How do YOU write a scenario
by: I. J.
12/1/99 6:57 AM
When you write scenarios, how do you all personally start out?
many small ideas?
one grand plot?
roll a die?
copy from others or movies or books?
Am I the only one who wants to exceed my potential in everything I write and therefore never gets anything written at all?
let's share some ideas.
i.
Untitled by: R. B. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/1/99 7:08 AMI.:
When I start out writing a scenario, I try to start small then write big. Usually starts out with an outline. Location, 1st adventure, 2nd adventure then go from there. One outline I used was this.
Place: Monastery
1st encounter Hostile Friar Tavor
2nd encounter Scared housekeeperThen I let my imagination go. I do it that way so that I don't jump the gun and write the end before I have the beginning.
Hope that helps.
R.
Untitled by: T. W. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/1/99 8:15 AMWhat I usually do is put on a piece of music, something without words usually, shut my eyes, and try to choreograph the music in my head to some scene or act. For example, I'll listen to "The Castle" movement of "Pictures at an Exhibition", and form in my head a looming, empty castle. I think, why is it empty? Because, long ago, it was underwater, a home for the sea gods. Then a war sprung between them and the fire gods, so a volcanic eruption occurred, turning all the sand an ashen black, driving the sea folk away. So the castle stands alone in a black desert, the bones of mermaids and of sea monsters a mile long marking the area. Once you have a main thing to focus on, you build around that, give it characters, legends for the PCs to find out about, treasures to terrors within, maybe it's a portal, maybe it's a living, sentient being, maybe the sea gods want to return to reclaim it. You see what I mean?
~T. K. W.
Untitled by: J. K. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/1/99 12:51 PMWriting scenarios has been a learning by trial and error kinda thing, for there is no set way to do it, but the method for which I am about to explain seems to be working for me. First off many of my ideas come from movies and books, granted you can't take a movie scene by scene and plug it into an adventure, but you can capture it's essence, example: If you liked the movies Aliens, but wanted to convert it to a medieval setting for an AD&D game. Have a town or village lose contact with the kingdom that they are ruled under, their tax payment haven't arrived and the tax collector never returned. The King's guard recruites an investigation team from the local hero/adventurer types. The adventure spins from there, there are plentry of role-playing opertunities right off the bat between the characters and the guards. Instead of aliens, use Carrion Crawlers, or Pit Feinds (depending of the level of the party), or maybe Drow Elves, but you have taken the essence of the Movie Aliens and translated it into an AD&D setting. From just what I wrote there I could run an adventure for weeks, maybe months depending on how fast the party moves. Which brings me to my second point. Don't over plan, all the planning in the world will never predict what the party will do, this applies to any RPG. Jot down a plot concept, some NPCs and some facts or rumors you need the party to recieve. Then give them the info through the NPC's. A bard can sing of the legend of X and there the party gets the info in the tavern. In a more futuristic adventure a poster on a Spray paint covered wall can give the party the time and date of a major club event, which is directly linked to the adventure. Basically it comes down to is too much rigidity in the adventure and time spent into anticipating that the party will do 5 possible things, the party always seems to do the one you didn't think of. So have your basic info, a Story concept, the NPCs you want them to meet, and then go with the flow. Setup the situation, what the party sees, things that are going on, and then let the players do their thing. When the opportunity to put in an NPC you want them to meet arises, go for it and have fun. That's how I write a senario, rather Improv, but it works for me.
-J.
Untitled by: I. M. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/1/99 8:58 PMHard question. I start with a plot idea. (usually inspiration) Create the characters, and lastly the number crunching for you can't have a game without all those numbers. I'm always trying to exceed what I've created before. And sometimes, yes I end with a blank page.
good luck
"daytona"
My approach... by: C. M. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/1/99 10:35 PMI usually start from a single idea, often just a scene, but sometimes an NPC, an item, or whatever. This is like a seed that inspires me. I'll sit (best is in the dark, with music on) and think about it, and the whole thing will very quickly unfold. Then I'll carry it around for a few days and consider the angles carefully. This is how the complexities of the plot evolve. I try to write down only the essentials in order to keep it flexible both to my own modifications and to the players' unforseeable actions. I am always trying to do better than before, but even if I'm not totally satisfied when the time comes to play, I'll go for it anyway and try to make up for any design shortcomings with how the scenario is run, plus a lot of improvisation. My scenarios so often turn out very different (and usually better) than I envisioned them.
C.
Untitled by: J. F. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/4/99 11:06 PMDefinitely not! (Two friends of mine who are both professional writers said that I'm my own worst critic.)
--
J. F.
"Raise consciousness, not taxes."Pictures and Everway by: A. S. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/6/99 6:04 AMWhen I prepare a new story I normally sit with a lot (as in very many) of picturecards. This method comes from the Everway-'system', where the storytelling element of Roleplaying is enhanced with the aid of visioncards, - pretty small pictures with stories in them.
My gaming group quickly collected cards from Magic, Bloodwars, Guardian, Rage, SpellFire and other games, and as a result, I can start the storydevelopment with a table covered with pictures, - all seeds of yet untold stories.
Looking through them I selects those, that move ideas in me, - at this stage the do not have to have anything in common, but selecting some pictures of caracters, locations and artifacts I normally get a realm visioned. With that completed it is normally not difficult to think of some major storyline happening in this location, but it is my experience, that when the realm is so clearly envisioned and nontrivial (with the inspiration form the cards) the players will be exploring the area and hardly have time for the 'main'-story.
So much for creating the story. I can't give any advice about writing the story since I find that extremely boring. My old stories are normally just some sheets of notes about what the heroes have done, some NPC stats and perhaps a couple of maps. Yes, I have had an idea for a Fastaval-senario the last 3 years, but getting it down on paper hasn't been a major priority yet.
A.
(Excuse my spelling, but I would have been a little rude to reply in Danish ;-)
Building a Story by: M. K. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/6/99 4:55 PMI know a GM who creates his bad guy and lets the game run as it will. He also knows his favorite game system inside and out so...
I get my ideas from movies and songs, usually. However, I must admit: I'm a hooked on the idea of relics and artifacts in games. I'll think about or read about some kind of religious or cultural artifact and wonder how it would affect the world and the characters. The plot line is easy: a collector hires our heros to retrieve a relic. The fun begins when the relic starts to affect our heros on the way home...
Untitled by: N. B. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/9/99 8:47 AMMost of my games come from Idea's "Borrowed" from other sources, changed in some way to make them more fun and put down in a way that can be followed even by the most stupid of parties. The best games do come from yourself, but try to get an origanal idea & sombody in you grup will have heard of it. As for dice rolling, unless you want no control of have your game pans out then don't do it. Write it haw you wish the game to go. You know your players, not the dice. If your players wish for a long campain the take one grand idea & go with it, if they don't then keep the ideas simple.
Hope that this helps N.
Writing Scenarios [repost] by: A. Y. in response to How do YOU write a scenario
12/15/99 10:32 AMI had a similar conversation a few weeks ago on another bulletin board; I've grabbed my comments and reposted them here. As setup, I tend to run (and consequently write) one-shots for conventions, so my perspective tends to be more finite than campaign-length. Still, the techniques are valid IMO.
The two questions I was responding to were:
1. Is it okay to steal from movies, books, etc.? Isn't that boring for players?
2. How do you write a 'complete' scenario? Is it linear in style, freeform (let the PCs do whatever), or something else?*****
#1: Plot Inspirations
...However, if you do want to get a bit original, here's a few things I do in order to freshen things up a bit (caveat - I tend to run humorous more than dark/realistic, so these may work better for me than you):
- Reverse and rewrite. Take your inspiration, and find ways to reverse the plot points. Make the heroes villians, make the important places unimportant, cause the 'climax' to be the turning point towards the TRUE goal. This works especially well if you're drawing from familiar works or worlds where the players think they know everything.
- Meditate on a game rule. Take a specific element of a game rule or character type, and see how far you can stretch it. YMMV, but often all it takes is one character or one rule forced to its limit to suggest a scenario.
- Don't neglect the small stuff. One of my favorite In Nomine scenarios I've written involves a group of angels charged with 'nothing more important' than protecting a pizza delivery. (I ran it at GloryCon last year, and five or six times previous to that, including GenCon. Details of the early version are http://www.sjgames.com/ftp/sjgames/in-nomine/digests/1997/10/ 1-409.txt , last message, named 'Deliverance')Taking a small, mundane, ordinary act and placing exaggerated emphasis on it can be both entertaining and enlightening, creation-wise.
I'm sure others have many more, but there's three I use a bunch...
#2: Free Will vs. Plot Line
... I like the 'here's where you start, there's what has to happen if you do not want Bad Things to happen' school of GMing. Give them a specific goal, and let them get there as creatively as you want. (I tend to write FAR more backstory for my scenarios than actual PC scenario material - if I can 'get into' what goes before, it's much easier to make up things on the fly when the PCs get creative on me.A. Y.
SJ GamesNorth US MIB RD/Cheapass Games Demo Monkey
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