labcats | Game / Novel Analogy

Okay. We all know that analogies can be taken too far, and that rpgs are not novels or comics or movies or television shows or quite a number of other things.

That said, analogies can be useful. I'm still mulling over the one

mnemex just handed me.

I'm trying to plot an adventure that he and

ebartley can play through, a face to face adventure for their older Cthulhupunk characters to have, as opposed to their younger characters in the Strange School play by email. And I keep hitting the wall, as I go round and round, saying to myself, "Okay, so there's this small war going on in the mystical realms, but the focus of the game is on the PCs. So, what is it that the PCs will be doing?"

mnemex told me to invert this. He said, "Okay, look at the novel about the war. Yes, I know that this is a novel that will never be written. That's all right. What is the shape of the novel? Once you know that, you can figure out what the PCs should be doing."

I don't know if this will help me break through the wall, but I think he's right. It's not that I want the focus anywhere other than the PCs. It's that in trying to focus the planning on the PCs, I'd forgotten that there's a reason for overviews. Many fine scenarios are written where the author says, "All right. Some group of players will have their PCs go through it as some GM runs it. I know none of these people, and that's all right. My job is to describe the situation, the characters, the setting, the plots, and the possible twists. From there, GMs can tweak things to their own groups."