Figures of Text

Disclaimer: All this is my opinion, but it’s based on what’s worked for me over the past eight years of writing con scenarios – and since writing said con scenarios has led directly to a job in the gaming industry, I’ll admit to a smidgin of ego on this topic. Contrary comments and arguments welcome.

The advice contained in this essay is focussed on writing scenarios for Irish cons, and more specifically for Warpcon and Gaelcon, because they’re the big cons and the cons I know. For those unfamiliar with the Irish con scene and the scenarios used there, we operate using a system derived originally (I suspect) from the RPGA. One writer writes a scenario in advance, which is passed onto the rpg co-ordinator. A number of GMs are given the scenario, who all run it at the same time for a number of tables of players. Each game lasts three hours (including set-up and debriefing, so the actual game should take two to two and a half hours) and is usually written for six players.  While much of the advice herein can be generalised to other convention setups and longer games, I’m focussing on the three hour con game.

THE PURPOSE OF WRITING CON SCENARIOS

As a scenario writer, your purpose is to give the GM all the tools he needs to entertain a group of six players for three hours. Everything in the scenario should be focussed towards that goal. Long backgrounds are only of use if the players have to read them, or if they are absolutely necessary for the GM to understand the plot.

What tools does the Games Master need?

• Six Player Character sheets with appropriate characters, backgrounds and stats. While I’ll go into more detail on PCs later, it should be noted that the PCs are just as important as the scenario. Indeed, if by some disaster you’re forced to choose between writing the characters, and writing the scenario, you should normally go for the characters. It’s better for the GM to be doing the improvisation than the players.
• A scenario, with enough plot to sustain the game for at least an hour and a half. The scenario should be readable in ten or fifteen minutes, be clearly laid out and broken down into scenes or encounters, and include a quick reference sheet for the beleaguered GM who got handed the scenario fifteen minutes after the event was supposed to start.
• In that scenario should be material to entertain the players. Such material includes:
  • Interesting handouts
  • Interesting tactical encounters
  • Interesting puzzles
  • Interesting NPCs
  • Interesting plots
  • Interesting conflicts between player characters
  • Interesting ideas and descriptive details for the games master.

GETTING STARTED

So, you want to write a scenario for a convention. Cool. Go you. We need more submissions. Fresh writers, fresh ideas. It’s fun, it’s cool, and it’s great to sit in the pub after the game and listen to players recount tales of the scenario you wrote.

However, between now and then, there’s a bit of work to do.

The first step is coming up with an idea. Some ideas fit into a particular game – if you’re doing to do a dungeon crawl, then some D&D variant is the obvious choice. Other ideas will arise from published games or settings. A scenario based around some quirk of Vampire politics has to be a Vampire game, a scenario set on Poseidon has to be a Blue Planet game.

Other ideas are not necessarily tied to a particular established game. You can do a heist game in any sufficiently detailed system, for example. Your clever rewrite of Macbeth or a parody of college politics or a simple game for hungover players on Sunday morning can fit into any system. Choose your favourite game, or ask the con’s rpg co-ordinator what gaps they need to fill.

THE OUTLINE

Next, outline your scenario. As a rule of thumb, you’ll have time to run at most half a dozen ‘scenes’ in a three-hour con slot, where each scene lasts around 20 minutes (the rest of the time will be taken up with roleplaying and indecision on the part of the players). You’ve got to have some sort of opening, and some sort of climax or finale, leading you with a maximum of four significant encounters or events. We’ll be breaking these scenes down in more detail later, but a six-scene outline will do for now.

What’s the basic plot of the scenario? Strip off all the trappings and setting-specific stuff, and determine what the players will do in the scenario. How do they get from the opening scene to the finale?

Some common basic plots, and their opening scene/encounters/finale:

Plot	Synopsis	Opening Scene	Encounters (3-5 of these)	Finale
The Mission	The players have to complete a mission.	They get assigned their mission	They have to overcome obstacles to the mission	They complete the mission
Examples	Go and slay that dragon Break into the EvilDoer Corporation and retrieve the McGuffin
The Mystery	Something weird is going on	Weirdness engulfs the characters	They find clues and figure out what’s going on	They use the clues to confront the source of weirdness
Examples	You get a letter from an old friend, who’s been abducted by the Cthulhu cult. Uncover the evil conspiracy.
Trapped by Horrors	The players are in a bad place	They discover they’re trapped	They explore the bad place	They find a way out or conquer the bad place
Examples	So, you’re all in this haunted hotel… So, you’re in this dungeon
You’re In Charge	The players have to manage an event	They’re briefed on what they have to do	They plan; unexpected problems and complications arise	The event happens
Examples	Here’s a map of the bank; plan the heist My, that enemy army is getting really close. You should stop them.
A Series of Unfortunate Events	Troubles beset the PCs	Life is peaceful, all is normal, then something disrupts it	Bad things happen.	The PCs work out what’s causing the badness, and stop it.
Examples	You’re a team of Superheroes, and the city’s in multiple perils. The city is under siege, you’re the only adventurers strong enough to save it.
Intrigue and backstabbing	The PCs plot and conspire against each other	The stakes and arena of play are stated	Lots of conniving and backstabbing	The winner is determined
Examples	You’re all diplomats representing different factions, trying to come up with a peace treaty. Welcome, Troubleshooters! Your fun mission today…

You can combine two basic plots, of course, and not every idea will fit neatly into one of these boxes. The important things to remember are:

 

• A strong opening scene
• 3-5 encounters or events
• A strong finale 

 

Do the players have meaningful decisions to make, or are they led through all the scenes in order? If they can go ‘off track’, then consider how the GM can get them back on course, or else work out an alternate route to the finale. If the players aren’t allowed go off track, then make sure that each scene leads clearly but naturally onto the next, and make sure that there’s still something meaningful for the players to accomplish. It’s ok to have a highly linear plot as long as the players have to conserve resources (hit points and spells in D&D, for example) or gather information (clues and so forth) that will play a part in determining the final outcome of the game.

THE BLURB

You’ll probably be asked to provide a blurb or a fifty-word description of your scenario for the con. These blurbs have to be in months before the convention, so they can be included in pre-con publicity such as the flyers or the con website. Normally, you’ll write the blurb long before you ever start in on the scenario itself. The blurb needs to:

• Sell players on the game. It’s got to be the Jerry Bruckheimer trailer for the movie, the gravely voice-over of epic drama. Six heroes must save the city from an orc army! Or What horror lurks in the murky waters of Lake Lovecraft? Or Who will win the prized ‘Best Pig’ award at the Eversham Parish Fete?
• Give players an idea of what to expect. Is it a hack-and-slash game, an investigative game, an emotional drama, a light-hearted romp or a deadly serious game of political intrigue? What sort of play can they expect? (We’ll talk about bait-and-switch games later, where the initial situation is replaced by something completely different during play, but be careful of bait-and-switch blurbs. If you say that the characters are exploring the Dungeon of Many Pit Traps, then the players are going to be expecting a dungeon crawl. Don’t then have the players leave the dungeon in your opening scene.
• Tell players what they need to know. What system is the game? Is it systemless? Over-18s? Specifically aimed at experienced players, or beginners?

 

There are lots of ways to make blurbs interesting. You could present them as in-character messages (from ‘you are cordially invited to the wedding of Prince Elfears and Princess Human’ to ‘this is Free Trader Beowulf, we’re under attack’.) You can directly challenge the players (‘no party has ever survived the Dungeon of Largely Arbitrary Death’) or hint at exciting twists (‘You’ve been woken from your sleep by the sound of troublesome mortals. Did they really think they could steal from your hoard and get away with it?’)

 

Be careful about being too obscure or specific. Vampire blurbs are especially notorious for saying absolutely nothing about the game (‘This night, the kindred haunt the streets. Their bitter masquerade masks their eternal thirst for blood. As the End Times loom, whose stars will rise and whose will fall?’). Equally bad are blurbs which drop half a dozen proper names or Capitalised Terms (‘the Blodderites are on the march, and only the Nork of Valus can wield the power of the Holpos. Is your Vinculu equal to the threat of Zasb?’), although these can work if you’re deliberately aiming your game at experienced players.

Next – the player characters.

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