In my south america campaign, it came up that we had to resolve a scene between 2 of the characters, although the outcome of this scene was mostly decided already. JayTee suggested to resolve this scene as a flashback, running parallel to the present scene, so the other players wouldn't have to wait. I thought it worked pretty good.
Now that got me thinking, what else could be used in the game?
What I came up with so far, besides a flashback:
Cutscene:
You know the first chapter of many books, that don't feature the actual hero but some luckless sap that is at the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes the first victim to the big bad. Scenes like that. You could have premade characters for a scene like that and play it out rather than just tell it or keep it from the group entirely. Or would that be too much information in the hands of the players (though the amount of information revealed is probably not much more than "there is something big and bad"). Many other things inbetween could be done like this as well. The characters are called in to the scene of a crime, where a priceless item has been stolen. In a book, the heist might have been described in full, so why not play out the scene?
A scene like that can be the ground for many declarations, and it would be more vivid than just stating a fact. It would change the rpg from a first person game to a third person game, and the question is: would it work?
"a year ago":
This is a type of storytelling I like very much. A story is told that has a long history, and the history is revealed in regular flashbacks while the characters walk through the aftermath. Basically, this would be playing 2 versions of characters with different refresh levels at the same time, the actions from the younger one influencing the story of the older one. This could get interesting, when an action in the past forces the older one to take on a different aspect than he was originally planned with.
I realise, some of those might only work in a pbp while other might work better at the table or equally good in both situations. What do you think, would those generally work? And do you have other ideas like this?
