Afterschool Tropes Special: What’s That Fridge Doing at the Table?

I’ve decided to rename my trope series because the posts feel like I’m writing a new season. I’m also experimenting with slightly different formats of trope posts. It remains to be seen if I’ll be jumping the shark or making the series grow a beard.

Have you ever had the experience, at school, in your families or at work of throwing out a clerverish expression and slowly seeing that expression take root and start being used by others?

While writing my Worldwide D&D Gameday post, I mentioned an unexplained plot element that could lead to a “WTF?” moment if players stopped and though about it.

I referred to this as a Fridge Logic moment.

I’ve since then seen the expression adopted by a few readers and bloggers and I was told that it also crept up on Enworld.

Now I didn’t create the expression, it’s actually part of the TV Tropes Wiki (and an industry term). However, since it seems to be making its way in our collective RPG subconscious, I thought I’d discuss it and ponder how to use it (or ignore it) in your RPG sessions.

Fridge Logic

Half an hour after the show is over, J. Random Viewer is staring into his refrigerator, vaguely bemused by the fact that his six-pack of beer has somehow become a two-pack of beer. Rather than work out how this might have happened, it occurs to him to wonder how in the hell Sydney Bristow (Chatty: from the Alias TV Show) went from Hungary to Melbourne, Australia, then to LA, all within 24 hours.

It hadn’t bothered him during the show. It wasn’t until he discovered he was running short of beer that it became an issue.

So Fridge Logic isn’t a trope per say. It’s more like a safety net on which writers can afford to thin (or ignore) a plot element and not break the viewer’s suspension of disbelief during the show.

Fridge Logic has been the writer’s-room term for these little internal-consistency issues for a good while, as in “Don’t sweat the fridge logic, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. We’ve only got 20 minutes left to work in three costume changes, a foreign language, and a weird wig.” The phrase is often attributed to Alfred Hitchcock, who referred to the delayed recognition of a Plot Hole as “the refrigerator moment.”

Carefully avoiding/subverting Fridge Logic events is what we have started to see in what I like to call ‘cleverly written shows’ like Lost, Heroes and Battlestar Gallactica (well, the good parts thereof).

Thing is, as a Game Masters (GM), we too have way too many fish to fry. We usually can’t afford to prevent such refrigerator moments. While some GM will try to do exactly that, such careful writing comes at a cost of:

• Taking time from prepping more scenes (or more complex/exciting ones)
• Favoring logic/verisimilitude (note my not using the term realism here) over excitement/fun
• Squelching cool ideas because “there’s no way this can fit in the story!”

In my very first trope post on the Rule of Cool, I mentioned that…

…my efforts as a DM should not so much be on far-reaching World Building and tight nitpicking-proof plot lines and such. I should go all out for encounters and role playing that will swamp my players in coolness

I still very much believe that you should not spend too much time trying to unify every single plot hooks and thread in your campaign.

What you don’t want is for your players to have time to ponder fridge logic during the game either because pacing is too slow or because you have been sloppy and left a gaping/railroading plot hole for all to see.

As a Dungeon Master (DM), you want to grip your players in an exciting storyline, amazing action scene or high-flying stunt-ridden combat. You should just go with the flow of where your gut feeling leads you and do whatever you feel like to entertain the players.

If you liberally use the Rule of Cool both in creating your adventure scenes and let your players invoke the same rule when they get creative, any fridge moment you let through won’t be picked up on…

Here’s a little GM secret: Since players are at the frontline of your adventure/story and not a detached audience, they most probably will be too focused on their somewhat selfish perception of the game to tug at any loose threads.

If they liked the game and had fun climbing over that Gargantuan Colossus in the Caves of Woe, chances are they’ll recall the mind-bogglingly crazy stunts they pulled. They probably won’t stop and wonder how the hell a 90′ walking fortress got into the dungeon in the 1st place.

So don’t fight the Fridge Logic, embrace it!

In fact, if a player does mention that there’s something fishy about how that Gelatinous Cube could acquire sentience and ally itself with the Lawful Good Illithid Barbarian, put on your sliest look and wink.

If the player insists, take a note and start planning a follow-up plot arc where you explore how this came to be. If no-one bats an eye, feel free to ignore it for more promising threads.

They say that constraints fosters creativity, I tend to agree.

In fact sometimes you will have to fill a hole discovered during one of your player’s refrigerator moments and discover a series of plot ideas that will lead your campaign to a memorable series of adventures.

Now let’s have a look at another Refrigerator-themed ‘viewer reaction’ that I’ve seen happen a lot online in the last few weeks.

Fridge Brilliance

First impressions are really important. They build relationships and opinions, and you will wish you could do it over again.

Yet, there are times when your opinion of someone or something might change. It could be upon receiving additional information, learning the alternate opinion of someone else, or simply that you have grown up just a little.

Fridge Brilliance is the idea of gaining a new respect for something that you initially hate. One night, as you get up for a midnight snack, you open the refrigerator door and the light dawns on you, “This is the real purpose behind this plot!”

With the advent of D&D 4e, a lot of emotionally charged, often negative posts have been written on it.

Now I’m not going to launch in another “4e is teh Awesomez” post as I’ve done enough of those lately, but suffice it to say that I have been reading a lot of Fridge Brilliance posts about that game lately.

Take about any random RPG blog and look in its archive (including this one). You’ll almost invariably see a neutral to negative series of post prior to the release. Then, from the moment the PDFs got leaked in early June and especially after people got to try it you start seeing a significant shift in opinion.

Most spectacular of those is Robin Stacey’s (aka Greywulf) 170 degrees turn on it (he dislikes the parts of the PHB like I do the DMG).

My take home message? If you can, give the game a try, from either the player’s seat or the DM (they are two different beasts).

What’s that? How could we use Fridge Brilliance in a RPG game? You mean gushing about 4e is not enough anymore? Awwww…

🙂

Let’s say you want to sell your group on another RPG (any game). Chances are you’ll have someone (or more that one) opposed and being vocal about it. Take the time to note the players’ concerns and issues with the new game (be they factual or irrational). Also take the time to note what kind of player type that person is.

In the course of discussion, try to get the player to agree, gracefully and in good faith, to giving the game a one session try. (If he/she won’t, don’t bother).

Now check if the proposed system can accommodate your player’s type and choose/create an adventure that will address his concerns/issues.

I believe that resistance to change exists because our perceptions of something are deeply set in our emotional centers. Rational discourse can eventually overcome it, but fighting fire with fire and using emotions is a almost always more efficient.

If you focus on your players’ needs (including the less than enthusiastic ones) and give them an emotionally satisfying session, it’s quite possible that a Fridge Brilliance moment will occur and the new game will be adopted.

It’s a very tall order, but if you really want to GM that new game, seeking a gut-response Fridge Brilliance moment in your change resistant players is the best path to achieving your goal.

Anyone has had positive experiences teaching a new game in the face of active/passive resistance? What were your strategies?