It’s very easy to write a story for an event. It’s vastly harder to write plot. It’s even harder to write plot that makes sense after the players get to it; and you’ll need to have some mechanics to enable the players to make an utter mess of the plot you’ve carefully created for them.
At the start of an event the players have a situation. They have a reason to be where they are, and some stuff they know about how they got there. For Mandala’s Dark Hearts game the players were Heroes who had answered the Empires call and were together to save resources/villagers from an approaching Orc force. For Alone often the players were an engineering crew or soldiers who were being sent to a suspect location by some corporation. For Slender events we’re paranormal investigators going to somewhere where paranormal activity has been reported. With a ‘Saw’ themed event you might wake up in a small room with no idea how you got there and possibly minimal information about who you are.
I like to start my events with very little background. I know why I believe I’m there, and I know what I think I’m trying to do, but usually this is the extent of my knowledge (other than how my character fits in with the wider world). We do get players who want more. I can understand that that’s their style of play, but given the way we write games and the way I think about the games I’m writing it’s hard to work out what extra information our players are after. Briefings are given in game, often by the commanders the players have picked themselves, or packs are handed over at the pub in the hours before time in so that the players are dropped in running.
I tend to find people who run events have patterns they tend to follow regarding pacing. Some of this is dictated by timings they run to, but event those are often chosen and stuck to by organisers. For example, here at Mandala 24 hour time-in means 24 hours of things happening at all hours and if we think too many people are sleeping we’ll find ways to wake some of them up. At other games often much less happens from 2-3am until 10am. We benefit from having refs who are early risers and others who sleep late. We have shift systems for monsters to ensure people are awake through the night and we call time-out between midnight and 3am on the Sunday morning to give people a chance to sleep.
We also like to time out at a dramatic moment. We will build up to a shuttle launch, or final large battle and rarely play through the effects of it for long. Players can make that bit happen without us.
Events normally involve things happening for us. These can be the result of things we do, the result of things the players do or things that are entirely unexpected and no one ever works out quite how they happened. Usually there are things that players can’t stop. Some of these are things that’ve happened before the players got there. We like to give players choices and have things that happen as a result of the choices the players make. If the players feel they were responsible for the choice they’re more likely to feel personal responsibility for the effects of that choice.
We aim to give the appearance of choice. We cannot guarantee what the players will do, and we hope to have options for as many of their actions as we can predict. You can often give the illusion that the players actions are having an effect whereas both of the two most likely choices had the same outcome. We will ignore entire sections of game if the players don’t take the hook – even if it means they don’t get to see a lovingly prepared set piece. The set piece doesn’t add value if it’s forced in to a plot where it doesn’t belong. There have to be coherent reasons for each happening even if the players can’t work out what they are.
We have people who spend most of their time at our events writing and rewriting plot to respond to the players actions. Finding out what the players are planning and working out how we respond to things are major uses of our resources. We’ve had one game where the plot was being rewritten constantly and had five major rewrites with new endings and new story lines over the course of the weekend. They did end up with an ending very similar to the one we’d originally written, but that was by no means a sure thing and they took an entirely different route than we had planned to get there. You can never predict what players will do.
3 Comments
Can you expand a little on the statement “it’s very easy to write a story for an event?”
I’ve usually defined plot as “the stuff that gets written before the event” versus “story” the stuff that happens at the event versus “narrative” how it is described after the fact. I appreciate your definitions may differ.
I’m coming from a place where the players actually do have choice, rather than the appearance of choice and I’m interested in the approach you take.
The plot for me are the bits that happen at the event. You have the plot delivered by crew and games runners and player generated plot. I know it’s not what you mean, but even just using words to suggest that the plot might be over before the players turn up feels wrong to me. It puts the emphasis in the wrong place as the important action is the action at the event.
The story is the reason the event is happening. You can write the story before the event, although the players may view it differently to you and it may change as they interact with it. We typically start with a short story. ‘On an abandoned ship explorers are attacked by aliens’ is a good example. Also ‘A village is besieged by attackers demanding the return of an ancient artifact. Heroes are sent to save them.’ They’re short stories that the players will make their own and expand until they’re good in depth stories. They tell you why the players are there and they’re background. They’re not plot. The plot is the players discovering a room filled with science equipment with their companies logo on, and then hacking the computer database to discover that their company created the aliens and sent them in as sacrificial people to help one scientist survive to escape with the important info.
Got it! Thank you – that makes perfect sense.