GOOD STORIES are ones that HAVE CONFLICT. CONFLICT REVEALS CHARACTER because it forces people to MAKE CHOICES. Stories are about
people MAKING CHOICES.
CONFLICT BETWEEN PEOPLE IS MORE INTERESTING than conflict with
abstract forces.
CONFLICT WITHIN A COMMUNITY IS MORE INTERESTING than conflict with
external forces.
BEFORE THE GAME STARTS conflicts within a community should be in
STASIS OR STATUS QUO. As
the game starts A CRISIS DRIVES THE CONFLICT within the community out of equilibrium and
into a new phase.
The CRISIS may be the result of abstract forces or external forces.
That is the role of
such forces within the story, to drive the conflict within the community, which is what
interests us.
The HEROES HAVE RELATIONSHIPS with people within their community.
Those relationships may
be on BOTH SIDES. As the crisis develops the heroes must MAKE CHOICES about who they
support, and how they OVERCOME INTERNAL DIVISION to deal with EXTERNAL
THREATS.
At the end of the game CHOICES WILL HAVE BEEN MADE, the status quo
overturned, AND
NOTHING WILL BE THE SAME. As a simple but effective example the interesting part of Sam, Gollum, and Frodo's journey to Mordor is the conflicts within the group. Outside forces, such as Shelob or the Orcs, serve only to show us the strengths and weaknesses within the relationship.
There are a number of techniques to setting up such a game, but one which has been proved
to work across a number of storytelling games goes as follows:
Create a community. Have a one or more (for a longer game) conflicts within that community. Have a detente amongst the conflicting groups. Create characters that have links to that community or insert the characters into the community and allow them to establish links. Have the potential conflicts relate to things the character's have listed on their character sheet as abilities. These are your flags, things the players want to appear in play. A character who has Sword and Shield Fighting wants conflicts that can have violent outcomes. Push those conflicts renewed through a crisis. The players, in resolving the crisis, must make choices in the conflicts, potentially eliminating one side or the other.
As an example in setting up The Coming Storm I have given the Red Cow clan a number of conflicts. One, for example, is the Moon Winds, the converts within the clan to the Lunar Way. Prior to the game beginning the clan has accommodated such folks, following the example of Willelm the Knowing, a former chief who welcomed the Lunar missionaries. The game begins post the Dragonrise. With the Empire gone, people across Sartar, have expelled their turncoat kinfolk and driven out the Lunar garrisons. How will the people of the Red Cow treat their treacherous former kin.
Now here is a key point about setting up games with conflict. You cannot be absolutist with the source material. If you say 'all clans would have driven out all of their turncoats following the Dragonrise' you shut down the potential rich veins for story that might exist in allowing the players to make choices about what could happen. This is why it is important to understand that in the context of an RPG Glorantha is a tool that you need to bend to the purpose of your story. Use the setting to provide obstacles, but allow the players to find solutions, for example following a heroquest path that shows how Moon and Air could co-exist, that may not occur in the wider 'reality. Even if the players choose the seemingly less heroic path, for example outlawing the Moon Winds, this choice needs to have its own consequences that make heroic in its own way. Heroes make choices. In the case of the Coming Storm this choice is balanced by alliance with Duke Jomes Wolf who forms a wall of spears against the Red Cow's hated enemy - the Telmori.
People often run into the railroading problem because they say 'this is how it would have to be'. In an RPG Napoleon can win the battle of Waterloo, if the players decide it is so.
I'm going to provide advice on how to run this sort of game as part of the Coming Storm.
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