: Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, the Pevensies in the Narnia universe, Percy Jackson in the novels of the same name.
The ability to focus a conflict clearly around a particular character provides opportunities for dramatic developments. An archetypal Shapeshifter may delude the protagonists into assisting them, before betraying them. The Underdog may receive everything they need only to find further trouble (allowing a continued cycle). The Hero, having completed the Hero's Journey, may find another person to assist: Takeshi Kovacs of Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon does this between each of the novels in the series, providing sharp shifts in tone but remaining internally consistent between each book.
How-To
Creating a good Underdog for a game is tricky, because you need to create a broad range of appeal for players. I remember rather distinctly playing EA's Syndicate reboot, a dubstep-fuelled first-person shooter that I actually rather liked for its gameplay (hacking stuff while shooting stuff is fantastic), but which had a scene where a character that I was supposed to sympathize with gave me orders and I had no choice but to comply.
As a game designer/writer, you never want to force a player into a decision that they actively disagree with during the main plot. It will happen accidentally, but at major plot points you need to make sure that players feel like they have agency.
In a linear story, it is possible to permit players to feel like they have agency without giving them agency by making sure that they buy in. However, silent-film cliche villains who twirl mustaches and tie people up on train tracks don't tend to build player agency in and of themselves.
A good Underdog provides motivation and context to the player's actions. In tabletop roleplaying, a quest giver who is an Underdog has added appeal to all characters, especially if they can promise pay. A rich young noble who's made a mistake but wants to atone is a powerful figure (or, for that matter, a character like the Bloody Baron in The Witcher 3, whose abuse has driven away his family but who is genuinely penitent for his actions) to draw players into a game and encourage them to follow a particular path.
It is important to remember that the Underdog does not need to be personally at risk, they just need stake in events that are unfolding. However, there is nothing to say that the Underdog doesn't have a place in the conflict itself. A character who is being hunted or pursued and turns to the Hero for help makes a powerful Underdog, and in a tabletop roleplaying setting, where multiple players need to be simultaneously co-motivated, that can be a great factor. Most players and their characters can be convinced to help someone who demonstrates a need that is appropriate to their persona, and once the ball starts rolling there is a psychological tendency to carry on with the same companions and goals.
Wrapping Up
The Underdog is an important archetypal figure in stories, and one that plays a pivotal role. Since they are the fulcrum on which the conflict, and therefore the plot is balanced, they need to be carefully considered and written well.