Building adventures around NPC plotlines
Roleplaying games are not games; they are game engines. A game master reads 1) the setting, 2) the mechanics, and 3) the game master advice, and based on that information, puzzles together an adventure. The actual game is the adventure because that’s what we play.
By embracing that the adventure is the game, it’s possible to write the roleplaying game as a focused procedure that tells the reader (the game master) how to write an adventure. However, this article is about the problem with a prewritten adventure; how the information typically is static, and demands work from the game master to better suit the adventure to the group and their characters, that the adventure maker cannot predict. A written text is also linear – you read from the start to the end – which makes the reader think linearly. We want the adventure to form around the player characters and their actions!
Make the Adventure Information Non-static
Give information to the players as a reward for taking action.
As the player characters interact with the game world, the game master gives them more and more information about the world. Because there aren’t any foolproof ways of predicting the players’ actions, make the game master rely on different lists to use during a session:
- Environment
- Rumors. The first layer of the “onion”, where the players can hear, read, notice, or in other ways foreshadow the world.
- Set pieces. Places, buildings, and cultures to bring into the adventure, not bound to specific locations.
- Descriptors. Words that can be reused while describing the setting. They set the mood of the environment. Examples: dreary, cold, bones, fall.
- People
- Names. Brings up different genders, classes, and cultures.
- Character traits. Appearance (black hair), manor (sneaky), task (hunting), class (farmer), etc.
- Templates. Templates that enforce the setting and are important to the adventure. Examples: a traitor among the elves; a psychic dodging their own visions; an unknown leader of the resistance; an immortal that destroyed the world that regrets their action; a person of faith cursing the ones they think are sinners.
By making the information abstract, the game master can apply it to whatever or whoever. The unknown leader of the resistance can be a character one player made up in their character’s background, someone they just made up, a reoccurring character, a rumor they heard, or a person the game master decides on beforehand.
It’s also not important what kind of information the leader possesses, instead the game master should decide on the spot what kind of rumor or other type of resource they can offer based on the situation. By doing this, the game master can always reward the players, by giving them information, when they take action so the players feel like what they are doing is giving result.
Make Plotlines for the Non-Player Characters
A plotline in this article mean “a sequence of events that may happen”.
Where the adventure information above is abstract, the plotline is bound to a specific person, group, or character template, described through a sequence of events that occurs unless the players or another plot hinders them. One plotline may be about a princess marrying a rival king’s son, while another plotline transforms her into a bear. The players can stop either plotline, and suffer the consequences of their actions.
- The princess gets saved, by the prince from a rival king, from a pack of wolves.
- The princess has a lengthy letter exchange with the prince.
- The princess meets the prince in secret.
- The king discovers what’s going on.
- The princess marries the prince in secret.
It’s up to the game master when the events in the plotline occur: the marriage can serve as a background, or the players can discover the secret meeting. Mix in other plotlines, like the rival king starting a war or someone transforming the princess, and the result is an ongoing world. Again, it’s still up to the game master what will occur and when. Did the war already start? Will the princess transformed before she meets her suitor? What happens when the players are thrown into the mix, and change the outcome of the plotlines? What happens if we add more plotlines?
What the Plotlines Stand For
The purpose: treating them as inspiration.
Each plotline indirectly sets an agenda for a character, but they don’t need to be interlinked, where each separate plotline creates a story. The plotlines can occur in any order, all at once, at different stages, and they can expand or come to an abrupt ending. The main purpose is to give suggestions of possible outcomes for the game master, and while all the plotlines take an active part in the world, they serve different purposes:
- Mood. The plotline serves as background information, like the beginning of a war.
- A world in motion. The player characters are not in the center of the world when several plotlines go through events without them intervening.
- Insignificance. One plotline can span over several adventures, high above the player characters’ heads, laying the ground for an inevitable ending. How the players handle the ending is up to them, but the ending will happen.
- Mystery: By discovering the backstory, the players can come to a conclusion about what’s going on and why.
- Intrigue. Several plotlines intersect, so affecting one will affect others.
- Consequences. Whenever the player characters affect one plotline, it will fight back in one way or another. “The princess still wants to marry.”
The adventure should have the plotlines in lists, where the game master can introduce them during the session or, later on, proceed with any of the plotlines as s/he feels like. The game master should create a list of rumors from the current event in each plotline, and the previous events will serve as a backstory. These are introduced in any order – before the session or as the players interact with the world.
The article talks from the perspective of a game master working with a prewritten adventure, but plotlines can be used with collaborative storytelling games as well, with no prep or game master. In A Thousand Years Under the Sun, the participants play through the birth, rise, and fall of several cultures, and in The Coyotes in Chicago, three participants bring their own plotlines that they present, and adapt to, the player that takes on the role as the protagonist.
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