Warning: This is more a stream of conscious post than anything else. Take what is useful, ignore the rest and feel free to comment.
A role playing session requires the PCs to do something. To make it interesting, there needs to be an obstacle to this goal.
So, can we break down all role playing sessions into: do | obstacle?
Now you can generate two list of things for PCs to do and obstacles. Granted this is not a terribly original idea. I believe Adamant Entertainment has half a dozen such lists.
My interest in this is breaking down a role playing session into its most basic building block at which point I can build on top of that to whatever layer of detail I want.
From here, I can decide that a session consists of three to five encounters. The Do will most likely be the same throughout the encounters, but it does not have to be. The Obstacle will likely change from encounter to encounter, but, again, it does not have to. Also more encounters can be added or removed.
It seems to me it should only take about five minutes to throw together the basics of a night’s session. The rest are details that add to the experience.
Each encounter needs a Who/What/Why/When/How.
The Who is likely related to your Obstacle and may not be a sentient being; for instance, time.
At least part of the What is being the Obstacle, although there could be more to it than that. The Obstacle may be minding its own business when the PCs come blundering headlong into it.
Why is a matter of fleshing out the Who. This is frequently one of my biggest stumbling blocks because it is the motivation behind my NPCs. It also helps me adlib by guiding how my NPCs will react to PC actions.
When is exactly the time the PCs show up. Otherwise, this happens off screen and is not really an encounter.
How, for me, is much like the Why. More details about the NPCs and their actions. A well thought out How helps me wing it when the PCs go off the reservation. The How should also help you identify what is needed for the PCs to succeed in the encounter. If they stop or beat the How, then they move closer to completing the Do.
Could these further classifications of Who/What/Why/When/How be put into some sort of list? Say you roll a random selection from your Do | Obstacle list which then points you to another sub list of Who/What/Why/When/How.
Director of Brand Strategy
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Some nice thoughts here. I like the idea of the plot being free-form improved based on conflict instead of just hooks. Allowing a player to say "I want to do x" and then find the table closest to x to indicate the obstacle or who/what/when/etc. would make Gygax very very happy. It allows for total sandbox play, while still helping GMs go with things on the fly in ways that even they might not know about, making them another player in some ways, just following the dictate of the GM of Randomness.
Any chance you could put together some of these random tables? I have a game of all female newbies soon and it has been recommended to me to do a sandbox style game so that they can do whatever they want without me having to railroad them into the plot of a pregen adventure. I think something like this would be extremely helpful.
Alos, where's that sexy poodle icon? I think we're gonna have a goat icon in February, which isn't thaaat different from a llama ;-)
Thank you.
*stands in awe looking at the unmasked master*
We did missed you actually, are u ditching the poodle head?
*whimpers*
Welcome back CourtFool.
Any chance you could put together some of these random tables?
I have not put together any random tables based on this yet. I have built some Open Office Calc sheets based on the Adamant Entertainment charts I mentioned.
Sandbox style gaming requires proactive players otherwise is flounders. What I mean by proactive players, are players who develop characters that have goals and motivations beyond killing something and taking its stuff.
I find it a lot easier to build a session around a character who wants to become a knight or avenge his slain father or what-have-you. For me, once I know where a character is going, it is easy to think up some reasonable obstacles to throw in their way.
I was planning on using this more as an idea generator to gently push the characters into action. However, after reading your post, I can see how it could be used in a more free form campaign as well. There is no reason it could not be used both ways.
This is a very short list of Do. My objective is to be comprehensive without being redundant.
Kill Protect Retrieve Hide Scout
I can not remember the quote or where it came from, but, as I remember, there are only three things that can serve as a protagonist in any piece of fiction; himself, man and nature. For a role playing game, I think himself does not apply very well…unless you are playing a VtM LARP. As far as man is concerned, this would be any external sentient being. Nature would be any other force not a sentient being.
So you could randomly select the Do as Retrieve which would lead to a list of somethings, one of which could be the Dingus. Next you randomly select the Obstacle which could lead to Nature which further leads to weather. So the PCs need to go from Point A to Point B and retrieve the Dingus. However, the weather proves difficult causing the PCs to become lost. Then they run into a pack of hungry wolves or discover some weather wizard is behind the climate change.
Obviously, my examples change the Obstacle from Nature to something else. I think any randomly generated material like this must remain open for artistic freedom. For me, the purpose of this is to get my creative juices flowing. With a couple of charts like this, I could throw something at the PCs with about 5 minutes of preparation.
I am still trying to figure out where I am going with all of this. As I mentioned before, I have seen these kinds of charts but they are always tailored to a specific setting or genre at the very least. I would like to abstract it away from genre so you could use it for any game. Can that even be done?
Retrieving the Dingus is a classic Fantasy trope. I find it pretty weak for a Supers campaign.
Something that was hinted at here and more fully realized on another forum is that this completely disregards the PCs. Say you have Player A who wants to become high priest of peace and healing and you roll up Kill NPC Enemy #1 on your handy dandy chart.
Is there a way to better integrate something like this with player objectives? Maybe skip the Do portion since the player has already selected this and simply use the Obstacle section to determine what stands in the way of Father McLoves Everyone and his Papal Tiara.
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as far as inverse-motivation tasks...simply flip the good guys and bad. the PC's (being a good healer type group) have to stop the newly bad guys from killing someone.
the best part of this: you can make changes on the fly and move on to the next encounter/task.
flowchart the idea, and set up time-goals, and you can whip out your entire night of gaming right quick.
perhaps i will look to these for travel time / during a riot / in the middle of a plague / random monster encounters.
-t
I stumbled upon this. Just using these formulas for titles for an adventure should inspire.
Overuse considered harmful
I am still kicking this idea around.
It occurred to me that not only does each session consists of Do | Obstacle, but overarching plots as well. There may be more room for man vs. himself in an overarching plot, but I think the most useful and common would be man vs. man.
The overarching plot is probably a better place for specific character motivations as well. Again, this would lay the responsibility of the Do in the hands of the players.
This may help form a holistic approach to session/campaign design. For example, the players decide their characters want to become rich and famous (Do). The GM must decide what the players must accomplish in order to become rich and famous. This leads to another series (sessions) of Do’s.
1. Get money (Do) – pretty much creates its own list of Obstacles, doesn’t it?
2. Be witnessed doing cool stuff (Do)
At least for me, this leads to some pretty straight forward brainstorming. Who (Obstacle) has the money? What steps have they taken to protect it (Obstacle)? What might the person with the money be willing to part with it for (Do)? Who might witness the PCs doing cool stuff? What cool stuff do they do?
This is all just pretty much brainstorming, isn’t it? Nothing new.
Does a Dingus trump a McGuffin?
Yes.