Comments | gametime: Player Facing Scenarios

mashugenah in gametime

Player Facing Scenarios

Jan 20, 2014 13:59

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 ( Read more... )

scenario writing

Comments 4

grandexperiment January 20 2014, 21:13:26 UTC

Interesting stuff. One thing I enjoyed about my Tenra Bansho Zero scenario "Goddess of the Dark Tower" is the player facing element you describe. Essentially, I made all of the major players of the story (even the antagonists) into PCs and allowed the players to create and advance the story after one hell of a kicker to start (and a couple of additional prods along the way). What I found also found interesting is that I could have easily made it a more traditional, non-player facing scenario by turning one or two of the PCs into NPCs. That would have made the scenario more reliable in some ways as it would be more under my control as a GM, but the scenario works better as it stands. There is greater genuine tension when PCs interact with potentially antagonistic PCs (possibly one of the appeals of LARPing too).

From a mechanical POV, I found the PTA style fan mail is also a great device for players in such a player facing scenario, as they can encourage and interact with each other outside of playing their PC.

ext_1196940 January 24 2014, 07:24:52 UTC

I take your point about investigation in EPOCH - although I do think your own preconceptions and expectations about the importance of investigative elements skews your view somewhat ( ... )

mashugenah January 26 2014, 09:47:59 UTC

I take on board your point about the alternate routes you've provided for traversing the adventure. Yet, I don't think that particularly affects the larger point I'm making. 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. For example, your "Script Overview" discusses the history of the bikers in detail rather than discussing the events that are likely to unfold during play. Your whole design philosophy for the adventure is that it needs this elaborate 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. The scenario's core stories are NPC stories. You've provided a way for the players to ignore that, which is a great step in the right direction. The presence of those NPC-driven elements however, is part of my point about how pervasive that adventure design paradigm is ( ... )

ext_1196940 January 28 2014, 07:54:41 UTC

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 ( ... )