While there are many television shows which have inspired me, there is one show above all others that stands out: The Twilight Zone. In fact, as a kid it was the only black and white TV series that I readily watched despite the last episode having originally aired 12 years before I was born. There’s something quite endearing about the series that took me years to really understand why it had such an appeal, meaning that it wasn’t until about a year ago that I figured it out. What the show really did was provide a commentary on the state of America after World War II. The series focused on our fears of a nuclear future, McCarthyism, and wretched excess.
So, why do I mention all this? One of the things that television can provide a gamemaster is a plethora of ideas that is more visually relevant than fiction when it comes to figuring out how to describe various situations in game. However, that is only a surface reading of the material that can be gleaned from the stories presented visually. And this is where the revelation that I had about Twilight Zone’s message in regards to the culture that produced it comes into play. Take for instance the episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” If one just takes this is a surface reading, this classic episode is nothing but one of pure terror at the hands of an outside force. There is nothing wrong with this reading. But if one looks deeper, what you see is McCarthyism as the neighbors turn on each other in the growing climate of fear that was actually gripping the nation with the rise of communism in Eastern Europe and Asia. Another layer can be added to this as a direct parallel to the distrust fostered between neighbors in Nazi Germany.
I chose that episode as an example because it’s a well-documented one were all of these themes have been explored academically as to how they play out in the social commentary that shows how intertwined these issues truly are and the potential for America to repeat the mistakes of the Third Reich. The point of all that being that an active reading of television can reveal deeper structures than what one may glean in the first viewing of an episode. While not quite unlike the method used for symbolism in fiction, the visual content of television lends itself well to the storytelling techniques of a role-playing game because the job of the gamemaster isn’t to give insight into the mental faculties of nonplayer characters, but rather to provide visual descriptions of the world so that the players can best use how they fill their character should act based on the personalities each player has developed for his or her character.
Of course, this does not mean you as the gamemaster cannot incorporate some form of symbolism into the story. The differences, you cannot use literary techniques when the game relies upon visual details for the players to be able to interact with the world you are creating. One of the ways to develop a good library of details that you can use for your players is to develop the habit of actively watching television rather than just passively absorbing what you see before you. This is the lesson that I learned from The Twilight Zone in the way it comments on how post-World War II American culture is structured. And is for this reason why I experienced so much delight when I saw the stage version.