Re: Preparing for play, how I do it

From: Ian Cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_...>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:08:40 -0000

Trotsky wrote:
>
>>One of the most difficult elements of the process, though, at least
for me, is figuring how to start. What is the key element that starts us off, the basic mystery to be unravelled, or problem to be solved? Coming up with such ideas is often pretty hard, and then there's a lot of detail to be put in - all those gears and levers - as we work out what the NPCs are trying to achieve and why. And, if the NPCs are trying to do something that the PCs are likely to want to stop, we have to make sure that their plan is at least potentially thwartable, even if we don't know what approach the players will actually take.<<

In this style of play I tend to need two elements: conflict and crisis. It's a little different for linear play for me but that's really a seperate thread.

The conflict for me is the heart of the setting.

At its base level it is to put two groups in opposition to each other, within the setting. Most conflicts are about one-side having something the other wants; ideology then justifies this want as morally correct for the wanting side, and for not giving it over to the possessing side. So really you just need to define a lack and post-hoc figure out the justifications from each side. It is a bad harvest we have no food. Oh, yeah those no-good Split Waters ought to pay us tribute in barley, because we help defend them against the wolves.

Usually get my ideas for the conflict from genre sources appropriate to the game. I also get character ideas from the same place. So for example in Red Cow you might have the following conflicts:

We hate the next door clans i.e. a blood feud: Icelandic sagas We hate those people that are not like us i.e. the Telmori: Wildwest  'injun' stories
We hate the people who now rule us i.e. the Empire: Rebels against Rome such as Manda Scott's Boudicca material

While I'm only giving one side here, you get more interesting conflicts when the players can have relationships with people who are from either side, or perhaps better have different views on the ideologies being used to justify/oppose the conflict. So some of the clan might support the Empire and the 'civilization it brings' or not want to stir them up by acts of rebellion, instead collaborating to survive.

Then the trick is to create a crisis that pushes that conflict into a new state, and to draw the players in by making them part of that crisis. Now for this kind of play a good crisis will potentially change, although not necessarily resolve, the state of play in the conflict. The players are protagonits because they get to change the status quo.

Again films and novels can ba great inspiration.

So let's say that I want to play something with the Telmori conflict. I might decide to pick up on The Searchers to do it. So I might look through the player's relationships and have the daughter of one of their friends kidnapped during a Telmori raid, several years ago. He's grown bitter and twisted, meanwhile, unbeknowst to him, she has gone native.

Now my crisis is a trader returning from trading with the Telmori, who comments he saw a girl there who could be their friends daughter. He wants to get her back and he wants the players to help to do it. Perhaps some of the Wolfskinners are anxious to join the expedition, but the chieftain is unsure, not wanting to stir up the wolfmen.

Now the players can react by killing Telmori and dragging the girl unwilling back to her family, or they might try negotiating, offering the Telmori something in exchange for the girl despite the resistance of her new husband etc. What happens now is open-ended.

Either way it is likely that the player's relationship with the Telmori will have changed by the end of it.