How to write adventures - I keep talking about scene based design

I'm continuing my thinking on adventure design, and have now come to how I've planned out my Savage Worlds scenarios. Since I've heard so much about how great this game is for cons, I designed scenarios from that. I've listened to how people often use a scene based design to fit in the time constraints, and that fit me perfectly.

So, I wanted to do something with a lot of feel of the X-files. Since I started from that, it was very natural for me to think of a scene that introduce the mystery and then play the intro and then introduce the characters. Since I was not writing a TV-show, I did think up the first part, but we started play when the players entered the plot.

The first scene would utilize the outcome of the background scene as its "bang". So I imagined a miner in this small community being attacked by his whole kennel of dogs, and how his fiance would see it and panic. That was what had just happened. Then I planned on putting the PCs in that small mining town, fill it with NPCs and build scenes from character interaction and some"plot based" scenes that would exhibit more of the strangeness that was the basis for the hounds attacking the miner.

The main plot was that the miners had dug deep into the Appalachians in West Virginia, and uncovered Cthonians. They reacted by psionic mind controls and called in their minions. I planned to have some weird things happening, like the MIB show up and discourage the PCs from snooping, and finally have the fiance disappear only to call someones phone and lure them out into the wilds at night. I had decided that after fooling around like that, I would end it with a scene where the PCs found them somehow confronting "aliens" in a strong light and finally finding themselves with redacted memories in their car out on the highway.

So, how did it go, and how did I used the scene based design?

Well, I started with the players taking control. They came to the town, and started talking to people. I decided to take a cue from Vincent Baker's advice in Dogs in the Vineyard, and started to give away as much as possible from all the NPCs. Vincent is wise, for without that they would have stumbled!

Talking to the NPCs, the characters were set in a location, some people were there and that was often the extent of my scene framing. I did not include any "bangs" or any destabilizing events into those interpersonal interactions.

In between those I dropped some small bombs in the shape of scenes with not only location and people, but also destabilizing events. It turned out that those scenes which all had things happening they had to react to did work really well. I totally failed to make one of them a chase scene with the Savage Worlds chase rules, but that was only me at odds with that rules set, and I've posted about that in other posts.

Worth noting here is that I did not introduce any shakeups in the "interview" scenes we had. Maybe I should have, because I sometimes felt that all those individuals with cool stories to tell had to walk up to the player characters more often than being sought out. It might be something that is dependent on how proactive your players are, but I did take that with me to my next attempt. It was my greatest lesson from this kind of adventure design.

Then there was that about how to string scenes together. In this scenario, which I called "Deep Calls to Deep", the players had the choice of going where they wanted and talking to whomever they choose. That kind of made it very natural for me to toss in my bombs after they had learned stuff which would make the next thing happening feel more cool. It made for a fairly natural flow, I would think.

All in all I think it went well, and as far as I understood from the after game chat I had nailed the X-Files feel. Nobody ever got any hint it was a Cthulhuoid menace.

But, what could I make different, and better, the next time? I will talk a bit about stringing scenes together next time.

How to write adventures - I keep talking about location based design

So, what were my experiences from Location Based Design for my adventure?

I had decided to play a game of Mutant, one of the earliest games I ever played for any extended time. It's a BRP game, which really looks a lot like Gamma World. Mutated anthropomorphic animals for the win! Thanks to those qualities I could inject lot of humour and jokes about contemporary events.

The backstory say that some kind of catastrophe occurred, and humankind escaped into subterranean bunkers, and only ventured outside when long time had passed. Knowledge of the old times have faded, and now mutants of all kinds roamed the lands. I decided to make the PCs all be part of a secret project to develop psychic powers, and they had all been put to cryogenic sleep. Now they wake up, with hazy memories and can explore the setting with no preconceived ideas, as they knew as much as their characters did.

 My location was a small village, with a sawmill powered by an artifact from the Old Days. The village was basically ruled and run by the robber baron that owned the artifact. I made up a few enemies of his, some shops and people in the village and let the players loose.

Like I wrote about yesterday I had the map, the location in question. The threat I envisioned was the tension in the village between the rich ruler and his "subjects". In order to make it something the players could not just ignore I also invented an NPC with a personal vendetta against the baron, and a timeline for how it would play out.

So, how did it work?

The biggest problem I think was related to the reasons for the PCs to be there. They woke up, and some mutated badgers brought them to the baron and the basically followed along. While they did walk around a bit, they never did take strong action for or against any of the sides in the village. I think I learned that the threat has to be immediate, and personal. If you have very pro-active players they might make things up for themselves, but I think having a clear, threat, is a good idea. It's first now when I look back at it and try to formulate what the components were that I settled on that term.

I claim this is one of the basic forms of design for an adventure. Some call this fish tank or sandbox. I'd prefer to shine the light on the Location. Why? Because a sandbox is just a somewhat flat area, of a common material. I think a location based adventure has to be much more, and that's why I never have had much success with "sandboxes". A Location has to be strange, worth investigating and exploring and there has to be a clear threat looming large and personal. At least that's the theory.

Next up I'll take a closer look at the Scene Based Design.

How to write adventures - some attempts at consolidating ideas

I've listened to quite a few podcasts  where the topic have been how to write convention scenarios. That combined with my experiences running Savage Worlds and my post apocalyptic game have resulted in some conclusions. At least I think it's conclusions. But, naturally, I will probably keep thinking on the topic, and probably keep posting new ideas. Now I felt like summarizing somewhat.

I think I've found two ways to write adventures. There might be more ways, but these two have worked for me, and I felt like taking some note of what parts were needed for the machine to work.

First off, Location Based Design.

For this to work, you need two things.

1. A map
2. Threats

The first thing can be a dungeon map, or a map of a city, spaceport or whatnot. It should provide things to investigate, and things to uncover. The second thing can be monsters, traps and NPCs with nefarious plans.

The Location Based Design I think work best when the reason for being there is not based on the location. It should be something that the PCs take with them, a mission or a rumour. For the longevity of this type of design I think that is a key thing.

Secondly, Scene Based Design.

For this design to work, you need three things.

1. Where the scene is set.
2. Those who are present stated up, with intentions and motivations.
3. What just happened, the "bang".

In this case I think the reason for being there is different. Now it should be part of the location. Either it is the place, or the people there, that compels one or more characters to be there.

Naturally, to have more than a very short scenario you will need multiple scenes. The way you string them together can probably be a topic in of itself. I'll get back to it.

I will try to dive a bit deeper into how these two crystallized in my next post, and bring some examples. Anyone having experiences with those two sets of design frames are welcome to chime in. I hope I will better understand my own thinking, and know I have more to learn on the topic.

More loot!

I've got more loot!

Who does not want an intense roleplaying game, eh?

This is the annotated edition, where every other page is just commentary on the text on the other page. I've wanted this for some games. I mean, how often did you ask yourself "what were they thinking?".

Frankly, when I got it, I had forgotten I would also get all the supplements in a big fat book. Goodies.

I also like to say that Ron had been communicative, quick and delivered exactly what he promised without long delays. Listen and learn, people!

Playing Boot Hill again

The day before yesterday I once again played Boot Hill. It was a very old school experience. We had started an adventure, five years ago, and none of us remembered a thing. Our referee looked mystified at his notes while we players tried to decipher our scribblings on the character sheets. What were those abilities again? Finally we figured out what numbers meant we were good at shooting, and our referee rolled back time and we restarted the adventure.

You know how we all say over and over again that deadly systems often have very quick character generation systems? This is a game that should need a very, very quick character generation system! We sat in a cantina somewhere and in came some ruffians, and naturally a fight erupted. My character was a greenhorn and botched loading his musket, and was a sitting duck while the lead was heavy in the air. Finally I managed to get a shot off with my "appropriated" french revolver we had found on some guy during a big kerfuffle in Mexico City. Then a bullet struck my character in the head.

Luckily I survived, but did nothing more in the fight than turning over the table each time someone entered the room, to have some cover during the fight.

The system is really peculiar. You get increases in abilities, but you get bonuses at spaced out intervals. That is interesting, since you can get both the satisfaction of seeing the numbers increase, and the "stair" effect of a level based system. Also, you have stats for sight and hearing, gun accuracy and throwing accuracy. It's really a system where the stats play first fiddle, and the skills are something of an oddity tacked on.

From the reviews I've read, nobody seems to think very highly of the game and I agree that it lacks that something extra. Still, we had fun in a crazy way. My character has 100% speed, 06% in intelligence, 98% in sight and slightly bad of hearing. Naturally I just had to do whatever was the most stupid thing possible, while still trying to stay alive and instant hilarity is guaranteed. Extremes are always more fun when trying to roleplay.

Our GM have created a big pile of tables for weapons, extra rules, tabled and such from decades of playing the game. I'm trying to convince him to type it up for the world to see. Contrary to the deadliness correlation mentioned above, his variant is actually not that quick. But, thanks to all those tables you get to know what you did in the war, where your family is from and all that stuff. I love life path systems!

Maybe our next session will be sooner than another five years...

More experiences with Savage Worlds

Last night we finished up our latest mission in the Agents of Oblivion series of adventures we're playing. The team was this time lacking their hacking resource, so they had to rely more on fist fights, language skills and some sneaking.

This time we started with a mission briefing, and then spending resource points on equipment and funny gadgets. I think this part of the super spy genre worked quite fine this time. But, the more I play this game the more I start to feel the books are terribly organized. I created some cheat sheets for the different resource options, and I think they are the reason that part of the mission was fun. There are multiple editing errors in this part of the book, and I have compiled an errata list. Maybe I'll post my cheat sheets here, and send the errata to Reality Blurs.

During the mission briefing they got to hear that they would be going to Iraq, where some ancient artifacts stolen from the Baghdad museum during the invasion had surfaced once again. One was more mysterious than the others, namely a cuneiform tabled with a new story about Gilgamesh! They went to Baghdad, talked to lot of people, had a car chase and found and placed lots of bugs for surveillance. Information gathering galore. Finally they took a flight to Beirut, drove to Baalbek and their went shopping. The last scene was a big firefight between two groups of cultists, with the PCs in between.

One thing I noticed was that even when I made an effort to involve the game rules a bit more than before, benny usage still was an issue. During 2-3 hours you have to roll a lot of dice in order to spend your bennies, earn some more and get to spend some of those as well. First I forgot the give out any, when I did they still ended the session with quite a few left over.

Is this my final proof that whatever I might think of myself, I'm a guy who hand waves most of the rules? It doesn't seem like I can bring enough dice rolls to bear for those bennies to matter. Or is is Savage Worlds built so that the average session and amount of bennies match up at a longer sessions than mine?

Who knows? I will post some thought on scenario design as well in the (hopefully) near future.

Deserted Island experiment - Hunter: The Vigil

Sometimes I see...

monsters

...and they need to be hunted down...

If you were to take the new Hunter game to a deserted island, the first question if you can only take three books is, what's core? Is the WoD rules core and the Hunter book a supplement? If I choose to include the Hunter book itself as a core book, this is my list.

1. Mysterious Places -There are more interesting books in the new World of Darkness for doing things beyond the big lines like Vampire and Mage. I like that. This book is one of those I think you could use for many modern day games of creepy stories. The fact that it's name reminds me of the Ars Magica books Mythic Places doesn't hurt either. This is a book with some interesting locations, designed to be horrific, weird and creepy. I think they have succeeded quite well. All of them come with story suggestions and quite evocative descriptive text. I bet you could probably come up with this kind of stuff on your own, but I need to be kickstarted by a book like this.
2. D6 Adventure Locations - I'm unsure if that D6 is part of the title or just telling us it's part of a game line. I guess you've noticed that I branched out. This is not a White Wolf book. In this book you will find maps of airports, conference centres, hotels ans other everyday locations. Add to that a paragraph of items commonly found at such a location, and you have some excellent help to make a fight scene in one of these places be just a bit more interesting, with some parts of the interior decoration to throw around. But, even though this is a very hand book, it looks bad. There are lots of clip art in it, which looks cheap. Then there's the cover illustration which I hate. What the heck is that woman wearing? It's wet suit for diving? So why does it look so flimsy over her breasts, suddenly clinging closely to the shape of them? Why does it look like it's metal polished to a high sheen, or is it just that it looks like a bad Photoshop colouring? I guess you get the point.
3. Supressed Transmission - You know what this collection of articles is, right? I'll just summarize. Ken Hite. You need more? Ok, this is a book collecting Ken's columns from Pyramid Magazine (yet another game company, Steve Jackson Games). Here you can find lots of ideas for conspiracy and weirdness, which can conceal those you hunt, or give hints to where they have hidden throughout history. If nothing else, you'll have lots is fun reading and odd facts you can befuddle your players with, and amuse yourself with. There's even a second volume, but then this list would be too long.

As you can see my game of Hunter:The Vigil would encompass a lot. As far as I know there have not been much support material published for H:TV so why not look at other game lines for inspiration?

Would your list look different? Agree? Disagree? Feel free to say so.

For my next post in this series I'm tempted to try to limit D&D or Traveller down to three books. Can you do that to 35 years of supplements? Maybe.

My problem with Fiasco

I have read so many times, and heard on so many podcasts, that Fiasco is a great game. Having listened to some actual play, and detailed rules explanations, I find that this really isn't a game for me. I kind of wish it was, though.

Not every game is for everyone, and you don't have to love every game. Just move on, right? Kind of true. The thing is, the kind of play that Fiasco supposedly is all about is one I think sounds interesting. I also think the multitude of play sets are really cool, and some are kernels to really cool games. Maybe there's something to learn from Fiasco, or maybe there's something that can be found to make it work for me? I'll start to nail down what I don't like.

Playing the game is, unless I have misunderstood something completely, basically done in four phases. First you roll the dice and distribute them using the play set, then you make shit up until you run out of dice, them you roll them again and you make more shit up until the end.

What I don't like about that is the "making shit up" part. In that part, you for each scene get to decide how it ends or how it's set up. That's what's rubs me the wrong way. If someone else is deciding what happens, why should I sit and waffle about what happens? This, I feel, robs me of "player agency" or if you like, the point where I think rpgs really shine. That thing, I think, is going into a game ready to gamble some resources not knowing the outcome, exploring a secondary world. If someone sits there and just makes shit up, why should I then play out that scene? I'd like to turn that on it's head.

When I listens to people playing Fiasco I don't hear people play. I hear people just talk. Making shit up without any relation to effort involved, traits involved or chance just don't a game make.

This makes me think of another game I have read but know played, and listened to and becoming confused. That game is Burning Empires. In that game you do one thing differently, though. In BE you have one trait that is the one that determines success in that scene, and after the talky part you actually do the game bits. You roll dice and "make your bets". I'm wondering if that retrofitted to Fiasco would suit me better?

So, what do I like about all this?
 
I really like the idea of the setup for the game in Fiasco. Coincidentally, in Burning Empires you also start the game by generating the setting and framework for play. That part I think could be really cool to explore in a game of a more traditional bent. Maybe that part is why I come back to Fiasco again and again, and even bother to talk at length about a game which looks like it will bore me to tears. But, the system for building a city in Dresden Files looks interesting! There is a system based on that in the new shine FATE Core book I own. Maybe there is a way...

Deserted Island experiment - Call of Cthulhu

A few days ago I started a new thing, listing three supplements for one of my games, that I'd take with me to a deserted island. Now the time has come for Call of Cthulhu.

1.  The 1920s Investigator's Companion - this book might be disqualified as it can be considered a "core book" for players. I'll add it to my list anyway, and add a fourth as a bonus. This book is just great when it comes to suggestions for character concepts. The long listing of professions and how to create those kind of characters are really helpful. If you want to get away from the dilemma that the characters are an unlikely bunch, you could pick a section and have all make characters from that type or one similar. Other goodies are the sections on research facilities, and how to get around. If you play in a historical setting these facts are gold. They are also well presented. We'll see how the 7th edition is designed, but this book would be great as the core of a Players Guide.
2. Cthulhu by Gaslight 3rd ed. - This choice might surprise some, but I think the second great era for any kind of horror game is the gaslight era. This is a great book with lot of details about the geography of London and how people lived back then. There are also some good advice and tweaks for character generation that can be used for other eras as well. Naturally there are a few scenarios to start that campaign at the island. 
3. Arkham Unveiled - Is there any book more iconic than this? Arkham is at the heart of Lovecraft country, and this is a book that gives a pretty good overview of a typical city of that area. There are lots of small mysteries and oddities you can make adventures out of, and there are nothing better than a university that can work as a patron for cerebral adventurers. If that's not enough, there's bootleggers and criminal gangs for more two fisted games. Round it off with a few scenarios and you have a good place to mine for lots of gaming.

Now what's the bonus item? Well, there are two obvious choices. One is that great campaign which some have dubbed the best rpg campaign ever, Masks of Nyarlathotep. The problem with that one is that I have not read it, or played it! I don't even own a copy. I would love to play it, mind you.

The second obvious choice, and the one I'll pick since my list above leans toward the historical eras, is Delta Green. Sure, by now it's also history, but it's modern day and tweakable to be used for 2013 as well, or whatever. It would be easir for me to pack for my island trip as well, since I own it. But, I have actually not read it all, so that will suit me fine. I can stay on the island for a while!

I bet some of those choices would meet with arguments! Agree? Disagree? Feel free to say so.

We'll see what game comes up next. You know where to find me...

Story games, really?

I feel like I have to rant a bit. I realize most people have no interest in the details of how things became like they are, but I hate it when people don't bother to find out.

Why the rage? I heard somewhere someone lamenting the fact that these days "indie games" is just a distribution label, and say nothing of the game. That person also seemed to like the term "story game".

You know why indie game is a distribution label? It has nothing to do with the subject of the game! Read what it say on the tin. Indie means independent. The Forge was started in order to talk about self publication, and creator owned properties. It was all about independent game publication. It has nothing to do with subject matter. Why would it? Look at the name again. Indie.

My second hang up then. You know why the story game community of that name was set up? It was because some people wanted to talk about things Ron Edwards had decided he did not want at The Forge. So, "story games" like they talk about there, are games that people want to talk about in a way Rod Edwards didn't want at his web forum. There, a really solid definition of game content and subject matter. Or not. No, it's not a distribution label.

Story games. Sheesh.

I think you could just as well call it hippie games, like they call non-traditional games at the Happy Jacks RPG podcast. A fun term, meaning nothing. Except of course, that games talked about at the Story Games community are all about long haired individuals with flowers in their hair. Naturally.

Sadly I realize it's damn hard to talk about these things, and I have used those term myself. But, I knew the history.

Why do I even get upset about these things?