Player-Generated Premises

[robin_d_laws]

We’re back to the 4E campaign after a long hiatus spanning convention/festival season and in-house Skulduggery playtesting. Over the years I’ve had campaigns that either gel or don’t gel, but this one is odd in that it oscillates back and forth between gelling and not. I’d point to a number of reasons for this, ranging from our collective sense of focus to a mismatch between an epic storyline the picaresque behavior of the characters. I’m also looking for ways to go further with the group storytelling techniques I started with. Some of these made their way into the DMG2, so now it’s time to further extend our bag of tricks.

Accordingly, I’ve asked the players to provide story premises for their characters. These are brief plot hooks, a sentence or so long, written in the format you’d see in TV listings. Each player was originally to write three premises for their own characters. My group had an even better idea, that they write two apiece for their own PCs, and then a third one for another character.

Among other things, I’m hoping to address an imbalance, where some of the characters have ongoing storylines attached to them, while others tend to float free from the narrative. Like an ensemble show, I foresee dividing the spotlight between players on a rotating basis. One episode will be a Shoryu episode in which others take supporting roles, then a Lacklow episode, and so forth.

I’ve collected the hooks together and printed them on cardstock in index card format. With these at my elbow, I can reach for them whenever the storyline cries out for a fresh fork. Surprise is preserved because no one, including me, knows which ones will appear in which order. Also, I’ll modify them as need be to fit the game’s evolving continuity.

This is the premise that incorporated itself into our season two premiere last Thursday:

• El-Haumarzeid encounters a caravan of the Gambling Princes of Zhood, the hedonistic nomadic aesthetes with whom he traveled after fleeing Ekhzom. The caravan is carrying someone he once knew, who demands he fulfill an old obligation.

Since the world has now been reduced to a post-apocalyptic state by an undead invasion, the caravan turned up to be a flying ship instead of an overland convoy. This modification of the premise keyed off another player’s suggestion that a flying ship might be the thing to have in a zombie-infested environment. So when the Zhood appeared, they were on a flying ship, and the favor they sought from El-Haumarzeid was that he go get a second flying ship for them.

Now that this premise has been folded into the narrative, the player will have to replace it with a new premise. At the player’s discretion, it might build on the expended premise, or go somewhere else entirely.

Other premises submitted so far include:

• El-Haumarzeid unwittingly becomes the centre of a new religious movement.
• Lacklow learns that not every problem can be solved with a swift thrust of a blade to the eye when a thiefmaster's convocation is held in a mysterious temple where violence is impossible.
  
  
• A normal mission suddenly gains deadly stakes when Lacklow learns that one of his missing family members may be involved.  Are they a hostage? Slaves?  Or something more sinister?
• Saltiamara discovers a little more about the potential destiny of the orc child she adopted.
• The local mafia tries to convince Shoryu, in his role as a pit fighter trainer, to help set up a bunch of games.

Many of these give me permission to do things to the characters that players might easily resent if sprung on them purely from the GM end of the table. Some of them build on existing threads, while others allow the players to shape the narrative around their characters in previously unanticipated ways.