Figures of Text

Since writing thelast post on this topic, I attended the Scenario Writing Workshop in Cork, which was entertaining and moderately productive, although I’m not sure if entrenched opinions (mine or anyone else’s) changed.

The most useful part of the whole workshop was where people discussed their favourite scenario ever to write and to play. In almost every case, the ‘favourite piece of scenario writing’ was some over-complex and experimental game, like my Serene and Primal. By contrast, the ‘favourite game to play’ category was more varied, but there were a few interesting common elements:

• The first time the person played a particular game
• Simple, effective scenarios with plenty of scope for the players to drive events.
• Games set in unusual locations or time periods. Even something as simple as running a Cthulhu scenario in, say, Mexico instead of Arkham made the game much more memorable.

A few other tips:
HOW TO RUN THIS GAME IN FIVE MINUTES
These essays are aimed at the Irish convention games scene, where it is a veritable badge of honour to run a game with no prep and no clue what the scenario’s about. I’ve been at dozens of cons where the poor harassed RPG director ran up to me and begged me to run a game at short notice; I’ve even been that harassed RPG director and promised blood oaths of loyalty and my firstborn children in exchange for GMs.

I include a short one-page synopsis of the scenario with every con game I write. This ‘how to run this game in five minutes’ sheet includes

• A quick description of the game, focussing on what the GM needs to know to get the game started.
• Really short bullet-point descriptions of the player characters
• Notes on any really important plot points that the GM should be aware of.
• A list of all the components of the scenario – the number of character sheets, a list of any handouts, any reference materials or other extras

Writing a ‘how to run’ page is more than a courtesy to the GMs who’ll be running your game; it’s also a useful ’sanity check’ on your game. Boiling your plot down to four or five lines can reveal structural problems or obvious logical errors; if your game can’t be quickly summarised, then it’s too complicated.

INVESTIGATIVE SCENARIOS
An awful lot of con games are investigative or mystery games. Obviously, the important activity of these games is uncovering and interpreting clues. Not all clues are equal. (The Gumshoe rules are an excellent illustration of this.) I divide clues into:

• Core Clues: Clues that the players have to find to move onto the next scene. The players have to find a core clue, and it should be easy to interpret. The classic core clue is the dropped matchbook or business card that gives the characters the address of the evil-doers’ lair.
• Background Clues: Clues that the players don’t need to find or interpret, but if they do, it sheds light on the background of the scenario. The players don’t need to find the book about African cults that describes why the bad guys are ritually flaying the ears of their victims to complete the game, but it does explain all the flapping ear monsters.
• Bonus Clues: Clues that the players don’t need to find or interpret, but if they do, they’ll be better prepared to deal with the threat. The classic bonus clue is finding the magic ritual to banish the cosmic horror; the characters might be able to defeat the horror without the ritual, but it would be much more risky.

So, you need to ensure the characters get enough core clues to get to the end of the scenario without trouble, and then scatter in background clues and bonus clues as needed. Don’t be afraid to make clues difficult to interpret; if a player signs up for an investigative game, they should have to do a little sleuthing.

HANDOUTS
These go hand-in-hand, so to speak, with investigative games. Handouts are the single easiest way to lift a scenario from ‘ok’ to ‘memorable’. They enable roleplaying by giving the players a prop to play with, they let the players interpret clues and information directly instead of filtered through the GM, they help the players remember key plot elements and reduce confusion, they’re memorable – and in these days of DTP and the internet, they’re really easy to do. For any modern-day scenario, a quick google can get you a map and some illustrative photos of the location of your game. You can easily knock together mysterious notes or diaries with a few odd fonts (remember to send along any unusual fonts or save the document as a .pdf if you’re sending your game to the rpg co-ordinator by email).

COMBAT GAMES
If you’re going to do a combat-heavy game, then make sure you do the following:

• Provide interesting places to fight. The 10×10 dungeon room is a classic, but it’s dull. Take a few minutes to come up with a distinctive theme or gimmick to each fight.
• Provide interesting, challenging enemies to fight. Give the GM tools to adjust the difficulty of the fights.
• Get the rules right. You can run the game rules-light or keep to the book, but make sure you provide all requisite information either way.

ACTUALLY, ON THE TOPIC OF RULES
By their very nature, con games tend to run in a more rules-light manner than campaign games. With a limited time to run the session, the GM has to keep the game running and can’t stop to check a rule; the players may not be familiar with the rules either. Because of this, some con writers have the mistaken impression that they don’t need to worry about the rules.

This does a disservice to the game. Rules affect how a game plays, and many players want to try out new systems at a con. Defaulting to the ‘ah, sure roll a dice and get a big number’ system is just lazy. You want to at least give the players a taste of the distinctive elements of the rule system.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME
Once you are comfortable with writing for cons, try more ambitious games. There are lots of possible variations.

• Killing off the player characters and replacing them with new pregens half-way through the game
• Multi-table games, where events at one table affect others. For example, one Cyberpunk game I played consisted of the players designing the defences for a fortress. At the half-way point, the tables swapped fortress designs and the players now had to break into the fortress designed by their neighbours. Warpcon ran White Wolf triway games for many years, with three GMs each running a table of Vampires, Werewolves and Mages, and a fourth GM co-ordinating communication between the three
• Multi-round tournament games, where only a subset of the players progress to the next part of the scenario.
• Unusual games; one Cthulhu game I wrote has the player characters divided among three different time period.

WHY I OWE THE IRISH CON SYSTEM MY CAREER
I started out writing games for Warpcon.
Using these games as writing samples, I started freelancing.
From freelancing, I went to a full-time writing career.

The Irish con system has its flaws, but it does teach you to write coherent game material designed for use by other people. Better yet, you get instant feedback on how your design works in play. There is no better way to learn the art of game writing.

Trackback URL

Conventions, Roleplaying