RE: Re: where's the Scenario?

From: donald_at_...
Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 21:05:19 GMT

In message <BAY110-W145861D272324308C11526A8A40_at_...> Mike Holmes writes:
>
>Donald Wrote:
>"However because it's the hero's story they need to have an influence
>on what happens and have the opportunity for some successes."
>
>Agreed, but how about failure? The scenario should take that possibility
>into account as well. This is touched on in my essay here:
>http://www.glorantha.com/support/na_defeat.html
>
>The point being that I personally find traditional scene-based scenario
>design to be very problematic. It's giving you a structure that you will
>almost automatically have to discard, potentially right off in play in
>the first scene. So I feel that it behooves us to have scenarios written
>up more like Prof. Edwards' offering in question, "Last Days at Skullpoint."
>Or, as another good HQ example that anyone can take a gander at, the Well
>of Souls scenario by Peter Nordstrand and Chris Chinn:
>http://www.geocities.com/doctorpeace/well.html

I was leaving the narrativist advocacy to others. Yes I like the approach (the Well of Souls was what enabled me to understand what all the theory was about). It would be nice to have more scenarios in that style but those two are the only ones I know exist.

[snip]

>It's not so much that we need to leave room for PC success or failure...
>those will happen regardless with HQ. It's that we need to make room for
>the players' choices to matter in terms of where the plot goes. At least
>for certain styles of play.

That's not true, it is possible to write scenarios where PC success or failure is irrelevant. The Sky Ship and to a lesser extent the Battle of Iceland are examples of that. Worse still the key events happen out of sight of the PCs so they don't find out what it's all about. Not that the narrator could tell them because it isn't explained.

However the intention of the thread was to encourage the writing of scenarios useful to all styles of game. Not criticise existing scenarios or advocate one style.

Incidently my main writing experience is of freeform games and that takes narrativism to an extreme. Once the game starts the GM's have little or no influence on what happens at all - they are too busy fielding queries and resolving mechanics.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/