> I think it's possible to convert some stories into
> scenarios. I've got one, which Jane's seen, but I'm
> not really happy I'm doing it right. It needs
> someone
> with experience of writing scenarios to review it.
Yes, I was very unsure about that, too. I'm not the person to review scenarios, since I tend not to use them without heavy modification.
> Certainly stories which are about the actions of
> specific
> heros are rarely suitable for conversion.
Would you believe I've had more than one person asking about using "Captured" as a scenario? Of all the impossible stories to use... you get just one diceroll going a different way from how I wrote it, almost anywhere in it, and you either get no crisis to solve, or Kallyr dead five minutes into the plot.
I can see how little bits of it might be useable, but there is no way that the main plot could work as a scenario. Unless of course more experienced scenario-writers would like to tell me how? There is no such thing as "impossible", there is only "10W10 resistance"... go on, someone beat it!
> The most useful scenarios are the ones like Cattle
> Raiding
> in BA. A clear objective suitable for most PCs with
> limited ways of achieving it.
(nods) That one's good. Nice and generic, you can set it in just about any clan, clear objective, and gives a great description of typical clan life. The only problem I can see is that some PCs won't have any natural place in it. "Sheepless nights", too - again, you can see what needs doing, and there's investigation as well as action. Trotsky's just run us through a modified version of that (it was a different person Who Dunnit).
> More complex ones, especially if they involve a
> major story
> arc, become problematical because the group is
> unlikely to
> have the right abilities and the results can throw
> the story right off course.
Whe I adapt scenarios for my group, one of the first things I do is look at what abilities are required to solve it - or rather, to be able to progress - and then make sure I have an NPC to hand with those abilities. Then if the PCs don't have them, or the PC who does is away, or if they simply fail horribly, there's another route through. Of course, I give the NPC a bit more than just "required ability 10W", I'll hand them a relationship and another more obvious ability as a disguise, but that's the plan.
Links with major story arc are a separate problem anyway. Are you and your group happy with the idea that by the end of the scenario, the major story arc may have veered away from "future history"? If not, and a lot of people aren't, then you end up with the PCs having no effect on the events that are taking up most of their attention. And they're meant to be the Heros, not spectators, so this is all wrong. What I'm trying to aim at in Swords is that major events, where they interact with them, occur as planned, but *because* of the PCs' actions. Or, if that fails, *despite* their actions, with NPCs stepping in, and making it quite clear what they think about having to do so. I don't like the second approach, but it's what the players wanted. So far, I haven't had to use it.
Actually writing a general-use scenario to allow for this sort of thing sounds like very hard work. Possible, but hard work. About all you could do that I can see is write out what is planned to happen without the PCs, explaining which NPC does what, and then let the GM decide which NPCs can have PC substitutes. But you'd absolutely have to give the GM every bit of information about what's being done and why, and how different NPCs interrelate, and why this one plan has been chosen above other possibilities - once you have PC substitutes, another plan may make more sense. Still, you'd have to do all that working out anyway, to be sure the Grand Plan you were going to describe as background actually made sense. This just means you have to write it down in coherent English rather than back-of-an-envelope scribbles.
> So to me the ideal scenario book would be something
> like
> twenty plots each covering a page or two in a single
> setting
> together with a dozen NPCs who appear as allies or
> opponents in several of those plots.
Yes. An existing relationship map, with plenty of places the PCs can slot into, as distant relatives, professional colleagues, competition, hirelings, whatever it takes to get them interested, and plenty of existing conflict and points of view. A couple of scenarios that set out "typical" clashes - cattle raiding, standard petty crime and occupational hazards - plus some more that are more unusual.
You know, that sounds a lot like "Blood over Gold", doesn't it? And it also sounds a lot like the original "Pavis".
Pavis - it was where I first met Glorantha, twenty-odd years ago, and I'm still adventuring there right now, with a very different rule system and playing style. Now *that's* a scenario pack!
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