It feels like a massive leap to be sitting (metaphorically or literally) on the other side of the table. Not only do you have to come up with a scenario and make it entertaining but you have to deal with the fact that your players are going to do the exact opposite to what you want and expect them to do and then frantically scramble round for a way to get the adventure back on course without railroading your players (virtually impossible).
An initial tip would be to start with something like Monsterhearts. You will need to introduce elements and ensure everyone feels confident enough to participate but if you are running a one shot you can basically give your players free reign.
The wonderful +Tom Pleasant taught me about the concept of the 5 room dungeon which is a great way to create a short scenario. The idea is you have a beginning point and an end point that you are working towards (although if your players do something amazing that would make a fantastic end point that’s fine too.) The dungeon doesn’t have to be a literal dungeon. To take a typical fantasy setting a 5 room dungeon might look like this.
Except, spot the problem? To achieve the ending you have to ensure that the characters take the right steps in the right order and that’s not likely. The only way you could run this scenario would be to guide them from event to event and not let them do anything else.
So a better way to write the scenario would be:
Now we have several different paths to several different endings and potentially a more interesting game that gives the characters options. You will still need to be prepared for players to deviate from the paths you have chosen but it will be likely you have covered most eventualities. The important part is to ensure the events that need to occur, occur. In this example you could probably start the story from the characters witnessing the dragon act, possibly replacing 1 with 2a if you wanted to start in medias res. 
The scenario I was writing was one player, one GM which I think is a good way to start if you’re feeling nervous, especially if your player is someone who will give you feedback on what worked and what didn’t work afterwards. Also playing the same scenario with different people is a great way of exploring where players are likely to want to go. Another suggestion of Tom’s was to look at things you’ve recently watched or read, take a scene from them that stood out and then incorporate them, maybe with slight changes, into the game. I was writing a Cthulhu Dark scenario and my inspirations were:
A scene from a recent Dr Who.
A scene from Jessica Jones
A concept from a recent LARP I played.
A scene from Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Once I had mashed them together and altered them to fit the game I don’t think any of them were recognisable. The game took about an hour and a half (including character creation which I want to experiment with and swapping in and out of coffee shops because they kept closing.) I’m not sure if it’ll get longer or shorter as I get more competent. Probably less waffly and with less of an info dump at the start. Once I’ve found a few more playtesters and run the game a few more times I will write about my experience with it and the dynamics of running the scenario with different characters. When you have one PC who they are and how they interact with the scenario matters a lot.
A lot of this can be boiled down even further depending on how comfortable you are with improving and how much prep the type of game you're running requires. Looking at the revised diagram, there's the starting point, a common middle and an end point with a couple of variations. So if you wanted to keep it a little more open-ended and cut down on your prep you could even dilute this to something like:
ReplyDelete1. Part encounters a villager who tells them about the dragon stealing their livestock.
2. "I think I want to up the stakes at some point so I'll have some children from the village get kidnapped by the dragon at some point"
3. "I like the idea of giving the players an opportunity to avoid a direct fight if they approach things intelligently, maybe they can catch it sleeping."
You'll note I've intentionally re-written this quite loosely and have focused more on what the GM is trying to do with the various pieces. 1 has stayed the same because that's the beginning and let's face it, you have to start somewhere. I've dropped the variations on 2 in my breakdown and have focused more on item 3. In my version I'm looking more at what the point of that moment is and have decided it's to raise the stakes. I've also left 4 off and focused on 5 and have highlighted that the GM wants to reward some creativity and not necessarily have it be a standard fight.
Where things are left open-ended is how the players chose to get from the beginning to the end. By leaving those open-ended the GM is free to see where the players want to take it and you've not had to prep a bunch of options that may never get used.
Where this also helps is that you can now see how the players are handling things and see how the time is going and can play with the other bits. For instance, maybe the players latch onto questioning everyone in the town and it's eating up a lot of time. Well then maybe you move directly to having the dragon kidnap some kids. That's going to move things along and force the players to act. On the other hand, if you need to slow things down then that's when you can insert an extra moment into the mix to drag it out a bit longer.
Similarly, if they reach the dragon's lair and sneak in but you can really tell that some of the players are really feeling bummed about not getting a combat in, then you can have the dragon be awake, or have them wake up the dragon. If it's toward the end of the night and it's late and you just don't have time for that then make the dragon be asleep.
I'm mostly saying a lot of what you've said above but have just made a few of the parts even looser than what you've outlined above. It certainly doesn't work for everyone, or every adventure. I wouldn't want to run D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder this way for instance because you really do need to have encounters prepared for that and I'm not experienced enough to just make one up on the fly.
Yes absolutely. And I really hope to get to the stage where I can just decide what would be interesting and what they need to know (although I think it would be harder for investigative games because you would need to make sure that enough clues were planted that players could get to the right place without being railroaded there.)
ReplyDeleteBut I think it's definitely true about adapting as you go along and that, as you say, if the players seem really invested in combat then you have the dragon awake and if they prefer puzzles you have opportunities to avoid combat if the players approach it intelligently. Interesting take on it - thanks.