|||
Sarah is running a game of Ultraviolet Grasslands 2E soon. She was a frequent player in the Wolves Upon the Coast campaign which I co-refereed. Since UVG is a “travel to a location and do something”-type game, I offered to give some pointers on how to prepare for a session in an episodic game. Other folks expressed interest in my thoughts, so here they are.
Unless it is the very first session, you must talk to the players about what they want to do next. In a West Marches format, the players self-organize and tell you where they are going next. In a face-to-face game, you can do this at the end of the session.
Players may have vague ideas. Ask clarifying questions about how they go about it until they settle on a concrete location or objective. “Learn more about the area” is an outcome. They need to say “we’re going here to look for XYZ” or “we’re going to sail this route.”
Once you have the Goal, you can prepare your material. I do this in two chunks.
About a week before the session, I read the material. I find it easier to understand material that is organized visually, so I make a map. I make a couple short notes if I think something is cool.
When prepping a point crawl, I make a little graph and annotate it with notes directly - just a few words. If you have a PDF, you can take a screenshot and add notes to it in Google Slides or Affinity Photo.
I “run the simulation” ahead for a few days. Most Wolves sessions start with a large chunk of travel, so I roll enough weather to get to the player’s goal. Weather is important in Wolves - your system may think something else is more important.
I also make encounter checks for land and sea ahead of time. I roll the actual encounter and its Reaction, but not Surprise and Distance. Here’s an example:
On Foot Day 3 - Priest and Faithful
Father Erik and 4 Faithful
Reaction: Negative Inclination
If near 17.12, they probably think the players are here to rob the tombs
This encounter will happen if the players are on foot on day 3 of the session. The encounter can happen anywhere that the players can reach by day 3.
Because I made a map, and I know the destination, I know where they might be on day 3. An idea for the negative reaction springs to mind. I was also able to give the priest a Norse-ish name because of the region. You don’t have to do either of these, they just happened.
The final thing I consider is this question: “what does it feel like to reach the goal?” I need one idea, and it doesn’t have to be good. This is high concept stuff.
Now I am done for the evening! Time for bed.
A few days later, the ingredients have had time to bonk around in my head. Now I need to come up with a couple of Big Moments, and then prep the connective tissue around these moments.
A Big Moment is a cool idea, usually some read-aloud text or sensory details that I want to get across. It may be a speech from an NPC or a description of a monster or place. I am not sure how effective it is, but sometimes I feel like it’s time to cut the malarkey and have a damn cutscene to get the players all facing in the same direction, looking at the cool thing they came to see in the first place.
There is another family of prep techniques which I think of as “design by spreadsheet.” An example is the Gauntlet’s 7-3-1 technique:
Before a session, I come up with 7 total NPCs, locations, and encounters. I give each of these a motivation. I then come up with 3 sensory details for each that I can describe at the table (sights, smells, sounds, and so forth). Finally, I think of 1 way I can physically embody each at the table (a distinct noise, voice, verbal tic, body posture, mannerism, etc.). I write all these things down.
In my experience, if I set out to brainstorm 7 things and I need to come up with 4 details for each of them, I run out of energy and inspiration before I finish. I am recommending the same content as 7-3-1, but less of it. Do not chain yourself to a format where you have to fill in all the boxes before you can get on with your life.
Mull over things that inspire you, and only those things. You only need to get through the next session. Save your juice.
“Wow, you’re talking about plot, isn’t that what you’re not supposed to prep?”
My brother-in-law makes theater, and when he visits we always talk about stories. He recommended two books for thinking about story structures: Playwriting: The Structure of Action by Sam Smiley and Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story by John Yorke. Here is a quote from Smiley about plot:
One of the most important distinctions that every writer ought to understand is this: plot and story are not synonymous. They are, however, intimately related. Plot is overall organization, the form, of a literary work. Story is one kind of plot; it is only one particular way to make form in drama. Suffering, discovery, reversal, story, tension, suspense, conflict, penetration, contrast - these are examples of the various factors that may contribute to plot. Though extremely useful, story is but one among the many ways the materials of a play may be arranged. Story, simply defined, is a sequence of events, and such a sequence can provide one kind of unity in drama.
The structure of action in any play comprises the form of that play. In mimetic plays, unified action controls the selection and arrangement of all other parts. A plot may, for example, consist of an extended image of suffering, a group of discoveries or revelations, a series of events, or a chain of crises. Action may gain unity in many different ways. But, whatever form a play might assume, its plot will have some specific kind of structured action, a structure featuring wholeness, emotionality, and magnitude.
Justin Alexander’s definition of plot is “story.” I agree that you shouldn’t prep a sequence of events. As mentioned above, story is merely one element of plot. The point of plot is organization and unity.
Many referees deride a preset story as railroading. Before I get into my plot structure I want to say some things that are and aren’t railroading.
If you are planning for what the players want to do ahead of time, then you are not railroading them. You are providing runway for their stated plans. As part of the agreement to play a game, they have to make medium-term decisions and stick with them. They have go-anywhere-do-anything agency in Part 0 when they set a goal. During the session, the sandbox has boundaries. If you are running short sessions - 3 hours max - they will get back to a place of total agency soon enough!
It is not a railroad to say “you go to the tavern where people like you hang out.”
It is not a railroad to anticipate your players’ actions and have something ready. Some of my players have a running joke about asking “the oldest, weirdest person in town” for information. It is not a railroad to have that person say a wild-ass rumor which is mostly incorrect and somehow related to the plot.
It is not a railroad to prepare a couple encounters that happen in order as they are getting to the destination.
It is a railroad to put players in a dungeon crawl situation and have a five rooms in a straight line. Do not do this. It’s way better to have one room with an interesting problem in it!
It is a railroad to give the players a problem and have one solution which they have to guess. It is not your job to solve problems, it is your job to solve solutions. You translate their plans into rulings and dice rolls.
For the Wolves game, we ran tight sessions of two and a half hours. The players have discussed ahead of time in broad strokes what they want to do. They usually want to “encounter” some person, place or thing - the Goal.
Because of the short session time, I plot sessions in a two-act format. The basic format is this. In the first act, they work to get in the same place as the Goal. Then we take the 5 minute break. In the second act, they interact with the Goal.
What does it feel like to reach the Goal? That’s a Big Moment. The players are encountering the truth. All is revealed.
This is what the players came to see. Write a little NPC speech or description to read aloud. If you are running an adventure module, this is fleshed out for you. Read some bits directly from the source material if you want. Engage the five senses. You don’t need seven of these things, just one or two.
As you come up with these moments, pull out some facts. The plant monster is carnivorous. The goblins ill like fire. The tower is crumbly and treacherous. The undead horse swallows people whole. These statements should seem very obvious to you, the omniscient referee. You’ll use them later.
Once you know the end state, think of ways to get there. In Act I, they might do any of the things on this non-exhaustive list:
You should feel prepared to run these segments, mostly by knowing the rules. The random encounters and map you made in the first block of prep are your raw materials. Roll HP for your goblins, decide what weapons and armor they are carrying.
Concrete things like travel, dungeon crawling, and skill checks are supported by the game systems. I have some notes below about prepping NPCs and Rumors, these are important but very specific to you as a Referee and the game world.
At the beginning of a session, I always give the players 10 minutes to discuss specifics. This is important because they cement their own expectations about what is going to happen during the session. They commit resources to a plan without having all the information. You might say they are “sinking costs” into a “fallacy.”
It’s important to cement their expectations first. In Act I and Act II you will reveal information that challenges these expectations. This is called a reveal, a reversal, or a turning point.
The first reveal should occur towards the beginning of Act I. This is a piece of information or problem which adds a new dimension to the goal. This may be a fact about the Big Moment that you generated for Act II.
The players must integrate this new information into the plan. In the unlikely event that they planned things perfectly, then they feel smart and rewarded. Some examples:
You can also tease a reward here. The first reveal shouldn’t be so big that they are scared off. The stakes should be raised just a couple of notches.
Act II starts when the players have reached the Goal, but they are overextended in a tough position because they do not control the situation. The second reveal occurs at the beginning of Act II. This is the “oh fuck” moment. The stakes are higher and they have to make tough decisions using limited resources.
This is usually just a revelation of the Total Truth of their goal. Oh fuck, Vampire Kate Bush is in there, and she wants you to join her. Oh fuck, this fish has AC equivalent to plate armor. Oh fuck, the undead horse swallows people whole.
The above format works great for “go to a location and have a spectacular encounter” adventures. Here are some other common goals which I encountered:
X has encountered you before, and can do something new. It’s also fine to end the session early and just talk about all the treasure they get.
Rumors are frequently untrue or distorted. You have free reign to send them somewhere cool that you like from the source material that they would otherwise not see.
The wizard always has a request.
Settle on a route before you start prepping. Then you can sprinkle a bunch of small encounters and have no Act II. If they start going too deep into one thing, end the session or telegraph a spike in danger to scare them off.
To figure out how to run NPCs, I recommend reading Zelda-Style NPC Personalities, which is roughly two paragraphs long.
For my money, the most important thing is that NPCs be extremely on their bullshit. This means:
- They have something they are very interested in.
- They have something that is of interest or value to you.
- They are not interested in you or your goals.
If an NPC wants the players to do something, you need to be able to answer the question: “why doesn’t the NPC do it themselves?”
Pick a name, and go from that to a voice. The NPC has opinions about stuff in the game based on the voice. The NPC will find ways to steer the conversation back to their hyperfixation.
If a sorcerer sounds like an old fart, give him old fart opinions. If the mayor thinks that being an adventurer is so very droll, darling, she should probably be out of touch and have little concern for everyday life.
The Big Moment is a good time for making decisions about the world. This can manifest as two sides of an NPC conflict whose goals are mutually exclusive (the Baldur’s Gate Special), or a powerful NPC who offers the players a deal - usually “are you with me or against me?”
Players might offer an alternative arrangement. If you think it’s interesting, go with it. If it’s milquetoast, the NPCs don’t have to be interested! Why should they accept less? They don’t have to explain themselves. If the player has no leverage, the NPCs don’t have to be interested. Who the fuck are you?
Freely offer rumors and information about the world when the players are in settlements, by speaking as NPCs. The information may be inaccurate, out of date, or dramatically ironic, but there is always information.
Any time information comes out of an NPCs mouth, you can exaggerate and get it as wrong as you like. You can also tell them an unbelievable truth in the voice of an absolute crank.
As you move closer to the Total Truth of Act II, information about it gets clearer and more reliable, like a lens slowly focusing.
Consider how information moves and how the scale of things can warp information. Imagine there are werewolves in the forest one hex away from Hamletville. Hamletville is one hex away from Bigtown. If the players are far away in Othercity, they’re going to hear that “werewolves are a problem in Bigtown.” They will not know the exact location in the forest.
Into the Woods, mentioned above, attempts to distill narrative structures from plays, movies, novels, and television into one story structure to rule them all. The Hero’s Journey is in there as is Shakespeare’s five-act structure. Trying to understand a short format that would help me plan two-and-a-half hours, I encountered the Seinfeld two-act format. I don’t think mine is the same, but there are a couple takeaways.
“No hugging, no learning” is a mantra for stories on that show. Similarly, I don’t think the goal of a referee is to be didactic. It’s to present a situation and let the weirdos bumble through it. In games that I play, the players are typically outsiders who are incentivized to do things orthogonal to a functioning society. They will fuck things up and make people mad. The end! No moral.
The (extremely crass) spec script “Seinfeld - The Two Towers” by Billy Domineau is an episode about the Seinfeld characters’ self-absorbed response to 9/11. I think this is a good example of working backwards. In the final scene, all the dominos fall in rapid succession, and if you read the script again you can see how they were set up.