Player Facing Scenarios

[mashugenah]

When the Forge spawned the "Indie Game Revolution", I was very sceptical. I took my line pretty far - I called out steve_hix over his award of "Best GM" at KapCon for his break-out Indie game, "The Lucky Joneses", a game about dysfunctional families that was finally released last year as Bad Family. I argued that the GM in Indie games had a much lower

Comments

[ext_1196940]

If I could change one thing about EPOCH it would be to call the 'Script Overview" the 'Background' or "What has Gone Before" because that's what it is - a background which establishes how the horror has come to exist, and what it wants. Therefore it necessarily includes NPCs (as there are no PCs in the fiction of an EPOCH scenario as there are no pre-generated characters).

I don't so much think the scenario "back-story in order for the events to make sense to the GM, so the GM can predict responses and extrapolate and interpolate those NPC agendas into the story" as I think it needs a compelling human story articulated early-on to stimulate the interest of the GM to read it and visualise running it. The other sections like NPCs, Locations and Facilitation Notes (which you have previously argued should be incorporated into the body of the text) are intended to give a quick access toolkit to achieve the aim you outline.

As for whether " The bulk of the scenario text is still oriented toward the bikers' story, and I think the structure of the write-up itself points to the centrality of that story" I disagree, but accept that people will read and interpret work applying a personal frame that is beyond my control.