Unlikely Inspirations- Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles

                                                        Bantam Books

I’m the sort of Game Master that provides the players a lot of input in the story. That leads to a good amount of improvisation on my part, which in turn can lead to a somewhat disjointed narrative. But real life never follows a rigid narrative arc. So that means mean seemingly disparate events over the course of a campaign can’t link up to have a larger meaning. Plenty of books adopt this sort of approach but Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is closer to Roleplaying Games than most other examples. The book links up short stories written across his career, the only constant being the use of Mars as a setting. However, the repetition of certain themes, characters, and concepts, along with the stories written to unify the others, gives the anthology a surprisingly coherent storyline. The Martian Chronicles taught me that as long as a GM can keep a few fundamental elements consistent, they don’t have to worry about the individual sessions of a campaign forming a more conventional plot.

               While each story has considerably different characters, circumstances, and tones, they all share a common setting. Each story helps build up Bradbury’s vision of a habitable Mars and the strange, wondrous beings that built it. Alternatively, they establish the circumstances on earth that brought Mars’ human colonists to the red planet. Most of the stories also share themes about exploration, colonialism, technology, and nuclear war. The way in which The Martian Chronicles builds a larger narrative out of smaller, self-contained stories forms a close parallel with the way many RPG campaigns play out. It also shows that one "whole" narrative isn’t necessarily more effective or meaningful than a more fragmented one.

               In addition to offering insights into how to run a campaign, The Martian Chronicles features some strong ideas for them. While only a few stories feature direct violence, each one has significant stakes and an eerie atmosphere to accompany it. The Martian Chronicles helped teach middle school me that there’s more ways to convey threat in a story than just an adversary or some other form of direct harm. Just because science fiction can features monsters, ray guns, and the like doesn’t mean it absolutely has to. Imagery like 50s style American towns built over Martian cities and automated houses that run even after the end of the world also gave me a sense of what an unconventional, colorful but still familiar setting could be. The Martian Chronicles had a considerable influence over me as a kid and its impact extended to how I run RPGs.