The Importance of Story (CSC)

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First, it must be stressed that it is entirely possible to p1ay adventures that have been designed without an underlying theme or unifying scenario, and that have no plot, subplots, or their complications. Players (particularly Adventurer types) can be satisfied without them... for a while. Yet it is not so difficult to create adventures that do contain these elements.
If the DM can bring himself to think of his campaign as a story with an unwritten ending, he has made the first logical step in successful campaign design. Players, regardless of type, want to do more than just slay endless streams of monsters or loot bottomless treasure hoards. They want to be heroes who perform legendary deeds like the characters in fantasy fiction or film. To do this, they need a vehicle where their characters can grow strong and become famous. The vehicle for this is the game campaign.
==Theme==
The first step in campaign design is to give thought to the underlying theme of the campaign. A theme is a unifying concept that goes beyond the limits of a simple adventure. It is the framework upon which the adventures are built and provides the links between seemingly unrelated events in the world. Think of theme as the overall story line in a trilogy of books where each individual book both tells a complete tale in itself and advances the overall story of the series.
Several themes of varying depth and complexity should be created initially, allowing the players to pursue those which interest them most. As the game progresses, the DM will undoubtedly find ways to link and interweave the themes and the potential plots and adventures they contain.
Themes are expressed in terms of action, since they represent a macro view of the action going on in the world. A land with dragons is not a theme, whereas dragons who like to prey on villagers is. Other examples include: Ores mass for invasion in the mountains, a migration of barbarians threatens the kingdom, or rats threaten the villagers. The theme must provide a need for character involvement and then be sufficiently broad to support several adventures. Taking the example of the barbarian migration, the players first hear of burnt villages on the frontiers from refugees which leads to a series of adventures, all based on different scenarios, but linked together by the theme of the migration.
A baron needs aid to infiltrate a camp and learn of the barbarians' plans. This leads to the discovery of a captured princess in another encampment. Meanwhile a fortress in a pass must be re-supplied and regular troops cannot be spared. The Duke needs an escort to negotiate with the barbarian high chieftain, during which the party finds shelter in a ruined castle. Finally the PCs discover the reason for the barbarian migration: the sudden reappearance of an eldritch evil in the north. A new theme, that of suppressing the evil, is now linked to the old and a new series of adventures logically begins.
==The Tale is Told==
The structure of each adventure should develop like a story. It begins with a hook, something that piques the characters' curiosity, focuses their attention on a problem and then grabs and runs with their imaginations. The story develops as the pes hunt for details that reveal the plot and important subplots to them. Tension increases as plot complications occur until the PCs arrive at a predetermined climax and the players realize that success or failure depends solely upon their actions in this encounter. The climax resolves one or more of the maj or conflicts presented by the plot, often a showdown between the characters and their major opponent. This is where successful characters get to be heroes and the players have to keep wiping the sweat off their palms. After the climactic encounter, the story closes with a denouement, a short period of retrospection in which the victors can count their spoils and review their deeds, while the vanquished shake their heads and count their losses. It should be a pleasant, relaxing period of relative safety (for both the PCs and their players) before conflict arises anew and tension builds once again.
==Plots & Subplots==
The plot is the arrangement of adventure elements in which the characters must work to overcome a major obstacle and achieve a goal. While the major obstacle (or antagonist) is any force that opposes the pes' completion of their goal, it might be the forces of nature or even the characters' personal problems, but more often than not, it is a monster or evil NPC, often the villain or the characters' chief adversary.
Although the plot outlines the major conflicts, it's not an order of play in which the pes follow the DM's imagined script. A good plot line allows for a variety of paths and outcomes and may not come DM had originally intended. Remember, this is a game. Unlike a fiction author, the DM has less direct control over the heroes in his stories.
Plot deals with conflict, but conflict is not necessarily fighting. Conflict occurs whenever a person must overcome or resist someone or something that threatens his safety, his possessions, his personal goals or ambitions, or his values. Thus, most plots develop around one or more of these basic situations.
The plot should always initially appear uncomplicated and straightforward. An example might be that a baron wants the PCs to destroy the monsters in a remote part of his barony. The plot here is initially one of the players against the monsters.
The DM now must create a rough outline for the plot, listing the major encounters or scenes that will occur (though they need not all occur in the order listed). A outline for this simple plot above might read:
Episode one: The PCs scout the area. They encounter several hideous monsters in the area.
Episode two: The monsters organize a return ambush in an empty village.
Episode three: The lone surviving resident of the village is dying and frightened. If healed and befriended, he tells of the temple where the monsters dwell.
Climax: The adventurers try to ambush the monsters in their lair.
This is a simple, straightforward plot, with much physical conflict and a bit of role-playing to make it successful. It's also a dull plot. Missing are the complications that add depth to the story, the subplots that weave in and out of the main tale and often personally involve the PCs.
Subplots are stories within stories that complicate matters for the characters. They deal with side issues and focus on the goals of minor players, especially as they get in the way of the major action.
In the story above, the baron hires the characters to solve a problem. By adding a simple complication, the baron becomes a part of the problem. Instead of hiring the PCs to get rid of monsters, he has them take care of a mess that his own meddling has begun. The story picks up with episode two ..
Episode two: At night, the PCs are challenged by angry villagers who do riot want them here. Many villagers are strange-looking, even ugly, but in the firelight its difficult to say why. The encounter may end in a fight.
Episode three: A frightened villager seeks shelter in the PCs camp, but disappears during the night.
Episode four: If the PCs track the villager, they discover an abandoned temple with odd riddles and fierce magical guardians. Trails indicate that the monsters live here. The villager from episode two warns them to leave. He looks different now.
Episode five: The PCs solve the puzzles of the temple and defeat the guardians. They press on into the monster lairs and discover the sleeping bodies of villagers with monster-like attributes.
Climax: The PCs attempt to destroy the thing that changes villagers into monsters, despite the villagers' actions to stop them. If they spend too long here, the PCs undergo minor, monstrous changes.
The story can be further complicated by having one of the empty villages be the home of one of the PCs or by having the baron and his guards show up to deal with the weakened PCs, thus tying up his own loose ends. The climactic end may not be the battle with monsters, but the running battle with the corrupt nobleman's henchmen.
Subplots can also be sidelights to the main story line, brief little adventures that take the PC party off the main track, but in reality provide another component needed to develop the main story.
Avoid giving the players all the information they want, or need, all at once. Make them look for it, make them adventure for it, parcelling it out in pieces gained from this NPC or that bit of library research or from tavern rumors.
Don't give out solutions, present clues. Remember to provide the occasional red herring (false clue or trail) to keep the PCs on their toes and not accept everything they hear as truth. On the other hand, remember that an NPC will probably not lie unless he has a motive for doing so (to protect his or someone else's interest, or out of sheer malice-although the latter should be perceivable in some way).
==Personal Involvement==
Try to base one or more subplots within an adventure on the personal goals of the player characters. Personal goals are great hooks for justifying the start of an adventure, yet they can also become liabilities to the DM. Avoid having a character's personal goal become the primary focus of the campaign. Should that character irrevocably die, the campaign will rapidly grind to an embarrassingly and boring halt. Furthermore, the DM may be tempted to cheat (more than is necessary) to protect his plot line, keeping that key character alive in order to keep his story alive.
It's better to make the character's personal goals into subplots, side-line stories to the main adventure plot. Conflicting personal goals may not contribute to group harmony, but boy will they increase the intrigue level in a game.
To determine these personal goals, the players will have to create character backgrounds, working together with the DM to make their characters come alive. Go deeper than social status, parentage, and occupation to give a satisfactory answer to the question "Why has the character become an adventurer?"
If time permits, have each player write a short history for his character, including social status and any significant events of his past. The DM can then take the history, reshape it slightly and fit it into the events of the world, possibly even intertwining the histories of several characters. The end goal is to give the player characters a motivation for adventuring (rather than just looting for gold and glory) and in so doing create more character-oriented subplots.
==Plot Complications and Twists==
Complicated plots are more exciting than simple ones-ask anyone who reads for enjoyment. The same holds true for gaming. Most plot twists involve incorrect or insufficient infomation supplied to the PCs or someone working at cross purposes to them. These are the little (or big) surprises for which even the best of problem solvers cannot plan ahead. The following are suggestions, but with a little ilnagination the creative DM can go beyond them. Fiction and film are wonderful sources for these little gems.
* All is not What it Seems: What the PCs are told about something or someone is apparently not true. Who is lying and who is telling the truth?
* The Set Up: The PCs are set up to do something that no one else wants to and then find out why.
* Bait-and-Switch: In the middle of a mission, the objective changes.
* Betrayal: Whoever hired the PCs lied to them and has played them into the hands of their foes.
* The Problem Goes Deeper: What the PCs were assigned to do is not the real problem, only a symptom. Example: the PCs are sent to clear out bandits and discover that the bandits are acting on secret orders from a mysterious power in dark castle.
* Ah, Romance!: An NPC has a romantic attraction to a player character or to another NPC, one that only serves to make matters more difficult.
==Hooks==
It's possible for the DM to start an adventure with "You find the entrance to a dungeon. " Yet in campaign style play, that opening totally voids any feeling of story continuity or player choice. The belief that the characters exist in an ongoing story is destroyed or at least severely damaged. Instead, the DM needs to plan out a Hook, an imaginative opening scenario that presents adventure options to the players (never force them to choose one path) and then grabs onto their imaginations in such a way that they feel they must delve deeper into the adventure!
Open with action. Nothing starts a game off more predictably or pedestrian than t 'You are in your favorite tavern and a stranger comes up and tells you about..." Such detail at this stage is unimportant. Although the stranger may have a great adventure in mind, his speech inspires the same amount of excitement as, say, a trip to the dentist.
Action need not be combat or even something that directly involves the PCs. Have a murder occur in front of the party, a dragon strafe the village, an army march through, or have that stranger entrust the PCs with a locked box, just before he dies from that knife stuck in his back.
Whatever the DM does, it should latch onto the motivations of the PCs and appeal to one or more of the player types in his player group (Adventurer, Problem Solver, or Role-player).
==Story Development==
Once the PCs bite the hook, lead them into the adventure with other clues. Most major encounters or side adventures should advance the story line. If the DM feels a need to use random encounters (random dice-rolling can be used to spur the imagination but should never be taken as a substitute for it), it's an excellent practice for the DM to predetennine a number of encounters before beginning play. This gives him a chance to set up the statistics and motivations for monsters or NPCs encountered. It also allows the DM to answer questions like, "What kind of goods is that caravan carrying and where is it headed?tI or tlWhat's the ores' tribe?"
Encounters and events develop the story line as long as they bear some relationship to the story's primary villain or adversary. Battles with the foe's evil minions often bring insight into the complexity of the plot. Provide a balanced mix combat and encounters.
Remember to add in plot twists as necessary to deepen (or confuse) the plot, and throw in a few traps and puzzles, regardless of the setting.
Eventually, the encounters should serve to point the adventurers towards what the DM has determined to be the climactic encounter of the adventure. The climax need not be reachable in a single gaming session, although each gaming session should have some kind of mini-climax. This lets the players feel they are making progress toward their final objective.
==Climax==
Plan for a big finale which allows the characters to accomplish their goals and should involve some of the character's personal motivations. This is the encounter toward which the entire adventure has been leading. A wizard who is avenging his brother's death should be able to confront the murderer while a thief who seeks a lost magical item should find it.
Have an idea of what the climactic encounter will be when designing the campaign, but do not design it too far ahead. To do so may be to waste design time that could be used better elsewhere. The stoty is bound to change (remember players act independent of the DMs goals) and as it does the nature of the final encounter will change with it Rough it out in advance, but add final details only when it looks like the PCs will be there on the next play session.
Like the Hook, which opens the adventure with action, the climax should close it with more action. A rousing good fight is one way, but the DM may wish to combine it with a daring, fast -paced escape or a challenging puzzle that has to be solved while the battle rages. A pulse-pounding climax will make the players feel good about the adventure, even if their characters fail.
While the purpose of the climax is to resolve major goals and mysteries, leave some unsettled, or have the resolution of the first mystety unveil even deeper ones. Let the main adversary survive to plot and come back even stronger next time. Plant hooks for the next campaign or adventure!
==Suspense, Drama, & Humor==
Like fantasy literature itself, the elements of the story need not be limited strictly to blood and thunder action, obscure puzzle solving, or subtle role-playing. Fantasy stories often borrow elements from murder mysteries, tales of horror, and humorous stories. The DM may wish to add variety to his adventures by changing the tone of the game.
Suspense is created when the players know that something is happening or going to happen, but do not know what or when. It involves playing up the fear of the unknown. Whatever is going to happen will directly affect the PCs. The setting can enhance the feeling of suspense, playing upon the uncertainty. Darkness or deep shadows, unfamiliarity with the surroundings, and separation from friends all build suspense.
Suspense moves into fear and horror when the unknown becomes a threat to life and limb. Unknown quantities develop a feeling of paranoia in the players. Don't describe monsters right out of the Monstrous Compendiums or even give out their names. Describe only what the players see, hear, or smell. Let them first experience monsters by their hideous deeds. Keep the foe a secret as long as possible and build the tension by dealing horrible death to henchmen and other NPCs.
Humor in an adventure can balance horror and suspense by breaking the grip of tension on the players. Humor is not silliness, such as using puns for NPC names or making horrifying monsters into pink and purple polka dot absurdities that blow bubbles (although silliness does have its place in gaming). Humor is essential1y a way to make light of tragedy. It depends heavily on the DM's playing style and really can't be anticipated.
Humor should arise from the situation. A character is shrunken until he becomes trapped underneath his helmet. A terrible thing to happen, unless one happens to find him pounding angrily on the inside the helmet and running from the head I ice that didn't shrink with him.
Often it derives from the slapstick outcome of the solution to a problem, such as placing glass marbles on a stair to foil pursuit and listening to the enemies shouts as they tumble backwards into a pile of noisome goo.
NPCs are a wonderful source of comic relief as their singlemindedness, slowness of wit, or peculiar habits take their toll on the characters' patience. A tubby ha1fling hireling whose goal in life is to sample the world's cuisine may never provide much help in combat but he's worth his weight in gold the first time he staunchly defends his larder with a sturdy sausage.
==Success or Failure==
The temptation, when designing a campaign so closely tied to a story, is to think of it as a novel in which the DM must guide the players to the make right choices in order for the end of the story to come out as he has planned. Resist the temptation. Strongly resist the temptation! A DM who manipulates his players to reach his desired conclusion is telling those players that their actions and motivations are worthless and have no bearing on the game world. Instead of determining the outcome, they are impotent puppets. The DM might as well read them the novel he has brewing in his mind.
The solution is to look ahead to the possible outcomes, success or failure of a scenario. What will be the effect on the story line for each outcome? What effects will those outcomes have on later adventures?
Allow the story to flex and change as the adventurers move through it. If the DM feels that a particular scenario must be dealt with successfully for the adventurers to accomplish their mission, he may wish to give the PCs a second (or third!) chance to make a go of it. Remember, a key element to the fun of campaign play is the PCs' ability to influence the world for good or ill.
==Multiple Story Lines==
A good role-playing campaign usually relies on more than one story at a time. Although these may just be subplots of the same adventure, they can also be separate stories occurring simultaneously. The working out of characters' personal goals is good examples. A character could be looking for a way to remove a cursed glove from his hand and hoping an ancient temple Inay give him the insight to do it.
The whole story line of an adventure could easily be a stage in a greater epic. An epic is a single story with many linked episodes (usually more than simple encounters). The end goal of the epic is some fine and noble purpose, the ultimate defeat of evil, saving a continent from sinking below the waves, or founding a new nation in the wilderness. The final outcome of the epic often demands some sacrifice on the part of the heroes involved.