Iceman
June 19th, 2011, 14:26
I wanted to share a very successful formula I have created over the years that has helped me create and run numerous Dungeons and Dragons sessions. It has little to do with FG2 and everything to do with creating gaming environments in general. Nevertheless the methodology integrates easily into FG2 module creation as well.
I like the top down approach, so I pick a theme for my world. My favorite to run and play are Arthurian era adventures though I have also run games during the 100 years war between Great Britain and France, campaigns during the Crusades and many others situated in medieval Europe. Once I select my theme/era I research major happenings, usually from www.HistoryChannel.com (https://www.HistoryChannel.com).
After I get the facts straight I find interesting tidbits from the facts and search for myths, stories and legends surrounding those key facts. Then I integrate it all into a document that no one but me will ever see. The idea is to get enough truth to make it flavorful and inspire your players to research the period, but to mix it up enough so that they cannot anticipate historical events to their advantage. I refer to the document often during the campaign to remind myself as to the overarching themes that are developing within the lands.
The next part is the evolution of the world. I used to do what everyone else did – that is create a module and run my players through it. I have found a much more satisfying method is to allow my players to create the world as they go through it adventuring! I will create the base town or starting place and throw in a random dungeon/encounter just to get things started. Then, as my players discuss various aspects of the world I PAY ATTENTION TO THEM, what they say and what they are interested in doing. In this way I actually wind up using their own ideas and conversations to create the world around them!
I will never forget one adventure that started with a simple ‘encounter’ where a daughter went missing and the father posted a notice which was seen by the PCs. The truth was that the daughter had eloped with a neighbor’s son and this could have been easily determined/resolved. But my players kept finding and talking about interesting ideas that could have happened, and I used their own ideas which eventually put them into a vampires’ castle and allowed me to run an adventure that went on for more than two years in real time!
At any rate the method below is one that has worked well for me in creating a night or two of game play while preventing me from creating the whole world/module, so that I can keep the world evolving and up to date with what my players are most interested in at the moment.
METHODOLOGY:
I create three planned encounters, P1, P2 and P3. “Encounter” does not necessarily mean combat, but three incidents that are in line with what my players have been discussing, most likely at the prior game session. My intent is to PLAN to put at least two of those three encounters into the game at the most appropriate spot.
I create three PLACE encounters, PLACE1, PLACE2 and PLACE3. These are location specific encounters and the type that is most commonly used in commercial products, like the dragon that patiently waits in a room – never needing to sleep or eat – just waiting to attack the party! It the players travel to that area the encounter occurs. If not then they avoid that encounter.
I create three Random encounters. I literally roll for the appropriate CR encounter before the game and when I ask one of my players to roll a d6, if he gets a six then the first/next random encounter occurs.
I create three TIMED encounters. These are game time occurrences, so they might be a few hours, a few days or even a few weeks off depending upon what the PCs are doing. When the players reach the allotted time in the game these encounters occur. Some of these are also tied to a place, so unless the players are in that place at that time, they may not know that anything has occurred. Others are semi-place specific, meaning that it might occur if they were perhaps in a town or city but not if they were traveling overland. And then some are party specific, meaning that at the allotted time they are going to happen wherever the PCs might be at that moment.
Finally I create a REAL TIME event. I set my phone/watch to sound an alarm a couple hours into the game session. No matter where the characters are or what they are doing the real time event occurs. Its usually a pretty big one, like a volcano erupting or a town being annihilated by Saxons or something of that nature. Still, if the PCs are underground or in some place where they couldn’t know about the event then it may be weeks or months before they even hear about it!
All those methods come together to do three things for me:
1. The keep the world ‘alive.’ You don’t always have that dragon waiting in that room, so the PCs can come back whenever they want and as many times as they want to slay it and grab its treasure. The world keeps turning and the players are aware that things are changing in the world.
2. The players, whether they realize it or not, are actually creating the world as they adventure! The more interest they put into specific events (like the simple boy/girl eloping event) the more it gets developed and always keeps the world turning in the direction that interests your players the most!
3. The methodology allows me to create the world a little bit at a time in a fairly efficient manner. It takes longer at first, but once your players decide on a path to pursue it becomes easy to update the game weekly. Only once or twice have my players unexpectedly gone off on some wild unforeseen tangent and I was forced to end the game early so I could properly develop the plot lines for the next game session.
The only enhancement that I can think of for FG2 to help incorporate this strategy would be to keep track of game time and to allow for the easy ‘promotion’ of events, i.e. if I used Timed Encounters one and two but not three then simply advancing the game clock would check off the two used timed events and allow me to easily promote T3 to T1 and then add two more timed events for next session. Obviously what I do now is just edit/retype over the ones that have been used. So advancing the game clock to automatically highlight game time events would be helpful, but its not too hard to keep track of manually anyway.
Hopefully other DMs have other successful methods and this post will spark some of those ideas as well. As for the DMs just getting started, this methodology has proved most advantageous to me over the years and easily allows you to introduce mini-premade modules as you see fit to supplement your main storyline.
Iceman
I like the top down approach, so I pick a theme for my world. My favorite to run and play are Arthurian era adventures though I have also run games during the 100 years war between Great Britain and France, campaigns during the Crusades and many others situated in medieval Europe. Once I select my theme/era I research major happenings, usually from www.HistoryChannel.com (https://www.HistoryChannel.com).
After I get the facts straight I find interesting tidbits from the facts and search for myths, stories and legends surrounding those key facts. Then I integrate it all into a document that no one but me will ever see. The idea is to get enough truth to make it flavorful and inspire your players to research the period, but to mix it up enough so that they cannot anticipate historical events to their advantage. I refer to the document often during the campaign to remind myself as to the overarching themes that are developing within the lands.
The next part is the evolution of the world. I used to do what everyone else did – that is create a module and run my players through it. I have found a much more satisfying method is to allow my players to create the world as they go through it adventuring! I will create the base town or starting place and throw in a random dungeon/encounter just to get things started. Then, as my players discuss various aspects of the world I PAY ATTENTION TO THEM, what they say and what they are interested in doing. In this way I actually wind up using their own ideas and conversations to create the world around them!
I will never forget one adventure that started with a simple ‘encounter’ where a daughter went missing and the father posted a notice which was seen by the PCs. The truth was that the daughter had eloped with a neighbor’s son and this could have been easily determined/resolved. But my players kept finding and talking about interesting ideas that could have happened, and I used their own ideas which eventually put them into a vampires’ castle and allowed me to run an adventure that went on for more than two years in real time!
At any rate the method below is one that has worked well for me in creating a night or two of game play while preventing me from creating the whole world/module, so that I can keep the world evolving and up to date with what my players are most interested in at the moment.
METHODOLOGY:
I create three planned encounters, P1, P2 and P3. “Encounter” does not necessarily mean combat, but three incidents that are in line with what my players have been discussing, most likely at the prior game session. My intent is to PLAN to put at least two of those three encounters into the game at the most appropriate spot.
I create three PLACE encounters, PLACE1, PLACE2 and PLACE3. These are location specific encounters and the type that is most commonly used in commercial products, like the dragon that patiently waits in a room – never needing to sleep or eat – just waiting to attack the party! It the players travel to that area the encounter occurs. If not then they avoid that encounter.
I create three Random encounters. I literally roll for the appropriate CR encounter before the game and when I ask one of my players to roll a d6, if he gets a six then the first/next random encounter occurs.
I create three TIMED encounters. These are game time occurrences, so they might be a few hours, a few days or even a few weeks off depending upon what the PCs are doing. When the players reach the allotted time in the game these encounters occur. Some of these are also tied to a place, so unless the players are in that place at that time, they may not know that anything has occurred. Others are semi-place specific, meaning that it might occur if they were perhaps in a town or city but not if they were traveling overland. And then some are party specific, meaning that at the allotted time they are going to happen wherever the PCs might be at that moment.
Finally I create a REAL TIME event. I set my phone/watch to sound an alarm a couple hours into the game session. No matter where the characters are or what they are doing the real time event occurs. Its usually a pretty big one, like a volcano erupting or a town being annihilated by Saxons or something of that nature. Still, if the PCs are underground or in some place where they couldn’t know about the event then it may be weeks or months before they even hear about it!
All those methods come together to do three things for me:
1. The keep the world ‘alive.’ You don’t always have that dragon waiting in that room, so the PCs can come back whenever they want and as many times as they want to slay it and grab its treasure. The world keeps turning and the players are aware that things are changing in the world.
2. The players, whether they realize it or not, are actually creating the world as they adventure! The more interest they put into specific events (like the simple boy/girl eloping event) the more it gets developed and always keeps the world turning in the direction that interests your players the most!
3. The methodology allows me to create the world a little bit at a time in a fairly efficient manner. It takes longer at first, but once your players decide on a path to pursue it becomes easy to update the game weekly. Only once or twice have my players unexpectedly gone off on some wild unforeseen tangent and I was forced to end the game early so I could properly develop the plot lines for the next game session.
The only enhancement that I can think of for FG2 to help incorporate this strategy would be to keep track of game time and to allow for the easy ‘promotion’ of events, i.e. if I used Timed Encounters one and two but not three then simply advancing the game clock would check off the two used timed events and allow me to easily promote T3 to T1 and then add two more timed events for next session. Obviously what I do now is just edit/retype over the ones that have been used. So advancing the game clock to automatically highlight game time events would be helpful, but its not too hard to keep track of manually anyway.
Hopefully other DMs have other successful methods and this post will spark some of those ideas as well. As for the DMs just getting started, this methodology has proved most advantageous to me over the years and easily allows you to introduce mini-premade modules as you see fit to supplement your main storyline.
Iceman